Twitter exploded last night when news about payoffs to former employees of the National Restaurant Association who had accused Herman Cain of sexual harassment during his tenure hit POLITICO’s front […]
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As we make sense of the world around us, our minds often take shortcuts, generalizing, cutting corners, making connections and engaging in inferences as they integrate all of the incoming […]
Will China become the banker to the rest of the world? Here’s why the E.U. can’t rely on the U.S. but could rely on China to help bail it out of its liquidity crisis.
Having hit the human population milestone of seven billion, the future we now need to face is not one of too much population growth, but too little, says strategist Sanjeev Sanyal.
What sends chills and thrills up your spine just by looking at it on a museum wall? Fright, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. But here is perhaps the scariest painting of them all.
While protests continue to rage in Syria and a new government takes shape in Libya, the origin of the Arab Spring has attained a huge milestone: Tunisia successfully held its […]
The ‘generation gap’ of the 1960’s and 1970’s referred to the differences between the then young baby boomers and their parents about what was wrong and whatshould be – today […]
–Guest post by Jamie Schleser, American university doctoral student. Technological advances in how we communicate, from the advent of the printing press to the launch of the World Wide Web, […]
“Two, four, six, eight, we don’t want to integrate!” The black and white picture from the fifties of a teenaged white girl yelling racial epithets at a young black coed […]
Activities that give us pleasure activate the same areas of the brain such that, for some, taking cocaine is analogous to giving to charity. Pleasure is a powerful motivator for action.
Studies show that people who believe that intelligence can improve with time and effort are more likely to bounce back from failure than those who view their abilities as fixed. Why?
In a culture obsessed with efficiency, mind-wandering is often derided as a lazy habit. But our minds lose track frequently and daydreaming, if cultivated, can pay dividends.
The scientific study of dreams is known as oneirology. Rather than being concerned with what dreams mean, it is more interested in the processes that give rise to dreams.
Thanks to advances in computing power over the last few years, it is now possible to scan someone’s brain and get a reasonable idea of what is going through his or her mind.
So my post on whether or not higher education is worth it got a lot of responses, mostly negative. Many of the respondents chimed in through email and want to […]
Creating an ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneurship in the Arab world is the next logical step in consolidating the political gains of the Arab spring and stabilizing the region’s volatile economic environment. That’s […]
When my sister married a man she had only known for nine months, seventeen-year-old me thought that was a bad idea. “Why not live together first?” I asked. Because, she […]
When I tape a radio segment for WEAA’s AFRO/FIRST EDITION with Sean Yoes, I usually gather more information than we have time to cover. Yesterday was no exception, when I […]
The X Prize Foundation will offer a $10 million prize to the first team that significantly boosts the speed and accuracy of D.N.A. sequencing, which could open wide new medical horizons.
There’s a very good chance that generating food from traditional farming and livestock practices will not be able to keep pace with the world’s population boom.
“The $2.6 trillion the United States is spending on health care is too much, and we can reduce it without rationing or sacrificing quality,” says Ezekiel Emanuel, M.D.
The holy grail of blood research, man-made blood, will soon be tested on humans. Within a decade, it could supply much of the world’s need, saving countless lives around the globe.
A growing body of research suggests that laughter can really benefit your health. From improving immune function to lowering blood pressure, a good guffaw is good medicine.
Are you a Big Thinker? Are you a Serial Thinker? Are you always the first person to offer your opinion? Then there’s a good chance you’re an Ice Breaker. You […]
To be a successful investor, you don’t want to be jumping from one company to the next. Instead, William Ackman says, pick a company that you can own forever.
The technologies that contribute to automation are likely to follow an exponential pattern, which means that more industries will start to lose jobs at an astounding rate as machines get […]
It’s always exciting news for us at Big Think when one of our own has published a new book. Today we are excited to spread the word about Mark Seddon’s […]
How can individual employees as well as managers create a more pleasant work environment? Thinking positively and giving to others are two good places to start.
–Guest post by Sarah Merritt, American University doctoral student. As we begin to look back at the Iraq war in hindsight, it is clear that more scholarship needs to focus […]
Listening to Mozart won’t make your child a mathematician, but Shakespeare can help make her more social.