Sometimes it’s important to do absolutely nothing at work, or least not the job you’re supposed to be doing.
All Articles
The CEO of SAP discusses leadership ethics and why never missing a Little League game is good for business.
Researchers have found that consuming high levels of antioxidants–specifically the kind present in dark chocolate–can improve the memory of aging persons by up to twenty-five percent.
Why quantum entanglement spooked Einstein his entire life. Image credit: Nature, October 2006 (vol 2 no 10). ‘Tis the season of ghouls, goblins, witches, demons, and things that go bump […]
According to designers at the Centre for Process Innovation, airplane windows are unnecessarily heavy and should be replaced by light-weight OLED screens projecting images from outside the plane on the inner walls.
Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio hosts a biweekly meeting of “The Quiet Time Caucus,” in which House members and their staff are invited to participate in mindful meditation.
Architect Frank Gehry’s raised many controversial buildings over the years, but few as controversial as the middle finger he recently raised during a press conference in Spain. During a press […]
The appeal of being a manager will wear off quickly once the reality of the position sinks in. In order to succeed, it’s vital new managers maintain perspective.
The last object in the entire Messier Catalogue is faint, elusive, and the most common type of galaxy in the Universe! Image credit: Adam Block / NOAO / AURA / […]
Too much stress can have a permanent negative impact on your health. Recent research out of Germany shows that dealing with negative, abusive, and toxic people elicits huge amounts of stress in the brain
Exercise isn’t just for the outdoors anymore. An array of websites and YouTube channels dedicated to diet and fitness is at your fingertips. And many of them are completely free to use.
Biographer Walter Isaacson discusses his new book The Innovators and why Steve Jobs was a prickly teambuilder.
Increasingly, scientific research is being done in ways that seem to advocate the scientists’ point of view, more than to objectively and dispassionately represent “the facts.” Society is at risk when science is hijacked by advocacy-masquerading-as-objective-science, whether such distortion is done by researchers working for companies, governments, environmental groups, or just by scientists who allow their personal views to color the questions they ask and the way they describe and promote their findings.
The Week’s Ryan Cooper calls the 2014 midterms “perhaps the least consequential American election season in a generation,” but argues that’s not a reason to stay home.
One woman’s decision to end her life has a large segment of Americans rethinking their stances on assisted suicide.
How one person singlehandedly created a forest, saved an island, and changed the world. Image credit: Amarjyoti Borah, via Al Jazeera. “The trees are man’s best friends; but man has […]
Henry Rollins dished on the power and limitations of music in his Big Think interview:
“Is music a viable force for change? Can music stop things, start things, change things? To a certain degree yes, maybe in pop culture, but if a song or an artist could stop a war Bob Dylan and Bob Marley would have.”
A new study finds that receiving gossip encourages people to better themselves, particularly if the juicy news is positive in nature.
Understanding the relationship that Abraham Lincoln had with the press, which was then limited entirely to newspapers, helps put our current obsession with the news media in historical context.
Sherman Alexie, author of the award-winning novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, on Young Adult fiction:
“A lot of people have no idea that right now Y.A. is the Garden of Eden of literature… One person asked me, ‘Wouldn’t you have rather won the National Book Award for an adult, serious work?’ I thought I’d been condescended to as an Indian — that was nothing compared to the condescension for writing Y.A.”
Changing trends in how American undergrads choose their college major reflect broader social trends, argues Mark Shiffman, an associate professor of humanities at Villanova University.
“You see what power is – holding someone else’s fear in your hand and showing it to them.”
-Amy Tan, from her book The Kitchen God’s Wife (1991)
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof recently visited Big Think to discuss his new book A Path Appears and talk about the tactics advocates must employ to raise awareness for a good cause.
Current technology is not far from ushering in a new paradigm of human learning, said Google’s vice-president of research Alfred Spector at a recent conference in New York.
Elon Musk, purveyor of electric cars and rocket ships, is a much more wary of artificial intelligence. “With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon,” said the SpaceX CEO this week.
Environmentally friendly office space makes employees happier and more productive, according to a broad range of studies that have examined temperature, sunlight, and plants.
When we see the future through rose-tinted lenses, we are less likely to take the action necessary to achieve our goals.
When you throw more fuel on the fire, why does it burn out in less time? Image credit: Wikimedia Commons user Fir0002. “The light that burns twice as bright burns […]
A new parking app in San Francisco allows users to forgo the misery of searching for a spot. Instead, drivers can reserve an on-demand valet who will wait at your destination.
Civil rights leader Mary McLeod Bethune on never giving in to discrimination:
“If we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination, we accept the responsibility ourselves and allow those responsible to salve their conscience by believing that they have our acceptance and concurrence. We should, therefore, protest openly everything… that smacks of discrimination or slander.”