Harvard primatologist Richard Wrangham came by Big Think a few weeks ago to discuss cooking and all of its evolutionary implications. Did you know that cooking is a huge influence […]
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As a kid, I loved my oversized reproduction of Action Comics #1, the June 1938 issue in which Superman, the first true superhero, burst onto the scene and changed the […]
Scientists think toads may be able to predict earthquakes by sensing “pre-seismic perturbations in the ionosphere.”
“If ever there was a scientific theory that is fundamentally historical, that purports to explain change over time, it is evolution through natural selection,” writes Donald Worster.
A group of scientists is hoping to transform fast food waste oil into a high-tech polymer and create a “smart roof coating system” which will help to insulate homes.
The moral and legal debate over the use of military drone aircraft raises questions about how adequately the current laws of war have been adapted to the age of terrorism.
Researchers have come up empty in their quest to link genetic “copy-number variations” to diseases like breast cancer and diabetes.
Scientists have discovered the reason why the earth wasn’t covered with a layer of ice four billion years ago, when the Sun’s radiation was much less than it is today.
Researchers Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong have found that exposure to organic and environmentally friendly products leads people to act more altruistically.
The taste of many 2008 pinot noirs from California’s Anderson Valley was tainted by the severe forest fires during the growing season that year.
Gary Bass looks at how Israel lost its alliance with France in 1967, and what that precedent might indicate for the country’s relations with the Obama Administration.
Some journalists believe that Apple’s forthcoming iPad could save their industry, but it’s likely that publishers are being overly optimistic in their pricing schemes.
I spoke with one of Atlanta’s former mayors last week about the new advocacy organization she had just joined. Shirley Franklin, the first black woman to run the city, seems […]
If you’ve spent time with an environmentalist in the past few years, you’ve probably had a conversation that went something like this: You: I’ve switched to organic peanut butter! After […]
Michael Lewis is probably best known these days for two great sports books, Moneyball and The Blindside. But he originally made his name with Liar’s Poker, a book based on […]
Not that you spend too much time wondering what life would be like if you were a light bulb…but, in case you’re curious, your body’s existence is equivalent to a […]
This past month, Honduras has witnessed an unprecedented series of attacks on journalists: five journalists were killed in March alone, making the country, along with Mexico, one of the two […]
No man is an island…or could be if he tried. Even traits that we believe to be products of our individual genes, choices, or experiences—from our weight to our taste […]
Simon Johnson, MIT professor, former Chief Economist at the IMF and co-founder of BaselineScenario.com, stopped by today to talk about the financial crisis and why we desperately need to get […]
Well before the Kinsey reports, turn-of-the-century Stanford University hygiene professor Dr. Clelia Duel Mosher did a scientific survey of the sexual habits of her era’s women.
A look at the factors behind the brutal civil war that has been taking place in the Congo over the past decade — and the epidemic of mass rape that has swept that country with it.
Researchers at the University of Utah have found that 2.5 percent of the population is able to do two or more tasks at the same time without hurting their ability to perform each.
Columbia University professor Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic says her team of researchers has grown a human jaw bone using stem cells taken from bone marrow.
Recent evidence indicates that bats have sensitivity to the geomagnetic field, and use it to navigate. When they are traveling miles from home at night they seem to guide their flight, at least in part, by using the magnetic field around them.
New research has found that the ancestors of modern Scottish people left rock engravings that contain a written language from the Iron Age.
It cost $10 billion and took 16 years, but the Large Hadron Collider finally went into operation yesterday in Switzerland — and the world didn’t end after all.
Dominique Browning’s book, excerpted in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, will tell her story. Her story is more than just this, but it begins with this: she was the extremely […]
There’s a new anti-snobbery food movement in France called Le Fooding, which focuses on sensual cooking, that evidently wants to take over America as well.
Why did Texas, remarkably, escape the worst of the burst of the real estate bubble? The state has had a comparatively low mortgage default rate through the recession, and Alyssa Katz looks at the broader secret to the state’s success, and what Washington might learn from it.
“We want to make architecture that people like to use,” said Kazuyo Sejima, who with partner Ryue Nishizawa won the 2010 Pritzker Architecture Prize yesterday. “The jury somehow appreciated our […]