Culture & Religion

What is it like to create music, on both a technical and emotional level? This week Big Think presents a fascinating tour inside the mind and heart of one of […]

Osama Bin Laden’s closest family is reportedly in hiding in a secret compound in Iran. The group allegedly includes his wife and children who disappeared after the 9/11 attacks.

How much real science is there in James Cameron’s science fiction movie “Avatar”? Quite a bit, says MSNBC’s Charles Choi.

Let us now praise Sir Harry Evans. Why not? We thought we knew him, but now we know so much more. Memoir is best when performed by those who did […]

In a Hollywood that became increasingly politicized (some moviegoers would say “boring”) over the past five years, James Cameron is generally considered a-political. Among the all-time box office kings, the […]

What do the Egyptian pyramids, the Mona Lisa and George Clooney’s face all have in common? The “golden ratio” according to The Independent writer Steve Connor.

The Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was in town four days before the fall of Kabul in November 2001 in “remarkably good spirits” before slipping indefinitely from U.S grasp.

An engineering team has developed face recognition software which they claim is “remarkably accurate in realistic situations” unlike existing face recognition systems.

Of course he does.  And West’s passion for the things he loves is uniquely infectious.  When he tells us what he thinks—about anything, from the history of jazz to Obama’s […]

The House of Representatives has passed legislation declaring Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue album to be a masterpiece.

In an effort to publicize a marginalized community, India has held its first ever transsexual beauty pageant.

This afternoon, Michael Kupperman, the man Conan O’Brien calls “one of the best comedy brains on the planet,” came in for his close-up with Big Think. Despite freezing weather in […]

Well, not exactly. But Jessica Valenti, founder of Feministing.com, spoke with Big Think about how she admires the pop star for her pluck and blunt sexuality. Much of the interview […]

A fragment of a temple to Isis submerged for centuries but recently hoisted from the Mediterranean sea is believed to date back to the era of Egyptian queen Cleopatra.

Senate member and former vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman is seen to be “holding Obama to ransom” by using his deciding vote to go against the health care reform bill.

Golfer Tiger Woods may well be spending the Christmas holidays alone after reports that his wife Elin is moving out of his den following revelations that the pro has been cheating.

British comedian Stephen Fry is best known for his work as an actor, writer and, more recently, a new media aficionado, with some million-plus Twitter followers eagerly awaiting his every […]

Who needs proper porn when one can read Chaucer? Both might make us feel good in diverse ways, but assumptions that the afterglow of old poetry is uniquely cerebral are […]

The Independent talks to George Bush about the “surreal afterlife” of being an ex-American president, dog poop and being mistaken for himself.

Displeased Indonesians have been venting via Facebook outraged that a statue of a young Obama, “who is not an Indonesian national hero”, has been installed in a Jakarta park.

An ice-making kit which urges drinkers to recreate the sinking of Titanic using ice cube replicas of the ship and surrounding icebergs has been branded “sick” by consumers.

Textbooks–and perhaps, uniquely, economics textbooks–are not known for their literary brilliance. Why should they be? Does math need metaphor? In college when we think about numbers we think about things […]

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns has tackled a wide variety of subjects, from jazz to baseball to war, but all have one thing in common: they cut somehow to the heart […]

Some critics admire Disney’s new entrepreneurial black princess and her interracial relationship with the frog prince.

Hair samples from ancient Peruvians contain hormones that indicate they suffered from stress just like we post-moderns do.

A mixture of polo and football requiring a decapitated goat is the elite Afghan sport called Buzkashi.

More than perhaps any other genre, poetry has the ability to unite past and present into a unified experience. Whether drawing from scattered memories of random passersby, the Napoleonic Wars, […]

Multiple Grammy Award-winning jazz composer Maria Schneider visited Big Think today for a conversation that, like her work, spanned genres and art forms. Topics covered included the influence of dance […]

Futuristic 3D videogame-esque film “Avatar” is a “triumph of technology storytelling” for a writer/director who had to propel the special effects he wanted into existence.

There have been myriad memorable speeches, and memorable lines, from our current President, but perhaps today’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech will be remembered as his finest. Its lyricism was notable, […]