Culture & Religion

Feeling IS fast thinking. And emotions aren’t always guilty of being irrational. Whenever pondering minds, always bear in mind Daniel Kahneman’s teachings on the brain.

Actor Lon Chaney was the movies’ original “Man of a Thousand Faces.”  Who is the man (or woman) of a thousand faces today?

Artist Laura Poitras—the filmmaker who helped Edward Snowden—shows Americans how to survive total surveillance in a new exhibition.

Warhol may be dead, but Pop Art is not—it’s more international, relevant, and alive than ever.

A group of scientists got together to make a case for going back to the moon in the latest issue of New Space. They see it as a gateway which will open up the rest of our solar system, namely, Mars. The bigger question is how much is this side trip going to cost us?

The current buzz is that robots are set to take our jobs – whether we work on the factory floor or the halls of finance. What could possibly be next? Perhaps robots will even replace our children.

Ursula Nordstrom changed children’s literature. During her time as the editor-in-chief of juvenile books at Harper & Row, she helped nurture the talents of many authors, such as Shel Silverstein author of The Giving Tree and Maurice Sendak illustrator and author of Where the Wild Things Are.

When Francis Bellamy penned our pledge in 1892, his focus was really on the ‘liberty and justice for all’ part.

Adam Smith hated greed. He’d likely be horrified to see how his name is now used. And any Smith fans who believe selfishness is a virtue distort what Smith called his best work.

Picasso didn’t fight in World War I, but he still struggled with how that war influenced his art and life.

Monty Python’s Terry Jones argues that economics isn’t a science—it’s history!  Forgetting that history inevitably dooms us to the next financial crisis.

Big Think is proud to partner with the 92nd Street Y’s 7 Days of Genius Festival to bring you an in-depth look at the many qualities and characteristics of genius.

Ra Paulette spent 20 years carving caves into soapstone mountains. His passion for the transcendent brings us back to Earth. 

A Spanish collective has transformed an old abandoned church into La Iglesia Skate: a modern skatepark and cultural center, complete with a brand-new paint job by renowned interior artist Okuda San Miguel.

The coffee pod design isn’t sustainable, so the German city of Hamburg has placed a ban on government-run buildings from using “Kaffeekapselmaschine,” or coffee capsule machines.

For Women’s History Month 2016, take the #5WomenArtists challenge and test your (sexist?) art history knowledge.

The science of “human vulnerabilities” is being used to “engineer compulsion.” In addition to A.D.D., “attention captivation disorders” are going viral.

Before #OscarsSoWhite and #MoviesSoBland, William Cameron Menzies turned American movies into art.

Our technologies possess intention, delicately guiding and influencing our most human behaviors in ways we haven’t considered.

China, India, Brazil, and Indonesia are the biggest carbon emitters. They also have the highest rates of premature deaths from air pollution.

On the 500th anniversary of the death of Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch, his native Netherlands is letting the freak flags fly.

The tale of a young man driven to his death for fighting for what is right, and the young woman picking up where he left off.

Technology is changing every aspect of life — including how we find love. A recent study conducted by the Pew Research Center indicates that nearly one-third of couples today found each other online.

A more nuanced picture of Justice Antonin Scalia’s 30-year stint on the nation’s highest court tells a tale that complicates the conservative-mouthpiece narrative.

There is a new SAT exam in town, and it’s a major revision. This five-question quiz will test the limits of your vocabulary.

Charles Darwin probably wouldn’t like what his name now means. He called any “Darwinian” human, having no trace of team loyalty, “an unnatural monster.”

Robots could be considered legal drivers in the United States. This means human occupants inside the vehicle wouldn’t require a valid license in order to ride inside — the software would be the vehicle’s legal “driver.”

Every year, air travel contributes more and more carbon emissions into the atmosphere, altering the world’s climate. But we never stop to think about how climate change will affect air travel. Paul Williams, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Reading, is about to tell us.

The recent Mid-Atlantic blizzard demonstrated how cities can do a lot better to serve the disabled residents whose lives are most impacted by controversial snow-clearing policies.

Walter Martin sings about art history in his new album Arts and Leisure and makes music for your eyes.