Culture & Religion
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Call it art, experimental philosophy, theater, or what you will – Jonathan Keats plays the fool as a kind of public protest against the ever-present danger of taking ourselves and our understanding of the world too seriously.
On Mother’s Day, in a sermon to his flock at the Providence Road Baptist Church in North Carolina, Pastor Charles Worley revealed his plan to rid America of its homosexuals: […]
We’ve long been fascinated by the endless streams of data available in the world around us, and we especially love to try to make sense of them.
A new tech start up wants to use a mobile app to create a worldwide network for real-time language translation. Its creators say the system is the next-best thing to the singularity.
What’s the Big Idea? Before neuroscience and quantum physics, there was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The 19th century German idealist revolutionized Western thought, and every great thinker since has been working […]
Today we’re pleased to announce our second Big Think Book of the Month, the dazzlingly ambitious Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism, out May 22, 2012 from […]
Due to rising tuition costs, even students attending state universities are taking on sizable debt. Until what point does digging a financial hole now allow you to scale a golden mountain later?
Compromise may be important to stable relationships but it can make the bedroom a very boring place. Sex psychologist David Schnarch suggests alternating between preferences.
As fathers play larger roles in their children’s lives, families are reevaluating old gender roles. But when two working adults are also committed parents, what energy is left for marriage?
Internet pioneer Jaron Lanier argues that free technologies like Facebook come with a hidden and heavy cost – the livelihoods of their consumers.
The presiding philosophy of the Laboratory for Perception is ultimately more informed by the possibilities of the future than by the past. Eagleman is fascinated by the idea that we could import the technology into human biology to enhance our sensory perception of the world, broadening and deepening our reality.
There is not much middle ground in the debate over whether life exists beyond planet Earth. Astronomers either believe the odds of life are impossibly rare or mundanely common.
Philistines are people who have something to be embarrassed about but nevertheless do not feel embarrassed. In common usage a philistine ought to feel embarrassed primarily because he lacks “culture”: […]
The Mind/Body Split in American Acting (and culture) On the whole, and with a few notable exceptions, Hollywood expects its great actors to play themselves in every role. We want […]
Despite America’s classless and meritocratic self-image, the divide between elite and supposedly plebeian culture is growing. What is driving the nation’s deepening divide?
Brian David Johnson is Intel’s first official futurist, helping the chip maker to imagine tomorrow and then build it. Johnson reads the sci-fi works of Vernor Vinge, Cory Doctorow and Charlie Stross.
Common Sense Media is an advocacy group for proper media digestion for kids. The website offers reviews of video games, movies, websites, apps, and much more along with parenting tips and […]
What’s the Big Idea? What do an art exhibit, live music, and a car manufacturer have in common? A lot more than you’d think. The Avant/Garde Diaries, a digital interview […]
Votifi is an online platform that encourages positive, nuanced political exchange. After you sign up, the website sends you daily polls through your browser or mobile device and creates a […]
Economics rests on unguarded assumptions that need to be examined, says author and Harvard professor Michael Sandel. He wants to revive a debate over the role of market forces.
Momentary enthusiasm, a few nice words at the inauguration, then gridlock: it’s the ebb and flow of electoral politics in America, and it’s lead liberal and conservative insiders alike to argue that representatives ought to capitulate every now and then, if only for the sake of negotiation.
The fact that contraception is back on the national agenda astounds sex therapist Marty Klein. Yet the struggle for humane sex laws is also about our struggle for democracy.
Writers invest their very lives in their work, so who should they turn to when a manuscript is finished? Increasingly, literary agents are taking the place of publishing house editors.
What’s the Big Idea? Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson believes in the power of science — so much so that he gets hate mail for it. From children. As director of […]
Today as I meditate on Arum and Roksa’s much-discussed study, “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses,” my thoughts turn to academic life at the institution where I teach. This week […]
Mistakes made 30 years ago have made much of the early digital age inaccessible to historians. Today, regulators are struggling to find ways to maintain a faithful historical record.
Busuu.com is an online network for learning languages. The site offers lessons in a number of languages and the ability to video chat and interact with native speakers – who […]
What matters in life? Will Wilkinson wrote wrote a nice Big Think post on Friday quoting some recent psychological research and suggesting the answer is “memorable social experience”: A number […]
Eastern Europe shares common positive characteristics that not only distinguish it from Western Europe, but also from most of the world. During the twentieth century, few regions on the planet […]