Guest Thinkers

Conservative columnist Ross Douthat opposes gay marriage because he cares more about his aesthetic ideals than he does about equality. In his latest New York Times op/ed Douthat rejects all […]

Is it possible that it is not yet boring to talk about the end of books, the end of literature, the increasingly (at once obsessive and trite) making rare of […]

It’s been over four decades since Greenland lost an ice chunk like the one “born” last week. The ice island – four times the size of Manhattan – calved off […]

Now that the dust has settled after the immediate reaction to WikiLeak’s release of secret Afghan war logs, clearer lines can be drawn concerning the event’s significance. The most fundamental […]

Most white women in America work their asses off. I live smack dab in the middle of stay at home mommy land, complete with the high priced tennis outfits and […]

“The govenrment needs to be exposed because it cannot be trusted to expose itself.” Even Fox News praises WikiLeak’s release of Afghan war logs as a necessary check against secrecy.

In chemistry, a free radical is the name for an atom or group of atoms having at least one unpaired electron, thus making it unstable and highly reactive. From the […]

Design and innovation consultancy IDEO, credited with pioneering the concept of design thinking, has been at the forefront of pro-social design over the past decade. Now, they are entering the […]

Imagine heading out West with a pair of binoculars and unexpectedly coming across a pair of passenger pigeons, birds that have been extinct for decades? Or imagine driving into the […]

Two stories this week featured young black men and race. In one story, a young black man in his mid thirties who reported that he was often harassed at work […]

“Until we find the collective will, the drive for national economic security will continue to lead to collective insecurity.” A finance professor discusses the eventual downside of coveting resources.

“Once on the fringe, about 750,000 off the grid American households pioneer green living by tapping sustainable energy from the wind, sun, and earth.” The Christian Science Monitor reports.

“Don’t covet your grief like a precious thing, something that justifies your every whim.” In the controversy over Cordoba House, The Economist sees a petulant America just trying to get its way.

Experts commonly accept the Hudson River School, led by Thomas Cole, as the first true American art school and movement. They looked at the American landscape and saw something the […]

“Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated”, Mark Twain famously responded after reading his obituary in the New York Journal. To which may now be added “Reports of the […]

As Moscow is afflicted by heat waves and smoke from neighboring forest fires, Russians are sometimes at a loss. The countries cultural wisdom turns on surviving the cold (with vodka), not the heat.

“The loudest and most important lesson of the Soviet experience should always be: don’t ever do this again. Children, don’t try this at home.” A new book chronicles the failed experiment.

Yesterday the Senate passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act by unanimous consent. The bill allots $4.5 billion to fund public school food programs. The bill, which was backed by Sen. […]

A little Friday afternoon fun from Media Matters… A profile of Dr. Kevin Pezzi, a contributor to Andrew Breitbart’s website Big Government. Update: Shrinkage has occurred at Big Government. Is […]

Providing adequate and sustainable sources of energy isn’t a geophysical problem of finding supplies or a technological challenge of using sun, wind or gas more efficiently. It’s a psychological problem: […]

Since this is Big Think’s ‘Month of Thinking Dangerously’, here are my three pennies worth. In politics it has almost been impossible to think dangerously on either side of the Atlantic […]

Emily Yoffe, aka Slate advice columnist Dear Prudence, has evidently been driven to distraction by the prospect of an Islamic cultural center/mosque two blocks from the former World Trade Center. […]

Our Sun has been asleep for a while, but now it’s starting to wake up. You’ve probably read or heard about the recent solar storms that sent plasma towards Earth, […]

“When life is being led in public, every word and gesture is open to criticism.” A new book explains how social media recall the dating games of Jane Austin’s provincial England.

Harvard Business School alumni have been passing around an article via email. David Brooks referenced it on the Times Op-Ed page. The article was written by Professor Clayton Christensen, one […]

The real target of yesterday’s decision to overturn California’s gay marriage ban was the Supreme Court. Judge Vaughn Walker knew that his ruling would not be the final word. His […]

In a recent interview with Der Spiegel, Random House CEO Markus Dohle explained his company’s outlook on the future, why he’s in no rush to bargain with Apple, and what […]

At the University of Salford in England, Charlie Mydlarz is working on a sound-map of the entire globe. He is asking people all over the world to contribute 10 to […]

Christopher Hitchens describes his treatment for cancer of the esophagus as travelling to a disorientating new land that is ironically comforting, though he is now bored by his fate.

While defining spirituality is ‘like shoveling fog’, an increasing number of Americans self identify as spiritual but not religious. One political scientist sees it as an outgrowth of the 1960s.