Guest Thinkers

Is this some kind of sick April Fools Day spoof? Arizona’s Republican governor reportedly has a bold new plan to pit fat Medicaid recipients against kidney-transplant candidates. Jan Brewer is […]

Following Congressional hearings this week on climate change, in a guest post today Ashley Brosius considers the origins of the partisan divide on the subject and suggests several possible paths […]

In a guest post today, Lauren Krizel reports on an event held this week in Washington, DC that gathered some of the city’s top chefs to discuss sustainability and the […]

Maybe the most provocative speaker (although not so much, maybe, to BIG THINK readers) at our conference at Berry next Friday and Saturday will be RONALD BAILEY–the libertarian proponent of […]

History is being made; and not just history in human affairs. It is about the history of life on Earth and whether we will find the means to co-operate in arresting the destruction.

After reading a story earlier this week about the problems in Bank of America’s mortgage modification department, I wondered—has the mortgage crisis become so large and pervasive that we have […]

Amidst the failed state Somalia, the northern part of of the country, encompassing the colonial boundaries of the former British Somaliland is a functioning, free and fair democracy. Bizarrely, it remains unrecognised by any other country.

“Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate,” Dante Alighieri wrote on the entrance to Hell in the Inferno section of his allegorical masterpiece The Divine Comedy. The English translation usually goes something […]

Over the last year, we’ve been hearing about unrest at the Taal caldera in the Philippines. Last year, PHIVOLCS even raised the alert status briefly when seismicity at the volcano […]

Here is a mystery: where is all the radiation coming from at Fukushima? Since the site is too radioactive to make definitive analyses, physicists and engineers are making educated guesses, […]

Wall Street investment banks will begin trading a new type of exotic financial instrument in which the underlying cash flows of an artist’s creative works are re-packaged into off-balance sheet derivatives

Remember, ladies, there is no “I” in “uterus.” The Republican speaker in the Florida state house has opened in new front in the GOP’s war to control women’s bodies. He […]

What’s with all the microearthquakes under the eastern seaboard? Are we, as a Dartmouth geologist suggests, seeing a resumption of volcanic activity associated with a newly active subduction zone?  

I heard he has an ex-wife in some place called Mayors Income, Tennessee And he used to have a consulting business in Indonesia But what’s he building in there? He […]

I am running behind schedule today, so only a brief post – but luckily it is packed with plenty of good volcano info: the latest Global Volcanism Program Weekly Volcanic […]

With unhealthy diets raising people’s risk worldwide for heart trouble, diabetes and other chronic diseases, the hunt is on for better ways to get us all to eat more vegetables and fruits. The answer could be in your nearest vending machine. 

The European Commission said that to meet climate goals by midcentury, gasoline- and diesel-run cars must disappear from cities. Its new goals to cut oil use are the world’s most ambitious.

As the railroads shaped the American West in the 19th century, a new electrical generating and transmission system for the 21st century will leave its lasting mark on the desert.

Barack Obama called for cutting U.S. oil imports by a third before 2025, in a speech aimed at defending his energy agenda from Republicans seeking to limit fuel efficiency standards.

On each day of Shakespeare’s birth month, Big Think will examine a different way that studying Shakespeare enriches the various disciplines—from neuroscience to business to psychology and beyond.

Design Thinking is one of the most fashionable concepts in the innovation world these days. But could it really save industries that are on the fast road to extinction?

Over the years, dozens of portraits have claimed to be the true visage of the bard–including a new contender, the Cobbe portrait. But can we ever know which one is real? 

You are looking at the first color image of Mercury from orbit. It was taken by NASA’s Mercury Messenger spacecraft, which is on a mission to “unravel the history and evolution of the Solar System’s innermost planet.”

With koanic brilliance, Robin Sloan recently summarized the difference between last century’s old command-and-control journalism and today’s. It was, of course, a tweet: “The way to cover big news in […]

I paid more taxes on my blogging income than General Electric paid last year. That’s not because I make so much money blogging, but because GE literally paid no taxes […]

Florida’s Republican governor has a creative way to demoralize and demonize public sector workers: mandatory drug testing for all state employees who answer to the governor and all prospective hires […]

Governor Rick Scott has done the Madness in Madison one better—instead of wasting time paying off political supporters and other intermediaries, Scott has decided to institute “RickyCare” in the state […]

Perhaps it was unintended, but two or three weeks ago, at the height of the protests that was gripping the great cities of Egypt, the Director General of the BBC, […]

After taking a vow of silence for 17 years and refusing any transportation, save his own feet, for 22, John Francis is speaking out about the lessons of conservation and planetary harmony.

A new generation of climate models and the visionaries who wield them show that our carbon legacy will last far longer than most of us realize, long enough to interfere with future ice ages.