6 video games that can help older players focus and relax

More people over 50 are becoming gamers, but finding the right game can be tough.

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  • Over 164 million Americans play video games on their phones, computers, or gaming consoles.
  • 21 percent of gamers in the United States are over the age of 50.
  • Studies have shown that games can improve memory and reduce signs of aging.
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How Big Think can better support you and how you can support Big Think

Here's a letter from our co-founders on the ways to help the world get smarter, faster, through engaging actionable content.

Mind & Brain

Dear readers,

We're the co-founders of Big Think. First and foremost, we want to thank you for your viewership. Over the last 12 years, you have helped us take Big Think from a vision scrawled in notes on lined paper to a reality that has reached over 1 billion people with the mission of helping the world get "smarter faster".

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Become a speed-reading machine: Read dozens of books next year

Tripling your reading speed with just 15 minutes of practice each day, and boost your ability to retain what you read.

  • Speed reading training can double, or even triple your reading speed in 30 days.
  • Results can be seen with just minutes of practice each day.
  • Training also focuses on memory retention and skill acquisition.
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10 mind-bending books on the nature of time

Why does time flow in one direction? Why do humans perceive time so differently than it really is? Is there really a difference between the present, the past, and the future? These books explore these questions and more.

  • Despite being immersed in it and inexorably propelled by it, we don't really understand time all that well.
  • Fortunately, we can rely on the minds of our smartest writers to give us a good understanding of the one thing we all can't get enough of.
  • This list of books on time ranges from the complicated to the straightforward, the historical to the speculative, the scientific to the literary, and more.
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Does the inability to distinguish fact from fiction factor into Americans' mistrust of mass media?

About 86 percent of American 15-year-olds can't tell fact from opinion. Can you?

Mind & Brain
  • The results of the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment show that just 13.5 percent of American 15-year-olds could reliably distinguish fact from fiction in reading tasks.
  • A 2018 Pew Research Center study showed that more than half of U.S. adults had trouble identifying fact from fiction after reading a list of 10 statements.
  • Respondents who were least able to correctly flag opinions were likely to be digitally unsophisticated, relatively politically unaware and generally mistrustful of the media.
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11 holiday gift ideas for the person impossible to shop for

From coffee makers and headphones to a calming weighted blanket, something here should appeal to just about anyone on your list.

Gear
  • Check out 11 awesome holiday gift ideas, each up 75% off.
  • Options include an ultrasonic cleaner, a portable video projector and a weighted blanket.
  • You can save an extra 15% off each item with the coupon code MERRYSAVE15.


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    Jeannie Gaffigan: Finding comedy in a brain tumor

    Here's how a pear-sized tumor on Jeannie Gaffigan's brain stem became an unexpected comedy gold mine.

    Videos
    • It was only by chance that Jeannie Gaffigan found out she had a pear-sized tumor on her brain stem. During a visit to her kid's pediatrician, the doctor noticed something off about Jeannie Gaffigan's hearing, which led to the diagnosis.
    • She needed to have immediate brain surgery. Gaffigan describes this highly stressful and uncertain time in her as traumatic—and deeply hilarious, says Gaffigan. Comedy, she says, can be used to process your traumas.
    • A comedy writer by trade, she obsessively documented the experience and asked people who visited her in hospital to make notes and lists, which she later turned into her memoir When Life Gives You Pears.
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