Megan Erickson
Associate Editor, Big Think
Megan Erickson is an Associate Editor at Big Think. Prior to Big Think, she taught reading and writing to ninth and tenth graders in NYC public schools and tutored students of all ages at the Stuyvesant Writing Center, which she helped launch. In her spare time, she worked in the communications department at the Center for Constitutional Rights and served as a mentor at the Urban Assembly, where she designed and led an extracurricular civics course on grassroots community action. She’s written on education, small business, and the arts for CNNMoney, Fortune Small Business, and The Huffington Post. Megan received her master’s degree in Education from Teachers College. You can reach her at [email protected].
Peggielene Bartels was working as a secretary at Ghana’s Embassy in Washington D.C. when she got a phone call informing her that she had been crowned king of Otuam, a […]
When we think family, we often think values, tradition, averages: 2 parents, 2.5 kids. But the concept of what makes up a family is anything but stable, says Sonia Arrison, a policy analyst who studies the impact of new technologies on society. And due to an unprecedented recent increase in longevity, it's changing again.
Margaret Moore, co-founder and co-director of the Institute of Coaching at McLean Hospital/ Harvard Medical School, answers all our burning questions about how to sift through the chaos of the digital age and organize our lives and minds. (Hint: it starts with the brain.)
Scientists have discovered four new species of chameleon in Northern Madagascar, including the Brookesia micra, which now has the distinction of being the world’s tiniest known lizard. Speedy runners, these chameleons […]
What’s the Big Idea? What Wikipedia is not, according to Wikipedia: a paper encylopedia, a dictionary, a publisher of original thought. A soapbox. A means of self promotion. A link […]
Michael Schatz, a researcher at Cold Spring Laboratory, wants to use Google's algorithms to understand genomic data.
“If you think about it this way, if you are a Martian coming by earth and looking at all these humans and then looking at how they work you wouldn’t—it would never dawn on you to say, ‘Well, now, this thing needs free will!’ What are you talking about?” says Michael Gazzaniga, one of the world's leading researchers in cognitive neuroscience.
Athletes may be paid millions, but implicit in the bargain is that ownership of their bodies is no longer entirely theirs.
What’s the Big Idea? If seeing is believing, then how do we come to know? One common misperception holds that vision springs directly from the eyes. True, the eyes, ears, and […]
Julian Assange: Establishment outsider. Nobel Peace Prize nominee. Talk show host? Apparently so. The Australian founder of controversial website WikiLeaks will be at the helm of “The World Tomorrow,” a series […]
It's unusual for a website to charge for its services, admits Lynda Weinman, but the fee "allows us to have a sustainable business model where we can pay contributors." Her approach represents a compromise between the open ideals of the web and the financial needs of the people who fill its pages.
What’s the Big Idea? As the Assistant Secretary of Education in the first Bush administration, Educational historian Diane Ravitch became known for her push to establish national standards for K-12 […]
According to the online community that has formed in opposition to the legislation, it amounts to online censorship. But is the controversy really about free speech, or is it just another showdown between rich and powerful Hollywood, and even richer and more powerful Silicon Valley? How will SOPA and PIPA affect everyone?
Are we born with a sense of morality?
What’s the Big Idea? In a 2011 interview, physicist Stephen Hawking declared, “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail.” Of course, the […]
Once they’re gone, mammalian arms and legs can't ever be restored. But if you cut off a salamander's leg it will reappear in just a few weeks. The enigma of amphibian organ regeneration has long puzzled scientists. Now, a new wave of scientists hopes to put it to use.
The social contract is clear: if you commit a violent crime, you go to prison. But what if you commit a violent crime because you have a brain tumor in a region of the brain that controls good judgment?
As soon as 2025, large parts of the world could experience perrennial water shortages, says Dr. Upmanu Lall, director of the Columbia Water Center and a leading expert on hydroclimatology, climate change adaptation, and risk analysis.
Get in to the holiday spirit by listening to Robert Pinsky read Dante's Paradiso.
“To me, being a DJ and being the Director of the Media Lab are essentially the same thing,” says Joi Ito, Director of the MIT Media Lab.
Roberto Díaz was the principal violist of the Philadelphia Orchestra and the National Symphony orchestra. Watch as he explains why bringing a hundred musicians together in to one synchronized ensemble is not easy - it's a feat of human expression well-deserving of our attention.
As barbarians, says Lawrence Summers, economist and former President of Harvard.
Patricia Milligan discusses the conflict between a generation that has carved out a niche and is intent on securing it and a generation that's burning for a shot. The give-and-take between the two is global in scale.
"We are children when we talk about the cosmic scale of energies throughout the entire universe," says theoretical physicist Michio Kaku. But with a little (okay, a lot) of human ingenuity, we may one day have the ability to harness the energy of the stars.
Do holiday sales make your palms sweat with anticipation? That's because they're designed to. “There's a very, very deep art and science to pricing," says Lee Eisenberg, author of Shoptimism. Watch as he explains the tricks of the trade and how you can avoid them.
“We are at the cusp of a revolution in medicine and biotechnology that will radically increase not just our life spans but also, and more importantly, our health spans," says Sonia Arrison, author of 100: How the Coming Age of Longevity Will Change Everything.
What's the difference between a Jackson Pollock painting and a finger-painting? Why is "The Magic Flute" so enduring, while other classical compositions have been forgotten? Leon Botstein, the dean of Bard College, examines what we're talking about when we talk about art.
"All of the cells in the body have this potential to make other kinds of cells. This has led to the discovery of human embryonic stem cells and other stem cells, which we’d now like to use to replace tissue and body parts," says Dr. Douglas Melton.
In the 21st century, biology will usher in advances in regenerative medicine. Stem cells will be at the center of discovery and application in that new field.
"Consciousness of course is one of the largest questions of brain structure and function. And we approach it now perhaps differently than we have in the past with our new tools. But I’m not convinced that we understand it any better," says Joy Hirsch.