Zachary Shtogren
Zach Shtogren has worked as a translator at PEN and as a journalist for the now-defunct Catalonia Today and BCN Week. Zach has also worked as an environmental educator in the Peace Corps, taught New York school children urban ecology, and managed the Grand Canyon National Park's greenhouse and nursery. He is also a former Big Think editor. He graduated with a degree in French from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Does “Population Die-Off” Need To Be Retooled?
One would think humans would have a notion of preservation lofty enough not to get too bogged down in the semantics of the climate debate, but such is not the […]
Digital Soothsayer Sees Strength In Twitter For Marketers
Blogger Stevel Rubel spoke with Big Think yesterday on the the future of internet advertising, the semantic web and digital media. He’s a smart guy. He also has a really […]
Where Has All The Fried Possum Gone?
The popular notion that food trends improve over time might be little more than a foodie’s conceit. Certainly, we have cast aside the Twinkies for arugula and the lard for […]
Will Obama Toe The Line On Foreign Policy?
For a president elected on his promise of pulling the U.S. out of Iraq in a jiffy and treating the world at large with a softer hand, observers say Obama […]
Gender Scholar Unpacks The “Hidden Brain Drain” Companies Face
Sylvia Hewlett consults organizations worldwide on the value of diversity in their ranks. In her conversation with Big Think this afternoon, she had one message for companies: shun women and […]
Rx For Casualties of Consumerism
“The grand edifice of brand-name consumerism rests on the narcissistic fantasy that everyone else cares about what we buy.” So writes John Tierney in this morning’s Times. If this sounds […]
When Mobile Phones Become Eco-Watchdogs
From the Department of Really Cool Gadgets comes a protoype for a mobile phone that will alert us to all the bad stuff out there. It can sense pollen counts, […]
Abortion, Stem Cells No Longer Too Hot To Handle
There was a brief moment when it seemed like our perilous red state-blue state divide was closing. It was back when all those gun owners crossed the aisle to vote […]
The Return of Hans Rosling
Statistician extraordinaire Hans Rosling is back on the presentation circuit with data that suggests reorienting the debate over the success of AIDS prevention could be a wise next move. Unveiling […]
Crisis Tip From Norway: Know Your Guilt
Etched deep into the DNA of the Anglo-Saxon diaspora is a boundless sense of economic entitlement. Such has consistently been the world’s criticism of the west for months now. Some […]
Is Arlen Specter An Old-School Intellectual?
By outlining his near and long-term legislative priorities in a publication read by graying intellectuals and Left Bank expatriates, Arlen Specter may have been trying to tell us something. His […]
“Quaker Monarchy” To Join The Facebook Generation
Thinking people intolerant of network television newscasting have sought refuge in PBS for generations. Now public television’s flagship news program, NewsHour, is going 2.0. Among the changes set for September […]
Getting Drunk With Your Mu-Opioid Receptors
In keeping with the notion that alcohol allows ordinary people to do extraordinary things, there is evidence to suggest alcohol can also help creative people find their spark…if they’re lucky […]
Will The Recession Kill The Decisive Moment?
If the fine art photography scene is experiencing a rough market, the situation for photojournalists is certainly not far behind. Seems strange at a time when so many ground-breaking stories […]
Art, Culture And The Breadline
The forecast for art and culture is partly cloudy this week at Big Think. On one hand the news is grim. Independent films are seeing dark days. Broadway is slashing […]
To Combat Recession, Denny’s Targets Drunken Punks
The destination par excellence for gut-busting dinners and slippery morning-after scrambles has needed to refoot for difficult times. Denny’s found the needed salvation for their afterhours business model in the […]
High School Math Whiz Gives Stimulus A+
New Jersey high schooler Steven Castellano spoke with Big Think today on all things neuroscientific. His forte is brain science, but we wouldn’t let him leave without first telling us […]
Ziggy Marley Says Hemp Can Save the Planet, Devotes Next Album to It
The son of the father of modern reggae rode his lion of Judah into the Big Think studio today, and it wasn’t too long after we sparked the chalice of […]
A New Sexual Vocabulary For a Modern World
As soon as we even breathe the word “sex” here in the Big Think office, headlines hop off the Google newswire fast enough to make even a liberal blogger wince. […]
Having Sex With Lolita in Tehran
Throwing mud on the notion that sexual relations in the Muslim world are but chaste couplings in poorly lit rooms for purely procreative purposes, merchants from Morocco to Indonesia are […]
New Cracks in the Frozen Egg Debate
There are a few ways to think about storing your gametes at -321 F for later use. On the one hand, cryopreservation could be one of the greatest tools would-be […]
Testing Causation With Infants and Danish Girls
Infants may not be capable of quantum mathematics, but they very well may be capable of deeper insights than once thought.
Big Think Presents Sex and the Brain Week
The flowers are blooming, the bees are buzzing, and the layers are coming off. This could mean only one thing at Big Think: it’s time to consider sex and the […]
David Brooks Takes Another Whack at the Genius Myth
Add to the Gladwellian oeuvre on talent, precocity and its discontents, a few notes on how practice can make perfect from another pretty smart guy, David Brooks. Brooks shies away […]
The Week in Torture
Condi’s freak-out comes midway through a Q & A on American foreign policy under Bush in a Stanford University dorm. One contrarian student decides to replay a scene from Smackdown, […]
Three Must-Watch Obama Retrospective Videos
At a 102 days and counting, we mined the Big Think archives for campaign-era Obama vids. Here’s the gold we found. Last spring, Johns Hopkins Professor an Iran expert, Azar […]
Eat, Pray, Love Author Lectures on the Finer Points of Rationalization
Globetrotter, soul-seeker and author of Eat, Pray, Love Elizabeth Gilbert landed at Big Think to share her thoughts on love, sexuality, marriage, and intimacy. When we asked her for the […]
The Thinkers Guide to Swine Flu Prevention
Apologies for blurring thought and common sense here, but in case the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations were insufficient, we’ll add in some out-of-the-box thinking on staying healthy […]
George Mitchell Sees the Future
Politicizing the federal deficit has long been a campaign maneuver to get out the votes and make the other candidate look responsible for all our financial woes. When Big Think […]
It’s the End of Material Culture as We Know it and I Feel Fine
Clothes dryer? Try a rack. Microwave? Light up the stove. Dishwasher? Your two hands are just fine. In recalculating their household expenses, Americans seem to be discovering the recession doesn’t […]