–Guest post by American University student Becca Stern. People are often scared of topics they do not understand, explain Matthew R. Hartings and Declan Fahy in their article “Communicating Chemistry […]
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What’s the Big Idea? Happy International Women’s Day! This is the first of many events throughout the month which focus on celebrating the historic achievements of women around the world, […]
by Clay Shentrup The Problem My fellow voter: have you ever been afraid to vote for your favorite candidate? If so, you’re not alone. It happens to the best of […]
I started a version of this post a couple weeks ago, but since then the dispute between libertarians about the place of “social justice” in their philosophy has become white-hot, […]
As I’ve often mentioned, religion has a set of cognitive tricks – unconscious ideas, prejudices and habits of thought it tries to instill in believers – which shield their minds […]
A Q&A With Dr. John L. Casti, author, X-Events: The Collapse of Everything Dr. John L. Casti is a complexity scientist. This is one of those job descriptions I would […]
“Why are we picking at these carcasses of creativity?” Holly Finn asks in a recent Wall Street Journal article, pointing her critical finger at the particular corpse of Damien Hirst’s […]
Now that SCOTUS deliberation over the constitutionality of portions of Obamacare is going much worse than most liberals predicted, left-leaning pundits are screaming “judicial activism!” which is cute, though I […]
What is the Big Idea? It’s late May and the year is 1989. Among the chaos in Tiananmen Square is 20-year-old David Tian, who is one of millions bravely chanting […]
Today, the question of how people make decisions is an animated and essential one, capturing the attention of everyone from neuroscientists to lawyers to artists. In 1956, there was one person in all of New York known for his work on the brain: Harry Grundfest. An aspiring psychiatrist, Eric Kandel chose to take an elective in brain science and found himself studying alongside Grudfest at Columbia University.
My previous post on the term “mansplaining” was turning into a zombie thread, so I had to drive a stake through its heart. But there’s more that needs to be […]
“Plan Now. Relax Soon.” The Concierge of a fancy resort has sent me this “Quick! Relax, Goddamnit!” email. My husband and I are looking forward to attending a wedding […]
As of March 1, Nevada became the first state in the nation where it is legal for driverless cars to take to the roads, provided they identify themselves with red […]
People tend to see their ideological affiliation as constitutive of their identity in a way their opinion about, say, the ontology of mental illness isn’t.
My research for Dirty Minds: How Our Brains Influence, Love, Sex, and Relationships wasn’t all orgasms in brain scanners. As I sifted through the scientific literature on love and sex, what I thought was a discussion about romance kept circling back around to decision-making.
A unique history is what distinguishes one family from another, and knowing a family’s distinct set of stories is what binds the group together. While social media connects the larger society, genealogical work is what connects us to our own small group.
Welcome to Action In Action, a new column on Big Think that seeks to investigate and clarify the underlying structural causes of America’s economic, political, and social problems. Some background on […]
I don’t write fiction, at all. I can’t make stuff up. But I used to read more fiction than I do now. And occasionally I wonder why I’ve struggled to […]
The Mind/Body Split in American Acting (and culture) On the whole, and with a few notable exceptions, Hollywood expects its great actors to play themselves in every role. We want […]
A South African model, Jessica Leandra, took to Twitter recently, expressing her anger at being accosted by a man in a store. She said: “Just, well took on a an […]
The United States of America murdered an innocent man. But this is not the main reason we should be against capital punishment. Carlos DeLuna was put to death in 1989 […]
Do you and your partner have “couple friends”–other couples that you socialize with as a couple? Have you thought about their role in your marriage? University of Maryland professor Geoffrey […]
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 […]
A couple weeks back, I wrote a post for the Economisttrying to get my head around the circumstances in which tax deductions and credits, and tax cuts generally, do and […]
It’s commonplace to imagine the people of the period we know now as the High Renaissance, centered in Italy from the 1490s to the 1520s, looking at the works of […]
My household has split opinions on the new Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC. I think it is amazing that a national news show has a black woman with braided hair […]
Abandoning circular growth, the Russian capital has started sprouting limbs across the surrounding countryside
This author explains convincingly that we haven’t been concerned enough with our children’s moral virtue—or acquiring the habits required to flourish as free and rational animals in a society such as ours. Aristotle, […]
Thomas K. Lindsay, quite an erudite and distinguished expert, applauds the decision of post-secondary public technical schools in Texas to evaluate institutions and faculty according to how many students have […]
Pulp fiction paperbacks sold by the millions, for a dime, in the 1950s and 1960s. Despite their lapel-grabbing, shocking, often tawdry, salacious covers and contents, they’re interesting cultural relics because […]