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What’s the Big Idea? Before neuroscience and quantum physics, there was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The 19th century German idealist revolutionized Western thought, and every great thinker since has been working […]

Note: Before you comment to say “This is not going to change the mind of someone who would issue a death threat”, please don’t. That’s not my point. Ask yourself […]

By Chris Arkenberg “The intelligence of the city is on the streets.“ – Manu Fernandez Amidst the swirling maelstrom of technological progress so often heralded as the imminent salvation to […]

“Facebook is worth $100 billion, but all I got was this lousy status update.” That just about sums up the type of public sentiment that has been inundating the Internet […]

Realizing technology’s promise of accelerating our collective learning – of making us smarter, faster – is a matter of building the right tools, then using each to teach the form of knowledge it conveys most efficiently. 

Anxiety Creates Extra Tasks – And Problems Have you ever had one of those ‘super-productive’ days where you burn through all of your tasks and then feel… strangely hollow? This […]

Bistra Milovansky chases inspiration for a living. The Bulgarian immigrant and self-described “holistic lawyer” can often be found doing business from a hammock in Costa Rica, working on her laptop […]

I wanted to pull this exchange out of the comments, because I thought it was worth highlighting: “Science is constantly evolving and improving on itself”. I AGREE. The same as […]

This essay was previously published on AlterNet. In the summer of 2010, I saw him several times a week: a portly, dark-skinned gentleman, leaning against a pillar in Penn Station […]

Mysterious dark matter and dark energy may no longer be needed to explain the Universe’s accelerating expansion, which may be caused by tension between matter and antimatter.

If you’re a parent and you want to introduce your child to art, it’s sometimes hard to find that perfect combination of optimism and imagination in a single artist. Too […]

The real world has never been more real, with the latest proof being the release of the much-hyped Retina Display on the new iPad from Apple. This new tablet screen, […]

Ever wondered how you were supposed to keep up with the never-ending stream of content and data in your life? Not to worry, the elves of the Internet are busy […]

Bioethicist Paul Root Wolpe questions the basic premise of the Singularity concept, arguing that it “misunderstands the complex nature of biological and physical life.” 

I recently revisited What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis and was struck by how it spoke to me about the needs of today’s schools. Here are a few points […]

Since moving to Big Think, there’s a viewpoint I’m encountering more and more often. This belief holds that the New Atheism is tilting at windmills, because most religion is moderate […]

Summary: The Roman Catholic equivalent of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s “Infidel”. A luminous, extraordinary account of one woman who devoted her life to Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, saw the organization […]

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and Daniel Junge shined a spotlight on Pakistani women who endured the physical and emotional pain of acid attacks in the documentary Saving Face. The filmmakers followed Dr. […]

In Defence of Hamza Kashgari The chalk outline of societal protection is increasingly being coloured in by personal offense and we’re left with a corpse called justice. Yet, whatever name […]

A couple of months ago, physicists at CERN, Switzerland, claimed they had found a fatal flaw in Einstein’s theory of relativity. Their findings immediately lit up the Internet with activity, […]

Why do skeptics bother to debunk quackery if the rational adult who chooses to use these unverified methods harms no-one but himself?

Using money she had received for her 30th birthday, Zoe Strauss bought a camera in 2000 and began shooting a 10-year project that had previously existed only in her imagination. […]

Chinese students are attracted to American universities, but what can be done to keep their skills in the country after graduation?

This post was written by Preetika Rana and originally published on the Wall Street Journal blog India Real Time. Recent claims that the Taj Mahal is in danger of collapsing […]

Several mysteries currently bedevil physicists such as our inability to account for an expanding universe and an apparent exception to the cosmological principle of uniform laws.

Your mobile wireless carrier may soon have a say in the way you think about health and wellness. AT&T, through its Emerging Devices unit, plans to offer for sale health-tracking […]

–Guest post by Judy Millili, American University graduate student. In today’s technologically-driven digital age, consumers are constantly inundated with drug advertisements that encourage active engagement in making decisions related to their […]

The USB stick in your hand contains a zip file with your genome on it. You insert the drive into the side of your computer and click the button on the screen that says “Upload.” The machine spits out a prognosis. The secret to your very own personal happiness.

Bill Glod, a philosopher who works at the libertarian Institute for Humane Studies (I used to work there, too), offers an interesting short discussion on the limits of the common […]

Great Big Ideas, the first Floating University course, features twelve of the most important thinkers and practitioners in their fields. These lecturers are constantly making news, and in this blog, […]