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Is the overconsumption of sugar the cause of chronic metabolic disease? 

Getting risk wrong leads to dangers all by itself, and we will remain vulnerable to these mistakes until we let go of our naïve post-Enlightenment faith in reason and accept that risk perception is inescapably an affective system, not just a matter of rationally figuring out the facts. 

“The owl of Minerva,” Hegel wrote, “takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering.” A year ago I launched Praxis as a forum for thinking reflectively about […]

New York City recently became radicalized out of necessity in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Simply put, when systems broke down, New Yorkers improvised, and took matters into their own hands. 

For the third year running, here’s a very personal, very subjective, “I can’t read everything, so I probably left out something, so mention it in the comments, OK?” list of […]

Smug confidence in human reason, and the belief that once fully educated and informed people will then make the objectively ‘right’ decision about risk, only widens the gap and increases the danger.

With the presidential election less than a month away, it’s hard to go to a museum or gallery in the United States right now and not see art that either […]

“Americans censure nepotism on the one hand and practice it as much as they can on the other.” –Adam Bellow (the son of Saul Bellow) 

Modern campaigns have rarely focused on the issues, but in the 2012 election the level of moral outrage and anger is unprecedented.  Even before the campaign, America was divided, but […]

“My earliest memory is of anxiety!” cartoonist Daniel Clowes tells an interviewer in The Art of Daniel Clowes: Modern Cartoonist, the first serious monograph of the work of this seriously […]

One of the great mysteries of art is why it exists. Although our desire to create and enjoy art is so widespread that it appears as natural as eating or […]

The questions in this quiz are adaptations of items from research studies from the 1960s to the 1980s, initiated by Daniel Kahneman and his late research partner, Amos Tversky.

Like many others I mistook the first John Carter trailer I saw for a Pepsi commercial. And like so many others, I did not go to see the film when it opened […]

We are witnessing a paradigm shift in medicine that is equal to that of Galileo saying the Earth was not the center of the Universe or Columbus saying that the world was round, not flat.

Given the fact that Mormons were a key group that helped Mitt Romney win important victories in states such as Nevada and Arizona, it may seem counterintuitive that many Mormons are uncomfortable with a Romney candidacy. 

Our BIG THINKING friend, Robert de Neufville, wonders why more Republicans aren’t voting in the primaries.  His wondering, of course, is hopeful.  It must mean either that the ferocity of the […]

With SETI’s search for extraterrestrial life running on all cylinders again, two questions must be raised: How do we make contact? And how do we make meaningful contact? Big Think asked Bill Nye, aka, ‘The Science Guy,’ who heads The Planetary Society. 

This week Big Think decided to give Twitter a big bear hug. Why? We realized the Twitosphere had (undeservedly) become the neglected stepchild of our various social media profiles. To […]

     Stress. It is probably one of the biggest risks we face. The more worried you are that you might get sick, the more likely it is that you will, […]

The September issue of the American Journal of Public Health is now available online featuring 8 studies and articles by an interdisciplinary set of experts, each examining the health risks […]

Was the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki legal? Was it wise and did it make Americans safer?

The cover of the May 16, 2011 issue of The New Yorker features a cartoon by Gürbüz Doğan Ekşioğlu in which the image of recently killed terrorist Osama Bin Laden […]

 I will talk about the work of each of the speakers below over the next few weeks.  But it should be clear enough that this conference will explore most of […]

The link between Super Bowls and heart failure is usually written in guacamole and beer. But we are a social species, whose feelings about group identity have a direct impact […]

Looking back at pivotal events that took place within the business world in 2009, it is becoming increasingly clear that there are five macro trends that will be shaping a […]

A number of my favorite commentators on Yemen have been speaking and writing on Yemen lately and here is an assortment of their varied views:First up is Daniel Varisco of […]

Last week I vowed to pay more attention to replication in psychology experiments. Repeated experiments are an important test of whether a finding is “really out there” or an accident, […]

Well, after sorting through all of the Leadership Day 2010 posts, tracking down incorrect URLs, deleting a few nonexistent items, and reviewing some attempts to recycle old posts, I believe […]

The 18th century French Neoclassical painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres played the violin well enough to hold his own with “Sold His Soul to the Devil” good musicians such as […]

A recent article has me worried; apparently there is a penalty associated with being a “sexy” professor.*  Until now, all I had been worried about was that the mother of […]