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Maybe the brain evolved a lot like the way big pieces of software get developed.  

It was as though a spontaneous performance of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream broke out next to us on the sidewalk. My husband and I were on our way home […]

The human brain’s ability to recall the past, plan for the future, reason abstractly and navigate complex social relationships makes it far superior to other species’. But how did that happen?  

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 […]

      I remember going to bed one night when I was 11, seriously afraid I would not be alive in the morning. It was October, 1962, and the frightening cold […]

N.A.S.A. has produced a material that absorbs over 99 percent of the ultraviolet, visible, infrared, and far-infrared light—a development that promises to open new frontiers in space technology.

In each generation, our most brilliant thinkers lay the foundations on which lesser lights will build a new, bloated bureaucracy of the mind. Can experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats help us break the cycle? 

In a previous thread, again buried in a huge pile of comments, there was one I wanted to highlight: Now you talk of pregnancy as a real life threatening thing […]

A new version of a dating website run by Sean Mills, former president of the Onion, wants to take the weirdness out of online matchmaking by emphasizing real-time social networking.  

The fourth potentially habitable planet in our galaxy has just been discovered, 22 light years from Earth. This planet, called GJ 667Cc, is too large to be called Earth’s twin. It […]

Happy winter solstice, everyone! As you doubtless already know, today is the shortest and darkest day of the year (assuming you live in the northern hemisphere). Ancient people, who were […]

Carbon nanotubes have been in the research phase for a decade. Will they ever break out and benefit society at large? Engineers continue looking for a way to scale their production.

President Obama apparently thinks the safer way to justify higher taxes on the super rich is to pitch the proposal based on its deficit-reduction potential. But if he wants to get the ball rolling for meaningful tax reform, Obama will summon his rhetorical powers to explain how the Buffett Rule could help reduce the nation’s massive and destructive wealth inequality.

With spring blooming all around us here in the United States, it’s natural that our thoughts go to, well, last spring, specifically the “Arab Spring” that saw the rise of […]

An invisibility cloak? That sounds like science fiction. Until now. Scientists at the University of Texas at Austin unveiled the results from an experiment in which they were able to […]

I know at least some of you are thinking: I already feel like I am having sex with a robot. But new research predicts that we will be having sex […]

“Muslim Marriage Events” is an initiative in the UK to “tackle the problems in searching for a spouse in an Islamic framework.” They hold mixers and other matchmaking events, sometimes […]

Back in 2004, Jon Stewart famously hijacked CNN’s hyper-partisan “Crossfire” show, calling on the hosts to “stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America.” Rather than fostering real debate on the issues […]

As I wrote last year in a chapter at the Oxford Handbook of Climate Change & Society, the imagined public relative to climate change remains a source of ever growing anxiety […]

Nothing keeps the mind healthy like an education, say psychologists. And contrary to past belief, recent research shows that new neural connections can be built well into middle age.

The Being Human Conference, which took place at San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts this weekend, was designed to explore the science of human experience. The speakers ranged from neuroscientists, […]

To make solar panels, silicon wafers must be heated to high temperatures and that means using a lot of power. But a new optical furnace uses light to heat the cells which requires half the energy.

A new mode of civic engagement in New York City, “participatory budgeting,” may help bridge the gap between our country’s foundational principles and our tendency to let ourselves be shepherded by elected leaders. Rousseau would be proud.  

In Europe, pedestrians avoid running into each other by stepping to the right. In Asia, people step to the left. What accounts for these differences and how can crowd science be used to improve cities?

Surely the greatest scientific discoveries are the product of imaginative energy and curiosity no less intense or pure than that which animates Hamlet or King Lear. Still, the petty squabble between Reason and Imagination that began in the 17th century persists . . .

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. 

Bano, a mother of five who lives in the ancient quarter of Lahore—the cultural center—was without power for days. She wanted to make goat stew, a family favorite and a […]

In my essay “Into the Clear Air“, I wrote about how people leaving religion often go through a stage of profound darkness. In the end stages of deconversion, there’s acceptance […]

Pamela Haag: “Whenever I hear a headline like ‘Marriage Ruined by Cheating,’ I’m tempted to point to a divorce somewhere else and declare, ‘Marriage Ruined by Monogamy.’

Bill Nye has always mixed science and comedy, dating back to his early career when he balanced his day job as an engineer at Boeing with his nighttime routine as […]