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Hundreds of years before climate change was a topic of discussion, monks and merchants kept records when lakes and rivers froze-over in the winter. These records show how the Industrial Revolution was a major turning point in altering the Earth’s climate.

Five of the Solomon Islands have vanished due to rising sea levels. The effects of climate change will be keeping cartographers busy as our borders continue to shift.

As horrific as the Orlando Massacre was, we must not forget the Wounded Knee Massacre, the single worst mass shooting in U.S. history.

Big Think is proud to partner with the 92nd Street Y’s 7 Days of Genius Festival to bring you an in-depth look at the many qualities and characteristics of genius.

A mysterious, unidentifed, low-frequency hum as been baffling people for years.

Walter Martin sings about art history in his new album Arts and Leisure and makes music for your eyes.

The name of our country reflects a legacy of blood-soaked European colonialism and other historical ills.  To get a fresh start, we should rebrand America by renaming it. 

Everything depends on it, and yet we don’t know it as well as we’d like! “Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have […]

The politics of immigration continue to “mobilize racist, xenophobic, and nativist tropes,” says author Junot Diaz, who credits his own artistic triumphs to being an immigrant himself.

Around 53 million years ago, the Arctic was host to a wide range of creatures that thrived in its warm swamps. The fossil record shows how our warming climate might influence old migratory patterns to reemerge in the Arctic Circle. 

Between Microsoft’s racist chatbot to beating the world GO champion, artificial intelligence has better things to do than whatever we’re afraid of. Here’s a recap of the highlights. 

Turkish cardinal directions? I didn’t even know they had cardinals in Turkey!

More than just a pretty face, the Venus de Milo (rediscovered on this date in 1820) has changed ideas of female beauty ever since, often in surprising ways.

No doubt you’ve heard one of these arguments given as a reason against gun control. Problem is, it’s very dubious logic.

Don’t even think about getting anything other than this one! “No one regards what is before his feet; we all gaze at the stars.” –Quintus Ennius If you are (or you […]

Those who want to keep Syrian refugees out of the country are succumbing to a classic error of logical reasoning. 

Fleeing the Norman Conquest, English émigrés established a now-forgotten New England on the northern shore of the Black Sea.

‘Tis the season for cartographic overindulgence.

Lawrence Summers, economist, professor, former president of Harvard University, and economic adviser to President Obama, asks this question in a thought provoking lecture about the evolution of ideas and the critical importance of education in an increasingly multi-faceted world.

The story of the boy who survived underwater for 42 minutes is astounding. But how was he able to live? Science gives us a few possible answers.

Recent reports about radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster in ocean water off Canada reported the risk responsibly. At low doses, the risk is infinitesimal. More news coverage of radiation needs to say so.

Don’t just try to give your child the right answers. Lead them to smart conclusions by offering thought-out, open-ended questions.

When the Whitney Museum of American Art decided to stage in 1948 their first exhibition of a living American artist, they chose someone who wasn’t even an American citizen, but only legally could become one just before his death. Painter Yasuo Kuniyoshi came to America as a teenager and immersed himself in American culture and art while rising to the top of his profession, all while facing discrimination based on his Japanese heritage.  The exhibition The Artistic Journey of Yasuo Kuniyoshi, which runs through August 30, 2015 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, unveils an amazing story of an artist who lived between two worlds — East and West — while bridging them in his art that not only synthesized different traditions, but also mirrored the joys and cruelties of them.

In 1931, Norway annexed part of Greenland. It could have been the start of a very Cold War indeed. 

A newly released series of anti-nuclear videos demonstrates just how blind to the evidence our underlying values can make us… and how that blindness can make it harder to solve the huge and complex problems facing modern society.

Global Population Boom: Are People the Problem, the Solution, or Both? Professor Joel Cohen first asks and answers the question, “How did humans grow from small populations on the African […]

American Impressionism’s often been seen as a pale copy of the French Impressionism that flowered in the late 19th century. Although American Impressionists early on copied their French counterparts (and even made pilgrimages to Monet’s Giverny garden and home), the exhibition The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism and the Garden Movement, 1887–1920, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts through May 24, 2015, proves that American Impressionism quickly blossomed into something distinct—and distinctly American—by the turn of the 20th century. Capturing aesthetically a moment of contradictions as American nativism threatened to close borders while women’s suffrage struggled to open doors, The Artist’s Garden demonstrates the power of flowers to speak volumes about the American past, and present.

A bizarre Islamic splinter lodged deep in the body of Europe.

The NFL’s success hosting regular season games at Wembley may spur the league into expanding full-time across the Atlantic.

How a funny idea to ship your enemies glitter turned into an empire. “There is a concept that is the corrupter and destroyer of all others. I speak not of […]