culture

Have you ever noticed how many things you interact with but can’t name? So did we.

Ryan Condal, who worked in pharmaceutical advertising before Hollywood, talks with Big Think about imposter syndrome, “precrastination,” and Westeros lore.

For most of human history, babies probably picked up language by overhearing.

In “Moral Ambition,” Dutch historian Rutger Bregman argues that all would benefit from a collective redefinition of success.

Concerns about privacy and pressures regarding the physical appearance of women and their homes contributed to the failure of AT&T’s 1960s Picturephone.

Each year, over half a million migrants cross the deadly jungle separating Colombia from Panama in search of a better life in the United States.

Rhetorical mastery is within everyone’s reach — equipped with some basic techniques you can rock it like Aristotle.

Should social media platforms have the right to decide what speech to allow online? Should the government?

While weltschmerz — literally “world-pain” — may be unpleasant, it can also spur us to change things for the better.

From Nick Carraway to Charles Marlow, these side characters offered truths their scene-stealing protagonists couldn’t.

Freethink asks three different kinds of experts to answer this question.

Acclaimed writer Mauro Javier Cárdenas used AI in his latest work to surprising effect.

If music is a window onto truth, what does screaming reveal?

The “Shopping Cart Litmus Test” is a popular meme about morality. What does it really reveal about one’s character?

“I believe that in the future, there will be a Francis Bacon of AI art,” Saltz tells Big Think. “We just haven’t seen that artist yet.”

Author A.J. Jacobs explores how voting has changed since the days of the Founding Fathers — for better and for worse.

“Values emphasizing tolerance and self-expression have diverged most sharply, especially between high-income Western countries and the rest of the world.”

The fellowship’s journey through Middle-Earth mirrors the modernization of the English countryside.

A human hand has the power to split wooden planks and demolish concrete blocks. A trio of physicists investigated why this feat doesn’t shatter our bones.

Although social paranoia is more common than clinical paranoia, studies suggests that American society isn’t any more conspiratorial than it has been in the past.

A poignant, 2,000-year-old burial in northern Italy could be the latest evidence of an ancient friendship.

Six visionary science fiction authors on the social impact of their work.

“Dune: Part One” screenwriter Eric Roth spoke with Big Think about the challenges of bringing Frank Herbert’s sci-fi epic to the big screen.

Google’s “Genie” could be used to create a wide range of interactive environments for more than just games.

Dennis Klatt developed trailblazing text-to-speech systems before losing his own voice to cancer.

Perrikaryal uses an EEG to translate her brain activity into beating bosses in “Elden Ring” and beyond.

His career helped define humanity’s place in the world by bringing us “a little closer” to our ape relatives.

The truth may be out there — but it’s not in these close encounters of the third kind.

NuqneH! Saluton! A linguistic anthropologist (and creator of the Kryptonian language, among others) studies the people who invent new tongues.

The secret sauce of humor is incongruity. AI knows this as well as we do.