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The English language is a key factor in retaining America’s competitive advantage in the world – like a linguistic reserve currency. But as more Indian and Chinese people learn English, […]

Some scholars say that Shakespeare’s notorious tragicomedy is too politically incorrect to stage in modern times. Is there really no room for such “polluted” texts?

The global risk expert explains the three crucial things you must know if you plan to invest in the developing world.

The New York Times chief theater critic points to key instances where lines from Shakespeare are taken out of context and misunderstood.

As part of Big Think’s “How to Think Like Shakespeare” series, our panel discusses the most common misunderstandings and misapplications of Shakespeare.

“Shakespeare steals stories from everybody, but what he does with those stories is clearly an act of his imagination and his will,” says Kahn.

Einstein believed that free will was just an illusion, and that awareness of this lack kept him from taking himself and others too seriously. But Einstein was plain wrong, says […]

A laser fired from a US warship off the California coast has ignited a nearby boat. This is the first time that the high-energy laser (HEL) has been fired from […]

If you ask conservative and liberal judges whether George W. Bush is a war criminal for invading Iraq, you are unlikely to find agreement. But ask them about Henry V, […]

The Beatles take on the roles of the “rude mechanicals,” performing the Pyramus and Thisbee scene from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in 1964.

The global risk expert explains how the Saudi royal family is like the Vatican.

Mubarak is gone, but the military is still there and will remain the most powerful player in that country for a long time.

While technology may not have sparked the fire in the Middle East, it has helped people pressure their governments to reform.

There’s no doubt Wall Street’s over-leveraged risk-taking was a key cause of the financial crisis. Many critics charge there has been little or no accountability. And yet, will putting bankers […]

Stanford University’s Susan McConnell explains brain development like “a play that follows a script, that is written down by the genetic code, performed by actors who “have never spoken their […]

Henry V is perhaps the most famous (and complicated) leader in Shakespeare. Here, he is portrayed by Sir Laurence Olivier in his famously propagandistic 1944 film, meant to rally the […]

Michael Kahn directed two very different stage versions of Shakespeare’s Henry V, which helped him realize the full complexity of leadership.

Aditi Muralidharan demonstrates how natural language processing has not only found its place in the humanities, but has also dramatically sped up the the time it takes to conduct research.

Rather than hauling heavy atmospheric pumps from earth, the way to create a habitable atmosphere on Mars is to take advantage of its own topology, geography and nature.

The U.S. hasn’t commissioned a new nuclear plant since before the Three Mile Island meltdown in 1979, and will soon have to decommission all its aging reactors. What, if anything, […]

The artist and filmmaker muses on the usefulness and limitations of the Internet, revealing, in the process, his philosophy about art and the role of the artist in our digital […]

On an earlier panel, Parag Khanna, Dambisa Moyo, Daniel Altman and Anand Giridharadas discussed which countries have the potential to emerge on the global stage. Here they discuss which markets […]

Parag Khanna, Dambisa Moyo, Daniel Altman and Anand Giridharadas discuss which countries have reached the same stage of advanced economic development as the Big Four-Brazil, Russia, India and China.