All Videos — January 28, 2011

Learning From Failure

The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free.

Failure is a terrible thing, but there’s no other way for people to learn how to do most things except to screw up enough until the point where they get better at it.

The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free.

Two glowing spheres connected by a thin line suggest a quantum link above a red, knotted rope, with abstract wave patterns in the background.

The Long Game

The “quantum long game”

A meditation on quantum physics, creative endurance, and the unseen forces that shape what lasts.

Krel and Hana Koecher celebrate with StB colleagues after returning to the Eastern Bloc.

Big Think Books

Operation TRIGON: How a rookie spy helped change the world of espionage

In this excerpt from “Agents of Change,” Christina Hillsberg tells the story of Martha “Marti” Peterson, the first female case officer stationed in Soviet Moscow.

Business

4 way leaders can supercharge their CQ: “Cultural intelligence”

To be culturally intelligent, you must be curious and open-minded — and the benefits can be transformative.

A healthcare worker wearing blue gloves gently inserts an IV into a man's hand as he lies on a hospital bed, battling lung cancer.

Starts With A Bang

You can’t do your own research without doing your homework first

Here in 2025, many of us claim to come to our own conclusions by doing our own research. Here’s why we’re mostly deluding ourselves.

A cratered, spherical celestial body with a bright spot on its surface floats in dark outer space dotted with stars.

Hard Science

Ceres: The asteroid belt’s forgotten ocean world

As the closest icy ocean world to Earth, Ceres may be a promising candidate in the search for signs of ancient life.

Up Next

Guest Thinkers

The Megachurch and God’s Love

BIG THINK has displayed a taste of the astute social commentary of Robert Putnam–the man who was so worried that so many Americans were bowling alone. The success of the megachurch, […]