Latest Articles

Latest Articles

The newest essays, interviews, and features from Big Think.

Split image: left side shows a pencil sketch of a person's lower face, while the right reveals a painted portrait's lower face and neck with a red beaded necklace and ruffled collar—capturing hints of why we talk funny.
Long before today's debates, immigration was already transforming the American accent into something distinctively its own.
A man in a blue sweater and dark pants sits on a chair against a white backdrop with illustrated tree branches in the background.
49mins
What if one of our oldest ideas about ancestry is simply wrong? Harvard geneticist David Reich argues that ancient DNA has exposed the myth of purity and uncovered a far messier history of who we are and where we came from.
Image of a galaxy cluster with bright yellow galaxies at the center, surrounded by blue regions representing dark matter in deep space—a striking view often used for dark matter cosmic test MOND studies.
On cosmic scales, only dark matter (or something equivalent) gives us the Universe we observe. Now, the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect agrees.
Colorful nebula with bright stars ignite glowing gas clouds in space, featuring red, yellow, and blue hues against a dark background.
Although a star's "birth" is well-defined, it doesn't correspond to an ignition event in its core. Here's how stars are actually born.
protoplanetary disk
Every time a new star forms, there's an opportunity to form planets alongside and around it. How does it happen, and how long does it take?
A man sits on a chair in front of a white backdrop in a brick-walled room with arched windows; "B T" logo is visible in the top right corner.
1hr 8mins
Members
Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, argues that the entire self-help industry has been selling ephemeral highs: affirmations, visualizations, the relentless pursuit of feeling good. The research doesn't support it, and more importantly, neither does lived experience.
Black-and-white photo of Jan Morris, an older person seated on a bed, smiling with a typewriter in front. The book cover text reads: "Jan Morris, a life, Sara Wheeler.
Jan Morris's biographer confronts the limits of storytelling while trying to capture a life defined by contradiction and reinvention.
A digital illustration of a human head in profile showing a highlighted section of the brain with a bright light beam focused on a specific point inside the brain.
6mins
The voice in your head feels like your own, but it’s actually constructed by neurological processes. Three experts explain how this system shapes both perception and identity.
Unlikely Collaborators
An Ishihara color blindness test with colored dots, showing letters “u” and “d” in black, and a magnified section highlighting the dot pattern—inviting viewers to observe proton decay through subtle visual cues.
"Color" with respect to the strong force is just an analogy. Here's how to understand it without colors, group theory, or any advanced math.
How to get employees to engage in learning programs.
Most L&D pros assume attention comes with the job title. Marketers wake up every day convinced they have to earn it. That gap explains a lot.
A hexagonal storm formation with a dark central vortex on a planet’s surface, showing swirling blue and tan cloud patterns.
From 2004 through 2017, Saturn was imaged many times and from many angles up close by Cassini. This new viral image isn't real; it's AI.
Silhouette of a human head in white with a small red figure appearing to move or climb inside, set against a black background—illustrating how our brains shape our selves.
Your sense of self isn’t located in a single part of the brain — it emerges from a complex interplay of cognitive processes that change over time.
Earth rises above the horizon of the Moon, with the lunar surface in the foreground and space in the background.
Globalization did not fail — it improved the lives of billions of people. The next phase of human development could push us to a new level of global abundance.
An older woman with long gray hair wearing a dark jacket and shirt sits against a plain, light background, looking slightly toward the camera.
20mins
Mary Beard uncovers the spectacle of the Ancient Roman parade, the Roman Triumph.
A bright, circular object with concentric rings and a surrounding halo set against a dark background, resembling a gap-clearing planet or other astronomical phenomena.
One parameter, alone, sets the dividing line between rocky planets, gas giants, brown dwarfs, stars, and much more. Here's why mass matters.
Two highways, "Early Route" and "Late Route," marked 67.2 and 73.5, traverse a cosmic background with gradients and data—highlighting the Hubble tension and potential bad measurement in determining universal expansion rates.
The distance ladder and the CMB give incompatible values for the expansion rate. A new study shows just how robust the Hubble tension is.
A distorted galaxy with two bright, horizontal bands and scattered stars, seen against a dark background. Image credit: NASA/ESA/CSA.
By looking at a giant, remarkable, edge-on protoplanetary system, astronomers have found a proto-protoplanet for the first time.
The cover of the book "The Future of Free Speech" by Jacob Mchangama and Jeff Kosseff, with part of the cover image pixelated, explores topics like Germany free speech in a rapidly changing world.
Germany built aggressive systems to combat hate speech, but the line between defending democracy and undermining it may be beginning to blur.
Four people wearing black shirts and eclipse glasses look up at the camera indoors, their excitement echoing the spirit of the Artemis II distance record mission.
Human beings have now traveled farther from Earth than ever before with Artemis II's flyby of the lunar far side. Here's how it happened.