Search
Latest Articles
The newest essays, interviews, and features from Big Think.
There are predictions that, like Latin before it, English must inevitably lose its global dominance. The Guardian's Robert McCrum is not convinced.
Everyone yawns, but no one knows why. We start when we are in the womb, and we do it through old age, but the purpose and survival value of yawning remain a mystery.
The three most important questions for a nationwide broadband network are: What should the speed be? What will it cost? And how will we pay for it? Craig Settles gives some answers.
Investors’ giddiness over the tech upstarts—and the dozens of other Chinese companies that have gone public in the U.S.—has some wondering whether this boom is really a bubble.
How can we trust a literary guide who, ignorant of the terrain ahead, promises us it will be light and easy? Hillary Kelly objects to Oprah's positivity charged book club.
Our cosmos was "bruised" in collisions with other universes. Now astronomers have found the first evidence of these impacts in the cosmic microwave background.
The amiable idea that language shapes thought has become disconnected, in our popular culture, from any consideration of mere fact, says Mark Liberman of the U of Pennsylvania.
Can modern science help us to create heroes? That’s the lofty question behind the Heroic Imagination Project, a new nonprofit started by Stanford psychologist Phil Zimbardo.
Obesity is a growing global health problem, and we all know why, don't we? It's the fault of corporations that sell corn syrup, and a starkly unequal society (why would […]
A California judge signed off on Festivus as a legit religion: Locked up in a California jail, Malcolm Alarmo King wanted healthier meals. In an argument apparently made to a […]
Who won the Bad Sex in Fiction Award in 2006? Whoever it was, it should have been Julian Assange for this self-description: Thu 29 Jun 2006 : Krill to the […]
3mins
Even if it causes global tension and takes awhile, the Yuan could become the world’s go-to reserve currency if these four changes happen in China.
2mins
With economic power comes a rise in political and geopolitical power for China, including the possibility of economic bubbles and military aggression.
2mins
It’s easier to succeed in your career by taking mainstream views rather than thinking independently—but that doesn’t mean you’ll be right.
3mins
The economist's prediction that market rationality was wrong is an example of why conventional wisdom should be tested for weakness.
2mins
Knowing what empirical data to look for is the key to confirming an idea—especially when that idea is the premonition of a looming global economic crisis.
13mins
A conversation with the NYU economist.
War-torn Afghanistan has a long path to healing ahead, but one nonprofit, Business Council for Peace, is quietly pushing things along with a smart social enterprise that trains Afghan women […]
Chances are you have probably never heard of the stem cell tourism industry. This nascent yet growing industry consists of clinics and practitioners in China, Mexico, and Germany who promote […]
Recently, I had the rare opportunity to be on both The Colbert Report and the Conan show. As you can imagine, we had a madcap, hilarious romp through time travel, […]