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The newest essays, interviews, and features from Big Think.
5mins
The art of narration may have emerged as an evolutionary adaptation, says the author. "If I can tell you that right over there in that river was where the crocodile […]
3mins
Reading may have evolved from early hunters’ skills of interpreting animal tracks, which allowed them to find food and determine whether they themselves were being hunted.
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Books are important because electronic storage is fairly fragile. That said, e-books provide many advantages, especially for those with dyslexia and other reading disabilities.
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Authors are always trying to disguise which parts of the novel were most difficult to write. For Atwood those parts are always the exposition, she says.
4mins
For the author, it’s not a question of sitting around and wondering what to write; it’s a question of deciding which of the "far-fetched and absurd" ideas she’s going to […]
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New forms of communication are just modernizations of things that already existed earlier in some other form, says the author.
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The sprightly 71-year-old has really taken to Twitter and now has over 85,000 followers.
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The author grew up reading books like "1984" and "Brave New World" and wanted to solve the problem to which these types of books so often fall prey—too much exposition.
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Books about the end of the world become popular when people suddenly realize that basic assumptions they took to be true may no longer hold.
"Canadians have a reprehensible habit of making fun of just about everything," says novelist Margaret Atwood. In her Big Think interview, she tries to explain Canadian humor, asking us, "What […]
The NASA Earth Observatory has posted two images of erupting volcanoes this week, so I thought I'd spotlight these systems: Barren Island, India:This image captures the volcano in the Indian […]
Our memory peaks at the age of 30, and then it declines gradually with time. But if we train our brains to stay more active and focused, they can remain healthier longer.
Last week, I introduced a series about a Colorado ballot initiative that would amend the state's constitution to define a person under the law as "a human being from the […]
For Washington, DC area readers, talks this Thursday evening and Friday afternoon may be of interest. Details below. For directions and a map of American University, go here. Panel on […]
It’s kind of hard to live in Atlanta and not write a few words about Eddie Long, the pastor of the metro area’s own New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, who […]
"A massive new project to scan the brains of 1,200 volunteers could finally give scientists a picture of the neural architecture of the human brain."
"My suspicion is that most of us would be quite surprised by the things our grandchildren will condemn us for." The Economist's Democracy in America blog on moral progress.
"More polling evidence is in: Californians support Proposition 19, the statewide ballot initiative to legalize marijuana." The Atlantic's Chris Good on the prospect of legalization.