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The newest essays, interviews, and features from Big Think.
"Why did our ancestors eat each other? Simple: They were hungry." Discovery News reports on findings of cannibalism that refute explanatory theories like ritualism or starvation.
The world's top mathematics prize that outshines even the Nobel, the Fields Medal ceremony in India contrasts the romanticized and turbulent life of mathematical revolutionaries.
"It’s possible to demean oneself by sinking to the level of those who promiscuously accept any sort of apology." The New Yorker meditates on the politics of giving and accepting apologies.
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is laying claim to Internet technologies now widely used by Google, Facebook and Ebay. The Wall Street Journal reports that patent litigation is on the rise.
A new video montage of live news reports broadcast between 9:02 and 9:03 a.m. on 11 September 2001 captures the first utterances of rhetoric that define the 9/11 narrative.
Somali fisherman have made a conscious career change to piracy with Kalashnikovs and RPGs replacing fishing poles. Stanford's Hoover Institution looks at the burgeoning industry.
"If gold were the basis of the world economy, each ounce would be worth about $6,000." The Christian Science Monitor asks what it would take for currency to return to the gold standard.
A field not traditionally considered profitable by men, women are taking the Pakistani art market by storm. Female artists and curators and gaining international exposure as a result.
A Columbia professor of law and economics says the U.S. is idealizing manufacturing as a solution to the economic crisis, but that service and information industries perform just as well.
On August 23rd, the Public Broadcasting System launched a new web portal for promoting the arts. PBS Artsspearheads an overall expansion of arts programming to take place over the next […]
Today’s economic news was not good. The Commerce Department lowered its estimate of second quarter growth from an annual rate of 2.4% to an annual rate of 1.6%. That’s down […]
One of my enduring memories of New York City right after 9/11 was the absence or religious or racial violence. As we stared up at the planeless sky or across […]
A novelist and two neuroscientists came by Big Think's offices this past week. Jonathan Safran Foer, one of the most acclaimed young novelists of the past decade, spoke to us […]
It's often said that children are the designers of humanity's future. International research consultancy Latitude and ReadWriteWeb decided to take the adage literally, asking children to envision the future of […]
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Scheck thinks we should do away with judicial elections, and should do more to educate the judiciary about scientific evidence.
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Eyewitness testimony is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions, says Scheck. Psychologists and researchers have demonstrated a variety of ways that witnesses regularly misidentify suspects.
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"Nothing guarantees the conviction of an innocent person more than a lawyer that is not adequately funded or not competent to do the job," says Scheck.
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Sometimes a prosecutor doesn't want to admit that they're wrong. Other times they don't want to face the victim's family after a conviction is overturned.
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Barry Scheck says the Innocence Project has transformed the way that the criminal justice system looks at error.
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Scheck's group will take up the case of a convicted prisoner if there is the possibility that a DNA test—or multiple DNA tests—could prove them innocent.