Latest Articles

Latest Articles

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

If a desperate, last-ditch attempt to cap the Deepwater Horizon wellhead fails, environmental damage to the Gulf of Mexico may profoundly and permanently alter the area.
Emily Bazelon writes that a citizen charged with a crime needs to be read their Miranda rights—even if they are charged with an act of terrorism.
Some winemakers and enthusiasts believe that wine tastes better on so-called "fruit" days—those days in the lunar calendar when water and saps rise.
"A growing body of evidence suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life," writes Paul Bloom. "Some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bone."
Greece has plunged the euro into its worst crisis ever, and if economists are unable to bring discipline to the country there will be much more at stake than the fate of the currency.
The Web and cloud computing have made the work of archivists and record keepers faster than ever before, but is information lost in the internet's labyrinth any more accessible than […]
Arizona is facing a backlash after Governor Jan Brewer signed a law making it a crime not to carry immigration papers and authorizing the police to detain anyone suspected of […]
We’ve always had a strange fascination with watching ourselves. Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray famously agonized over the reflection of a hedonist life on his portrait, which aged and suffered at […]
The idea that our planet's climate is changing is nothing new, says environmentalist and writer Bill McKibbon—in fact, the first person to theorize that our planet was warming was a […]
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Exxon Mobil made more money each of the last three years than any company in history. In our political system, that buys them power to prevent change.
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Unfortunately, no one source of renewable energy will be able to hold a candle to fossil fuel.
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These days, the average bite of food you eat has traveled 2,000 miles to reach your lips.
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As a first step, the government needs to put a tax on carbon dioxide emissions. Fossil fuel needs to pay the price for the damage it causes in the atmosphere.
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Our civilization is going to be forced to change dramatically as a result of global warming.
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The first person to come up with the idea of global warming was a 19th-Century Swedish chemist.
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A conversation with the writer and environmental activist.
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If American science education is to move forward, American culture needs to stop caricaturing scientists as socially awkward villains.
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New research on the underlying causes of autism could soon lead to earlier diagnoses and better treatments.
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The geneticist feels for parents who seek causes for their children’s autism in vaccinations. Unfortunately, no evidence yet supports the theory.
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Why is the risk of autism higher in boys than girls? Why do older parents tend to have more autistic children? New genetic research attempts to answer some of the […]