A conversation with Sam Gosling, professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.

Footnote about the Pinker-Gladwell kerfuffle: To discredit Gladwell, Pinker takes advantage of a truly embarrassing mistake (the science-writer's nightmare) in which Gladwell misspelled "eigenvalue'' as "igon value.'' (It seems a […]

When it comes to gauging exactly how the economy is faring, the long-held method has been to look towards the bare necessities. Turns out they don’t get much more bare […]

Last night a fireball lit up parts of the Utah sky– and the phenomenon, which saw the dead of night as bright as day, was captured on CCTV.

Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin called the hacking of her Yahoo e-mail account the “most disruptive and discouraging” incident in her campaign.

A service by North Pole dwellers to answer letters addressed to Santa has been suspended after a sex offender was recognized as a volunteer.

Sufferers of the chromosomal disorder Downs syndrome could be helped by a new drug which increases the levels of message-carrying chemicals in the brain.

In South Africa a polygamist businessman has been convicted of the murder of his pregnant wife and the attempted murder of his second wife.

President Barack Obama needs to take decisive action in Afghanistan and remind the American public why they are fighting the war he inherited from George Bush.

A super-submarine left over from the Second World War has been found in Hawaii.

Some morbidly overweight people don’t realise they’re obese according to the findings of a new report.

A translation firm is offering prospective parents the chance to check their preferred baby-names don’t mean anything embarrassing in other languages.

President Obama has admitted that the US government will miss the January 2010 deadline for closing Guantanamo Bay.

The new Atlantic magazine has an intriguing dispatch about how "Iranians line up daily to cross the Astara River to buy and sell jeans, chickens, bras, laptops—and often sex and […]

Jim McManus visited Big Think today to talk about the poker habits of the men who have inhabited the White House.  The stories he told come from his new book […]

In the 1960s, the world seemed on the verge of a global food crisis, as the population grew faster than the food supply. As I wrote last week, thanks largely […]

It looks like the Iranians have balked on their promise to ship lowly enriched uranium to Russia. One wonders if the whole thing was a ruse to tamp down the […]

Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, argues that abusers should be treated the same as anyone with a debilitating disease.

Can you force yourself to crave lettuce and running? Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, examines the science of compulsion.

It could be related to the drug-like state of withdrawal that comes when you severely decrease the amount of sugar in your system, says Nora Volkow, Director of the National […]