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On the map, the changing fortunes of French baby boys' names look like battles in a weird, unreported war.
The similarities between the Universe and a living being are striking and surprising. Could larger entities than us be alive? “Do not look at stars as bright spots only. Try to […]
2mins
The essence of comedy is being critical, says John Cleese, and that means causing offense sometimes. But we shouldn't protect everyone from experiencing negative emotions by enforcing political correctness.
3mins
Our mobile devices provide so much stimulation that they capture our entire attention, even when we're with other people in social situations. Smartphones isolate us; ironically, they rob us of true solitude.
Big Think's Jason Gots reviews David McCullough's 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography John Adams.
How "the stats" are being used often causes a fog of low-quality quantification. Multiple regression is widely misunderstood by researchers and journalists.
2mins
To describe humans as innately selfish creatures (a) misunderstands some of our most important scientific and evolutionary theories and (b) is empirically false. A person's first impulse is generally toward generosity, not meanness.
As the world works toward a zero-emission economy, Japan has had to get creative about building up its solar infrastructure.
New research shows that the most effective leaders, from Abraham Lincoln to Jeff Bezos, are always questioning their own convictions.
An unfamiliar new threat that harms babies, that we can't protect ourselves from, that experts don't fully understand, and about which the media is blaring loud alarms; Zika virus has several powerful emotional characteristics that make any potential danger feel much more dangerous than it might actually be.
1mins
When presidential debates become a media circus, it's the voters who lose. But an alternative debate format would eliminate the kind of candidate-moderator feud that is dominating our political moment.
Chinese activist Ai Weiwei is the most political artist on Earth. Did he just sell his soul to a department store?
And how close does the farthest one we’ve ever found so far come to it? “Science, however, gives me the feeling of steady progress: I am convinced that theoretical physics […]
7mins
For most of his adult life, George Takei had to hide his sexuality to protect his career as an actor. He came out when he was 68 years old and, contrary to his fears, his work and his life have since blossomed.
Planet Nine? More like “Planet maybe.” “Finding out that something you have just discovered is considered all but impossible is one of the joys of science.” -Mike Brown Last week, the […]
Out of those hundreds of friends on Facebook, you'd only count four of them as "true friends."
All cities have clogged traffic arteries, post-industrial pockets of hipness, and districts that hate each other's guts for no other reason than that they're across the river from each other, or on opposite sides of the tracks.
4mins
In prohibiting juvenile solitary confinement in federal prisons, President Barack Obama follows the advice of prison experts like Marie Gottschalk. Here she explains the "degrading and dehumanizing" harm caused by extreme isolation.
Could Michael Bloomberg actually win? Or should he spend his billions on fixing our broken electoral system instead?
Google.org is trying to help refugees regain the lives they lost.