The Latest from Big Think

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My thought experiments don't happen in my mind. I undertake these experiments out in the world. 
We won't be able to solve the major problems that we have without more intelligence. 
Studies show that weight gain is happening in the wider animal kingdom as well -- in our pets, yes, but also among some captive and wild animals. No one really knows why.
Today we are celebrating 7 of the most popular - and indeed they turn out to be among the most interesting - ideas of the summer of 2013.
Many Americans are being misled on serious scientific issues, and science journalists have to spend an inordinate amount of time debunking myths which seemingly never die.
Make no mistake about it. Seamus Heaney, widely regarded as the world's greatest poet of the last half century, was Irish.
This week a New Jersey state appeals court determined that if a person knowingly sends a text to someone who's driving, and the driver is involved in an accident as a result, the texter could be held liable.
How is it that something 460 miles long, 6 miles wide and, and up to 2,600 feet deep would go unnoticed until now?
This image is an illustration of a knot of gas that is six trillion miles, or about one light year long. 
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk – recently named by TED’s Chris Anderson as one of the most innovative thinkers in the world today – is at it again, this time with a plan […]
There's a kind of hostility to teachers that underlines the current corporate reform narrative. 
I just came to realize that what we got involved in and what I had been supporting was turning education into a desiccated, data-driven, anti-human activity and this would not encourage the love of learning. 
The year-old startup, which operates in San Francisco and Austin, has many plans for people's mail, not the least of which is "making [it] as sortable and searchable as email."
It’s a fact of life that we are surrounded by points of view and by propaganda that is heavily messaged and it’s meant to persuade us of something. 
Big food, which is industrial food, big farming, which is agribusiness, and big pharma all profit from making people sicker and fatter.  
The element molybdenum, delivered via Martian meteorite, could have served as the catalyst for the development of organic molecules, which became the first living things on the planet.
The road-side exterior wall of a hotel in one flood-prone London district is covered with a 21-foot-high vertical garden that acts as a "350-square-meter green sponge."
Behavioral scientists, neuroscientists, and psychologists have identified attitudes, beliefs, and other factors that contribute to risky behavior.
By understanding a modern picture of cosmology, even at just an intuitive non-detailed level, people can get a wonderful spiritual sense of how they fit into the universe.
Adam Conway's custom-built drone only cost about US$100 to make, and although it still needs a bit of work, the technology behind it could prove useful in a variety of situations.