The Latest from Big Think

A conversation with the anti-slavery advocate.

Women tend to be systematically better at doing what works in leadership positions. The data indicates that women are better managers and better for the economy.

Because of a persistently unequal division of work at home, men, on average, put in more hours at the office. As a result, it’s harder for women to reach the […]

The idea that there is a persistent prejudice against women that keeps them from top roles in society is out of sync with reality.

Successful female leaders tend to act like role models, inspiring and encouraging others. These qualities are make them better suited as leaders of the organizations we’ve developed in the modern […]

A conversation with the Northwestern University professor of psychology.

Before setting off on a new novel, the author must be fully equipped with a sense of his characters, must have a path in mind, and must be able to […]

The detective tries to be outside the story, hiding in his office with his bottle of whiskey in the desk drawer, yet he always ends up inside it. This alienated […]

The history of the novel in the 20th century is, among other things, a history of an argument with cinema—a very excited, nervous argument.

In the tradition of Jay-Z and Jean-Michel Basquiat, YouTube users create brilliant “vernacular moments”—moments filled with pure expressivity that don’t bother to think of themselves as art.

Jonathan Letham used to think he was a hipster—until he realized the amount of nastiness people intended when they used that word.

The author writes about neighborhoods in New York with such richness that they become characters unto themselves. Here, he discusses his favorite undiscovered hoods that haven’t yet made it into […]

There is a bogus script in American life that everything was better during some imagined time in the past. We tend to characterize change as either sweepingly utopian or dystopian, […]

A conversation with the novelist.

Sometime in the 21st century psychology will finally be considered a science. But until then political correctness will interfere with its search for truth.

The molecular biologist believes that a predisposition to schizophrenia is 100% genetic. Certain environmental factors, like smoking marijuana, can trigger the mental disorder.

Most doctors believe that different cancers require personalized therapies, but studying their common biochemistry could lead to a universal treatment.

The X-ray crystallographer contributed some crucial pieces of information to Watson and Crick’s search for the double helix. But because she likely had Asperger’s syndrome, she was almost impossible to collaborate with.

If you go into science, you should do so in order to win the Nobel Prize, not to earn a decent paycheck.

Synthetic life is just a close mimic to what already exists—it isn’t a truly new form of life, Venter’s human genome rival says.