The Latest from Big Think

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1hr 19mins
“We don't have enough knowledge to precisely calculate what is going to happen, and so we assign probabilities to it, which reflects our ignorance of the situation.”
A man sits with his head resting on his hand, surrounded by crossed-out words like "nonsense," "babble," and "rubbish" in red text.
A thesaurus isn’t for finding fancy words; it’s a resource to help you keep your rhythm.
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Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
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18mins
“The fear of panic has killed more people than most disasters themselves.”
mars
The surface and atmosphere is colored by ferric oxides. Beneath a very thin layer, mere millimeters deep in places, it's not red anymore.
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In the tears and laughter of a single life, you find the grief and joy of humanity.
A digital illustration of a brain, composed of circuit-like lines, appears against a black background filled with white dots resembling stars.
"Nobody expects a computer simulation of a hurricane to generate real wind and real rain," writes neuroscientist Anil Seth.
A deflated basketball lies on rough, textured ground.
10mins
“The voice in your head is not you. You are listening to that voice. It’s a heckler, trying to make you feel bad.”
Abstract illustration of a figure reaching for a yellow sphere on the left, with colored overlapping circles and concentric arcs—evoking themes of physics and consciousness—set against a vibrant multicolored gradient background.
Many, from neuroscientists to philosophers to anesthesiologists, have claimed to understand consciousness. Do physicists? Does anyone?
David Perell, in a short-sleeve white shirt, sits in front of a blurred background with plants, looking slightly to the side.
You no longer need an army of followers to stand out as a writer — “one great piece is all it takes,” says Perell.
Book cover for "Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global" by Laura Spinney, featuring contour lines on a beige background, explores the journey of this killer language that reshaped communication worldwide.
English could settle into a state of "diglossia" where a gulf exists between the written form and its spoken varieties, but the two are bound into a single tongue.
Silhouette of a person with the words "you matter" overlaid in large, bold letters on a dark background with abstract white lines, inspiring team esteem.
Harness the power of “respectful engagement” to make sure everyone in your team feels like they matter.
Scatter plot with dark blue data points and black dashed elliptical contours centered on the origin, with axes labeled ξ (') horizontally and vertically—similar to plots used by astronomers in studies of the smallest galaxy ever discovered.
With stars, gas, and dark matter, galaxies come in a great array of sizes. This new one, Ursa Major III/UNIONS 1, is the smallest by far.
A white brain model is wrapped in colorful electrical cables, set against a plain blue background.
Curiosity is often considered a personality quirk. Neuroscience paints a different picture.
A man with a beard and short hair smiles at the camera; the background features abstract green, purple, and black-and-white graphic patterns—capturing a confident presence that suggests he may share valuable leadership advice.
The cofounder and CEO of red-hot billing platform Metronome unpacks his leadership journey.
A human hand appears to hold a glowing celestial object surrounded by small planets and stars, creating the illusion of a miniature universe in the palm.
11mins
"We are all in orbit around the center of the Milky Way galaxy. How big is this collection of stars? Somewhere between 200 and 400 billion suns in the Milky Way galaxy, about 100,000 light years across."
Astro2020
NASA astrophysics, which gave us Hubble, JWST, and so much more, faces its greatest budget cut in history. All future missions are at risk.
Diagram of the solar system with gravitational waves emanating from a distant bright source, and a triangular spacecraft array detecting the waves in space.
Just 10 years ago, humanity had never directly detected a single gravitational wave. We're closing in on 300 now, with so much more to come!
tolkien fantasy
According to Tolkien, fantasy requires a deep imagination known as "sub-creation." And the genre reflects a fundamental truth of being human.
An older man sits on a chair in front of a white backdrop, surrounded by rows of hanging beef carcasses in a meat processing facility.
1hr 55mins
“It’s not about being perfect. It’s about reducing suffering where we can, and right now, we’re choosing not to.”