"We live in a culture in which intelligence is denied relevance altogether, in a search for radical innocence, or is defended as an instrument of authority and repression. In my view, the only intelligence worth defending is critical, dialectical, skeptical, desimplifying."

Author and entrepreneur Andrew Keen recently visited Big Think to discuss his new book "The Internet is Not the Answer," which explores the negative effects of Silicon Valley innovations on society.

"I don't think necessity is the mother of invention — invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble."

In today's featured discussion on pheromones, biologist Edward O. Wilson explains that there are massive amounts of natural stimuli that humans are not physically privy to.

"I am of the firm belief that everybody could write books and I never understand why they don't. After all, everyone speaks. Once the grammar has been learnt it is simply talking on paper and in time learning what not to say."

"World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor—it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement."

One of the world's foremost psychiatrists specializing in PTSD recently visited Big Think to discuss the diagnosis and treatment of traumatic disorders. 

In case you missed it from earlier this week, Walter Isaacson visited Big Think to discuss the inextricable link between new technologies and creative communities built around them.

In case you missed it from earlier this week, Bill Nye visited Big Think to discuss dog evolution and what it teaches us about race.

"A depressing number of people seem to process everything literally. They are to wit as a blind man is to a forest, able to find every tree, but each one coming as a surprise."

The murder of a dozen Charlie Hebdo employees in France by Islamic extremists brings back memories of the unrest surrounding Muhammad cartoons published in a Danish newspaper in 2005.

"Not long ago, if you wanted to seize political power in a country you had merely to control the army and the police... Today a country belongs to the person who controls communications."

Considered a major inspiration for the founding of the international Scouting movement, Major Frederick Russell Burnham was an adventurer who wrote on the power of leadership.

The biographer evaluates the current state of technology-based communities and suggests that future innovations will completely revolutionize the way we write books.

"Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice."

The former Chief Evangelist steps into Mark Zuckerberg's shoes and explains that if he were CEO of Facebook he would make sure not to alienate users by debasing their social media experience.

"When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude."

The NBA gathers massive amounts of gameplay information through special cameras installed in its 29 arenas. Over the past several years, teams have learned to glean insight from the data and apply it to on-the-court strategy.

The Science Guy explores the social lessons to be learned from evolution. Paramount is that race, both as a classification for humans and dogs, is not a natural construct.

"There are no happy endings in history, only crisis points that pass." The author and biochemist was born 2 January 1920.