While Sam Harris doesn't necessarily condone their use, his experimentations with psychedelic drugs were indelible in the formation of his worldview and understanding of consciousness. 

With Oscar Taveras on our minds, we remember another ballplayer who was taken much too young young. More than just a Hall of Fame outfielder, Roberto Clemente was a man committed to giving back. He died tragically at the age of 38 when a plane he chartered to deliver aid to earthquake-stricken Nicaragua crashed in the Caribbean Sea. "Any time you have an opportunity to make a difference in this world and you don't, then you are wasting your time on Earth."

"We should write our own history books to prove that we did have a past, and that it was a past that was just as worth writing and learning about as any other. We must do this for the simple reason that a nation without a past is a lost nation, and a people without a past is a people without a soul." -Seretse Khama, 1st President of Botswana

Venture for America is a non-profit fellowship program that grooms the next generation of American entrepreneurs by placing them in startup apprenticeships.

The CEO of SAP discusses leadership ethics and why never missing a Little League game is good for business.

Biographer Walter Isaacson discusses his new book The Innovators and why Steve Jobs was a prickly teambuilder. 

Henry Rollins dished on the power and limitations of music in his Big Think interview: "Is music a viable force for change?  Can music stop things, start things, change things?  To a certain degree yes, maybe in pop culture, but if a song or an artist could stop a war Bob Dylan and Bob Marley would have."

Sherman Alexie, author of the award-winning novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, on Young Adult fiction: "A lot of people have no idea that right now Y.A. is the Garden of Eden of literature... One person asked me, ‘Wouldn’t you have rather won the National Book Award for an adult, serious work?’ I thought I’d been condescended to as an Indian — that was nothing compared to the condescension for writing Y.A."

"You see what power is – holding someone else's fear in your hand and showing it to them." -Amy Tan, from her book The Kitchen God's Wife (1991)

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof recently visited Big Think to discuss his new book A Path Appears and talk about the tactics advocates must employ to raise awareness for a good cause.

Civil rights leader Mary McLeod Bethune on never giving in to discrimination:  "If we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination, we accept the responsibility ourselves and allow those responsible to salve their conscience by believing that they have our acceptance and concurrence. We should, therefore, protest openly everything... that smacks of discrimination or slander."

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any." -Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple

Even an Iron Chef can fall into the trap of letting his kids eat junk food. His secret to selling his kids on nutrition is to present good foods in forms and textures they enjoy.

"People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within."

Kip Tindell, CEO of the Container Store, explains that his employees are the company's most valuable asset and that it's important to pay them what their worth to foster a positive workplace culture.

Mark Hatch, a leader of the Maker Movement, is CEO of the DIY workshop TechShop. Hatch explains how TechShop allows makers the opportunity to harness its resources to innovate and create amazing things.

"A writer — and, I believe, generally all persons — must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art."

"Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you've got to go deeper. Down deep the fish are more powerful and more pure. They're huge and abstract. And they're very beautiful."

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof discusses the importance of a compelling narrative that appeals to human biases when promoting a good cause.

Madeline Levine discusses an instance when one overbearing father shared a little too much information. From her Big Think interview on parenting, available here.