Edward Tenner wonders whether business models, like major engineering projects and government agencies, have their own failure timetables.

Having now closed out the first six months of the year, it seems like a good time to look back on Big Think’s 10 Most Popular Videos of the First […]

Science fiction writer Catherine Asaro is also a ballet dancer and a math teacher who believes thatphysics and dancing are much more closely related than you might think

Harvard Business School Professor Ranjay Gulati doesn’t buy it when businesses today say they are “customer-centric”—because any company will say that they are. “It’s a platitude,” says Gulati. “There’s confusion […]

Amit Chatterjee, the CEO and founder of Hara Technologies, consults with companies all across the country about how to go green. He stopped by Big Think recently to talk about […]

Cities' ability to store heat means they are typically warmer than their surrounding areas. Given climate change, this could mean the end of cooler nights and more frequent heat waves.

Despite the Cold War mystique surrounding alleged Russian spies living within the U.S. under "deep cover", Al Jazeera reports that spying is an eternal art, valuable to a nation no matter the epoch.

Garrison Keillor extrapolates the three stages of life from three generations casually standing on a street corner: Defenselessness, Cluelessness and finally Helplessness.

While surveillance that results in a speeding ticket may curb our wayward morals, Internet surveillance has no such benefit. Beware the illusion of your public persona, says The Economist.

Slate recalls Marshal McLuhan's distinction between hot and cool media to say that ink on paper is perceived differently than type on screen. One, therefore, cannot completely replace the other.

The struggle to overcome Tourette's syndrome or even severe stuttering increases cognitive control in the prefrontal cortex because individuals suppress purely reflexive behavior.

"Apple’s legions of devotees should brace their hipster selves for an inevitable fall from grace," says Dennis Kneale at the Daily Beast after sampling Google's yet-unreleased smartphone.

"Those who perpetrate wars of aggression invariably invent moral justifications to allow themselves and the citizens of the aggressor state to feel good and noble about themselves," says Glen Greenwald.

MIT engineers have completed a four year project to develop a car with foldable wings, in other words, a flying car. The vehicle is powered by unleaded gasoline and goes for $200,000.

"Do we inflate the menace of Islamic Jihad in order to justify the war in Afghanistan?" Robert Wright wonders if our simplification of Muslim motives squeezes relevant facts out of picture.

Journalist Jere Van Dyk stopped by the Big Think offices today to recount his gripping tale of survival after being captured and imprisoned by the Taliban in 2008. Van Dyk, […]

Humans are hard-wired to make bad investment decisions, says Legg Mason Capital Management’s chief investment strategist, Michael Mauboussin. It’s in our nature to follow along with a bearish or bullish […]

Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos.com, believes the most important aspect of any company is its culture. That’s why he was so disappointed with his first company, LinkExchange—and why he […]

"The Supreme Court on Monday loosened the limits on the kinds of inventions that are eligible for patent protection," reports The Washington Post. Intangible goods are increasingly eligible.

Though the Islamic world has "fallen behind" recent scientific times, the oil-rich states of the Middle East are seeking to diversify their economies. The New Scientist says science and technology appear promising.