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A novelist and two neuroscientists came by Big Think’s offices this past week. Jonathan Safran Foer, one of the most acclaimed young novelists of the past decade, spoke to us […]
If you’re not a computer programmer, the name Bjarne Stroustrup might not mean that much to you. The creator of the coding language C++ isn’t exactly a household name. But […]
A groundbreaking 1981 study that showed that it is not our physical state that limits us, but our mindset about our own limits, is set to feature in a movie starring Jennifer Aniston.
Facing a slow-motion food crisis the world should learn from Brazil, which reacted to its farm crisis with boldness, expanding production through science, not subsidies.
Mother Teresa, who would have turned 100 this week, helped spark a new missionary model which increasingly sees ordinary people volunteer while on vacation.
It would be nice to dismiss the stupid things that Americans believe as harmless, writes Timothy Egan, but a culture of misinformation can have very serious consequences.
German city planners are hoping that applying "environmental psychology" will help make Hamburg's huge new urban development a success.
The Telegraph says that after more than a decade of "virtually unfettered immigration", the U.K. "is desperately overcrowded" and public concern is not xenophobia or racism.
Author David Rieff laments the rise of “fast thought” in books and decrease of works written in the spirit of scholarly investigation, not just to illustrate a thesis.
Retired intelligence officer Paul R. Pillar says the U.S. should try harder to curb the export of terrorists — particularly homegrown ones — and terrorism from its own territory.
More fast growth among global for-profit universities seems probable and the number of globally mobile students is likely to surge as higher education's globalization continues.
Publishing houses are more relevant than ever in the digital era, says Ursula Mackenzie, chair of the U.K. Trade Publishers Council. And demand for print works remains very strong.
Ever since she wrote a New York Sun article about why she let her 9-year old son ride the subway alone, journalist Lenore Skenazy has been lambasted by the media […]
Now that August, Big Think's month of thinking dangerously, is over, we'd like you to give a thumbs up or a thumbs down to 10 of the radical ideas we presented.
"How can economic modernization be combined with cultural robustness and social well-being?" Columbia Economics professor Jeffrey Sachs looks at Bhutan for clues to the answer.
"As far as scientists can tell, we humans seem to be the only species that shed tears for emotional reasons." Is there an evolutionary advantage to being inspired to weep?
"If u really r annoyed by the vocabulary of the text generation, it turns out they were doing it in the 19th century—only then they called it emblematic poetry, and it was considered terribly clever."
The Economist questions both the economic and moral justifications for the rising popularity of privately operated state and federal prisons. Contracting-out is not the same as privatization.
While we witness the transition from paper to digital publishing, The Atlantic looks back on ten prior revolutions in literacy from hieroglyphs to Hellenic song to the printing press.
"Walking up the side of buildings like Spiderman could soon be a reality, scientists have claimed." But the new technology was inspired by the gecko rather than the spider.