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History and Society
The color of the shirt you're wearing right now depends on many factors, from your eye shape to what language you speak.
In 1980, Willy Brandt drew a line across the map that still influences how we think about the world.
Philosopher Peter Singer argues it's time to examine a morally dubious practice.
Many beloved fantasy adventures take place in worlds that bear a striking resemblance to our own.
Here's the dark side of first contact.
Burns’ latest documentary dives into the long-romanticized life and work of the Italian polymath.
Mars and Earth were sister planets in many ways, with early similar conditions. Why did Mars die? The leading explanation isn't universal.
In the year 1181, a "guest star" was recorded in the constellation of Cassiopeia. Its modern supernova remnant is weirder than we imagined.
Reading this article would be such a millennial thing to do.
Some go gently into the night. Others die less prettily in freak accidents or deadly invasions, or after a showy display.
From tribal hunts to Stonehenge and into the modern day, the peer instinct helps humans coordinate their efforts and learning.
"I am free. It's a lot of effort to be free from the prison that is in your mind, and the key is in your pocket." - Edith Eva Eger
Studying why innovation clusters form can shed light on how to better promote research and growth.
The secret sauce is the real world.
Would you be upset if I called you an eggplant?
Don't make the mistake of blindly following quantitative metrics — whether you're helping clients or looking for lunch.
Great tidal ranges are relatively rare on a global scale — and can be very deadly to the unsuspecting foreshore walker.
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
The fabric of spacetime is four-dimensional, with three for space and only one for time. But wow, time sure is different from space!
An in-depth interview with astronomer Kelsey Johnson, whose new book, Into the Unknown, explores what remains unknown about the Universe.
"We are not our grandparents. It’s time to start thinking differently," journalist Annie Jacobsen told Big Think.
The Universe changes remarkably over time, with some entities surviving and others simply decaying away. Is this cosmic evolution at work?
The electoral reform also known as instant-runoff voting promises bridge-building and broad appeal instead of culture war and gridlock.
Modern autocracies operate "not like a bloc but rather like an agglomeration of companies," says journalist and historian Anne Applebaum.
To maintain momentum and flow, the great novelist Ernest Hemingway didn’t burn himself out — but learned when to put his work down.
The Sovereign State of the Bektashi Order would be just one quarter the size of Vatican City.
Artificial intelligence is much more than image generation and smart-sounding chatbots; it's also a Nobel-worthy endeavor rooted in physics!
Historian Timothy Snyder talks with Big Think about how true liberty requires both negative and positive freedoms.
The co-founder of Wired magazine shares his insights on how a long-term mindset can shape a brighter, more innovative future.
Interferometry gave us a black hole's event horizon, but that was in the radio. What can we accomplish with a new optical interferometer?