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The newest essays, interviews, and features from Big Think.
Two new studies suggest that chimpanzees face death in human-like ways, from holding deathbed vigils to comforting the dying.
People who are motivated by rewards tend to be the ones who win at games—even when the reward has been removed.
For much of the past century, the realm of alien conspiracy theories has been inhabited primarily by academics and recluses, both widely dismissed as crackpots. Despite the billions of dollars […]
“The Goldman Emails,” exchanges between executives regarding the state of the market—and Goldman’s strategic choices leading up to and during this last crisis—are artful in their absence of art. These […]
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The author of the classic writing guide “Bird by Bird” shares some of her favorite ways to get the creative juices flowing.
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Unlike Faulkner, the “Imperfect Birds” author doesn’t believe you should be willing to run over your grandmother for the sake of a great novel.
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Anne Lamott embraces her reputation as a popular novelist, but admits that she sometimes gets caught up in the pretentious side of her profession.
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A story of meditation, black coffee, and Safeway cakes.
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Anne Lamott used to seek inspiration in “drugs, alcohol, and poetry.” But writing her novels has always been more like arduous manual labor than an ecstatic high.
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Creating fictional people that seem real requires, among other things, writing a final draft in which you “take out all the lies.”
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Some social problems are too complex to attack in a 1,500-word editorial.
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“The difference between a writer who toughs it out and one who doesn’t is that you push through the parts where you know that you’ve just written seven pages when […]
“It’s obvious to anybody that the mind does much more than solve problems,” Yale computer scientist David Gelernter says in his Big Think interview. “But in a more fundamental way, […]
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The 21st century economy will evolve from a U.S.-dominated landscape to a “multiple power” system whose success will hinge on cooperation, not competition.
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With competitive local search companies waiting in the wings, will Chinese users really mourn Google’s absence?
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The financial meltdown caught China off guard—and may make the country hesitate to follow Japan and other East Asian neighbors into full-fledged capitalism.
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Will China’s future economic success hinge on its willingness to democratize? Or will U.S. debt make the country a superpower sooner than we think?
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“There’s no point in going into a field like English literature unless you’re going to have fun with it.”
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The Harvard critic recalls feeling genuinely anxious about how things would turn out for the hero of “The Magic Mountain.”