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The newest essays, interviews, and features from Big Think.
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China is becoming progressively more open and entrepreneurial, but Western corporations shouldn’t assume they can export their traditional business models there.
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Creative writing programs have left a dominant stamp on American literature in recent decades. The Harvard professor is glad they’re around.
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Louis Menand recalls the most vehement reactions his essays have ever gotten—including one from a reader who didn’t realize Menand agreed with him.
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A conversation with Booz & Company’s Chairman for Greater China.
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Louis Menand isn’t sure the cognitive science approach to literature has yielded much of interest so far, but thinks there may be “some surprises around the corner.”
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Not on purpose, says the “Marketplace of Ideas” author. But the system is starting to hurt them nonetheless.
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The “Marketplace of Ideas” author suggests steps American colleges can take to become more ideologically diverse.
This Thursday, April 29, Big Think will be interviewing Mario Armando Lavandeira, Jr., a.k.a. Perez Hilton, in Los Angeles—and we’re giving you, Big Think readers, the chance to contribute questions […]
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The “problem of general education” haunts any college trying to design a core curriculum, but standardizing across schools is a poor solution.
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Whether we’re in postmodernism, post-postmodernism, or some other phase, one thing we’re not in is cultural decline.
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The kind of literary criticism that Lionel Trilling practiced, which assumed that national literatures reflected deep national values, is dead now.
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The audience that the New Yorker critic has in mind is “somebody who’s like yourself, but in a completely different discipline.”
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A conversation with the Harvard University English professor.
"The need for Americans to enter the arena has never been greater," write Bob and Elizabeth Dole. They write in favor of Theodore Roosevelt's idea of "robust citizenship."
Researchers have discovered a deep-ocean current carrying frigid water rapidly northward from Antarctica along the edge of a giant underwater plateau. They call it a climate change "fast lane."
A new biography of writer Irène Némirovsky, author of "Suite Française," rejects the idea that the Jewish author, eventually killed by the Nazis, was anti-Semitic.
Hoarders have "a sense of intense responsibility for objects and an unwillingness to waste them," says Randy Frost. They also have an ability to find beauty in things that other people might not appreciate.
Scientists have gotten a better understanding of the molecular mechanism by which humans sense temperature. The findings could lead to new therapies for acute or chronic pain.
"With all the uncertainty and anxiety these days over landing a job with a steady paycheck, more job seekers are finding it harder to resist fudging on a résumé or job application," writes Anna Prior.
The Army is seeking proposals for a sophisticated human scent detection system that could “uniquely identify an individual,” at a geographical distance, or after several hours or even days.