Who are the artists that people who know nothing about art know? Van Gogh? Michelangelo? Picasso? For museums trying to bring traffic through their doors, drawing in the non-art lover […]

We tend to think of work done on assignment as being somehow cheaper than work springing entirely from the mind of the artist. Art on demand never strikes us as […]

In his Big Think interview, Freeman Dyson gladly discusses nearly the entire twentieth century: both its wonders (including almost miraculous advances in physics) and its horrors (for which, he says, […]

A new study conducted at Cornell University suggests that spending money on experiences (family vacation, massage, guitar lesson) rather than stuff (new flat screen TV, iPhone, set of china) actually […]

Cruising into the second weekend of the oft-intriguing NCAA basketball tournament known as March Madness, it’s been an interesting combination of traditional collegiate powerhouses (Kentucky, Duke) balanced by incredible performances […]

His fellow physicist Steven Weinberg says the Nobel committee has “fleeced” Freeman Dyson. But Dyson prefers the infamy of never having won.

In March 2009, a federal judge ordered the Food and Drug Administration to reassess the arbitrarily imposed and scientifically unjustified age restrictions on access to emergency contraception (aka “the morning […]

When the physicist expressed reservations about climate change, he stirred heated controversy. “It doesn’t disturb me at all,” he says.

“We don’t only have to worry about warming,” the physicist argues. “It could very well be the climate gets colder. Nobody knows”—and we waste time arguing when we should be […]

Last week, Obama signed an ambitious nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia. So why does the “Weapons and Hope” author fear that George Bush, Sr. will go down in history […]

Freeman Dyson never spoke to Einstein, but revered him from afar. He was a “totally exceptional person”—as was another colleague, Nobelist and “clown” Richard Feynman.

The sheer unpredictability of atoms exempts them from ordinary rules of causality. The brain may be a “clever device” that turns that freedom into freedom of action.

Why looking for extraterrestrial life gets more and more efficient—and less and less expensive—each year.

With NASA’s future in doubt, the physicist recalls designing an ingenious (and sadly, radioactive) rocket that could have had us “scooting all around the solar system” 50 years ago. Will […]

Freeman Dyson recalls the excitement of contributing a missing puzzle piece to the study of atomic science.

From WWI chemical warfare to nuclear weapons, Freeman Dyson thinks misguided science was “quite rightly” blamed for many 20th-century atrocities. What dangers could it pose for the future?

Freeman Dyson fell in love with math, science, and nature as a child. Later, as a statistician in World War II, he had a “front-row seat view” of mass tragedy.

A conversation with the physicist and writer.

The line between creative allusion and outright appropriation has always been a thin and unstable one, constantly being redrawn as our attitudes toward borrowing shift and change, and the Internet […]

Today marks the third installment of Big Think’s series on business sustainability, sponsored by Logica. For the next ten Mondays (through June 8, 2010), we will release in-depth discussions with top European […]