Search
Latest Articles
The newest essays, interviews, and features from Big Think.
Last week, I wrote about the dangers of waiting until the chemicals we are exposed to are conclusively proven to be dangerous before regulating them, especially when most studies on […]
Who are the “Tea Party” activists, and what do they hope to accomplish? Will their crusade purify American conservatism or factionalize it further? Former Republican House Minority leader Dick Armey, […]
Ben Heineman’s book, High Performance with High Integrity, is a sort of memo to CEOs on how to run a major company. He would know; Heineman was GE’s general counsel […]
The New York Times reported today that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s office asked a Manhattan high school newspaper to alter quotations of the Justice following a talk he gave […]
2mins
The author shares one of the “ranting inner monologues” that make him toss and turn.
4mins
With skyscrapers rising and infrastructure rotting, novelist Paul Auster explains what makes him “wistful” about his changing city.
3mins
The novelist believes that it’s “the burning need to do it,” not to be praised, that spurs great writing.
3mins
Philip Roth believes books will soon be dead. Paul Auster respectfully—and strenuously—disagrees.
6mins
Known for bending genres and playing with the paradoxes of identity, Paul Auster explains what anchors his novels in the personal and the real.
4mins
For a young future author, traveling in France after drawing a high number in the Vietnam draft, the opportunity to live abroad was as lucky as escaping war.
3mins
For “Invisible” author Paul Auster, writing novels never gets easier, yet he no longer dreads the blank page.
2mins
As costs run away in the legal and medical industries, pay practices are going to change, explains Ben Heineman, a senior fellow at Harvard Law School.
3mins
When the Israeli press uncovered a scandal at America’s largest company, former general counsel Ben Heineman was on the case. The first lesson he learned: take your head out of […]
2mins
Legally, General Electric had no obligation to the overseas facilities they employed. That didn’t rid the company of a moral obligation, describes Ben Heineman, GE’s former general counsel.
People see what their tools let them see. Case in point: How different the world looks when it’s mapped according to unfamiliar principles. Even more striking than a reverse-pole map […]
5mins
The field of economics will likely witness a wildly new approach to the notion of scarcity in the coming years, a good thing believes the Nobel Prize winner—but first let’s […]
1mins
Elinor Ostrom won the 2009 Nobel Prize for economics, yet Paul Krugman, another laureate, has confessed to never having encountered her work. Here she explains how we can move past […]
4mins
The Nobel-prize winning economist argues that, contrary to the widespread theory, with the right governance, humans are likely to forge peaceful solutions to coping with resource scarcity.
1mins
If given the opportunity to sit down with anybody, Elinor Ostrom would meet the late labor economist John Commons, who linked the individual’s rights with their responsibilities.