Latest Articles

Latest Articles

The newest essays, interviews, and features from Big Think.

A man in a black shirt sits on a chair, gesturing with his hands, with a large blurred image of his younger self in the background.
9mins
Jaleel White spent nine seasons as one of the most recognizable characters on television. Watching it back, he's realizing how much of that time he spent performing for everyone except himself.
Unlikely Collaborators
finite or infinite
As far as we can tell, there's no limit to how far it goes on; only a limit to how far we can see. Could the Universe truly be infinite?
World map showing changes in night-time radiance from 2014 to 2022; purple areas indicate dimming, yellow areas indicate brightening, with a color bar legend.
A Cold War accident became a reliable tool for using artificial lights at night to map GDP, poverty, urban sprawl, and even illegal fishing.
Book cover for "Pause: How to Lead Brilliant Work in a Busy World" by Shawn Vanderhoven with Anne Vanderhoven, featuring the title in large black and gold letters over a yellow dotted sunburst—a design that embodies the spirit of festina lente, encouraging leaders to make haste slowly even amid today’s busy world.
When Mark Allen stopped chasing speed, he changed from an injury-prone contender into an Ironman champion.
A view of Earth from space showing the continents, oceans, and cloud formations, with a dark background and a small bright object—possibly the Artemis II moon—visible below the planet, evoking a sense of hope for exploration.
The Earth is a massive planet, but doesn't form a truly perfect sphere. Here's how to understand our strongest and weakest gravity points.
Book cover of "Inner Propaganda: Leading Hearts and Minds Through Turbulent Times" by Owen Fitzpatrick, featuring bold text on a red background with white rays and a crumpled paper effect, visually capturing the essence of inner propaganda at work.
Our brains are gambling addicts placing bets on what reality holds. And sometimes, they bet wrong.
A single arrow with red fletching in motion, flying through a blue sky with wispy clouds.
7mins
We’ve been asking whether we have a purpose. Philosopher Alan Love says the better question is: what kind of purpose can we identify, document, and explain?
A person with hair floating upwards looks out of a spacecraft window at Earth, filled with hope as clouds and oceans shimmer below—a view reminiscent of the Artemis II mission’s journey.
Neither Vannevar Bush's "Science: the Endless Frontier" nor OSTP's "Science: A New Golden Age" got it fully right. Here's what they missed.
Image shows Saturn with its rings on the left and Jupiter—with the thickest atmospheres in the solar system, colorful bands, and the Great Red Spot—on the right, both against a black background.
Obviously, the gas giants all top this list. But the fall-off is rapid after that, and the final two spots in the top 10 are truly shocking.
Impressionist painting of a young woman in a blue dress sitting on grass and reading a letter, with soft, colorful brushstrokes.
Books to expand your perspective on history, philosophy, space exploration, and more this year.
the night sky with stars and trees in the foreground.
Human beings only see the Universe now: 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang. What would the earliest life, anywhere, have seen instead?
A person sits on a chair in front of an illustration of human lungs, highlighting the branching bronchial tubes and lung tissue in detail.
1hr 7mins
Physician Giulia Enders walks through 5 body parts, explaining what each one reveals about how we work, heal, and recover.
A man in a suit speaks into a microphone in front of a large American flag.
Andrew Yang, the one-time Democratic presidential candidate, thinks America’s political system is broken. Can third parties fix it?
A woman with dark hair looks upward with a neutral expression, soft light illuminating her face, and a blurred background with warm and cool tones.
10mins
How do you unlearn a story about yourself that the whole world seemed to agree on? Margaret Cho has been working on that answer for a long time. This is where she landed.
Unlikely Collaborators
When people choose the greatest scientist of all, Newton and Einstein always come up. Here's why they should pick Johannes Kepler instead.
Glowing green neural or fungal networks with scattered bright spots are visible against a black background.
Machine learning tools are allowing scientists to better understand forms of intelligence that operate on spaces and timescales utterly unlike our own.
Book cover of “The Savage Landscape: How We Made the Wilderness” by Cal Flyn, featuring a dramatic mountain range beneath a cloudy sky and a sweeping valley below, perfectly capturing the untamed spirit of the savage landscape.
From Viking tales to modern anthropology, the idea of the "savage" has shaped how outsiders viewed Indigenous societies — and justified attempts to dominate them.
Scientists are livid over the OSTP director's official report to the President. Will it lead to a new golden age for US science, or end it?
An athlete in blue sportswear and red shoes performs a high jump against a clear blue sky, framed by a red, scalloped border.
You don't talk yourself out of it. You out-evidence it.
The grid features 15 images of distant galaxies, each labeled with identifiers and redshift values from z=4.75 to z=8.92. Captured by JWST, these celestial wonders include intriguing little red dots scattered across the vast cosmos.
200 years ago, we hardly knew anything about our Universe on cosmic scales. Today, there's so much that we know. Here's how we arrived.