Maintaining a hopeful, optimistic attitude positively affects a person's health, academic performance, and relationships. But what makes someone hopeful or optimistic?

There are 400 breeds in total, including 23 distinct “clades” or types.   

Is time travel possible? Of course it’s inevitable in some sense, as we always move through the Universe at the “boring” rate of one second per second. But what about […]

“Atheist churches” are popping up across the US and Europe. Is it just a trend?   

Scientists create a superfluid with negative mass that accelerates backwards.

Our "one beer an hour" rule of thumb is based on drinking a bottle of Bud. Now that more people are drinking pints of stronger craft brews, how do we adjust this rule of thumb?

Here are this week's top comments on Big Think content from across the Web.

Our brains didn't evolve to see the world accurately, we only perceive what is useful and apply meaning to it. Neuroscientist Beau Lotto shows us how the sausage of reality is made.

Not everyone sees color the way you do. There are a suite of tools available to help graphic designers work more inclusively. 

Wingland? Flemingia? The indignity of colonisation includes the imposed ignorance of the coloniser

You might think that it should be all black, but then how would we see it? “It is conceptually interesting, if not astrophysically very important, to calculate the precise apparent shape […]

An accidental discovery may lead to a vaccine-like treatment for depression and PTSD.

When it comes to time, and what the heck it actually is, there's a clash of ideas between physics and neuroscience.

Here’s how a discovery by a plucky band of sky-watchers changed science.   

A study suggests people act aggressively on their prejudices when they have plausible deniability.

The Many Worlds Interpretation is just one of a few multiverse hypotheses—but is there a glaring paradox in this popular idea?

Spontaneous talk on surprise topics. Architecture critic Sarah W. Goldhagen on how the built environment shapes our minds and cultures. 

'Trump supporter' is not a synonym for moron. Philosophy professor Daniel Bonevac is a reminder that understanding your opposites, not dismissing them, is the way forward.

The world's first malaria vaccine will be released in Ghana, Keyna, and Malawi in 2018. While malaria was eradicated in the US by 1951, it still kills over 400,000 people worldwide each year. Will this vaccine help eradicate malaria?       

Sometimes, designing a careful experiment and measuring absolutely no effect can be the most important result of all. “It appears, from all that precedes, reasonably certain that if there be any […]