Latest Articles

Latest Articles

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

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It’s not a gambit. It’s not fraud. It’s not driven by opinion, prejudice, or bias. It's not unchallengeable. And it's more than facts alone.
A split image: left side shows an empty bench and rocking chair by a lake, evoking a sense of nostalgia; right side shows a person in a white shirt walking outdoors, partially obscured by a torn-paper effect.
The philosopher Svetlana Boym argues that "nostos" encourages people to reject the world as it is and seek to return to a better time — real or imagined.
Book cover for "The Price of Becoming" by Ryan Hawk, featuring bold black and blue text on a bright yellow background that captures the essence of transformation conveyed in The Price of Becoming.
Focusing on the process is essential, but it can also become a subtle way to avoid vulnerability and commitment.
A shot of the Perseid meteor shower
Although the Geminids have rivaled the Perseids recently, in 2026, the Perseids should win at their peak. Here's why, plus how to see them.
Colorful nebula with red and blue gas clouds, two bright stars—once separated stars now reunited after distant supernovae—and a rocky object, set against a star-filled background in space.
We've never witnessed a system of binary stars both go supernova before. A once-hidden source of gamma rays just revealed the first one.
Book cover for "You Can Just Do Things" by Cate Hall with Sasha Chapin, featuring bold text in red, white, yellow, and blue on a red background with a light green border.
We glorify hard work, but cutting out unnecessary effort is often the best path to get what you truly want.
A middle-aged man with a receding hairline, glasses, and a blue button-up shirt looks at the camera against a plain light background.
10mins
Why does life keep getting more complex? Why doesn't evolution get stuck? Physicist Stephen Wolfram has been working on this for decades. Turns out the answer is more simple (and more strange) than we expected.
A person writes equations on a chalkboard. Their face is obscured by a digital overlay of blue 1s and 0s.
If AI can someday make scientific breakthroughs, what would be left for the brightest human minds to discover?
A man in a suit sits at a table, facing another person whose back is visible in the foreground, against a blue background.
When someone asks you a question they genuinely don’t know the answer to, hold on to them for dear life.
A molecular cloud labeled G+0.693-0.027 is shown in space, with an inset displaying a 3D model of the erythulose molecule—a sugar that may provide clues about the origin of life—found within the cloud.
In a gas cloud 26,000 light-years away, a 4-carbon sugar, erythrulose, has just been found. Here's what it means for life in the Milky Way.
Map showing North Korea and South Korea, demilitarized zone, military demarcation line, and territory sizes in square kilometers, with major cities labeled in both countries.
Neither a victory nor a defeat, the Korean War lingers in a stalemate that remains unresolved.
A squirrel sits on a rock facing a standing bear in a forest setting, both animals appearing to observe each other closely.
People are almost always different to how we imagine them
Mars is very different than Earth: smaller, drier, colder, etc. But the biggest long-term challenge, for human colonies, is its low gravity.
A man sits on a stool against a small white backdrop, with a large yellow silhouette and abstract pattern in the background.
1hr 7mins
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Psychologist Paul Bloom examines why loneliness feels like starvation, why people are drawn to behaving poorly, and why revenge feels righteous until it destroys everything.
Stylized illustration of two purple eyes peering over a blue angular shape against a black background, evoking the intrigue found in stories with psychopathic protagonists.
These iconic literary characters shine a light on our enduring fascination with dangerous minds.
Woman with long brown hair gazes upward, softly lit from the front, with a blurred colorful background behind her.
11mins
Singer, actress, and daughter of Beach Boys legend Brian Wilson, Carnie Wilson reflects on a life of very public transformation — and what it feels like to finally look back and recognize the person she's become.
Unlikely Collaborators
universe bulk volume brane dimension
Mathematics is our language for quantitatively describing reality, but it can also take us to worlds that never were. Physics needs more.
Two people at a protest hold signs reading "no vaccine passports" and "STOP COVID JABS FOR CHILDREN," with others standing nearby and flags visible in the background.
Astrophysicist Adam Frank used to think the consequences of rejecting science would play out on the individual level. He's since changed his mind.
Einstein
Many think that intelligence can be outsourced to AI. Einstein wouldn't have used it. If he had, he never would have become Einstein.