The Latest from Big Think

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Book cover for "The Healing Power of Resilience" by Tara Narula, MD, featuring a flower entwined with an EKG line, symbolizing the healing power of resilience, on a beige background with a red border.
Tara Narula shares how journalist Richard Cohen challenged conventional ideas about illness, identity, and strength while living with MS.
Many view the development of fringe, alternative theories as a useless waste of time. But when they can be tested, it shows what reality is.
A compass with a red needle points north toward a yellow smiley face symbol, signifying happiness, on a textured background with gray, white, and red horizontal sections.
AI will shape the future of work, but human leadership will decide whether that future is good — and happiness should be the touchstone.
A vivid image of a galaxy with bright blue and red nebulous clouds, set against a black star-filled background in deep space.
With unprecedented resolution, wavelength sensitivity, and light-gathering power, JWST reveals our cosmos like no other observatory ever.
Two people sit on white chairs facing each other, both smiling and dressed formally, on a brightly lit stage with a blue and white background.
People don't want you to buy their stories — they want you to listen to them.
A deep space image shows numerous distant galaxies and stars against a dark background, including several bright spots shaped by a gravitational lens cross, with diffuse light sources scattered throughout.
Gravitational lenses arise when foreground masses and background light sources properly align. Einstein rings are rare, but crosses abound.
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A tour of the literary cover-ups, extraterrestrials, and cryptids lurking in the bookish backwoods.
Two men sit on grass under trees, talking. One, an elderly man with white hair and a mustache, appears to be a Great Mentor. Both wear outdoor jackets; backpacks rest beside them in the dappled sunlight.
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
black hole
It's not about particle-antiparticle pairs falling into or escaping from a black hole. A deeper explanation alters our view of reality.
A yellow and blue parrot perches on a branch with a black-and-white DNA strand illustration overlaid on a pink, pixelated background.
The case for why AI systems are not merely "stochastic parrots."
Book cover titled "Friction: A Biography" by Jennifer R. Vail, featuring an image of a matchstick angled on a matchbox striker—capturing the spark of friction—set against a light blue background.
The deep study of friction and surfaces — so crucial to industrial manufacture — emerged from a mid-century engineering conference.
Diagram showing light from a distant galaxy bending around a red-hued massive object, reaching telescopes on Earth via different paths and at different times.
The VENUS survey isn't about planets at all, but about finding multiply-lensed supernovae. The ambition? To save the expanding Universe.
havana syndrome
The Havana Syndrome mystery took a strange turn following a CNN report that outlined how the Pentagon had purchased a device through an undercover operation — one that some investigators believe could help explain the illnesses.
A colorful silhouette of a person sits at a desk, using a computer with a monitor displaying horizontal static lines—an image inspired by the innovative creativity of Jeff DeGraff.
AI may be rewriting “how” we work — but not “why” we work. And this has profound implications for leadership.
The Golden Gate Bridge is shown in a halftone style, with its left side tinted red and right side tinted blue, against a light background with hills.
Tech leaders may have backed Trump in 2024, but the majority of the community still leans left -- and has a big opportunity ahead.
Book cover featuring a stylized illustration of Michelangelo’s David, capturing the spirit of New Work, with the title “The Next Renaissance: AI and the Expansion of Human Potential” by Zack Kass.
Author Zack Kass argues that AI will not end work — it will expand it, pushing us toward new ways of creating, connecting, and adding value.
Astro2020
US science is worth fighting for, but so are the science projects and scientists denied opportunities. Here are 4 paths all worth exploring.
An orange silhouette of a standing child is overlaid on a background made of ASCII art and dense lines of text, resembling digital code or data.
AI can now generate entire worlds from text prompts. What does this mean for how we think, create, and connect?
A vintage photograph shows a Wright Brothers-era biplane flying low over a sandy hill as four people on the ground watch.
Our algorithmic age encourages us to over-index on probabilities — but we should instead exercise our “storythinking brain” and focus on possibilities.