The Latest from Big Think

Big Think expert Roy Cupples weighs in on this crucial issue. 

Quick. Grab a pencil. Some crayons. A notepad. Wrap your brain around this Big Enigma from Ivan Moscovitch's The Big Book of Brain Games.  Share a photo of your solution in the […]

Design experts say the furniture of the digital age will be dematerialized, meaning a minimalism no longer imposed by style alone but by the material necessities of digital devices. 

In a previous thread, again buried in a huge pile of comments, there was one I wanted to highlight: Now you talk of pregnancy as a real life threatening thing […]

We have devoted a fair amount of attention on Big Think to the ongoing saga of Apple's relationship with its Taiwanese-owned electronics supplier Foxconn. Why do we care about this story […]

Maybe the brain evolved a lot like the way big pieces of software get developed.  

Bano, a mother of five who lives in the ancient quarter of Lahore—the cultural center—was without power for days. She wanted to make goat stew, a family favorite and a […]

Now that SCOTUS deliberation over the constitutionality of portions of Obamacare is going much worse than most liberals predicted, left-leaning pundits are screaming "judicial activism!" which is cute, though I […]

What is the Big Idea? A new mobile app that helps young Beijingers hook up is a runaway hit, according to Economic Observer. Weixin, which means "tiny message" uses geolocation […]

Richard Dawkins, the most famous "atheist" on the planet, has argued "the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis like any other." 

Mitt Romney will win the nomination. Rick Santorum’s victory in Louisiana only delayed the inevitable. Santorum gained just 5 delegates in Louisiana on Romney, who is still 295 delegates ahead. […]

Today, the question of how people make decisions is an animated and essential one, capturing the attention of everyone from neuroscientists to lawyers to artists. In 1956, there was one person in all of New York known for his work on the brain: Harry Grundfest. An aspiring psychiatrist, Eric Kandel chose to take an elective in brain science and found himself studying alongside Grudfest at Columbia University. 

When last we heard from him, experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats was building a celestial observatory for cyanobacteria. From their petri dishes, billions of these microorganisms would study images from the Hubble telescope, coming to conclusions unavailable to our more highly developed brains. Months later, they’re still at it, and we can barely begin to imagine what they are thinking. 

Children whose parents were responsive at 18 months of age show more extended and imaginative play at four years, while children whose parents were directive spend more time in the immature pattern of merely touching or looking at toys.

Craig Taylor describes how he went about writing Londoners, a collection of incredibly diverse perspectives that collectively express the soul of this modern city.

Craig Taylor's Londoners is a humbling reminder that, for all the restless energy we put into categorizing, labeling, and compartmentalizing the world, the only way to understand people and places as they really are is to shut up and listen.   

Do you remember the scene in the The Breakfast Club in which Brian, the lovable geek played by Anthony Michael Hall, is asked what he would need a fake I.D. […]

One theme that consistently emerges in Teju Cole's work is an interest in creating space, through literature, for those bits of real, complex experience that can find their expression nowhere else.   

The all-knowing device used in the TV program Star Trek has been brought to real life by cognitive scientist Peter Jansen, who equipped the machine with an impressive array of sensors. 

A start up backed by a Skype co-founder is giving away free smartphone covers that provide about a gigabyte of free wireless per month. Internet is a right, not a privilege, says the company.