The Big Think Interview

Shark Tank’s Robert Herjavec breaks down why the traditional idea of mentorship is not only outdated, but actively getting in the way of your growth.

Neurologist Richard Cytowic has spent decades studying synesthesia, the phenomenon where one sense involuntarily triggers another. 

Archaeologist Eric Cline has spent his career forensically reconstructing why the Bronze Age collapsed, and the answer is far stranger and more unsettling than a single catastrophic event.

Historian Eric Cline illuminates the 400-year period following ancient collapse that shaped the modern world.

Jim Al-Khalili explains how the past and future are more fluid than we may think.

Jim Al-Khalili introduces the technologies emerging from the second quantum revolution.

Theoretical physicist Jim Al-Khalili explores why our sense of time may be incredibly misleading, including the idea that past, present, and future might all exist at once.

Brian Cox examines why, despite billions of stars and trillions of planets, we have found no evidence of other intelligent life.

Abigail Marsh unpacks what defines psychopathy, how it differs from antisocial behavior, and why terms like “sociopath” only add confusion.

"I call it a tyranny of attention because there's so many demands on our attention coming from so many different directions that we are simply overwhelmed and we don't have the mental bandwidth to cope with it."

"The production of the silicon wafers that are used in the chip manufacturing process requires extraordinary levels of purity."

Now that love has been liberated, it seems to have become more complicated and more illusive than ever. Alain de Botton explains.

"Rationalism is the idea that, in order to truly know something, you have to be able to describe it explicitly."

"The thing that the nihilist recognizes is that the values he or she holds are not grounded in anything other than their own preferences."

"In the process of mapping the heavens, it doesn't take long to realize the data problem they generated."

"It's this modern idea of doing voluntary discretionary, physical activity for the sake of health and fitness."

"By keeping people biologically younger, we can enjoy a longer health span, a longer period of healthy life where we're active, where we're happy, where we can engage in our hobbies, and play with our grandkids and great grandkids."

We tend to trust our intuitions about consciousness because they feel immediate and personal, but feeling convinced is not the same as being right. Annaka Harris explores what happens when […]

"I continue to believe that in the long run, boys, young men will believe their eyes more than their ears."

"It's much better to try to understand how the world works and then act accordingly. Rather than trying to impose on the world the way we want to think or the way we preferred things to be."