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Develop leaders in your organization with Big Think+ classes
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Create premium thought leadership and storytelling with Big Think Creative
Advertising Campaigns
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Live Events
Bring your people and ideas to life with Big Think Events
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Latest Videos
A library of interviews with the world’s biggest thinkers.
9mins
Is the nature of “the text” changing in the Web age? Are blogs hurting criticism? And could the growing interest in “thing theory” be a response to an increasingly virtual […]
1mins
The term “thing theory” is a joke, but not a joke about physics.
3mins
By inviting us to pay close attention to the object itself, “thing theory” can tease out new meaning in the simplest artwork—even an apparent prank like Duchamp’s “Fountain.”
5mins
Many modern artists have explored the idea that the material world “might want to be organized other than the way we’ve organized it.”
7mins
From Daisy weeping into Gatsby’s shirts to Tom Hanks chatting with Wilson the volleyball, stories are as much about things as people.
3mins
The critic’s signature “thing theory” is an exploration of how inanimate objects transform us, in art and life.
3mins
Bill Brown first sensed his calling when he realized he read very slowly—a habit he thinks is integral to the critic’s discipline.
38mins
A conversation with the professor of English and visual arts at the University of Chicago.
1mins
His fellow physicist Steven Weinberg says the Nobel committee has “fleeced” Freeman Dyson. But Dyson prefers the infamy of never having won.
4mins
When the physicist expressed reservations about climate change, he stirred heated controversy. “It doesn’t disturb me at all,” he says.
3mins
“We don’t only have to worry about warming,” the physicist argues. “It could very well be the climate gets colder. Nobody knows”—and we waste time arguing when we should be […]
4mins
Last week, Obama signed an ambitious nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia. So why does the “Weapons and Hope” author fear that George Bush, Sr. will go down in history […]
3mins
Freeman Dyson never spoke to Einstein, but revered him from afar. He was a “totally exceptional person”—as was another colleague, Nobelist and “clown” Richard Feynman.
3mins
The sheer unpredictability of atoms exempts them from ordinary rules of causality. The brain may be a “clever device” that turns that freedom into freedom of action.
1mins
Why looking for extraterrestrial life gets more and more efficient—and less and less expensive—each year.
6mins
With NASA’s future in doubt, the physicist recalls designing an ingenious (and sadly, radioactive) rocket that could have had us “scooting all around the solar system” 50 years ago. Will […]
4mins
Freeman Dyson recalls the excitement of contributing a missing puzzle piece to the study of atomic science.
5mins
From WWI chemical warfare to nuclear weapons, Freeman Dyson thinks misguided science was “quite rightly” blamed for many 20th-century atrocities. What dangers could it pose for the future?
2mins
Freeman Dyson fell in love with math, science, and nature as a child. Later, as a statistician in World War II, he had a “front-row seat view” of mass tragedy.
38mins
A conversation with the physicist and writer.