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In war zones, aggressors steal art to eradicate the cultural heritage of others. Victims, meanwhile, sell stolen art in order to survive.

“The Da Vinci Code” popularized the idea that Christians stole much of their theology. It’s wrong, especially regarding Christmas.

Debates about the existence of free will traditionally have been fought by two competing camps: those who believe in free will and those who don’t because they believe the Universe […]

Argentina’s black market for cash is embracing crypto — but it’s not what crypto proponents expected.

The same parts of the brain that help us navigate complex social interactions can also drive us to make wildly bad investments.

The neoliberal call for more ‘choice’, seems hard to resist.

All this from a wad of gum?

The more research conducted on psychedelics, the closer we get to new therapeutic models.

The war machine needs fuel, perhaps so much as to make protecting oil redundant.

Is this the real life or is it just fantasy? And does it really even matter?

The art of persuasion in sales & marketing is one that has changed significantly in recent years. Rather than trying to make your voice the loudest, basically yelling “look at […]

A spoonful of sugar has always made the medicine go down – but shouldn’t we be asking whether we need this type of medication in the first place?

Sitting cheek-by-jowl in the packed press gallery at the Supreme Court on Tuesday and listening to 150 minutes of oral arguments in the historic same-sex marriage cases, I marveled at […]

Have you ever emerged from the supermarket and wondered why you bought so many things not on your list? Congratulations, you’ve likely been manipulated!

Our ruling ideas grow evermore ethically evasive. Ignoring evident big picture problems, they have us mindlessly seeking the mathematically and morally absurd. Simple maxims can clarify: Economics, the study of […]

For a few weeks only, the UK-based supermarket chain Waitrose is offering what they’re calling “bubbleberries” due to their distinctive taste. In botanical circles, they’re known as musk strawberries; in Jane Austen’s day, they were called hautboys.

How humble is “His Holiness” The Dalai Lama really?

We’re no closer to solving this problem than we were 20 or 30 years ago.

From a health standpoint there really is not one shred of evidence that genetically modified food has any impact on health other than beneficial. 

NewSpace is no stranger to challenge, whether above the clouds or in legislation. One particularly ornery obstacle is the US International Traffic and Arms Regulation, commonly known as ITAR. (Please […]

Yesterday on NPR, Jenna Chavez, a member of an evangelical church in El Paso, Texas, succinctly summed up the foundation for the argument against same-sex marriage: [Marriage has] been defined…for […]

The argument over guns is a complex topic, but we ought not to dismiss arguments because they do not square with our gut feelings – regardless of whether we want more or less guns, more or less laws. 

When true paradigm shifts occur, as with Cloud Computing and NewSpace, there is no buzz phrase that is more appropriate, stigmatized as it may be. When examining existing and emerging […]

Mark Ruffalo’s energy campaign offers a powerful model here – one that leverages cultural power, scientific knowledge, and bottom-line economic reasoning to address the kinds of complex, 21st century problems it takes collective intelligence to solve. 

For anyone out there who is running a company, considering starting a company, or even just managing your own blog – we have a message for you: you can no […]

Ned Resnikoff picks up on my old post, via a terrific recent one by Daniel Little, on the radicalism of John Rawls’ position on economic liberty: If we’ve to fairly […]

–Guest post by Meredith Hollingsworth, American University student. In 2004, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger boldly declared in a white paper the death of environmentalism. They argued that the movement […]

Welcome to What Not to Think About. On this blog, Big Think’s editors will pick the stories that are making headlines elsewhere but which we encourage you to ignore. Why? […]

If your Facebook friend, who has been married for 20 years, changes her status to “Interested in men and women,” does that mean she is a swinger? More interestingly, what […]

What better topic at a conference full of carnivores than how to deal with people who think you’re completely off base, if not criminally insane?