Culture & Religion — May 3, 2010

BT Welcomes New Blogger Maria Popova

Today Big Think is pleased to welcome the very talented Maria Popova, of Brain Pickings fame, to our regular blogging team. Known for “curating eclectic interestingness” from around (and beyond) the Web, Maria will author the new Design for Good blog, focusing on socially beneficial design in the 21st century. You can read her debut post here.Design for Good will cover “everything from industrial design that addresses developing world problems, to guerrilla design interventions that make urbanity more livable, to graphical presentations of data that bring greater transparency to politics. Rapidly expanding in response to increasing cultural demand, this area of study will only grow more vital—and fascinating—in the 21st century.”

Maria, welcome; BT fans, enjoy!

a computer generated image of a human brain.

Thinking

The great free will debate featuring Michio Kaku and Steven Pinker

Who — or what — really controls your mind?

Building destroyed by the Halifax Explosion. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

The Past

The largest accidental explosion of all time

More than a century ago, Halifax suffered an accidental blast one-fifth the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

a collage of photos of a man with a hat and a book.

High Culture

6 great books with wildly unreliable narrators

Dive into the twisted truths and concealed realities told by literature’s most unreliable narrators.

a group of five matches on a pink background.

The Well

Signs you’re burned out — and how to bounce back

If you don’t feel better after the weekend, the “burnout paradox” could explain why.

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7 min

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with

Laurie Santos

Starts With A Bang

The trick to instantly identifying JWST images

If you can identify a foreground star, the spike patterns are a dead giveaway as to whether it’s a JWST image or any other observatory.

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