Guest Thinkers

The Italian Renaissance remains one of those amazing hinges of human history where civilization made a great leap that continues to be felt today. For German art historian Hans Belting, […]

In a previous post, Big Think speculated about what Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s death would mean — for the Arab Spring, for the price of oil, for President Barack Obama, etc. […]

A woman recently shared with me the secret to finding a husband. She told me to write a list of qualities that my ideal man would have and tape it […]

This paper, published online yesterday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, introduces a new term to neuroscience: The FBN, or “Facebook number.” Your Facebook number is, of course, […]

I’ve been having a high old time the last couple of weeks watching both Republican presidential candidates and TV political pundits squirm whenever the phrase “9-9-9” is uttered. Nevertheless, Herman […]

Why didn’t humans become as peaceful as we are today tens of thousands of years ago?

Charities that depend on donations and fund-raising to survive have it hard enough in the best of times. But in this depressed economy, it must be more difficult than ever. […]

My friends, I have to confess an unpardonable lapse of judgment. I have some very bad news to deliver, and what’s worse, I forgot to tell you until now, when […]

Deb Roy has created a machine that connects TV show impressions to expressions in social media. This has extraordinary implications for advertising, and also promises to “rewire how our democratic process works in the future.”

The former Senate Majority Leader says whatever system we choose, whether it is Obamacare, Clintoncare or Nixoncare, has a relatively small impact on how long we live as compared to behavior and genetics.

As tuition costs continue to skyrocket, parents and students are demanding answers to this question: what am I getting as the return on my $50 thousand annual investment that is college tuition today? 

It may be tempting to think that if you want to be innovative, your office has to “have all these weird things going on.” Not so, says Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO. The real power comes from shaking things up.

— Guest post by Luis Hestres, American University doctoral student. Ever since the financial crisis hit the U.S. in late 2008, many political commentators (mostly on the Left) have wondered […]

Once Facebook flips the switch on the official public launch of its all-new Timeline feature, nearly any action that you take will become instantly sharable online to your friends as […]

My previous post, “The Blinding Fog of Religious Moderation“, drew some criticism from people who felt that I was unjustly lumping moderate believers together with fundamentalists. So, in this post, […]

Yesterday, Grockit announced a $7 million USD Series D funding round which is in itself already newsworthy. Even more interesting to me though was the launch of a new feature […]

That’s the conclusion of Flagg Taylor—one of the leading experts on totalitarian communism: I’ve spent and continue to spend a great deal of time thinking about totalitarianism.  In what guise […]

     Suppose you have a disease…an incurable fatal disease…and a drug has just been approved that can treat that disease. The drug only works in about half the people who […]

Every art lover knows the story. Sad, mad Vincent Van Gogh went into the wheat fields of Auvers-sur-Oise on the morning of July 27, 1890 to paint Wheatfield with Crows […]

Just as peacocks spread their tails to signal virility, men have used conspicuous consumption to signal wealth and women have used the appearance of youth to signal fertility – all […]

The other day commenter Cotdail took issue with a tossed-off aside in my post about religion and happiness. I said the hostility of militant atheists to religion borders on madness, […]

Here’s an interesting graph from a new paper by Kenny Shirley and Andrew Gelman: The most obvious thing here is white Americans have been and remain much more likely to […]

Last Thursday I recorded a bloggingheads session on Yemen with Afrah Nasser.  In the 43-minute video we talked about the current stalemate in Sanaa and what, if anything, can be […]

On October 31st, the United Nations estimates that the seventh billion child will be born. But people have worried about overpopulation since long ago. Are we approaching a threshold? 

This past Saturday, October 15th, marked a momentous occasion in the history of cleanliness: the fourth annual Global Handwashing Day. Yes, it exists. Established by the Global Public Private Partnership […]

If I had to give the Occupy Wall Street movement a piece of advice, I would tell them to focus their growing chorus against Wall Street excesses on corporate governance […]

Wikipedia is universally relied on and universally distrusted. On the one hand, it’s a stunning repository of knowledge that has rendered the World Books of my not-so-distant childhood utterly obsolete; […]

Public support for income redistribution policies during the recession plummeted, especially among the poor. Why are so many acting against their own economic self-interest? 

This serious and thoughtful—and maybe great—film is quite the labor of love.  It’s a film about broken families and broken lives made by the father-and-son team of Martin Sheen and Emilio […]

Makeup is not just about good looks. Wearing makeup increases people’s perceptions of a woman’s likability, her competence and her trustworthiness, according to a new study.