Guest Thinkers

Well, I’ve been on Big Think for about two weeks now, and I’m starting to get used to the place. It’s a different experience from my old site, no doubt […]

Earlier this year, novelist Jane Smiley contributed an entertaining and provocative piece to Big Think’s “How to Think Like Shakespeare” series. In it she wrote that while composing A Thousand […]

Engineers have used carbon nanotubes to create artificial muscle that moves like an elephant’s trunk, which could be used to propel microscopic nanobots through the bloodstream. 

Clinical trials show marijuana might be useful for pain, nausea and weight loss in cancer and HIV/AIDS and for muscle spasms in multiple sclerosis. But research funding is sparse. 

After WWII, birth rates in the U.S. rose dramatically. During the war, relatively few couples could afford to have children, and many young men were on the front lines anyway. […]

One of the major changes that’s come with the new site is that here, every post has to have an accompanying image. I’m not complaining – I had always meant […]

As regular readers know, I’ve devoted considerable time to writing about the child-molestation scandal engulfing the Catholic church. The core of this story isn’t that there are child abusers within […]

Hemingway wrote of courage as grace under pressure.  In Private Acts: The Acrobat Sublime, Harriet Heyman writes of grace under the pressure of gravity and the courage demonstrated by those […]

There is a race on to control the architecture of online learning. While that race has been running for the past decade or more, largely dominated by a software for-profit […]

What’s the Big Idea? As the world watched London burn under the strain of economic uncertainty this past summer, the legendary entrepreneur and art world financier Asher Edelman warned that […]

Anita Perry, your public complaint that your husband Rick’s campaign is being “brutalized by our own party” has guaranteed that further mayhem will ensue. I know, I know – your […]

Despite spending more time working than any other group, women with advanced university degrees are having more children than other college-educated women. Why? Because the growing divide between the rich […]

Presumably, if we better anticipate its timeline, we will carve a path that makes the Singularity era most beneficial to our species.

As of right now, polls show that Herman Cain is in the lead for the Republican presidential nomination. They also show that likely Republican voters really like him.  And there’s a […]

Over the past two or three weeks I have noticed something really interesting. I got in contact with or read about at least six startups that were all working on […]

What’s the Big Idea?  For some of us, it was Spock. For others, a humiliating performance as a pilgrim in the kindergarten musical.  For me, it was William Blake’s relentless […]

Reuters reports that “leftists” in Mexico City’s assembly are contemplating a two-year, term-limited marriage.  They argue that it would spare the city’s married residents—half of whom split, and most within […]

The U.S. is historically a Christian country. It’s not just that 3 out of 4 Americans identify themselves as Christian. It’s that the colonists who fought in the American revolution […]

Men and women of the American armed forces are on patrol today in the ancient cities of Kabul, Herat, and throughout Afghanistan. Our soldiers come in the footsteps of so […]

I got this e-mail from a reader, which I was asked to pass along in the hope of getting some advice: I was raised in an Evangelical household and most […]

Continuing with our first week of posts (and getting all the particulars out of the way – posts will get more substantive soon), we would like to tell you who […]

For almost 2000 years, Western Art has groped about in the darkness, laboring under the Ptolemaic misconception that Earth (and humankind) is at the center of all things. Until now.

While the Obama Administration was busy foiling yet another terror plot yesterday, the GOP presidential candidates at the debate sponsored by Bloomberg TV and the Washington Post looked like they […]

Today, I don’t want to write about Kahneman’s work or his invaluable contribution to the study of decision making and the workings of the human mind, but rather, about something much more general: his approach to research.

            For all their apparent differences, the Occupy Wall Street protestors and the Tea Party are far more alike than either side, or the punditocracy, would like to admit. There […]

By @jason_silva and @notthisbody Hybrid Reality Institute Fellow Jason Silva will be speaking at the Singularity Summit in New York on October 15th. Here is Jason’s latest video inspired by […]

Last month the Boston Red Sox dropped out of playoff contention, losing their wild-card berth to the Tampa Bay Rays after leading them by nine games three and a half […]

Tara Sophia Mohr has a challenge for working women. “You’re brilliant and thoughtful, but could you move a few more inches in the arrogant idiot direction please?” Be an arrogant idiot is rule #5 of Mohr’s 10 Rules for Brilliant Women.  

Looking forward to the end of the world requires a divorce not only from reality, but from the awe that our infinitesimal place within it inspires.  

Every Wednesday, Michio Kaku will be answering reader questions about physics and futuristic science.