Politics & Current Affairs

What is the Big Idea? Russia’s lame duck president Dmitry Medvedev is working hard during the last two months of his presidential term. He met with a team of experts last […]

While embracing controversy in any form is a challenging first step, Gloria Feldt – former CEO of Planned Parenthood – argues that women need to go further. She says women need to set the agenda – becoming political thermostats rather than thermometers.

On March 10, 2009, President Obama announced that environmentalist and civil rights activist Van Jones would serve as a Special Advisor to the White House, overseeing the administration’s ambitious and […]

On Tuesday, April 4th, 2012, we had the pleasure of interviewing Richard Tafel, human rights activist and founder of the policy advocacy organizations The Log Cabin Republicans and The Public […]

What is the Big Idea? While the world was celebrating Nobel prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi’s party’s victory in Sunday’s special elections in Myanmar, a new currency exchange rate went […]

What’s the Big Idea? If you’ve ever shopped, socialized, or signed up for anything online, there’s a chance that information you offered up willingly, in a seemingly private context, is […]

While it’s tempting to mock the hollow chants of health care law critics as Jon Stewart did last Thursday — “what do we want? freedom! when do we want it? now!” — […]

A new book which points out correlations between political views and character types (determined by genetics) misses the fact that climate change skepticism exists in Europe, too. 

With Willard Mitt Romney, American politics has moved beyond the predictable Newtonian rules of campaigning, into the bewildering and unpredictable era of quantum politicking. 

New research shows that people who self-identify as conservative distrust science as an institution. Is it because our culture has changed or because their brains are wired that way?

What is the Big Idea? The working conditions at Foxconn is about to get a lot better. At least that is the idea behind purported reforms announced last week, some of […]

Bano, a mother of five who lives in the ancient quarter of Lahore—the cultural center—was without power for days. She wanted to make goat stew, a family favorite and a […]

Think the private sector has a monopoly on innovation and government is just hopeless bureaucracy? Not DARPA. It’s the agency that invented the Internet and flies at Mach 20. 

What is the Big Idea? Back in the 16th century, a group of rural and urban weavers who worked in the Black Forest mountain range of Germany formed a guild […]

What is the Big Idea? Effective next year, brothels in Ontario, Canada will be able to operate legally and sex workers will be allowed to hire security for protection, according […]

Bill Nye, aka The Science Guy, is a man with a mission: to help foster a scientifically literate society, to help people everywhere understand and appreciate the science that makes […]

As President Obama travels to South Korea, matters of the state will be on hand. But what about the people living in North Korea? Their treatment is at once frightening and bizarre. 

“We can have huge wealth in the hands of a relatively few people or we can have a democracy. But we can’t have both,” said Louis Brandeis. Today, income inequality is an all time high. 

Despite dire predictions of the future, brought on quite naturally by the protracted recession, professor Philip Auerswald believes the world is headed for epic prosperity. Here’s why…

In order to avoid destructive consequences, people must have reasonable opportunities to satisfy their desire for purity. Many horrors have been committed from fear of contamination. What else is “ethnic […]

In a new book, author Vijay Vaitheeswaran argues that innovation will occur differently than in the past. We need to harness the power of democratizing Internet technologies, he says. 

State legislatures tend to make national headlines when they vote on divisive social issues like mandatory ultrasounds or stage epic battles over the status of public-sector unions. But in the […]

Political ideologies on the left and the right get confused when it comes to enacting urbanization policies, unfortunately, to the detriment of those who live in the city and suburbs.

Long-term unemployment is double its highest rate since the 1950s, which may keep the economy from returning to pre-recession growth rates—forever—say some economists. 

As American firms hire more people and Europe avoids a Greek catastrophe, there are signs that the global economic is recovering. Countries need to take cautiously optimistic action. 

If market economies are to carry the world into a new era, they must achieve stability, equity and sustainability. Of these three, sustainability will likely prove the most challenging. 

Diane Ravitch tells Big Think what really matters when it comes to learning, inside schools and out. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it’s not K-12 teachers who are most responsible.

In The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita nakedly examines the (often ugly) means by which people are able to gain and keep power.

Intelligence Squared U.S. (IQ2US) will hold a debate to hash out and answer the question: Does China do capitalism better than America? “China seems to have emerged unscathed from the […]