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How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall? Fail, Fail, Fail
“Wildly uneven” “Fuzzy and confusing” These are not the type of reviews you want to receive if you are bringing a multimillion dollar musical production to Broadway. Words like these don’t look...
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Greenblatt’s “The Swerve” Wins National Book Award!
Yesterday, Big Think Expert and renowned Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt won the National Book Award for nonfiction for bringing to life a 15th century book-hunting expedition that changed the...
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Occupy MoMA: Diego Rivera’s Populist Murals Reunited
During his lifetime, Diego Rivera stood as one of the most important and controversial artists in the world. Today, thanks to the international feminist phenomenon of Frida Kahlo (who stood in her...
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Drug Companies Wait for FDA Guidelines on Social Media Marketing
–Guest post by American University graduate student Natalie Shuster. Since 2009, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has engaged in active conversation with national pharmaceutical and biotechnology...
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3-D Printing: End of Our Throw-Away Culture?
What’s the Latest Development? Recent advances in 3D printing technology have made commercial-quality printers affordable to the public for the first time. And the design software needed to create...
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The Future of Libraries and Bookstores lies in their own Past
Reading the daily news (probably on a PC or tablet device) one might have the notion that ebooks were on a killing spree, destroying every part of the old media system on their way, the latest victim:...
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The Sky IS falling. Should We Worry?
Most of us are aware that some monstrously large space rock may be headed our way that could cause what scientists dryly call “an Extinction Event”. Translation; WAY bad for life on earth....
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Silicon Chip Mimics Human Synapse
What’s the Latest Development? By creating a silicon chip that behaves like a synapse, researchers at M.I.T. have removed a significant barrier toward building computers systems that replicate human...
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See You At Skepticon!
As I mentioned earlier, I’ll be at Skepticon IV this weekend in Springfield, Missouri, and I’m eagerly looking forward to it. Given the sheer number of fantastic speakers, we’re at serious risk of...
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Can an Atheist Be a Unitarian Universalist? (Part 3)
In my previous post in this series, I quoted a shockingly anti-atheist letter written by Rev. John Buehrens, former president of the Unitarian Universalist Association. This letter repeated all the...
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How Great Thinkers Spread Their Ideas
What’s the Latest Development? If you want to get your thoughts out into the marketplace of ideas, you’ve got to visit different stalls. That means appearing on news sites, blogs, etc. that aren’t your...
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Start a Business in Five Days
What’s the Latest Development? A three-day event that has traveled to over 120 cities encourages individuals and groups to condense their business ideas and pitch to local entrepreneurs and investors....
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‘Tis Here! ‘Tis Gone! Dr. Michio Kaku on the Search for Heavy Elements
Every Wednesday, Michio Kaku will be answering reader questions about physics and futuristic science. If you have a question for Dr. Kaku, just post it in the comments section below and check back on...
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FollowFriday Friendapalooza: The Great Big Think Twitter War
This week Big Think decided to give Twitter a big bear hug. Why? We realized the Twitosphere had (undeservedly) become the neglected stepchild of our various social media profiles. To date, we have...
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Time to Unhate China?
Benetton’s controversial new “Unhate” ad campaign, which features pictures of world leaders like Barack Obama and China’s Hu Jintao caught in a liplock, actually raises a thought-provoking question: Is...
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W. H. Auden and the Comedy of Human Suffering
“What is so distasteful about the Homeric gods,” W. H. Auden complains in his essay “The Frivolous & the Earnest,” is that they are well aware of human suffering but refuse to take it seriously....
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Impulsivity and Addiction Genetically Linked
What’s the Latest Development? A new study from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, suggests impulsive behavior is genetically linked with addiction. A small segment of DNA—the gene NRXN3—has already...
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Do political affiliations matter in dating?
You are on a date with a wonderful man/woman. He/she is speaking, but you are gazing lovingly into his/her eyes thinking how lucky you are having finally met your perfect match. Then you hear him/her...
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Stopping Cancer Before it Starts
What’s the Latest Development? A new medical technique which examines how cells interact with light can possibly spot mutations in DNA that forecast diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s. Called partial...
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The Supreme Court and Obamacare
Obamacare is going to get its day in the Supreme Court. The court granted certiorari in—literally, informed the lower courts that it would hear—three cases challenging the Affordable Care Act on...
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Being Old in a Democracy
So we really do have an aging society. The good news, as I’ve said before, is that we’re living longer, on average, than ever before. The bad (some say) is that we have fewer children. These are the...
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Khan’s Biggest Impact: Changing the Economics of Education
A lot has been and will be written about Salman Khan. Though he already arrived in the spotlight of mainstream media, he is clearly just at the beginning of his mission. And with fresh money in the war...
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Are Girls’ Brains Different from Boys’?
What’s the Latest Development? At this week’s annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, panelists were quick to recognize that sex-difference research is easily abused and can justify sexism....
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Turning Twitter Followers Into Newts
Rumor has it that 80% of Newt Gingrich’s Twitter followers were purchased and as a result are fake and/or useless. This may be an exaggeration, but the evidence is clear that a sizable chunk of his 1.3...
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Publishing With Teeth: Megan Tingley & Twilight
Breaking Dawn Part 1, the latest film version of Stephenie Meyer’s bestselling Twilight saga sank a stake into the weekend box office pulling in an estimated $283.5 million worldwide. A monster share...
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The Book Job: Did the Simpsons Get it Right?
In case you missed it last Sunday night, the best Simpsons episode of this season so far (and arguably, the past few years) was posted on Hulu today. Publishing for young readers is squarely in the...
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Can a Museum Rewrite Art History?
Ask me to build a Mount Rushmore of Abstract Expressionism, and I’ll put the faces of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, and Barnett Newman up there. From Hollywood movies to MoMA...
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What’s on Your Desert Island Bookshelf?
If you were marooned on a desert island and could only bring a handful of books with you–let’s say five–which ones would you pick? Who better to ask than Stephen Greenblatt, the father of the New...
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The Whole World Is Watching: Why Pepper Spray is Good for Occupy Wall Street
It’s the video that everyone seems to be talking about, or at least a lot of people on Youtube. This video depicts a University of California, Davis police officer pepper-spraying a group of protestors...
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Skepticon Impressions: Gelatogate!
I’m back! As you may know, I’ve spent the last three days in Springfield, Missouri, having a blast at Skepticon IV. The convention was a weekend of great talks that ran the gamut: atheism, skepticism,...
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