Neil deGrasse Tyson recently joined the ranks of Stephen Hawking, Richard Feynman, and Lawrence Krauss when he called philosophy “distracting” and criticized it for not offering the kinds of tangible gains of science.
Search Results
You searched for: Big Think
Syracuse is adding itself to a growing list of cities that want to remove highways running through urban centers. Cities such as Milwaukee and San Francisco successfully tore down highways and ushered in an age of urban development and renewal.
Are you a fan of Elise Andrew’s Facebook page “I Fucking Love Science” as much as we are? Good news! The social media sensation, with over 10 million “Likes” on […]
Overstock.com’s CEO Patrick Byrne wants to increase the popularity of Bitcoin, according to a profile by Forbes. The large discount retail site has enacted features that reward customers paying with […]
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg famously argued in Lean In that women need to stand up for themselves in order to secure equality in the workplace. But what happens when leaning in backfires? Some women have found that negotiating their job offers puts them at risk of being sent away empty-handed.
Nikola Tesla was a rare genius who never received the recognition he deserved while alive. (He was overshadowed by his former boss and rival Thomas Edison). Tesla gave us neon […]
So-called “patent trolls” — companies with the sole aim of suing over patents — have been a scourge to big companies for years. Now a new study reveals that patent trolls harm startups as well as venture capitalists shy away from investing billions of dollars.
On July 4, 2012 a team of physicists in Switzerland announced one of the biggest discoveries in science: the Higgs boson–the “God particle” that could explain why all matter has […]
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to resume his nation’s commercial whaling ventures in the Antarctic seas despite the International Court of Justice’s ruling in March forbidding it.
Clarity suffers when speech becomes cluttered with filler words and phrases. Cleaning up your diction is easy with these simple strategies.
“Nudge” policies are spreading across the globe because they supposedly offer a less expensive and more effective way to get people to make the “right” decisions. In the original formulation, such decisions are defined as those that people would like to have made, had they not been hobbled and blinkered at the time by irresistible irrationality.
There’s plenty of gas, dust, planets and rocky bodies out there. Could some combination of them explain dark matter? Image credit: Chris Blake and Sam Moorfield, via http://www.sdss3.org/surveys/boss.php. “When a […]
And if not, how do you reason with those who believe they are? “Ignorance is hardly unusual, Miss Davar. The longer I live, the more I come to realize that […]
Michael Sandel: I think the reason we have such an impoverished public debate is that we are too reluctant to take on hard controversial, but important moral questions that really go to the heart of the question of what kind of society do we want to live in.
From atoms to solar systems to galaxies, everything seems to have rotation and revolution. Where does that come from? Image credit: Fermilab / DOE / Dark Energy camera; Dark Energy […]
More potential evidence that we may not be alone in the universe. Kepler telescope discovered 715 new planets beyond our solar system. So far, NASA has identified four of these […]
We don’t know the nature of either dark matter or dark energy: 95% of our Universe. Does that mean the Big Bang is in doubt? Image credit: wiseGEEK, © 2003 — 2014 […]
Much weight falls on the shoulders of the executive branch’s mouth.
James Watson: I think we’re all in favor of being alive when we’re alive. And of course, it’s how you define being alive.
Here’s an exciting first which hopefully indicates a promising trend: This year women outnumber men in UC Berkeley’s introductory computer science course. The field is vastly dominated by men, and […]
Researchers believe women who have their last child after 33 are more likely to live into their late nineties. The findings are a matter of genes, meaning the relationship between late motherhood and long life is correlative, not causative.
When the President gives a speech today, the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin tells Big Think, “you might hear the pundits tearing it down before he even finishes the speech.”
WASHINGTON, DC – There are two leading views about the world’s financial system. The first, heard mostly from executives at leading global banks and their allies, is that the system […]
New empirical approaches to psychology are better defining the introvert/extravert dichotomy. Behavior typically belonging to introverts better reflects a new identity category: Openness to Experience.
Borat Who? The oil-rich former Soviet country is becoming a major player in the world energy sector, building ties with both Russia and the United States.
A recent study published in Psychology of Women Quarterly reveals that most women are disgusted by the thought of female body hair or the thought of themselves not shaving. The stigma of female body hair no doubt stems from societal pressure, but perhaps there’s a scientific explanation as well.
Charles Vest, the legendary former president of MIT, has died. Back in 2007 he told Big Think that his fascination with all things physical grew out of taking discarded things apart and building something new with them.
Tim Harford presents two surprising examples when explaining how recessions work. A contributor to the Financial Times and author of five books, including his latest, The Undercover Economist Strikes Back, […]
At a time when we’re stilling debating creationism vs. evolution, it’s critical for science to be brought into people’s homes through a world-class TV show. Carl Sagan’s hit series “Cosmos” […]
Big Think is posting a series of three videos in which I discuss how to use thought leadership strategically. Surely the tactics of content marketing should connect to those strategic […]