Millions of people know James Lipton as the host of the popular Bravo series “Inside the Actors Studio.” Millions have also enjoyed his recurring guest role on the late, great […]
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Hello, Big Think. Welcome to Focal Point, a blog about politics, ideas, photography, media, feminism, and more. I’m a freelance journalist in Brooklyn, New York. I do both print and […]
Days after Haiti’s catastrophic earthquake this January, “fan pages” purporting to aid fundraising for emergency relief popped up all over Facebook. The pages said they would donate $1 for each […]
Testing patients’ genetic makeup could be used in a pioneering new cancer treatment which seeks to provide bespoke drug regimes based on genetic propensity.
What are seen as “green fuels,” made from the growth of sustainable plants, actually cause more harm than fossil fuels, according to a new report.
The US and UK can handle decades of debt, according to a Financial Times commentator who says that seeing debt as a serious problem is an “alarmist view.”
The world’s biggest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider, was restarted today by operators in preparation for experiments probing the secrets of the universe.
The head of a “colossal” granite statue of Amenhotep III, the grandfather of Tutankhamun, dating back 3,000 years, has been discovered in Luxor, Egypt.
Panchen Lama, the man “picked” by China as the second-highest figure in Tibetan Buddhism, has been appointed to the country’s top government advisory body.
The United States achieved a record 37 medals at the Vancouver Olympics despite losing to Canada in yesterday’s gold-chasing ice hockey game.
Former Bosnian leader Radovan Karadzic has said that the Serb cause in the Bosnian war was “just and holy” in his defense at the genocide trial at The Hague.
Google and Microsoft are at loggerheads over a routine lawsuit Google Inc. filed against a small internet site in Ohio, for which Microsoft has provided high-grade legal counsel.
Chile is appealing for international help as it copes with the double disasters of a fierce earthquake quickly followed by a devastating tsunami.
The weather outside may be frightful, but the planet is still warming, scientists are saying. Hard to believe when school systems across the nation are running out of snow days […]
Recarving Our Cultural Totem Pole is a book-in-progress. While researching a series a couple of years ago, I came across the customs and rituals surrounding the design, care and feeding […]
Like the first life forms on Earth, the career of John Singer Sargent rose up from the sea. Between 1874 and 1879, when Sargent first emerged from his teens and […]
I am one of the millions of Americans who have had trouble getting health care. After I left grad school I tried to get coverage with Anthem Blue Cross. A […]
Before there were abstract concepts, and probably before there were numbers, there were stories. She did this; it made him do that; then I heard her say this. According to […]
This week Big Think is pleased to welcome the newest member of our blogging team: acclaimed investigative journalist and photographer Lindsay Beyerstein. Lindsay’s BT blog, Focal Point, will be a […]
Randy Kennedy’s “The Free-Appropriation Writer,” in today’s New York Times Week in Review, considers the ever-sensitive spectrum of borrowing (said another way, flattery; said another way, plagiarism) that has historically […]
Bad news for sporadic dust-busters: our dust bunnies may be killing us softly. It’s not what they say about our abysmal standards for household cleanliness, it’s what they’re doing to […]
A former British prime Minister, James Callaghan once warned that sudden crises have the knack of coming out of the blue, from places and incidents that are often small and […]
On Tuesday, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said that the financial crisis that triggered our current recession was “by far the greatest financial crisis, globally, ever.” That’s right, even […]
It’s an organic cultural progression that has mostly gone overlooked. Whether it’s the respectful bow in Asia, the formal cheek kiss in Europe or the casual fist bump in North […]
Though the earthquake in Chile was 500 times stronger than Haiti’s, many fewer deaths are expected, but how can this be the case?
Looking for the upside of depression, The New York Times Magazine approaches the “disease” from the point of view of evolutionary biology.
Consumer activist Ralph Nader says that lax federal regulation of an ever-more complex auto industry is partly to blame for Toyota’s present crisis.
Warren Buffet says that it’s high time CEOs of financial institutions assume their own salary is at stake when they make investment decisions for their companies.
Weighing their impact on climate change, scientists say that whale populations in the ocean should be preserved as a carbon sink just like forests on dry land.
American Banks rejected the advice of their British counterparts to reduce high-level bonus payouts at secret talks held between the parties in London last year.