Inspiration & Wisdom
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Article written by guest writer Rin Mitchell What’s the Latest Development? Mental and vocal monologues are essential in learning and performing better in life. Researchers have identified that talking to yourself is insanely great for the brain. The better you are at self-talk the better off ... Read More
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Article written by guest writer Rin Mitchell What’s the Latest Development? Researchers from the University of Edinburgh have found that people with a well-integrated wiring of myelinated nerve fibers (white matter) in the brain will be sharper well into old age—when mental decline could ... Read More
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Big Think's own founder and president Peter Hopkins gave Rahim Kanani at Forbes some face time in preparation for the 2012 Social Innovation Summit taking place next week at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City. The two gabbed about everything from Big Think's achievements to ... Read More
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What's the Latest Development? A little-known book on the virtues of laziness, written in 2006 by a medical doctor named Ray Bennett, is receiving some renewed attention for its serious discussion of purposeful mediocrity. In The Underachiever's Manifesto, Bennett demonstrates the power and ... Read More
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In 1712, nobody would have looked at you funny if your business card read: "Surgeon, Apothecary, Investigator of the Unknown. Also, Shoemaker." There are many reasons why, in 2012, that's no longer the case. Among them, the increasing specialization driven by the rise of the great universities ... Read More
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What's the Latest Development? As the world's first privately-built space capsule hurtles toward the International Space Station, Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX is responsible for the feat, is the talk of the nation. After its successful launch, the Dragon capsule is scheduled to dock with the ... Read More
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A pioneer of neurotheology, Dr. Andrew Newberg uses fMRI and other neuroscientific tools to study religious experiences in the brain. He has the rare distinction of having studied Franciscan nuns and Tibetan monks in his lab. In this interview, originally broadcast live on Big Think on May 3, 2012 ... Read More
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This interview was originally broadcast live on bigthink.com on May 3, 2012. Newberg is a pioneer in the neuroscientific study of religious and spiritual experiences, or neurotheology. Here he discusses his research on what happens in the brain during religious ecstasy and answers a few questions from viewers. Read More
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Slavoj Zizek answers the question, "Do you think science has replaced philosophy in discovering the bigger questions of life?" Philosophy is not dying, he says -- in fact, we need it more now than ever. Read More
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What's the Latest Development? After Derek Amato sustained brain damage by hitting his head on the bottom of a swimming pool, he began playing classical piano compositions without a single lesson. He is one of just 30 people worldwide with acquired savant syndrome. In 2003, scientists began to ... Read More
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What is the Big Idea? While Congress dukes it out over the federal interest rates on student loans, venture capitalist Peter Thiel has a solution for college students who don't want to be saddled with huge amounts of debts in an unstable economy. The solution, he says, is to drop out of college ... Read More
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It is gratifying when people see you just as you want to be seen. But don’t count on it. If you like to think of yourself as a gentle person of few words others may nevertheless find you boring and pathetic. You may like to think of yourself as curious and passionate about ideas, while others ... Read More
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Class of 2012, you’ve heard it before: you will graduate into a world transformed by the global financial crisis. Unemployment among young people is at its highest rate since WWII, and the average 22-year-old now enters adulthood with $23,000 in debt. The total amount owed by students in the U.S ... Read More
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Internet pioneer Jaron Lanier argues that free technologies like Facebook come with a hidden and heavy cost – the livelihoods of their consumers. Read More
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What's the Latest Development? While the Kepler space telescope continues to find planets outside our solar system, the debate over extraterrestrial life, so to speak, rages on. Paul Davies, physicist and cosmologist at Arizona State University, argues that even given recent discoveries, the ... Read More
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What’s the big idea? There is no shortage of online tools to help us research restaurants, track up-to-the-minute news and even plan out our zombie escape routes, yet there are very few tools that can help us research, track and plan our own happiness. One of the few that does exist is Happstr, an ... Read More
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What's the Latest Development? The technical specifications for a real Star Ship Enterprise, the space ship known from the TV show Star Trek, have been released by an engineer whose Web moniker is BTE Dan. While the show predicted the first Enterprise would be built by 2245, Dan believes it can ... Read More
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What's the Latest Development? A nude protest held at a major tourist site in Paris is the latest statement made by the outspoken Ukrainian feminist group Femen. One of the group's leaders, Oksana Shachko, had to break travel restrictions placed on her by a Ukrainian court to attend. The court ... Read More
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Jason Silva is an optimist. With a capital O. His optimism hits you full force the moment you meet him – the broad, beaming grin, the reassuring handshake . . . no, before that, in the form of multiple enthusiastic exclamation points in his every email. More specifically, he’s optimistic about the ... Read More
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