Topics
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Arts & Culture
Every morning I wake up with resentment about the fact that I have to shave my damn face. The ideas that grew gnarled and twisted in my mind by the end of the previous day have loosened over night. My mind is fresh and agile and I’m already working on new material silently in the shower. I’m ready ... Read More
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Belief
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Business & Economics
The political philosopher and Harvard professor on the limits of the free market. Read More
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Environment
There are few in this world who can say they've never sat, solemnly, in some sort of traffic. This New York Times article reported that the average American commuter spends a whopping 38 hours per year in it. Money, in addition to good spirits, is lost as time is spent idle in the car or bus ... Read More
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Future
Twentieth-century liberalism lives on in forms of the social contract that are outmoded for the twenty-first century’s globalized, technological world. Liberalism today is entirely reactive, fending off attempts by conservatism to erode the social contract as it has been known to operate in the ... Read More
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Health & Medicine
What's the Big Idea? A Florida teenager will have a bad headache for a while after being shot through the head with a three-foot fishing spear, but doctors expect a full recovery. Remarkably, doctors say that after two to three months of rehabilitation the patient will retain the full speech ... Read More
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History
The future is mysterious, but not entirely. It is tangible in the promises that a person makes and in the unspoken responsibility one has to others. However much a person may enjoy whimsical fantasies about the future or disinterested predictions, the future will inevitably weigh most heavily on ... Read More
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Identity
Alan Turing was an English computer scientist, linguist, philosopher and code breaker widely credited as being the "father of artificial intelligence (AI)" and inventing the computer. 100 years after the birth of Alan Turing, we take stock of his most interesting idea, The Turing Test. Alan ... Read More
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Inspiration & Wisdom
Today's "visiting professor" Walter Mosley teaches us that failure is an important part of success. Failure demonstrates our willingness to take risks. But what else does failure tell us? What do you think are the main causes of failure? Tell us what you think by taking this poll. And then ... Read More
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Life & Death
What's the Big Idea? There are not only wrong answers -- there are also wrong questions, says Slavoj Žižek, philosopher and author of Big Think's most recent Book of the Month. And sometimes the way we ask a question obscures the answer. Watch the interview: For example, "Did you ... Read More
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Love, Sex, and Happiness
Human beings have the capacity to stop time. It is, in fact, a commonly used capacity. We use our ability to stop time as a bulwark against the threat of disruptive newness that encroaches with the future. It also allows us to keep what we remember from turning into the mere past. So how do we ... Read More
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Media & Internet
“Be yourself” can seem like risky advice in a competitive job market. But you know what’s riskier? Being nobody. Apple Ad Man Ken Segall explains how he followed his passion to a storied career in advertising. Read More
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Politics & Policy
The stereotype of Sweden as a liberal utopia of robust sexual health was somewhat complicated recently in the American imagination by the biker gangs, neo-Nazis, and serial killers that populated the Stieg Larsson trilogy. Further complicating things is Sweden's bold experiment on Twitter. Each ... Read More
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Science & Tech
What is the Big Idea? The energy crisis is one of the greatest economic and social problems of our time. How can greenhouse gas emissions be reduced at a time when developing nations are increasing consumption? How can development of alternative fuels be encouraged to ease dependence on oil and ... Read More
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Truth & Justice
What's the Big Idea? 2012 has been officially declared the year of cooperatives by the United Nations. The cooperative model is an alternative way of doing business that aims to share the wealth equitably among members rather than shareholders, and it's gaining traction thanks to the exemplary ... Read More
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World
What's the Big Idea? While over 70 percent of women in the United States work outside of the home, compared with 36 percent in Brazil, and while US women marry, on average, a decade older than women in Latin America, the United States has never had a female president. Latin American countries ... Read More