At what distance could a “twin Earth” detect our signals?

Just over 60 years ago, Frank Drake turned a radio telescope at two stars and “listened” for signals of an alien civilization. That experiment marked the beginning of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence or SETI. The stars Drake chose were nearby, residing just about 10 l … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 20 hours ago

Ask Ethan: What are the worst cosmic misnomers?

Out there in the Universe, there are all sorts of fascinating objects, phenomena, and events that have been either predicted, theorized, or directly observed. Some of them are named rather intuitively, as we have no problem with names like star-forming region or stellar remnant. … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 1 day ago

Embrace your dark side: A new perspective on negative emotions

In the 4th century A.D., Evagrius Ponticus escaped into the desert to contemplate salvation. An ascetic and philosopher, Evagrius came to believe that only by revoking the needs of the flesh could the spirit be united with God. And no emotions shackled the spirit more powerfully … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 1 day ago

The hidden mathematics behind why you find things beautiful

“Some people will hate what I say,” the mathematician Marcus du Sautoy tells me, “because it’s all about unweaving the rainbow. Some people want to retain the magic and don’t want to know why something’s working. That’s fine. But actually, for me, you know, the rainbow becomes mu … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 1 day ago

When research is cheap, conviction becomes priceless

This week, I had something of an a-ha moment: as AI-driven technologies make vast amounts of distilled information instantly accessible, the cost of research is plummeting. But paradoxically, this makes deep understanding — and the conviction that comes from it — more valuable th … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 1 day ago

How glorifying ignorance leads to science illiteracy

All across the country, you can see how the seeds of it develop from a very young age. When children raise their hands in class because they know the answer, their classmates hurl the familiar insults of “nerd,” “geek,” “dork,” or “know-it-all” at them. The highest-achieving stud … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 days ago

Blind optimism is not a cure for blind pessimism

Chapter 5, Section 1: Solutionism On September 7, 1898, at a theater in Bristol, a distinguished English scientist gave a speech to an audience of thousands of men and women in formal dress.1 The scientist was Sir William Crookes—physicist, chemist, discoverer of the element thal … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 days ago

Game Change

A Big Think special collection of essays, interviews, and exclusive book excerpts that rewire the connections between sports and business. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 days ago

How the sting of failure in sports can guide us to success in business

Success in sports and business requires discipline, consistency, resilience, and a willingness to adapt. Both involve high stakes, significant rewards, and the constant specter of failure. Athletes and business professionals alike face challenges that push them to their limits, f … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 days ago

How the right kind of sports analytics can transform business thinking

Famed sports announcer Howard Cosell once remarked, “Sports is the toy department of human life.” This succinct observation highlights how sports, much like toys in childhood, can serve as a space for understanding the world. Cosell also observed, “Sport is human life in microcos … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 days ago

Leadership masterclass: Nike, Jordan, and James Baldwin

In the foreword to George Raveling’s 2025 book, What You’re Made For, Michael Jordan writes: “I’m proud to call George a mentor and a friend … We can all learn from him.” It’s a testimonial that speaks volumes to anyone interested in leadership, success, and — frankly — the game … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 days ago

Win like Tom Brady? Take 5 key steps towards your “discipline bridge”

I developed the idea of a Discipline Bridge through building my first training experience as part of what would grow into my present-day, multifaceted training company, Game Changer Performance Group. For years, I had been speaking to audiences around the world as a keynote speak … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 days ago

“Playing tennis on Mars”: Why lessons from sport can sideline victory in business

What could Kobe Bryant have taught you about being a better CEO? What can you learn from Bill Belichick about driving your team’s performance? With their shared focus on performance and winning, and because our brains are wired to think in analogies and metaphors, it’s quick and … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 days ago

How John Doerr used football to land OKRs

In the bygone business world, work was strictly driven from the top. Goals were handed down the org chart like tablets from Mount Sinai. Senior executives set top-line objectives for their department heads, who passed them to the next tier of management, and so on down the line. … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 days ago

Why defining “pressure” can help you de-stress like an elite athlete

At the end of a long and stressful week at work, you’ve finally completed your report. You gather up the crumpled pages of notes that have been your crutch for the last few days and screw them into a ball before leaning back in your chair and tossing them towards the waste bin on … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 days ago

The lasting genius of “Swedish pragmatics” in soccer and startups

On a stormy night in Munich’s Olympic Stadium in September 2001, the stage was set for an epic showdown. England, fighting for a place in the World Cup, faced its arch-rival: Germany. The air was electric, charged with the anticipation of a battle that seemed destined for heartbr … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 days ago

The psychology of “ultra-confidence” in business and sports

Someone has probably told you that confidence is key. Key to what exactly? Whatever you aim to accomplish, it seems. Want to play music in front of an audience? You need confidence in your skills. Want to be a better writer or public speaker? Different skill sets but confidence i … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 days ago

The “Olympic mindset”: Do elite athletes make elite employees?

You yawn. It’s your third yawn in as many minutes. Your eyes are dry, your wrist is tired, and you’ve been sitting for so long, your legs feel like dead weight. You’ve interviewed fifteen candidates for one job, and none of them is any good. Sigh. “Bring in the next one,” you mut … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 days ago

How one moment of shamelessness saved Andrew Zimmern’s life 

After decades of addiction, the TV personality and chef believed he was beyond saving – until he found the courage to ask for help As a young teenager, Andrew Zimmern came home from summer camp to learn that an accident during surgery left his mother permanently disabled. When he … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 days ago

Our first “Earth-like” exoplanets probably won’t have atmospheres

When it comes to finding life in the Universe, there’s still only one place that we know of that has it: right here on planet Earth. However, as science has recently shown us, both the raw ingredients needed for life as well as the conditions needed for life to flourish are very … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 3 days ago

The “5 Types of Wealth”: Why you’re wealthier than you think

Earlier this year, I spoke with the writer, investor, and influencer Sahil Bloom about his new book, The 5 Types of Wealth. This was back in the foggy post-holiday — that time of year when most people are staggering back to work, gingerly opening emails, and spending a good deal … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 3 days ago

How the Moon’s two Grand Canyons formed in mere minutes

Both astronomically and geologically, our Moon has long been one of the most fascinating objects to all of humanity. With giant mountains, rich arrays of craters, ancient lava basins and more, it tells a very different history than Earth: one without volcanoes, oceans, weather, a … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 3 days ago

Leaders: Your well-being fix should be your highest priority

Some leaders may dismiss the factors associated with developing a positive work culture as soft, but it is a new frontier (and important differentiator) in the competition for talent and is a key ingredient in business success. When companies fail to create an environment where p … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 3 days ago

New findings raise questions about when (and where) life began

In a seminal paper published last year in Nature Ecology and Evolution, Edward Moody and co-authors describe the deep-time genetic analysis that led them to push back the estimated age of the “Last Common Universal Ancestor” (LUCA) of all terrestrial life to sometime between 4.09 … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 4 days ago

Are you an “accidental manager”? Take these 4 crucial steps

There is a global humanity crisis affecting our workplaces. And the cause? Poor management. According to Gallup’s 2024 State of the Global Workplace report, those who work in companies with bad management practices are nearly 60% more likely to be stressed than those working in e … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 4 days ago

Meet N79: home to the Local Group’s newest super star cluster

All throughout cosmic history, star-formation has illuminated the darkness of deep space. Looking at the same region of space in three different wavelengths of light, a short-wavelength infrared view, a long-wavelength infrared view, and a narrowband view at a wavelength of 1.87 … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 5 days ago

What if we’re alone? The philosophical paradox of a lifeless cosmos

The idea that we might have cosmic neighbors has captivated the human imagination for decades. It’s not just sci-fi enthusiasts who ponder the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) — the general public seems to lean strongly toward the belief that we’re not alone. Co … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 7 days ago

The surprising data on AI and unemployment rates

When ChatGPT was first rolled out, there was a widespread fear that unemployment was going to rise very quickly. Well, it’s been several years since ChatGPT was released, and the unemployment rate in the United States has stayed the same, says Joseph Politano, economic analyst an … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 7 days ago

Ask Ethan: Why doesn’t dark matter collapse due to gravity?

Here in our Universe, it may be the normal matter that we can directly detect, measure, manipulate, experiment with, and observe, but it’s the dark matter that represents most of the mass in the Universe. Whereas all the “stuff” that the planets, stars, gas, plasma, and dust are … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 8 days ago

Counteroffer: What if Greenland bought the U.S.?

The Danes are in “crisis mode” after a “horrendous” call in mid-January between President Donald Trump and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in which Trump in no uncertain terms reiterated his desire to acquire Greenland. What are the Danes to do — ponder and vacillate like … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 8 days ago

The rising value of in-person connection

A recent trip to San Francisco — including time with several Nightcrawler readers — reinforced something I’ve been thinking a lot about: as AI floods the world with soulless content, private communities (built on authenticity) will only become more valuable. Here’s the paradox: A … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 8 days ago

A.C. Grayling: We don’t need to bring back religion, we need to bring back education

After any revolution, there is a recalibration. When you push the pendulum one way, you have to wait for it to swing heavily back. At the start of the millennium, the revolution was the New Atheism, and the pendulum was given a mighty secular-humanist push. These were the days of … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 8 days ago

Government-censored science ruined the USSR. Is the USA next?

In 2016, an Italian virologist named Roberto Burioni was invited to appear on television alongside two celebrities: Red Ronnie (a DJ) and actress Eleonora Brigliadori. Near the end of the program, the host turned to Burioni for the first time. His response, now legendary, was sim … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 9 days ago

The unsavory history of the wellness industry

When most people hear the name Kellogg, they think of breakfast cereal. Corn Flakes, Rice Krispies, maybe even Eggo Waffles and Pop-Tarts. Misogynistically removing the clitoris as a punishment, masked as a treatment for female sexual promiscuity and masturbation, is not top of m … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 9 days ago

How the 3 pillars of “unreasonable hospitality” can transform any business

When a patron called Eleven Madison Park, a Michelin 3-star restaurant in New York City, to share that his father enjoyed Budweiser with his meals, the staff went to work. They visited the neighborhood bodegas and bought every kind of Budweiser they could find. When the father ar … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 9 days ago

The CMB: the most important discovery in cosmic history

There have been a few momentous discoveries throughout the history of science that have literally revolutionized our understanding of the Universe. The relationship between electricity and magnetism, the deflection of starlight by the gravity of the Sun, the fact that matter and … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 10 days ago

5 ways AI can create stronger teams

Throughout time, technology has empowered humans to boost their productivity. The wheel, likely invented around 3500 BCE, began as a potter’s tool but soon revolutionized transportation. With rudimentary wheelbarrows, people could haul crops more efficiently, freeing time for oth … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 10 days ago

Nathan Thrall: How to immerse readers in your nonfiction writing

“During Q&A sessions, readers sometimes refer to it as a novel,” journalist and author Nathan Thrall tells Big Think, “and I have to clarify it’s entirely nonfictional.” Thrall is referring to his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusal … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 10 days ago

We can’t “de-bias” our brains but we can change our systems

Our biases have far-reaching consequences for others, and when constantly reinforced, they can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. By age six, research suggests, American children have absorbed the association of intellectual brilliance and genius with men more than women. Hear … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 10 days ago

JWST shocks the world with colliding neutron star discovery

Where do the heaviest elements in the Universe come from? If you were like most astrophysicists during the 20th century, you might’ve said from supernova explosions: stellar cataclysms that occur either within the cores of massive stars or from stellar corpses (white dwarfs) that … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 11 days ago

4 steps to design e-learning programs at scale

Worldwide, organizations are contending with ever-escalating expectations from multiple stakeholders: customers, employees, stockholders, and regulators, to name a few. For multinational enterprises, however, such expectations are exponentially more difficult to meet. Growth, ope … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 11 days ago

Is AI eroding our critical thinking abilities?

In a series of experiments described in Science Magazine in 2011, a trio of researchers found evidence to support a sneaking suspicion bubbling up in the minds of many Google aficionados: Frequent users of internet search engines didn’t retain information gleaned through online s … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 11 days ago

5 reasons “fractional leadership” is the antidote to leader burnout

In 2022 Deloitte reported that from a comprehensive study of 2,100 employees and C-level executives across USA, UK, Canada, and Australia, nearly 70 per cent of the C-suite were seriously thinking about leaving their current position in favor of one that better supported their we … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 11 days ago

The great stellar dimming of T Tauri has begun

The story of how our own Sun was born remains a cosmic mystery. This glimpse into the stars found in the densest region of the Orion Nebula, near the heart of the Trapezium Cluster, shows a modern glimpse inside a star-forming region of the Milky Way. However, star-formation prop … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 12 days ago

How a popular model of cosmic life and intelligence got it wrong

Intelligence on Earth did not appear until almost 4.5 billion years after the planet formed. On the other hand, the Sun is slowly heating up and that means there’s just a billion or so years left before life becomes impossible on Earth. Is there any conclusion that can be drawn f … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 14 days ago

Choose your temple: How mythology can help you spend the time you have left

A name is a cage. It binds you to a type and casts you in this role or as that person. It shrivels your complexity and jams it into an artificial vice. A name says to the world, “This person is this thing, and this is what I’ll call it.” But no person who has ever lived is ever j … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 14 days ago

Mini Philosophy

Mini Philosophy is a space to explore ideas. It’s where we pause the busyness of life to reflect on ourselves, our relationships, and the Universe. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 14 days ago

The truth about supplements, from a doctor

Supplements and vitamins constantly go viral with claims that they can transform your health just by integrating these pills into your daily routine. But before you add to cart, take a pause and make sure you’re buying exactly what you think you are. In the US, supplement compani … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 14 days ago