bigthinkeditor

Soccer’s peculiar resemblances to socialism is why America has yet to really succeed at the sport, says The Guardian’s American-in-Residence, Michael Tomansky.

While genes and lifestyle play their respective role in the aging process, deeper research further delineates between the two. Living past 100 may be in the genes, says Scientific American.

“Boys’ voices are breaking earlier; girls are developing breasts as young as six. But why?” Danish researchers began investigating when a church choir could not find enough pre-pubescent boys.

“Blood drawn with a simple needle stick can be coaxed into producing stem cells that may have the ability to form any type of tissue in the body.” This according to three new studies.

The idea that espionage always relies on cutting-edge technology is a myth, says The Christian Science Monitor, which divulges the five oldest, and still most effective, spy tricks.

The USDA is addressing the American health epidemic: “For the first time ever, our official dietary guidelines might address access to healthy food for poor people,” says Salon.

Martha Nussbaum says that when the President and politicians publicly admire the education systems of China and Singapore, they support learning systems at odds with an open society.

New research suggests that reciting maxims to one’s self, such as “Everyone makes mistakes,” can help the ego recover from guilt associated with acting against one’s principles.

Legal scholar Laurence Tribe told Big Think today that he found Elena Kagan’s performance in her Supreme Court confirmation hearings to be “masterful in every respect.” Kagan, who was previously the […]

Researchers have demonstrated that “the neural circuitry that controls the sleep/wake cycle in humans may also control the sleep patterns of 17 different mammalian species.

“It seems fair to conclude that the 81-year-old, Canadian-born [Frank] Gehry is the most important architect of our age,” writes Matt Tyrnauer.

“In all Nabokov’s work, the kindliness of memory recreates Eden, just as perversity razes it to the ground,” writes Lesley Chamberlain. “We can lose our capacity to interpret the world as good. We can see only darkness.”

Imaging technology has now been used to assemble the first comprehensive map of global soil moisture that covers all land areas of the world, except for frozen soils at high latitudes and in some mountain regions.

Theodore Dalrymple is not sure that snobbery is actually a vice. “Everyone needs someone to look down on, and the psychological need is the more urgent the more meritocratic a society becomes,” he writes.

A new survey finds that while people around the world firmly support equal rights for men and women, many believe men should still get preference in jobs and education.

“Agnosticism is not some kind of weak-tea atheism,” writes Ron Rosenbaum. “Agnosticism is … opposition to the unwarranted certainties that atheism and theism offer.”

A new concept aircraft from Lockheed Martin could pave the way for supersonic flights over land by shushing the sonic booms created by the planes.

“What would you get if you crossed a whale with a shark?” asks Sid Perkins. “Maybe something like Leviathan melvillei, a long-extinct, hypercarnivorous whale with teeth longer than any T. rex ever had.”

Edward Tenner wonders whether business models, like major engineering projects and government agencies, have their own failure timetables.

Having now closed out the first six months of the year, it seems like a good time to look back on Big Think’s 10 Most Popular Videos of the First […]

Science fiction writer Catherine Asaro is also a ballet dancer and a math teacher who believes thatphysics and dancing are much more closely related than you might think

Harvard Business School Professor Ranjay Gulati doesn’t buy it when businesses today say they are “customer-centric”—because any company will say that they are. “It’s a platitude,” says Gulati. “There’s confusion […]

Amit Chatterjee, the CEO and founder of Hara Technologies, consults with companies all across the country about how to go green. He stopped by Big Think recently to talk about […]

Cities’ ability to store heat means they are typically warmer than their surrounding areas. Given climate change, this could mean the end of cooler nights and more frequent heat waves.

Despite the Cold War mystique surrounding alleged Russian spies living within the U.S. under “deep cover”, Al Jazeera reports that spying is an eternal art, valuable to a nation no matter the epoch.

Garrison Keillor extrapolates the three stages of life from three generations casually standing on a street corner: Defenselessness, Cluelessness and finally Helplessness.

While surveillance that results in a speeding ticket may curb our wayward morals, Internet surveillance has no such benefit. Beware the illusion of your public persona, says The Economist.

Slate recalls Marshal McLuhan’s distinction between hot and cool media to say that ink on paper is perceived differently than type on screen. One, therefore, cannot completely replace the other.

The struggle to overcome Tourette’s syndrome or even severe stuttering increases cognitive control in the prefrontal cortex because individuals suppress purely reflexive behavior.