Recent research may revolutionize the story of how life began. Ethan Siegel explains how our view of life's beginnings is changing and what it might mean for how life may begin elsewhere. Read the full article: bigthink.com/starts-with-...

Eric Markowitz shares how a small shop in Kyoto connects mastery with meditation. Read the full article: bigthink.com/the-long-gam...

Will athletes keep breaking records forever? Alex Hutchinson argues that human athletic progress may be uniquely infinite. Read the full article: bigthink.com/science-tech...

Print isn't dead. Our second print issue includes stories from a rock climbing legend, a neuroscientist's perspective on when resilience backfires, and what we can learn from daffodil's about outliving the winter. Get it quarterly, delivered to your door: buff.ly/b6JU9Kh

What can we do to quiet our brains? Neuroscientists Anne-Laure Le Cunff shares 5 strategies to make reading a restorative antidote to our fragmented attention landscape. Read the full article: bigthink.com/mind-behavio...

What could life on other planets look like? Thomas Moynihan explores speculative evolution and what it might tell us about life on other planets. Read the full article: bigthink.com/history-soci...

How do you build a top performer? Neuroscientist Rachel Barr interviews David Epstein, the author of the bestselling book Range, to understand what we get wrong about top performers. Read the full article: bigthink.com/smart-skills... 🎨 Elena Scotti

Kristin Houser shares 5 books that predicted the future of biology. Read the full article: bigthink.com/books/sci-fi... 🎨 Sarah Soryal

How social are our identities? Jonny Thomson speaks and philosopher Kwame Anthony Appian explore the tyrannous grip of expreme identity politics. Read the full article: bigthink.com/mini-philoso...

What do the beginnings of complex life look like? Astrophysicist Ethan Siegel @startswithabang.bsky.social shares the story of the earliest organised organisms. Read the full article: bigthink.com/life/earths-...

How do you separate good science from nonsense? Here are 3 lessons from Ethan Siegel's latest article. To read all 9 of Carl Sagan's timeless lessons for detecting baloney, read the full article: bigthink.com/starts-with-...

Will automated vehicles become a public good? Bern Grush, John Niles, and Andrew Miller argue that robotaxis offer a path toward smarter and fairer urban mobility. Read the full article: bigthink.com/books/robota...

Our 2nd monthly issue, "Biology's New Era," is live now on www.bigthink.com. In this issue, we explore the bleeding edge of biotech, as well as the scientists, writers, and philosophers whose efforts helped get us here.

Frank Jacobs shares the story of London's taxi drivers and the important brain area that grows in size as they memorize over 25,000 streets. Read the full article: bigthink.com/strange-maps...

Are we losing deep reading in the digital age? Ross Pomeroy explores how kids reading habits have changed in recent decades. Read the full article: bigthink.com/the-present/...

What happened to the weavers? Journalist Andrew Singer examines the industrial revolution and what it can tell us about the effects of AI on today's workforce. Read the full article: bigthink.com/business/wha...

Hollywood actor Ethan Suplee shares lessons from his real-world fight with addiction and self-hatred. Read the full article: bigthink.com/thinking/eth...

Why do most people give up before they get good? #Neuropsych Neuroscientist Anne-Laure Le Cunff @neuranne shares 5 cultural myths that make us quit and how to avoid them. Read the full article: bigthinkmedia.substack.com/p/the-5-myth...

Will conscious-seeming AI make us more vulnerable to manipulation? Neuroscientist Anil Seth argues that watching AIs converse in Reddit-like forums intensifies our natural bias to see minds and intentions where none exist. Read the full article: bigthink.com/mind-behavio...

Our January 2026 issue is live! In "The Pursuit of Mastery", we explore what mastery is, how it’s cultivated, and why some people are willing to trade it all for a chance to be the best.

There is a medical myth that still shapes our view of women's health today. #Science #Books Medical anthropoligist Emily Mendenhall explores the history of hysteria. Read the full article: bigthink.com/books/invisi...

Thanks to new tech, neuroscience is going places it couldn't before. #Neuropsych #Science Jasna Hodžić outlines how neuroethology could reshape what we think we know about our minds. Read the full article: bigthink.com/neuropsych/n...

Can slime and dumb rocks help us better define "smart"? #Technology Eric Markowitz argues that as we search for more powerful AI, maybe we should slow down and reimagine the shape of intelligence itself. Read the full article: bigthink.com/the-long-gam...

Is AI pretending to be intelligent, or is it really? @blaiseaguera.bsky.social #Technology #Books Researcher and CTO at Google, Blaise Agüera y Arcas, argues that AI's intelligence lies in its ability to make predictions. Read the full article: bigthink.com/books/blaise...

5 of our favorite books from 2025: #Books

How is neuroscience changing our view of free will, meaning, and the self? Rachel Barr explores 3 philosophical debates from the 20th century that are being reshaped by modern neuroscience. Read the full article: bigthink.com/thinking/3-p... #Neuropsych

Is social media psychology becoming a problem? Joe Nucci, psychotherapist and author of Psychobabble, argues that the online misuse of psychological terms is leading us to pathalogize our everyday lives. Read the full article: bigthink.com/books/psycho... #Neuropsych #Books

Why do we tend to repeat things like using the same mug for our morning coffee? Anne-Laure Le Cunff explains the neuroscience of everyday rituals. Read the full article: bigthink.com/smart-skills...

Do we really hate hypocrites? In this excerpt from “The Hypocrisy Trap,” Michael Hallsworth explains why accusations of hypocrisy don’t always damage credibility. Read the full article: bigthink.com/books/the-ty...

What is true that many don't accept? Ethan Siegel @startswithabang.bsky.social names 5 scientific truths that became unpopular in 2025, but remain vitally important. 🧵

Is AI going to save us from our 9-5 or kill us all? In her interview with Tim Brinkhof, the Empire of AI author Karen Hao says there are two sides to the AI debate, and both are perpetuating the idea that AI is “inevitable, all-powerful, and deserves to be controlled by a tiny group of people.”

The illusion of consensus is powerful. Here’s why Laura Kennedy, author of Peak Notions, believes you should fight it. Read the full article: bigthink.com/thinking/the...

Is some pleasure bad? Jonny Thomson and Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek discuss separating pleasure from its source. Read the full article: bigthink.com/mini-philoso...

Our lives are filled with necessity. But what do we do with the remaining hours? Jonny Thomson interviews wildlife photographer Georgia Barker about the importance of passions and how to cultivate them. Read the full article: bigthink.com/mini-philoso...

Why has the public latched onto the narrative that AI is stalling? Louis Rosenberg argues that conversations about an "AI bubble" miss the big picture. Read the full article: bigthink.com/the-present/...

Is mind reading going from sci-fi to reality? Jonny Thomson interviews the neuroscientist and bestselling author Anil Seth about the science of mind reading. Full article: bigthink.com/mini-philoso...

Is it true that ambition and inner life must run on separate tracks? Read the full article: bigthink.com/the-long-gam...

Can “flying boats” offer a faster and more scalable path to improved urban mobility? Read the full article: bigthink.com/the-future/f...

"Every now and then, if you’re lucky, you’ll encounter a book that changes your life." Here are five books that have helped millions of people find perspective and live better: (1/7)

"Rose-tinted nostalgia for the preindustrial era has gone viral, strengthened by anxieties about our own digital era." — Chelsea Follett Read the full article: bigthink.com/the-past/deb...

Why we need to relearn how to fail | Jonny Thomson and Ryan Holiday Read the full article: bigthink.com/mini-philoso...

Disconnection is systemic — but volunteering may be the most scalable, evidence-based way to close the connection gap. Aaron Hurst — founder and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Connection — offers a bold new vision for community service. 🧵 (1/7)

"Science is being rebuilt from the ground up." Smrithi Sunil explores the movement that's rewriting how we do science. Read the full article: bigthink.com/the-future/p...

Why do useful terms often become empty buzzwords? Laura Kennedy explores how "conceptual stretching" can turn a rude coworker into a narcissist. Read the full article: bigthink.com/thinking/fro...

At Progress Conference 2025, Tyler Cowen asked OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, “If you could have more of one thing to have more compute, what would the one thing be?” Altman responded with a single word: “Electrons.” Full article: bigthink.com/the-future/p...

Common law has long balanced innovation and accountability. Can it do the same for AI? In this op-ed, Dean Ball examines how common law — the precedent-based system of judge-made rules — has historically balanced innovation and accountability.

Is a new progressive era on the horizon? In this op-ed, Peter Leyden explores how today’s mix of transformative technologies, extreme inequality, and rising populism closely mirrors the conditions that preceded America’s Progressive Era.

Want to be a better learner? Start by noticing how you think. Anne-Laure Le Cunff explains how metacognition — the ability to think about your thinking — can help you learn faster and make better decisions. Full article: bigthink.com/thinking/lea...

Do we get more progress from unlimited budgets… or tight constraints? Blake Scholl, CEO of Boom Supersonic, argues that government-led “glory projects” ultimately hurt the aerospace industry they were meant to advance. Full article: bigthink.com/the-future/c...

Does progress happen by negotiating for incremental change or demanding absolute results? Jonny Thomson explores the complementary roles of pragmatists and purists in the history of activism.