Big Think

By bigthink

Big Think is the leading source of expert-driven, actionable, educational content -- with thousands of videos, featuring experts ranging from Bill Clinton to Bill Nye, we help you get smarter, faster.... more

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FAQs about Big Think:

How many episodes does Big Think have?

The podcast currently has 294 episodes available.

Big Think episodes:

September 03, 2025 America’s mass spiral of self-censorship | The Dilemma Ep. 1
Americans no longer feel safe to speak their minds. The levels of self-silencing in the country rival that of Mccarthyism in the late 1940s – or higher, says research scientist Todd Rose. Our social trust is non-existent, so much so that many are opting out of sharing their opinions altogether, making way for those at the extremes to be the dominant voices.
But just because the most vocal want something, doesn’t mean that the rest of the country shares this ideology. In fact, our brains mistake this extremist noise for consensus, reinforcing the lie that this is what we must believe.
Here’s why this social silence must be changed. Why it's healthy to invite in other points of view – even if they differ from yours.
This is The Dilemma with Irshad Manji, a series from Big Think created in partnership with Moral Courage College.
About Irshad Manji:
Irshad Manji is an award-winning educator, author, and advocate for moral courage and diversity of thought. As the founder of Moral Courage College, she equips people to engage in honest conversations across lines of difference.
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22min
September 03, 2025 Would we even recognize alien life? NASA astrobiologist explains
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5min
September 02, 2025 Why we explore, even when there’s no payoff
Astrobiologist Betül Kaçar believes science doesn’t always need a clear purpose; asking questions just to know is reason enough.
Historically, scientific breakthroughs have come as a result of random, niche interests: questions asked just for the sake of satiating curiosity. For Kaçar, science is a patient act, and the simple desire to understand is one of the most beautiful parts of being human.
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About Betül Kaçar:
Dr. Betül Kaçar is a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and NASA-funded research leader exploring life’s early evolution. Her team has developed methods to uncover ancient biological innovations. She earned her Ph.D. In Chemistry from Emory and trained at Harvard in Evolutionary Biology.
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About The Well
Do we inhabit a multiverse? Do we have free will? What is love? Is evolution directional? There are no simple answers to life’s biggest questions, and that’s why they’re the questions occupying the world’s brightest minds.
Together, let's learn from them.
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5min
September 02, 2025 The ultimate guide to rationality, with Harvard’s Steven Pinker
Harvard professor Steven Pinker explains how to develop a rational mind in 80 minutes.
Steven Pinker, a renowned Canadian cognitive psychologist and author, speaks to Big Think in this wide-ranging conversation on topics such as human progress, the tragedy of the commons, Bayesian reasoning, and strategies to curb our most destructive instincts, with the ultimate goal of improving the world for everyone.
Central to Pinker's argument is the promotion of rationality. His 2023 book, Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters, delves into the enigmatic nature of human progress, examining how we have achieved so many impressive scientific breakthroughs while concurrently succumbing to widespread irrationality, like fake news and conspiracy theories. Pinker maintains that humans are not innately irrational; instead, our thought processes are better adapted to low-tech environments.
So, how can we cultivate greater rationality in today's complex world? Pinker believes that one key lies in improving education. By teaching children critical thinking skills, we can better equip them to identify biases, emotional reasoning, and cognitive distortions. A more effective educational approach might emphasize probability theory, the elements of persuasive rhetoric, and developing empathy by understanding the perspectives of those with differing viewpoints. By fostering these skills, we can nurture a more rational and informed society capable of addressing the challenges of our modern era.
0:00 Meet Steven Pinker
0:25 Why does rationality matter?
3:44 How can we measure human progress?
10:17 Is your view of progress optimistic?
12:12 Are we a rational or an irrational species?
18:29 What are the current threats to rationality and progress?
23:41 Why do new technologies tend to increase irrational thinking?
26:05 How do institutions both enable and hinder progress?
29:57 How does cancel culture stifle rationality?
32:14 What are "tragedies of the commons" and how can they impede progress?
35:58 Do "tragedies of the commons" contribute to political polarization?
37:23 How can narrative thinking skew our perception of the world?
39:51 What are cognitive illusions and do they explain irrationality?
44:49 What is Bayesian reasoning?
50:34 What’s a situation where people tend to neglect Bayesian reasoning?
55:53 Why is Bayesian reasoning indispensable for scientists and AI researchers?
56:42 How useful is Bayesian logic for everyday reasoning?
59:25 Why is it so hard to get people to use Bayesian reasoning?
1:00:29 When can a focus on Bayesian reasoning become problematic?
1:04:20 Why do some journalists and scientists forego Bayesian reasoning?
1:08:22 Is the media responsible for our inability to employ Bayesian reasoning?
1:10:08 Can you simplify Bayes’ theorem for us?
1:10:59 Can we become more rational?
1:17:03 Do we have what it takes to be collectively more rational?
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About Steven Pinker:
Steven Pinker is an experimental psychologist who conducts research in visual cognition, psycholinguistics, and social relations. He grew up in Montreal and earned his BA from McGill and his PhD from Harvard. Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he has also taught at Stanford and MIT. He has won numerous prizes for his research, his teaching, and his nine books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, The Sense of Style, and Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress.
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1h 27min
September 02, 2025 Be a creativity pioneer. Change the world | Adama Sanneh
**Can creativity be the key to revolution?** In a world dominated by rigid structures and outdated frameworks, a new movement is rising—one that sees art, culture, and imagination as the driving forces of social change. From recording studios in African prisons to theater schools in vulnerable slums, these Creativity Pioneers are proving that innovation isn’t just about technology—it’s about redefining what’s possible. But can creative solutions truly reshape policies, challenge power, and rebuild democracy? **The spark is there. Will it be enough to ignite a global transformation?**
Creativity is a powerful force for social change. Learn how Creativity Pioneers are shaping our future by applying creative solutions to tackle the world’s most pressing global issues.
Can creativity really change the world? Creativity Pioneers argue that it can. By using art, culture, and imagination, these innovators are tackling some of the most pressing social issues of our time.From building recording studios in African prisons to using graphic novels to address homophobia, corruption, and environmental destruction, these visionaries are showing that creativity is more than just a luxury—it’s a powerful tool for global transformation.This message is clear: creativity is not just about producing art; it’s about fostering environments where innovative ideas flourish. It’s about combining the intellectual with the emotional, the practical with the poetic, and the local with the global.
About Adama Sanneh:Adama is the Co-Founder and CEO of the Moleskine Foundation. Adama brings a unique hybrid background in management and cultural studies to his work designing and building innovative organisations able to generate social impact.Adama graduated in Linguistic and Cultural Mediation from the University of Milan, obtained a Master in Public Management (MPM) from the Bocconi School of Management and a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Geneva. After graduating, he worked as a management and strategy consultant for various public and not-for-profit organizations among which the United Nations, in education, social entrepreneurship, and innovation.As the CEO of the Moleskine Foundation, he is committed to explore and leverage the intersection of business, education, culture, and social development to create new and meaningful public value.
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9min
September 02, 2025 What if the truth offends? Publish it anyway | Peter Singer
In an era of cancel culture, outrage cycles, and the censorship of dissent, philosopher and co-founder of The Journal of Controversial Ideas Peter Singer makes his case for freedom of thought and expression.
Singer argues that silencing uncomfortable ideas doesn't make us safer — it makes us less able to grow, reason, and solve the pressing issues of our time.
Chapters:
00:00 Freedom of thought and expression
00:44 Why is freedom of thought essential?
02:21 The cost of preventing objections
03:10 The Journal of Controversial Ideas
07:31 Our political climate and controversy
09:38 An argument for hiding controversial ideas
11:50 The importance of an open debate
14:18 Choice in end of life
18:54 Same-sex relationships
About Peter Singer:
Peter Singer has been described as the world’s most influential philosopher. Born in Melbourne in 1946, he has been professor of bioethics at Princeton University since 1999. His many books include Animal Liberation - often credited with triggering the modern animal rights movement - Practical Ethics, The Life You Can Save, The Most Good You Can Do, and Ethics in the Real World. In 2023, he published Animal Liberation Now, a fully revised and updated version of the 1975 original.
Singer’s writings have also inspired the movement known as effective altruism, and he is the founder of the charity The Life You Can Save. In 2021 he was awarded the $1 million Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture, which he donated to nonprofit organizations working for the causes he supports. In 2023 he received the Frontiers of Knowledge Prize for the Humanities, from the Spanish BBVA Foundation.
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27min
September 02, 2025 Einstein's equations and the enigma of wormholes | Janna Levin
Quantum wormholes are mathematically possible — but might also be physically impossible. Physicist Janna Levin explains the wormhole paradox.
Theoretical cosmologist Janna Levin challenges long-held assumptions about the behavior of black holes, information conservation, and the fundamental nature of space, time, and gravity. She uses black holes to explore the physical feasibility of wormholes: theoretical passages or tunnel-like structures that connect separate points in spacetime.
Stephen Hawking proposed that black holes emit energy via quantum particles, causing them to eventually evaporate and challenge the conservation of information. The holographic principle suggests that information is encoded on a black hole's surface, addressing the information paradox.
Levin metaphorically likens black holes to embroidery, woven from quantum threads. Her quantum perspective has profound implications, potentially altering our understanding of gravity and spacetime's fundamental nature — even questioning our pursuit of a theory of everything.

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16min
September 02, 2025 The American Dream is falling apart | Derek Thompson: Full Interview
"The disease is the fact that liberalism, which used to be an ideology of building, has become an ideology of blocking."

00:00:00 Affordability vs upward mobility
00:00:59 From collapse to abundance
00:01:45 Supply-side progressivism
00:02:49 An agenda of abundance
00:03:18 A look at liberalism
00:04:15 The failure of liberal housing policy
00:05:54 The unraveling of The American Dream
00:07:14 City housing supply
00:11:16 The freedom of housing abundance
00:14:08 Homelessness is a housing problem
00:16:40 The tragedy of good intentions
00:18:31 A new set of problems
00:20:27 Corporate power
00:22:51 The untapped potential of government efficiency
00:23:53 The Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill
00:27:02 Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)
00:30:06 Should government be more or less effective?
00:33:47 A new political order
00:36:39 Neoliberalism and deregulation
00:38:20 A fast, effective government
00:38:44 Innovation requires implementation
00:39:35 A story of technology
00:41:29 How do we accelerate science?
00:44:03 Ransacking American science
00:46:27 A culture of experimentation
00:47:30 The implementation of Penicillin
00:51:36 Operation Warp Speed
00:57:11 The anti-social generation
01:01:04 300 hours of leisure time
01:01:48 The privatization of attention
01:06:53 Optimizing ourselves out of relationships
01:07:55 The social costs of the anti-social century
01:09:13 Amistics
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About Derek Thompson:
Derek Thompson is a staff writer at The Atlantic and host of the podcast Plain English. He is the author of Hit Makers and the co-author of Abundance alongside Ezra Klein, which explores the case for renewing the politics of plenty in the modern world.
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1h 25min
September 01, 2025 Sam Harris: Experience emotions without being consumed by them
“You can be aware of sadness from a point of view that is not merely sad, and you can be aware of fear from a point of view that's not merely afraid.”
Can consciousness serve as a refuge from suffering? By examining the raw textures of difficult emotions like anger and sadness, Sam Harris explains how we can experience them without suffering, and how digging into awareness reveals a layer of openness below the mental state.
Harris explains how meditation and direct attention can alleviate pain and liberate us from a prison of our emotions.
0:00 The condition of awareness
0:48 Reframing our mental state
2:22 The condition of consciousness
4:55 How does consciousness arise?
7:09 Meditation and consciousness
7:36 Thought vs physiology
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About Sam Harris:
Sam Harris is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation. The End of Faith won the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction.
Mr. Harris' writing has been published in over ten languages. He and his work have been discussed in Newsweek, TIME, The New York Times, Scientific American, Rolling Stone, and many other journals. His writing has appeared in Newsweek, The Los Angeles Times, The Times (London), The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, Nature, The Annals of Neurology, and elsewhere.
Mr. Harris is a graduate in philosophy from Stanford University and holds a PhD in neuroscience from UCLA, where he studied the neural basis of belief with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). He is also a Co-Founder and CEO of Project Reason.

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13min
September 01, 2025 Learn these 3 triggers to navigate conflict like an expert | Jefferson Fisher for Big Think+
“What did you win? You won awkward silence. You won their contempt. You won the first to apologize. When you win an argument, you will lose their confidence, you will lose their respect, you will lose the connection.”
What if every argument you’ve ever “won” actually cost you something way more valuable? Whether that be respect, connection, or trust, lawyer and author Jefferson Fisher argues that when you try to control the conversation, you end up losing something far more important.
Instead of fighting to be right, Fisher invites us to unravel the tension of disagreement and examine the real triggers that lie beneath.
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About Jefferson Fisher:
Jefferson Fisher is a Texas board certified personal injury attorney, business owner, and communication expert. In 2022, he began making videos of practical communication tips to help people argue less and talk more. He is the host of The Jefferson Fisher Podcast.

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10min

FAQs about Big Think:

How many episodes does Big Think have?

The podcast currently has 294 episodes available.

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