The Big Think Interview

The political philosophy under attack from both the left and the right | Jonathan Rauch

Jonathan Rauch, author and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, dives into the philosophy of liberalism, how it has created and transformed our institutions, and t

The minimum viable intervention for a happier life | Tal Ben-Shahar

Most of us can recite the benefits of exercise, gratitude, and patience while doing none of it. Tal Ben-Shahar calls this the Knowing-Doing gap, and our typical intervent

The lost art of rhetoric, from a 2x debate world champion | Bo Seo

Two-time debate champion Bo Seo breaks down why arguments fail: the 4 bad-faith personas that hijack conversations, a four-question framework for picking fights worth hav

The science, medicine, and mythology of menstruation and menopause | Jen Gunter

OBGYN Jen Gunter unpacks the science, history, and mythology of menstruation and menopause, and offers a guidebook to navigate the modern healthcare landscape.

The invisible forces that create talent and elite performance | Daniel Coyle

Talent isn’t a gift we're born with – it’s a signal we’ve been reading completely wrong. Author Daniel Coyle breaks down the common traits shared by successful people, an

The world's greatest mathematician explains 6 essential concepts of math | Terence Tao

Terence Tao has spent decades solving problems most people can't even state, and he says he's never had a single eureka moment. In this conversation, the UCLA mathematici

The #1 predictor of relationships that are doomed to fail | Julie & John Gottman

Every marriage’s disintegration is marked by the same four warning signs that researchers John and Julie Gottman can spot before a couple even finishes their first senten

Psychologist: The blueprint for developing a healthy relationship with your emotions | Lisa Damour

Stress has a branding problem. Clinical psychologist Dr. Lisa Damour argues that most of us have the wrong relationship with discomfort entirely, treating stress like a m

Young people say their lives feel fake. Here’s why | Arthur Brooks

Arthur Brooks studies happiness for a living, and he says the epidemic of depression and anxiety among young adults comes down to one culprit: a meaning crisis. Brooks w

Giulia Enders: The old-fashioned mindset that gets in the way of our healing

Physician Giulia Enders spent years studying the gut before realizing no organ works alone. Here, she walks through 5 body parts — the lung, the immune system, the skin,

A philosopher's guide to escaping your own echo chamber

Philosopher Jonny Thomson walks through Dietrich Bonhoeffer's 3 conditions for the kind of stupidity that destroys societies: outsourcing your thinking to an authority, w

Paul Bloom: The psychology of morality, perversion, and revenge

Psychologist Paul Bloom has spent his career studying the parts of human nature we often feel uncomfortable examining: why loneliness feels like starvation, why people ar

The myth of the cult of genius, in 48 minutes

A philosopher who walked away from an elite academic career to spend 3 years washing dishes in a monastery says that intellectual life has nothing to do with degrees.  Z

250 million years of dinosaur history, in 104 minutes

Steve Brusatte, the paleontologist behind Jurassic World's science and author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs and The Story of Birds, walks through what fossils act

A neuroscientist’s guide to protecting your brain, in 58 minutes

A retired Japanese engineer once memorized pi to over 111,000 digits using nothing but storytelling and visualization. He also forgot his wife's birthday that same year. 

Tim Spector: The science of the gut microbiome and chronic inflammation

Could depression, dementia, and poor oral health all have one uniting link? The gut microbiome contains 200 more genes than human cells, and research shows its strong imp

The 3-part habit loop your brain is running 40% of the time | Charles Duhigg

About 40% of everything you do today is a habit your brain automated, and the neural loop driving it doesn't distinguish between good and bad habits. Charles Duhigg, aut

Vanessa Van Edwards: 7 cues that make you instantly more likable

You only have a few seconds to make a first impression, and the non-verbal cues you’re sending may be silently working against any kindness your words communicate. Charis

The difference between creative people and you: Tolerance for useful restriction | David Epstein

David Epstein, author of Range and Inside the Box, walks through decades of research exploring why constraints, not freedom, are the engine behind creativity, focus, and

The quantum realm, the cosmological realm, and the multiverse, in 69 minutes

Astrophysicist Hakeem Oluseyi takes us from the quantum realm to the cosmological and out to the multiverse, answering physics’ underexplored questions.  He digs through