Imagine there’s a large, flat sheet of ice out in front of you, and someone unceremoniously shoves you across it at a high speed. What are you to do? If you’re wearing conventional shoes, without crampons or blades attached to them, you’re going to have a difficult time. Ice is a very low-friction surface, and there’s very little you’re going to be able to do to change your momentum without slipping and perhaps falling down. You’re bound to simply slide along until either you run into an obstacle or slowly come to rest, likely a long way from where you began.
But if you put thin blades on the bottoms of your shoes — e.g., wear ice skates — you’ll discover that the situation is very much different in this case. As long as you can remain on your feet, with only your blades touching the ice, you’ll find that you can control your motion relatively easily, simply by applying forces through your feet (and the blades) to the ice down below. You can speed up, slow down, or change direction ... Continue Reading »
As 2025 comes to a close, I’ve been reflecting on what it means to practice leadership while helping others develop it. I’m Charlotte Sharpe, Managing Director of Research and Innovation at Big Think+. My role is to drive alignment between our content and platform, ensuring that what we build, design, and deliver truly serves our clients—organizations that are bringing leadership development to life within their own cultures.
Across this year, our team’s work has revolved around three ideas: clarity, collaboration, and storytelling. Together, they’ve shaped how we scale leadership: both inside Big Think+ and across the organizations we partner with.
1. Clarity Scales
One of our most important realizations this year is that clarity is a form of leadership. The ability to define what we mean, decide what matters, and move forward even when information is incomplete has been essential to every major milestone we reached.
In her Big Think+ lesson “Systematic Strategies for Making Hard Calls,” Suzy Welch reminds us that decisiveness is ... Continue Reading »
We’ve grown comfortable with the idea that trauma leaves people permanently altered. It’s a compelling story, but a misleading one.
Drawing on more than a hundred studies, clinical psychologist George Bonanno explains why resilience is not a rare trait or a heroic exception, but the most common human response to adversity.
This video The real reason some people adapt faster than others is featured on Big Think.
Continue Reading »
Despite these times of extreme change, uncertainty, and complexity, many leaders still expect that they, and the people who work for them, should leave their worries at the proverbial office door. If that ever was a reasonable expectation, however, it clearly no longer is.
Across industries and at all levels, people are overwhelmed, exhausted, and burning out like never before. The consequence: ever-growing disengagement, which undermines individual well-being and organizational productivity and performance.
In its most recent State of the Global Workplace report, Gallup found that the percentage of engaged employees dropped from 23% to a meagre 21% last year — a decline equal to that seen during COVID-19 lockdowns.
There are many contributors to this. Friction around return-to-work orders. Increasing financial stressors and polarization. The rise of AI.
And there is yet another big one that fails to get the attention or response it deserves. As the authors of another Gallup report, The State of the World’s Emotional Health 2025, succinctly put it, “The world is on an emotional edge.”
Have you ever spent most of your day worrying? It turns out, 39% ... Continue Reading »
Earth, whether we like it or not, serves as a cosmic particle detector on a continuous basis. It isn’t just light waves that travel through the Universe, nor is that light merely joined by gravitational waves and ghostly neutrinos. In truth, cosmic particles and antiparticles of all types are produced in high-energy processes throughout the Universe, from the Big Bang to stars to white dwarfs to neutron stars to black holes, both large and small. When we put detectors up to detect what sorts of particles are out there, we find a virtual zoo, including:
protons,
antiprotons,
electrons,
positrons,
and even still-heavier atomic nuclei, made out of protons and neutrons combined.
Most cosmic rays, as we measure them, turn out to be protons, and just as you’d expect, there are more of them at lower energies and fewer and fewer of them as you look to ever-higher energies. However, there’s a theoretical limit to how energetic even the highest-energy cosmic rays ought to be: about 50 exa-electron-volts (50 EeV, or 5 × 1019 electron-volts), a limit known as the GZK cutoff. In 1991, the Fly’s Eye ... Continue Reading »
Philosophers and scientists have always kept close company. Look back far enough, and it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.
Before we had instruments to measure reality, we had to reason our way into it, but that intellectual lineage is what eventually gave us the scientific method. As technology advanced and the scope for observation expanded, specializations splintered off from philosophy to reconstitute as the sciences.
Astronomy cleared the sky of deities and showed us a universe governed by gravity, not gods. Geography mapped a not-so-flat Earth, then geology dated it, stratifying earthly time in isotopes and sedimentary layers. Physics folded time into space, and with it, reimagined us not as beings apart from nature, but as a continuation of its energy and mass. We are not, as Pink Floyd suggested, “lost souls swimming in a fishbowl.” We are matter, muddling our way through life in relativistic motion.
Now, in the 21st century, science is tracing a map through the other great unknown: the mind.
Advances in biophotonics and neuroimaging have brought us closer than ever to a material picture ... Continue Reading »
When Simon Squibb was kicked out of his family home aged 15, he quickly built up the first of many businesses that helped him transform his name into a global brand. A gardening venture born of teenage survival kick-started the journey that would lead to the creation of YouTube’s most-watched business video: “30 years of business knowledge in 2hr 26mins.” (15M views to date)
More than 18 million social media followers now watch Squibb hand cash to strangers in the street if he likes their business idea. He also bought a staircase in London with a doorbell for people to “pitch their dreams,” and now has a similar doorbell in New York, which he runs with Sir Richard Branson.
Here, Squibb reveals to Big Think how he became a “professional talker” and how other leaders can explain ideas more clearly; why he’s opposed to traditional school education; and why he wants to give all his money away rather than leave it to his son.
Big Think: You’ve built 19 businesses, and invested in more than 80. Do you think entrepreneurs are made — ... Continue Reading »
Since ancient times, humanity has studied the skies.
70,000 years ago, a brown dwarf pair known as Scholz’s Star, right on the precipice of igniting hydrogen fusion in its core, passed through the Solar System’s Oort cloud. Stars, failed stars, and stellar remnants pass through our Solar System multiple times every million years. Both modern humans and Neanderthals were likely around to see this event. Unlike the illustration, however, it’s so intrinsically faint that it still wouldn’t have been visible to human eyes; today, it’s approximately 22 light-years away.
Credit: José A. Peñas/SINC
Cometary sightings, eclipses, and “temporary” stars date back thousands of years.
This particular image contrasts the constellations of the sky as they appeared thousands of years ago with corresponding artwork carved into stone at around the same time. Evidence that ancient peoples had an advanced knowledge of astronomy can be traced back as far as 38,000 years ago from cave paintings and other archaeological evidence.
Credit: M. Sweatman & A. Coombs, Athens Journal of History, 2018
Some ~2800 years ago, the Babylonians already predicted eclipses.
When the Moon passes directly between the Earth and ... Continue Reading »
Bryan Washington’s characters reveal themselves through what they don’t, won’t, or can’t say as much as the utterances they give voice to. Though he constructs his stories from the first-person perspective, his protagonists never exist in heroic isolation. Each is shaped — in ways small and large, superficial and profound, knowingly and unknowingly — by the people they interact with and the cultures they inhabit.
Most of Washington’s stories are set in Houston, where he grew up, or Japan, where he currently lives. Occasionally, as in Palaver, the author’s third novel, the two collide. A finalist for the 2025 National Book Award, Palaver tells the story of an unnamed son who moved from Texas to Tokyo to escape his homophobic brother, only to receive a surprise visit from his unnamed mother more than a decade later. Like much of Washington’s previous literary work, Palaver deals with themes of estrangement, loneliness, and forgiveness.
Unlike those works, as a review from the Washington Post points out, the novel errs on the side of hope. It “deconstructs the myriad ways we intentionally or unintentionally tear ... Continue Reading »
Most of us think happiness is something you achieve: status, money, accomplishment. Robert Waldinger’s work asks a more unsettling question: what if happiness is less about what you get and more about who you keep?
Drawing on the longest study of adult life ever conducted, Waldinger traces human wellbeing across 8 decades, from the Great Depression to old age, following people from radically different starting points to see what endures.
This video The happiness shortcut that hides in plain sight is featured on Big Think.
Continue Reading »
Imagine there’s a large, flat sheet of ice out in front of you, and someone unceremoniously shoves you across it at a high speed. What are you to do? If you’re wearing conventional shoes, without crampons or blades attached to them, you’re going to have a difficult time. Ice is a very low-friction surface, and there’s very little you’re going to be able to do to change your momentum without slipping and perhaps falling down. You’re bound to simply slide along until either you run into an obstacle or slowly come to rest, likely a long way from where you began.
But if you put thin blades on the bottoms of your shoes — e.g., wear ice skates — you’ll discover that the situation is very much different in this case. As long as you can remain on your feet, with only your blades touching the ice, you’ll find that you can control your motion relatively easily, simply by applying forces through your feet (and the blades) to the ice down below. You can speed up, slow down, or change direction ... 
As 2025 comes to a close, I’ve been reflecting on what it means to practice leadership while helping others develop it. I’m Charlotte Sharpe, Managing Director of Research and Innovation at Big Think+. My role is to drive alignment between our content and platform, ensuring that what we build, design, and deliver truly serves our clients—organizations that are bringing leadership development to life within their own cultures.
Across this year, our team’s work has revolved around three ideas: clarity, collaboration, and storytelling. Together, they’ve shaped how we scale leadership: both inside Big Think+ and across the organizations we partner with.
1. Clarity Scales
One of our most important realizations this year is that clarity is a form of leadership. The ability to define what we mean, decide what matters, and move forward even when information is incomplete has been essential to every major milestone we reached.
In her Big Think+ lesson “Systematic Strategies for Making Hard Calls,” Suzy Welch reminds us that decisiveness is ... 
Despite these times of extreme change, uncertainty, and complexity, many leaders still expect that they, and the people who work for them, should leave their worries at the proverbial office door. If that ever was a reasonable expectation, however, it clearly no longer is.
Across industries and at all levels, people are overwhelmed, exhausted, and burning out like never before. The consequence: ever-growing disengagement, which undermines individual well-being and organizational productivity and performance.
In its most recent State of the Global Workplace report, Gallup found that the percentage of engaged employees dropped from 23% to a meagre 21% last year — a decline equal to that seen during COVID-19 lockdowns.
There are many contributors to this. Friction around return-to-work orders. Increasing financial stressors and polarization. The rise of AI.
And there is yet another big one that fails to get the attention or response it deserves. As the authors of another Gallup report, The State of the World’s Emotional Health 2025, succinctly put it, “The world is on an emotional edge.”
Have you ever spent most of your day worrying? It turns out, 39% ... 
Earth, whether we like it or not, serves as a cosmic particle detector on a continuous basis. It isn’t just light waves that travel through the Universe, nor is that light merely joined by gravitational waves and ghostly neutrinos. In truth, cosmic particles and antiparticles of all types are produced in high-energy processes throughout the Universe, from the Big Bang to stars to white dwarfs to neutron stars to black holes, both large and small. When we put detectors up to detect what sorts of particles are out there, we find a virtual zoo, including:
protons,
antiprotons,
electrons,
positrons,
and even still-heavier atomic nuclei, made out of protons and neutrons combined.
Most cosmic rays, as we measure them, turn out to be protons, and just as you’d expect, there are more of them at lower energies and fewer and fewer of them as you look to ever-higher energies. However, there’s a theoretical limit to how energetic even the highest-energy cosmic rays ought to be: about 50 exa-electron-volts (50 EeV, or 5 × 1019 electron-volts), a limit known as the GZK cutoff. In 1991, the Fly’s Eye ... 
Philosophers and scientists have always kept close company. Look back far enough, and it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.
Before we had instruments to measure reality, we had to reason our way into it, but that intellectual lineage is what eventually gave us the scientific method. As technology advanced and the scope for observation expanded, specializations splintered off from philosophy to reconstitute as the sciences.
Astronomy cleared the sky of deities and showed us a universe governed by gravity, not gods. Geography mapped a not-so-flat Earth, then geology dated it, stratifying earthly time in isotopes and sedimentary layers. Physics folded time into space, and with it, reimagined us not as beings apart from nature, but as a continuation of its energy and mass. We are not, as Pink Floyd suggested, “lost souls swimming in a fishbowl.” We are matter, muddling our way through life in relativistic motion.
Now, in the 21st century, science is tracing a map through the other great unknown: the mind.
Advances in biophotonics and neuroimaging have brought us closer than ever to a material picture ... 
When Simon Squibb was kicked out of his family home aged 15, he quickly built up the first of many businesses that helped him transform his name into a global brand. A gardening venture born of teenage survival kick-started the journey that would lead to the creation of YouTube’s most-watched business video: “30 years of business knowledge in 2hr 26mins.” (15M views to date)
More than 18 million social media followers now watch Squibb hand cash to strangers in the street if he likes their business idea. He also bought a staircase in London with a doorbell for people to “pitch their dreams,” and now has a similar doorbell in New York, which he runs with Sir Richard Branson.
Here, Squibb reveals to Big Think how he became a “professional talker” and how other leaders can explain ideas more clearly; why he’s opposed to traditional school education; and why he wants to give all his money away rather than leave it to his son.
Big Think: You’ve built 19 businesses, and invested in more than 80. Do you think entrepreneurs are made — ... 
Since ancient times, humanity has studied the skies.
70,000 years ago, a brown dwarf pair known as Scholz’s Star, right on the precipice of igniting hydrogen fusion in its core, passed through the Solar System’s Oort cloud. Stars, failed stars, and stellar remnants pass through our Solar System multiple times every million years. Both modern humans and Neanderthals were likely around to see this event. Unlike the illustration, however, it’s so intrinsically faint that it still wouldn’t have been visible to human eyes; today, it’s approximately 22 light-years away.
Credit: José A. Peñas/SINC
Cometary sightings, eclipses, and “temporary” stars date back thousands of years.
This particular image contrasts the constellations of the sky as they appeared thousands of years ago with corresponding artwork carved into stone at around the same time. Evidence that ancient peoples had an advanced knowledge of astronomy can be traced back as far as 38,000 years ago from cave paintings and other archaeological evidence.
Credit: M. Sweatman & A. Coombs, Athens Journal of History, 2018
Some ~2800 years ago, the Babylonians already predicted eclipses.
When the Moon passes directly between the Earth and ... 
Bryan Washington’s characters reveal themselves through what they don’t, won’t, or can’t say as much as the utterances they give voice to. Though he constructs his stories from the first-person perspective, his protagonists never exist in heroic isolation. Each is shaped — in ways small and large, superficial and profound, knowingly and unknowingly — by the people they interact with and the cultures they inhabit.
Most of Washington’s stories are set in Houston, where he grew up, or Japan, where he currently lives. Occasionally, as in Palaver, the author’s third novel, the two collide. A finalist for the 2025 National Book Award, Palaver tells the story of an unnamed son who moved from Texas to Tokyo to escape his homophobic brother, only to receive a surprise visit from his unnamed mother more than a decade later. Like much of Washington’s previous literary work, Palaver deals with themes of estrangement, loneliness, and forgiveness.
Unlike those works, as a review from the Washington Post points out, the novel errs on the side of hope. It “deconstructs the myriad ways we intentionally or unintentionally tear ...