Big Think

How to recognize when you’re reacting from childhood wounds

Dr. Nicole LePera breaks down the 6 archetypes of childhood trauma.

Thankfully, we know from neuroplasticity that the survival habits and patterns that many of us have adapted based on traumatic events can be rewired, can be changed throughout the entirety of our life experience.

The mindset shift that ended my Sunday-night dread

Your to-do list isn't a debt to pay off. It's a menu to choose from.

The radical act of slowing down

A meditation on how our obsession with speed and productivity undermines our health, relationships, and chances for lasting success.

The power grid is breaking. Can it fix itself?
A new generation of self-healing tools could make the U.S.'s aging power grid far more resilient against modern threats.

Grant Mulligan

Night view of a city skyline with illuminated skyscrapers and a bridge, home to a self-healing power grid, all reflected in the water below.
Black text on a light background reads "Explore our LIBRARY" with "Explore" in large font and "our LIBRARY" in smaller, uppercase font underneath.

What would you like to learn more about? We have thousands of videos from the world’s biggest thinkers to help you dive deeper into any subject.

Pause the busyness of life to reflect on ourselves, our relationships, and the Universe.
A photo of a woman with her face blanked out is taped to a background filled with handwritten writing. She wears a pink top and gold hoop earring, her hand resting near her collarbone. Philip Pullman: The thing every writer needs to overcome
"I will not reason and compare: my business is to create."
A person looks out an airplane window at a cloud shaped like a brain in the sky, with a contemplative expression. The “rawdogging” trend: A new term for an ancient practice
TikTok gave an old practice a terrible name. Neuroscience explains why it actually works.
A sliced onion bulb with roots and stem, illuminated from behind and set against a black background, resembles the delicate layers of daffodils in bloom. The daffodil’s guide to outliving the winter
What a fragile flower can teach us about resilience, death, and becoming someone new.
Illustration in Aztec style showing four people with headdresses holding plants, a flower, and a drum, appearing to engage in a ceremonial or festive activity that explores themes of moral luck. Aztec philosophy: How lucky you are to not be in prison right now
Nick was always an angry boy, but he was unlucky as well.
Intimate interviews with the world’s biggest thinkers.
A man with curly hair wearing a brown suede jacket and black shirt gestures with his left hand while looking at the camera against a plain white background.
20mins
The real reason you’re always thinking about what other people think
What you actually care about shows up in your calendar and your bank statement, not your intentions.
A man with wavy brown hair wearing a brown suede jacket over a black shirt sits in front of a plain white background.
17mins
The most important question to ask yourself about your life’s purpose
Modern life has confused comfort and stimulation for genuine fulfillment. Could the Ancient Greek distinction between hedonia and eudaimonia help pull us out of this trap?
A detailed orange image of the Sun shows its surface texture and sunspots, against a black background.
10mins
The solar revolution turning sunlight into synthetic fuel
“10 years ago, my colleagues and I looked at the prognosis for climate change, and it looked pretty hopeless. There really was no way out. But something happened – something good.”
An older woman with long gray hair wearing a dark jacket and shirt sits against a plain, light background, looking slightly toward the camera.
20mins
Rome’s triumph was the ancient world’s most effective piece of propaganda
Mary Beard uncovers the spectacle of the Ancient Roman parade, the Roman Triumph.
The Universe is out there, waiting for you to discover it.
Two people examine scientific equipment in a laboratory, working on a large metallic device surrounded by cables and tools, as they investigate the physics mystery G—the elusive mystery gravitational constant. A new experiment deepens the physics mystery over “big G”
Newton's gravitational constant, G, is still known to just 3 significant figures in 2026. New measurements merely highlight our uncertainty.
pluto moons hubble The science case for why Pluto should become a planet (again)
In 2006, the IAU defined "planet" for the first time, excluding Pluto and all other dwarf planets. In 2026, is it now time for a change?
A vibrant cosmic scene reveals a galaxy with bright jets of energy, hottest stars twinkling vividly amidst scattered stars against a dark backdrop. Supermassive black holes launch the most powerful cosmic jets
From within our own galaxy to behemoths billions of light-years away, supermassive black holes create jets like nothing else in the cosmos.
A colored pixelated grid with rectangular outlines; a legend in the top right labels blue as F115W, green as F200W, and red as F277W—capturing data from the JWST to record a distant galaxy. Ask Ethan: How can ultra-distant galaxies move so fast?
It takes incredible energies to accelerate masses near the speed of light. So how do the farthest galaxies speed away from us so quickly?
Big ideas. Thoughtful conversations. One book at a time.
The image displays the words "mental," "health," and "illness" in white and gray text on a black background, with "mental" and "health" in focus—reflecting the strength found within the unfragile mind. Are we over-diagnosing ourselves? Rethinking the language of mental illness.
As mental health diagnoses become more common and expansive, the labels meant to help us understand our suffering may instead oversimplify it.
Dune features a determined protagonist in Frank Herbert's science fiction masterpiece. 4 literary masterpieces that make you despise the protagonist by the end
These initially sympathetic characters take readers down a dark path.
Book cover titled "MUSKISM: A Guide for the Perplexed" by Quinn Slobodian & Ben Tarnoff, featuring a plume of smoke rising against a blue sky—a striking visual that hints at the enigmatic essence of muskism. Elon Musk, SpaceX, and the rise of “sovereignty as a service”
As SpaceX slashes launch costs, governments are gaining new capabilities, while potentially outsourcing their sovereignty to Musk's private empire.
Black-and-white photo of Jan Morris, an older person seated on a bed, smiling with a typewriter in front. The book cover text reads: "Jan Morris, a life, Sara Wheeler. Jan Morris, and the struggle between coherence and uncovering another’s inner life
Jan Morris's biographer confronts the limits of storytelling while trying to capture a life defined by contradiction and reinvention.
Learn business from the world’s biggest thinkers.
Book cover for "Anchored, Aligned, Accountable" by Aiko Bethea, featuring gold stacked stones on a blue background and a subtitle about transforming lives and work by overcoming the false urgency myth. The false urgency myth, and why we confuse busyness with importance
Our obsession with speed and productivity creates unnecessary pressure that quietly fuels burnout and anxiety.
A hand holds up a small gold trophy against a dramatic sky with lightning and a burst of light, symbolizing victory when you lead with love. Lead with love and follow 5 principles of “energetic success”
When leaders embrace positive personal energy, everyone feels the benefits — in trust, innovation and creativity.
Book cover of "Design Love In: How to Unleash the Most Powerful Force in Business" by Marcus Buckingham, featuring bold "design love in" text and colorful, intersecting lines on a sleek black background. The best leaders don’t share traits. They do this instead.
Leadership isn’t about mastering a fixed set of skills, but creating the meaningful, human-centered experiences that inspire others.
Digital illustration of a human head in profile showing a translucent brain with layered neural pathways, set against a blue gradient background.
25mins
Reboot your mind for flow, unanxiousness, and resilience
“We can use neuroscience and tools from psychology to learn how to take advantage of anxiety.” From Zen Buddhism to flow state, these 3 experts explain how to hack your brain.
The world, seen sideways.
Four maps of Ireland from 1800, 1850, 1900, and 2000 show a steady decline in areas where Irish is spoken natively, marked in green, nearly disappearing by 2000. The Irish language is having a moment — and running out of time
Gaeilge is trending culturally. So why is it, according to census data, also dying?
World map showing global oil reserves, rare earth elements deposits (yellow dots), and major shipping routes and chokepoints, with oil reserves highlighted by pink circles of varying sizes. The Strait of Hormuz is today’s energy chokepoint. China is tomorrow’s.
As the global economy moves beyond oil, the strategic importance of the world’s most critical hydrocarbon chokepoint is likely to decline rapidly.
A map of the United States showing the most popular paint color in each state, with names of various gray, blue, and neutral shades labeled over the corresponding states. How the modern world turned gray (and why color may be coming back)
The ideology, economics, and psychology behind the modern world's draining of color from homes, cars, and everyday objects.
Historic map illustration of the city of Tenochtitlan, surrounded by water, with labeled features and detailed buildings, from the early colonial period in Mexico. Ghost map: Europe’s first glimpse of Tenochtitlan shows a city already destroyed
This 1524 map of the Aztec capital was a window into an exotic otherworld — and largely a fiction.
Where science meets the human story.
Illustration of Earth overlaid with a grid and energy types from the Kardashev Scale: Type I, II, and III, representing planetary, stellar, and galactic energy usage. A physicist explains what the Kardashev scale gets wrong
The famous framework ranks civilizations by energy use — but ignores a critical factor that can halt their progress.
A split image explores the nature of life, with a gray rock on a dark background on the left and a colored microscopic view of a cell—hinting at intelligence—in vivid detail on the right. Why organisms are more than machines
Sixty years ago, a little-known philosopher challenged how science understands life. His perspective is finding new relevance in the age of artificial intelligence.
Three planets are silhouetted against deep space with a bright red star and nebula clouds in the background. Aerial aliens: Why cloudy worlds might make detecting life easier
Astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger spoke with Big Think about how "the colors of life" could leave detectable traces on distant planets.
A cylindrical space habitat with green landscapes and rivers, viewed from inside; two moons and a bright sun-like object are visible through large windowed sections. The next great leap in evolution may lie beyond Earth
NASA’s Caleb Scharf talks with Big Think about life’s long experiment in expansion.