Big Ideas

The Big Ideas Series features innovative programs that inspire and captivate audiences while exploring some of the most complex of scientific questions, including our origins, our fundamental nature, and our place in the cosmos. The John Templeton Foundation is a founding benefactor of the Festival and provides major support for the Big Ideas series.

Rewiring the Brain: The Promise and Perils of Neuroplasticity

Visual Illusions: Catching the Brain Creating Reality

170,345 views |

The Deep: Exploring Earth’s Last Frontier

142,292 views |

To the Moon, Mars, and Beyond: The Next Step in Space Exploration

The Dreaming Mind: Waking the Mysteries of Sleep

518,945 views |

Karen Armstrong: Sacred Nature – A Conversation with Brian Greene

52,280 views |

Psychedelics: Chemicals, Consciousness & Creativity

918,825 views |

First Images: James Webb Space Telescope’s New View of the Cosmos

262,745 views |

Black Holes: Seeing the Unseeable

585,115 views |

Riddles of Reality: From Quarks to The Cosmos

456,931 views |

Lifespan Expanded: The Scientific Quest for a Fountain of Youth

138,367 views |

Einstein and the Quantum: Entanglement and Emergence

1,938,464 views |

Science, Life, and Purpose: A Conversation with Francis Collins and Brian Greene

53,645 views |

The Future of Cosmology: A Live Conversation

150,188 views |

Things We’ve Never Seen: The James Webb Space Telescope Explores the Cosmos

2,797,111 views |

2021 Nobel Laureates in Conversation with Brian Greene

74,009 views |

Mind Your Language: Metaphor, Thought and Imagination

828,593 views |

Does Math Reveal Reality?

1,564,996 views | 01:36:02

On the Shoulders of Giants: Steven Weinberg and the Quest to Explain the World

123,187 views | 00:57:27

Beyond Higgs: The Wild Frontier of Particle Physics

1,215,132 views | 01:30:08

Making Room for Machines: Getting Ready for AGI

50,427 views | 01:27:46

We Will Be Martians

54,308 views | 01:25:38

Outsourcing Humanity: Do Algorithms Make Better Decisions Than People?

Rethinking Thinking: How Intelligent Are Other Animals?

1,473,328 views |

The Richness of Time

2,498,081 views | 01:29:37

Eyes In the Skies: Bringing the Universe Down to Earth

65,318 views | 01:24:01

The Technology That Transforms Us: From the Stone Age to the Computer Age

01:12:02

Intelligence Without Brains

1,227,151 views | 01:29:11

Physics in the Dark: Searching for the Universe’s Missing Matter

1,168,632 views | 0122:24

On the Shoulders of Giants: Shep Doeleman

68,517 views | 00:32:32

The Reality of Reality: A Tale of Five Senses

1,422,943 views | 1:11:33

On the Shoulders of Giants: Andrew Strominger

00:35:03

The Science of Extreme Behavior: The Line Between Courageous and Crazy

01:11:03

Can We ‘Cure’ Deafness and Blindness? Should We?

01:11:53

Revealing the Mind: The Promise of Psychedelics

5,029,680 views | 01:24:38

Loose Ends: String Theory and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory

2,318,192 views | 01:27:24

The Right Stuff: What It Takes to Boldly Go

01:20:43

The Believing Brain: Evolution, Neuroscience, and the Spiritual Instinct

3,804,089 views | 1:17:46

Alien Contact: What Happens Next?

1,450,921 views | 1:00:10

Rethinking the Internet: How We Lost Control and How to Take it Back

00:58:06

How Music Affects Your Brain: Notes on the Folds

00:52:42

Rewriting Life: The Promise and Peril of Editing Your DNA

00:48:20

Neutrinos, Matter, and Antimatter: The Yin Yang of the Big Bang

102,142 views | 00:57:28

Sylvia Earle: On the Shoulders of Giants

00:57:18

Harnessing the Power of Neuroplasticity: The Nuts and Bolts of Better Brains

1,490,436 views | 01:00:35

RESISTANCE IS (NOT) FUTILE: THE END OF ANTIBIOTICS AND THE FUTURE OF FIGHTING INFECTIONS

00:51:17

Teach Your Robots Well: Will Self-taught Robots Be the End of Us?

1,042,533 views | 01:02:39

Black Holes and Neutron Stars: A Merger in Space

82,480 views | 00:41:54

Is Alien ‘life’ Weirder Than We Imagine: Who Is Out There?

1,379,954 views | 00:59:56

Growing Up Digital: Coming of Age in a Virtual World

01:02:05

The Roots of Extremism in Your Brain

01:17:53

The Microbiome: Vital Cells of Existence

59,885 views | 01:06:47

The Matter Of Antimatter: Answering The Cosmic Riddle Of Existence

4,426,086 views | 01:39:21

Pondering the Imponderables: The Biggest Questions of Cosmology

716,802 views | 01:06:44

The Social Synapse: Neuroscience and the Roots of Human Connections

97,184 views | 01:07:13

Cartographers of the Brain: Mapping the Connectome

108,209 views | 01:33:49

Quantum Reality: Space, Time, and Entanglement

7,528,116 views | 1:32:48

Computational Creativity: AI and the Art of Ingenuity

00:58:53

Forever Young: The Promise of Human Regeneration

942,852 views | 01:02:40

The Future of Augmented Intelligence: If You Can’t Beat ‘em, Join ‘em

01:02:01

Engineering Immortality: the End of Aging?

55,042 views | 00:59:50

Quantum Computing – The Qubit Technology Revolution

100,585 views | 01:03:48

Science In A Polarized World: A Global Town Hall Meeting

01:00:35

Evolution Beyond Earth

57,931 views | 00:59:31

Shaking Up the Dark Universe: The Dark Horses of Dark Matter

540,481 views | 01:17:01

Testing the Limits of Cosmology

139,409 views | 00:57:13

Moral Math of Robots: Can Life and Death Decisions Be Coded?

58,591 views | 01:34:35

Beyond Beauty: The Predictive Power of Symmetry

460,231 views | 01:33:30

Splicing and Dicing DNA: Genome Engineering and the CRISPR Revolution

517,191 views | 01:24:26

To Unweave a Rainbow: Science and the Essence of Being Human

206,303 views | 01:38:53

It’s Alive, But Is It Life: Synthetic Biology and the Future of Creation

1,213,994 views | 01:27:13

Mind Melds and Brain Beams: The Dawn of Brain-to-Brain Communication

1,377,682 views | 01:25:32

My Neurons, My Self

449,070 views | 01:39:51

Wizards of Odds: The Power of Probability

509,788 views | 01:23:44

The Next Quantum Leap: Here, There, and Everywhere

159,717 views | 01:02:32

Planet of the Humans: The Leap to the Top

190,708 views | 01:19:33

Spark of Genius? Awakening a Better Brain

139,484 views | 01:21:33

To Infinity and Beyond: The Accelerating Universe

801,725 views | 01:22:23

Time Is of the Essence… or Is It?

1,171,770 views | 01:22:11

Mind Over Masters: The Question of Free Will

453,972 views | 01:23:39

Designer Genes: Fashioning our Biological Future

01:13:31

Alien Life: Will We Know It When We See It?

7,376,346 views | 01:33:30

The Deceptive Watchman: How Our Brains Twist Time

300,277 views | 01:23:57

Measure for Measure: Quantum Physics and Reality

3,733,062 views | 01:38:44

Infinity: The Science of Endless

1,612,989 views | 01:23:57

A Matter of Time

950,169 views | 01:27:52

Architects of the Mind: A Blueprint for the Human Brain

755,520 views | 01:28:48

Destiny and DNA: Our Pliable Genome

50,288 views | 01:24:33

The Whispering Mind: The Enduring Conundrum of Consciousness

775,464 views | 01:26:02

Engineering the Brain: Deploying a New Neural Toolkit

01:03:39

Multiverse: One Universe or Many?

3,421,216 views | 01:22:35

James Watson: On the Shoulders of Giants

01:08:08

The Elusive Neutrino and The Nature Of The Cosmos

440,948 views | 01:30:42

Why We Prevailed: Evolution and the Battle for Dominance

147,644 views | 01:31:59

Exoplanets: The Search for New Worlds

107,611 views | 01:24:28

Madness Redefined: Creativity, Intelligence and the Dark Side of the Mind

368,007 views | 01:35:31

Beautiful Minds: The Enigma of Genius

520,775 views | 01:30:32

The Illusion of Certainty: Risk, Probability, and Chance

682,925 views | 01:28:02

The Dark Side Of The Universe

1,136,835 views | 01:44:14

Mysteries of the Mathematical Universe

806,820 views | 01:16:48

A Thin Sheet of Reality: The Universe as a Hologram

2,888,216 views | 01:30:10

The Limits of Understanding

1,647,653 views | 01:33:00

Faith and Science

93,443 views | 01:41:19

Back to the Big Bang: Inside the Large Hadron Collider

362,436 views | 01:35:29

Food 2.0: Feeding a Hungry World

01:32:13

Mind and Machine: The Future of Thinking

271,526 views | 01:25:28

What It Means to Be Human: The Enigma of Altruism

01:18:33

NOTHING: The Subtle Science of Emptiness

1,014,004 views | 01:25:19

Infinite Worlds: A Journey through Parallel Universes

2,374,695 views | 01:43:58

Time Since Einstein

846,641 views | 01:36:21

What It Means to be Human

01:25:35

Science Faith and Religion

327,237 views | 01:46:12

Beyond Einstein: In Search of the Ultimate Explanation

235,255 views | 01:02:50

Echoes From The Beginning: A Journey Through Space And Time

161,623 views | 01:17:21

The Invisible Reality: The Wonderful Weirdness of the Quantum World

4,789,715 views | 01:30:56

Faith and Science

01:07:48

Big Data: Power, Potential, and Perils

01:30:23

This is Your Brain On Neuroprosthetics

01:30:01

Game Change – CRISPR’s Brave New World

01:25:42

Life in Our Image – The Ethics of Altering the Human Genome

01:27:38

Coming to Grips With Gravity

274,639 views | 01:25:57

My Society, My Self?

01:32:11

Paging Dr. Robot—How A.I. is Revolutionizing Healthcare

01:27:47

The Beauty of Balance

01:32:53

Barry Barish: On the Shoulders of Giants

01:08:05

E.O. Wilson : On The Shoulders of Giants

01:01:50

Steven Weinberg: On The Shoulders Of Giants

140,175 views | 01:02:03

Edward Witten : On the Shoulders of Giants

189,288 views | 00:48:49

Cumrun Vafa: On the Shoulders of Giants

00:55:43

Afterglow: Dispatches from the Birth of the Universe

288,638 views | 01:26:50

Live Discussion with Brian Greene

99,816 views |

Our Mathematical Universe: Brian Greene & Max Tegmark

293,235 views |

Cosmology and the Accelerating Universe | A Conversation with Nobel Laureate Brian Schmidt

224,686 views |

What is Life? Five Great Ideas in Biology. | A Conversation with Nobel Laureate Sir Paul Nurse

214,392 views |

Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality | A Conversation with Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek

628,380 views | 02:03:40

Entanglement, Black Holes, and Wormholes: An informal discussion with Brian Greene

224,433 views | 01:51:22

Brian Greene and Leonard Susskind: Quantum Mechanics, Black Holes and String Theory

1,023,624 views | 02:08:02

Brian Greene and Sir Roger Penrose: World Science U Q+A Session

1,171,910 views | 02:53:44

Brian Greene and Andrea Ghez: The Hunt for Supermassive Black Holes

124,512 views | 01:54:16

Brian Greene and Barry Barish: Accelerate, Collide, Detect: Gravitational Waves & Particle Physics

70,668 views | 02:06:58

Brian Greene and Harold Varmus: Tackling Today’s Medical Issues From Cancer to Covid-19

85,726 views | 02:19:44

Brian Greene and Priyamvada Natarajan: Shedding New Light On Dark Matter

218,421 views | 02:10:10

Brian Greene and Gabriela González: Discovering Gravitational Waves

170,845 views | 03:01:37

Brian Greene and Cumrun Vafa: World Science U Q+A Session

178,477 views | 02:33:02

Brian Greene and Adam Riess: World Science U Q+A Session

417,359 views | 03:05:19

Brian Greene: Time Dilation and the Slowing of Time

178,995 views | 01:45:24

Live Q&A with Brian Greene: How Can Supermassive Black Holes Grow so Quickly?

125,900 views |