Hi everybody, welcome to Crookyton Conversations. I'm John Loveitt. Today on the show, I sat down

and talked with Stephen Pinker, philosopher, professor, writer about his latest book Enlightenment

now. I was so excited to have Stephen Pinker in this to do. Somebody's written fascinating

books on consciousness, on violence, and now on the Enlightenment and the role it plays

in our culture now. And I was really interested to hear what his thoughts are and how we're

doing given, given how much of our politics doesn't seem to be driven by reason, by facts,

by logic anymore. It feels as though that those forget winning in our human based on facts.

It seems believing in facts itself is something people don't take seriously anymore. And this

is a really optimistic book. It doesn't, I don't think, gloss over our problems, but it

does say that these Enlightenment virtues of reason and science that ultimately these will

prevail. And I was fascinated to hear what he thinks about that in an era when we have elected

somebody who, let's just say, is not a fan of those ideas. When that person becomes present,

what does that say about us? What does that say we have to do? So I hope you enjoy it. And

that's it. You know, listen to the whole episode. And don't skip the ads. Here we go.

Welcome to Curated Conversations. I'm John Lovebitt. I am very excited about our guest today. He is a

professor of psychology at Harvard University and a New York Times bestselling author. His new

book is called Enlightenment Now. The case for reason, science, humanism, and progress. Please

welcome Stephen Pinker. Thank you. Thanks for being here. So I want to start with the pessimist case.

All right. Trump is president. There is no cost to lying and deceiving in our discourse,

Facebook, and Twitter, and CNN panels. Leave no home for reason or intellectually honest debate.

We've seen a rise in climate change in islas. I'm in a massive propaganda operation to obfuscate

and confuse and beyond the tenor of our politics. We see a real cost to human flourishing.

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