I know what you know – why that’s good for both of us

KERA's Think

KERA

Society & Culture, 071003, Kera, Think, Krysboyd

4.8 • 861 Ratings

🗓️ 23 September 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s common knowledge, say, that every driver stops for a stop sign – and we shouldn’t take that shared understanding for granted. Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He joins host Krys Boyd to discuss the rules of society we all know and follow and the ways our world would fall apart if people disregarded this social contract. His book is “When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life.”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Ira Flato here from Science Friday. Each episode we give you surprising facts.
0:07.5	There's a whole phenomenon of moths visiting eyes of mammals. Expert insights. It doesn't
0:13.5	take a lot of brain to run a lion, actually. And we tackle the big questions. How is this going to
0:20.3	affect the future?
0:21.8	From space to climate to tech to medicine,
0:24.7	get a new view on the world around you.
0:26.8	That's Science Friday, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:31.8	A Better Help ad.
0:33.8	Lewis Capaldi partnered with BetterHelp
0:35.8	to get word out about how important therapy can be.
0:38.3	I struggle most weeks to get up, get myself up and ready and go to therapy or whatever.
0:44.3	Even like to open the laptop to talk to, my therapist sometimes can be really difficult,
0:48.3	but I do it because I realise how important it is for me to continue to feel good.
0:53.3	Because I felt the best I've felt in a long time through therapy.
0:57.1	Learn more about online therapy at betterhelp.com.
1:09.3	Today we're going to talk about common knowledge.
1:11.9	Not the A Little Club Soda will get that stain out kind, but awareness of someone else's
1:17.4	awareness of something, as in, I see that you have a stop sign, and I know that you see that
1:22.3	stop sign, and I know that you know that I know there's a stop sign right there, so I can
1:26.8	drive through this intersection trusting that we will not crash.
1:30.0	That kind of common knowledge.
1:32.2	From KERA in Dallas, this is Think.
	...

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