Steven Pinker and David Runciman on Optimism, Enlightenment and Progress PART 2

Intelligence Squared

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🗓️ 20 July 2023

⏱️ 27 minutes

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Summary

For the second part of our conversation between cognitive psychologist and bestselling author Steven Pinker and academic and podcaster David Runciman, who teaches politics and history at Cambridge University, we rejoin the discussion with the two looking at the roots of skepticism. This interview first appeared on Intelligence Squared in early 2019 at the time of the publication of Pinker's book, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. We’d love to hear your feedback and what you think we should talk about next, who we should have on and what our future debates should be. Send us an email or voice note with your thoughts to podcasts@intelligencesquared.com or Tweet us @intelligence2. And if you’d like to support our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations, as well as ad-free podcasts, exclusive bonus content, early access and much more, become a supporter of Intelligence Squared today. Just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, this is Jeremy Bowen, the International Editor of BBC News and I'm here because I want
0:05.1	to talk to you about an event I'm doing with Intelligent Squared on the 2nd of November in London
0:11.5	and I'm going to be talking about the more than 30 years that I've spent reporting on major
0:17.6	events in the Middle East with my great friend and colleague over many, many years just in web
0:25.6	and I'm sure we'll talk about a few other things as well, just in and I started at the BBC
0:31.5	on the same day in 1984. So if you'd like to join us either in person or online then visit
0:41.6	IntelligentSquared.com to find out more. Welcome to Intelligent Squared. I'm Senior Producer,
0:49.3	Connor Boyle. We're rejoining our conversation with cognitive psychologist,
0:53.2	and best-selling author Stephen Pinker today. Part one of the discussion came out in our last
0:57.6	episode on a available now to all listeners, so do take a listen to that first if you can.
1:02.0	Joining Pinker in conversation is David Ronsman, academic and podcaster who teaches politics
1:07.0	at History at Cambridge University. The two discuss the themes within Pinker's book,
1:11.6	enlightening it now, focusing on whether optimism should still play a role in our increasingly
1:16.4	turbulent and polarized times. If you'd like to hear this episode ad-free and support our
1:21.2	mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations, head over to IntelligentSquared.com,
1:26.5	slash membership or subscribe to our channel on Apple. Now let's jump back into the conversation
1:31.5	with Stephen Pinker and David Ronsman. We rejoin them talking about the roots of skepticism
1:36.4	and why too much of it can be a tricky proposition. So one humian idea, which I take to be one of the
1:42.0	core ideas of the Enlightenment is skepticism. Absolutely. It has many of its roots in kind of
1:48.7	Cartesian skepticism. So skepticism is a powerful but sort of dangerous doctrine. I mean it's hard
1:56.1	to control it. It's clear, I'm completely persuaded we need more skepticism in the world because
2:02.5	there is too much credulity and superstition around particularly around certain kinds of,
	...

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