Steven Pinker Knows Everything
Talking Feds
Harry Litman
4.8 • 4.1K Ratings
🗓️ 20 March 2025
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Harry sits down with Steven Pinker, who wears many intellectual hats, all well: linguist, psychologist, political philosopher, historian, and social critic, for starters. After some brief discussion of his childhood and background, they dive into Pinker’s best-selling “The Better Angels of Our Nature,” (Bill Gates’s favorite book at the time), “Enlightenment Now,” and Rationality” (Bill Gates’s new favorite book). In those works, Pinker lay out an argument that by and large, in fits and starts, society is advancing incrementally in health, safety, knowledge, and other key benchmarks of Enlightenment values. The two also touch on Pinker’s strong if idiosyncratic views about writing (he rejects much of modern pedantry about correct usage); his original Promethean work in linguistics; and his views about certain human cognitive biases. A wide-ranging and provocative discussion with one of the great public intellectuals of our time.
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Transcript
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| 1:05.0 | Welcome to Talking Fed's one-on-one, deep-dive discussions with national figures about the most fascinating and consequential issues defining our culture and shaping our lives. |
| 1:12.6 | I'm your host, Harry Littman. |
| 1:14.6 | Welcome to a conversation with Stephen Pinker. |
| 1:18.6 | This is a bit of a thrill and a challenge for me when the organizers asked if there was anyone |
| 1:26.6 | in the whole week I particularly would like to |
| 1:29.3 | speak with. I had no hesitation in requesting just this sit down. I've been a great fan of Stephen's |
| 1:37.0 | works ever since the language instinct, which I still consider one of the best nonfiction books |
| 1:43.0 | I've ever read. |
| 1:44.5 | But since that, Promethean, and I, you know, still I think canonical work in linguistics, |
| 1:50.7 | he has branched out to produce a work of astonishing breadth. |
| 1:56.2 | The best shorthand description, and it's not so short, on your website is experimental psychologist |
| 2:02.8 | who's interested in all aspects of language and mind, though I think that's under-inclusive |
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