Today, it's great to have Stephen Pinker on the podcast.

Dr. Pinker is the John Stone professor of psychology at Harvard University.

A two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and the winner of many awards for his research teaching

in books.

He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences and named one of times a hundred

most influential people and won a foreign policy as a hundred leading global thinkers.

His books include how the mind works, the blank slate, the stuff of thought, the better angels

of our nature, the sense of style, enlightenment now, and most recently rationality, what

it is, why it seems scarce, why it matters.

Stephen Pinker, so great to have you back on the psychology podcast.

Thanks, Josh.

Nice to be here.

I always enjoy talking to you.

You always stimulate my brain, which is the motto of our podcast, is that we all make

people with brains, but you stimulate my brain.

So you say in this new book of yours, you argue that, quote, rationality ought to be the

load star for everything we think and do.

Why is that?

The very fact that you're asking that question and waiting for my answer means you've already

accepted the answer, namely that we ought to persuade each other with good reasons.

Now, it's not the only way that we can get other people's assent, we can bribe them,

we can threaten them, we can beat them up, we can try to cancel them.

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