Peter? Michael.

Michael.

What do you know about the better angels of our nature?

I don't know what's worse.

Living in a society where you might die by the spear or living in a society where there

are 900-page non-fiction books. So today we are talking about the better angels of our nature by Stephen Pinker.

This is one of those books that didn't sell like Oprah, well, the number

that I've seen Bandied about is 1 million copies, which is still a shitload, but nowhere

near things like the secret. But it is one of the most influential books of the last 20 years.

Bill Gates called it the best book he's ever read.

It's been promoted very heavily by like the Davos set and it has turned Stephen Pinker into Aspen royalty.

He's one of the most prominent public intellectuals in the United States and a lot of it is by spreading this message that it might seem bad but in fact

things have gotten a lot better over the last 500 years. You thought it would have ruled to be a caveman, but it's actually not true.

This episode is a little bit different than previous ones.

Or maybe it's the same, who knows, but as we mentioned on our last bonus episode, I got some sort of weird bug over Christmas.

And Michael, I'm sorry, but the plague was worse.

And so I don't want to hear about this.

But I basically have not like left the house

or like been very functional since Christmas.

But I usually have like a couple hours a day

where I can like concentrate and read stuff.

And so I have basically

...