167. The Secret of Humanity? It’s Common Know...

She’s best known for playing neurobiologist Amy Farrah Fowler on The Big Bang Theory, but the award-winning actress has a rich life outside of her acting career, as a teacher, mother — and a real-life neuroscientist. Steve Levitt tries to learn more about this one-time academic a ...  Show more

By cataloging the steady march of human progress, the Harvard psychologist and linguist has become a very public intellectual. But the self-declared “polite Canadian” has managed to enrage people on opposite ends of the political spectrum. Steve Levitt tries to understand why. Th ...  Show more

Steven Pinker is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author and Harvard College Professor. One of the world's leading authorities on language and the mind, he is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. P ...  Show more

Are things really as bad as they seem? Has Gen Z given up hope for the world? And why was the father of positive psychology a lifelong pessimist?

Getting along in society requires that we mostly adhere to certainly shared norms and customs. Often it's not enough that we all know what the rules are, but also that everyone else knows the rules, and that they know that we know the rules, and so on. Philosophers and game th ...

Common knowledge is the secret engine of social life, letting us coordinate everything from meet-ups to markets to international diplomacy. In this fascinating talk, experimental cognitive scientist Steven Pinker explores its momentous impact, threading together stories of why ...