logo
episode-header-image
Jan 2021
1h 14m

Can We Build a More Rational World?

YASCHA MOUNK
About this episode

Steven Pinker dares to believe that human beings are better off than ever before in human history. A world-renowned linguist, Pinker has dedicated his career to unveiling the ways by which we express our human nature through our language, behaviors, and beliefs. In an era often plagued by fatalism, Pinker maintains a radical and unwavering dedication to his belief in humanity's steady improvement.  

In this week's conversation, Yascha Mounk and Steven Pinker sit down to discuss why we need to look to "nature" as well as "nurture" to understand the human condition, how to build institutions untainted by human biases, and whether human beings are inherently irrational. 

Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone.

Email: goodfightpod@gmail.com

Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk

Website: http://www.persuasion.community

Podcast production by John T. Williams and Rebecca Rashid

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Up next
Aug 23
Why Do We Always Think We're Right? (Rerun)
What transforms reasonable people into an angry mob? Why are we so eager to dismiss those who disagree with us as inherently evil? These are questions which Jonathan Haidt has spent his career trying to answer. One of the world’s most influential social psychologists and a member ... Show More
50m 3s
Aug 20
Arlie Hochschild on Trump Voters, Old and New (Rerun)
Arlie Hochschild is an author and professor emerita of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her books include Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right and Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. In this week’s conversatio ... Show More
57m 11s
Aug 16
The Good Fight Club: Trump's Firings, Reinventing Liberalism, and the Rise of AI
In this week’s conversation, recorded live in D.C. at the “Liberalism for the 21st Century” conference, Yascha Mounk, Francis Fukuyama, Steven Pinker, and Sabina Ćudić discuss Trump’s firings and what this means for the civil service, how to build a positive case for liberalism, ... Show More
55m 25s
Recommended Episodes
Aug 2020
Rutger Bregman on Human Kindness in a Frightened World with Helen Lewis
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared ------ Human beings, we’re taught, are by nature selfish and governed by self-interest. From Hobbes’ theory about the state of nature to Richard Dawkins’ ‘selfish gene’, the roots of this belief are deeply ingrained ... Show More
1h 2m
Sep 2021
Salman Rushdie: Touchstones with Razia Iqbal
Acclaimed novelist Salman Rushdie joins journalist Razia Iqbal to take us back in time and discuss three influential touchstones of his life: a silver ingot engraved with an unpartitioned map of India, Bob Dylan’s ‘Mr. Tambourine man’, and James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’, a slightly int ... Show More
58m 47s
Mar 2023
Anaximander: the Ancient World’s Most Radical Scientific Thinker
Carlo Rovelli is one of the world’s best-known scientists. A theoretical physicist, his books have sold over two million copies around the world. He recently came to Intelligence Squared to talk about his favourite scientist, the little-known Greek philosopher Anaximander, whose ... Show More
58m 28s
May 2023
Can Neurotechnology Already Read Our Minds?
In this episode we bring you our event ‘The Battle for Your Brain’, recorded on the 2nd of May 2023.Imagine a world where people who suffer from epilepsy receive alerts moments before a seizure, where the average person can peer into their own mind to eliminate painful memories a ... Show More
38m 42s
Jul 2022
What if you could talk without speaking?
A groundbreaking new study claims to have found a way for a fully paralyzed person to communicate entirely via thought. But as we learned in an episode earlier this year, the scientists behind it have a checkered past.This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Matt Colle ... Show More
27m 4s
May 2023
Mehdi Hasan On How To Win Every Argument - Part 2
In this episode we bring you part two of our live event, 'How To Win Every Argument,' with renowned interviewer and debater Mehdi Hasan. Hosted by columnist, author, and broadcaster Jonathan Freedland, Hasan shares his tips and techniques for mastering the art of persuasion, whic ... Show More
26m 8s
Aug 2023
What We’ve Chosen to Forget (Baratunde Thurston)
“Energy doesn't dissipate. You know it moves, but it doesn't die. And the big bang that happened 15.7 billion years ago, all that energy is still here. We are it like we are a version of it. We are an instance of that near Infinite Force and every atom that existed then exists no ... Show More
1h 1m
Sep 2021
Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 118
Husband and Wife, Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, are evolutionary biologists who spend their time exploring human nature. They’re both on the political left, with careers as professors. In 2017, the two spoke out against radical orthodoxy at Evergreen State College which spar ... Show More
1h 12m
Jun 2023
How the Ocean Shapes Our World
To understand the world you need to understand the ocean. That’s the argument of physicist Helen Czerski who has long studied the complex ecosystems and forces that drive the ‘blue machine’ which covers 71% of our planet. Czerski joins Intelligence Squared to discuss her new book ... Show More
44m 50s