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Start giftingThink with Pinker
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreSteven Pinker's 12-part guide to thinking better
'A paean to human potential' The Telegraph
Cognitive scientist Professor Steven Pinker has spent his life thinking about thinking, and now he wants us to join him. With the aid of his critical thinking toolkit, he hopes to help us make smarter choices, become more rational, gain a greater understanding of the confused world we live in - and maybe even become better citizens.
In this fascinating series, produced in partnership with the Open University, he examines the different ways the human brain can be tripped up, from understanding probability to the difference between correlation and causation. Joined by an array of other prominent thinkers, he explores such diverse subjects as whether formulas can predict how well an athlete will perform, why it's dangerous to see patterns in the randomness of everyday experience and why so many of us believe in conspiracy theories.
He also considers the life and death choices made by judges and juries, ponders whether some thoughts are too evil to think, asks why making future predictions can be hard, and wonders: should we eat, drink and be merry, or make sacrifices now to benefit our future selves? And what can the game 'Rock, Paper, Scissors' teach us about preventing a climate catastrophe? In addition, he and his fellow experts discuss how we can stop the news distorting our understanding of the world - and why getting it right might mean admitting you're wrong...
Among his special guests are Tim Harford, presenter of BBC Radio 4's More or Less; Pulitzer Prize-winning author Siddartha Mukherjee; Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Professor Hannah Fry, co-presenter of Radio 4's popular science show The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry; Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics; and one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th Century, Elizabeth Loftus.
Production credits
Presented by Steven Pinker
Produced by Imogen Walford and Joe Kent
Edited by Emma Rippon
Think with Pinker is produced in partnership with The Open University
Episode 1: Think twice
Featuring: Sig Mejdal and Professor Ellen Peters
Episode 2: Methinks it is a weasel
Featuring: Charlie Munger and Tim Harford
Episode 3: In touch with reality
Featuring: Jonathan Rauch and Ellen Cushing
Episode 4: Don't expect a zebra
Featuring: Talithia Williams and Siddartha Mukherjee
Episode 5: You can't think that!
Featuring: Philip Tetlock and Sally Satel
Episode 6: Future you
Featuring: Dr Maria Kournikova and Bina Venkataraman
Episode 7: The climate game
Featuring: Bill Gates and Professor Hannah Fry
Episode 8: Rational soothsaying
Featuring: Barbara Mellers and Thomas Friedman
Episode 9: Nudges and noise
Featuring: Daniel Kahneman and Robyn Scott
Episode 10: Sentence first, verdict afterwards
Featuring: Judge Nancy Gertner and Elizabeth Loftus
Episode 11: Headlines and trendlines
Featuring: James Harding and Anna Rosling Rutland
Episode 12: Being right
Featuring: Julia Galef and Daniel Willingham
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4, 18 November 2021 - 3 February 2022
© 2022 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P) BBC Studios Distribution Ltd
Steven Pinker (Reader)
Steven Pinker is an experimental cognitive scientist. Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he has also taught at Stanford and MIT. He has won many prizes for his research, teaching, and his eleven books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Enlightenment Now. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, a recipient of nine honorary doctorates, one of Foreign Policy's 'World's Top 100 Public Intellectuals' and Time's '100 Most Influential People in the World Today'.
Steven Pinker is an experimental cognitive scientist. Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he has also taught at Stanford and MIT. He has won many prizes for his research, teaching, and his eleven books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Enlightenment Now. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, a recipient of nine honorary doctorates, one of Foreign Policy's 'World's Top 100 Public Intellectuals' and Time's '100 Most Influential People in the World Today'.
Bill Gates is a technologist, business leader, and philanthropist. In 1975, he cofounded Microsoft with his childhood friend Paul Allen. Today, he is cochair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he has spent more than twenty years working on global health and development issues, including pandemic prevention, disease eradication, and problems concerning water, sanitation, and hygiene. He has three children.
Hannah Fry is an Associate Professor in the mathematics of cities from University College London. She is also the author of The Mathematics of Love, The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus and Hello World and regularly writes for The New Yorker. In her day job she uses mathematical models to study patterns in human behaviour, and has worked with governments, police forces, health analysts and supermarkets. Her TED talks have amassed millions of views and she has fronted television documentaries for the BBC and PBS. With Adam she co-hosts the long-running science podcast, 'The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry' with the BBC.