EPISODE · Sep 29, 2025 · 42 MIN
Steven Pinker on common knowledge
from Start the Week · host BBC Radio 4
The experimental cognitive psychologist and popular science writer, Steven Pinker delves into the intricacies of human interactions in his latest book, ‘When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...: Common Knowledge and the Science of Harmony, Hypocrisy and Outrage’. From avoiding the elephant in the room to the outing of the emperor’s new clothes, Pinker reveals the paradoxes of human behaviour. Common knowledge can bind people and communities together in a shared purpose, but Aleks Krotoski, the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s The Artificial Human and The Digital Human, journeys to the fringes of human endeavour in The Immortalists. There, Silicon Valley tech billionaires are using their wealth to focus on their own futures, attempting to disrupt and defy their own mortality.How people behave to strangers and how much they’re willing to spend to help them, is at the heart of David Edmonds’s biography of the philosopher Peter Singer. Death in a Shallow Pond considers Singer’s most famous thought experiment and his contention that we’re morally obliged to come to the aid of those less fortunate if we can. It’s a practical philosophy that has divided opinion, but also inspired a new movement of effective altruism.Producer: Katy Hickman Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez
What this episode covers
The experimental cognitive psychologist and popular science writer, Steven Pinker delves into the intricacies of human interactions in his latest book, ‘When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...: Common Knowledge and the Science of Harmony, Hypocrisy and Outrage’. From avoiding the elephant in the room to the outing of the emperor’s new clothes, Pinker reveals the paradoxes of human behaviour. Common knowledge can bind people and communities together in a shared purpose, but Aleks Krotoski, the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s The Artificial Human and The Digital Human, journeys to the fringes of human endeavour in The Immortalists. There, Silicon Valley tech billionaires are using their wealth to focus on their own futures, attempting to disrupt and defy their own mortality.How people behave to strangers and how much they’re willing to spend to help them, is at the heart of David Edmonds’s biography of the philosopher Peter Singer. Death in a Shallow Pond considers Singer’s most famous thought experiment and his contention that we’re morally obliged to come to the aid of those less fortunate if we can. It’s a practical philosophy that has divided opinion, but also inspired a new movement of effective altruism.Producer: Katy Hickman Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez
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Steven Pinker on common knowledge
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