Is the World Actually Getting … Better?

On this week's episode of my podcast, I Have to Ask, I spoke to Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard and author of the new book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. It follows up on his controversial best-seller The Better Angles of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, which offered a sweeping account of why Pinker believes the present is better than the past. Below is an edited transcript of the show. In it, we discuss why people have so much trouble with the notion of progress, whether global warming and nuclear weapons invalidate his thesis, and just how much of a threat Donald Trump and other demagogues are to our future. You can find links to every episode here; the entire audio interview is below. Please subscribe to I Have to Ask wherever you get your podcasts.