Steven Pinker

Our TV screens may be full of news about war and crime, but this masks a fall in historical terms in the number of violent deaths that’s nothing short of astonishing, says Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker. He tells us how and why this happened. (This interview was updated 17 December, 2020, to include books that have come out since it was published in 2011)

Modern society depends on trust more than we realise, and the basis for that trust is security. The trick, says the security guru, is preserving the forces that allow us to trust one another, while also knowing who not to trust.

It’s hard to understand many things about the world around us without a knowledge of the unconscious workings of the brain, argues the New York Times columnist David Brooks. He chooses five accessible books that’ll get you into neuroscience as well.

Most grammar books say ‘do this, and that’s that.’ But who says? How do they know? Real rules are grounded in the facts of actual standard usage. Here are five grammar books that show their work, telling you not only what to do but why, and how they know. Accept nothing less.

Baruch Spinoza thought reason could do it all, but experience tells us otherwise. Philosopher Rebecca Goldstein recommends both the books that made the best case for reason—and the most successful critiques.

Linguistically, swear words are unique—they can shock and offend, are processed differently in the brain, and saying them may allow you to withstand pain for longer. But where do they get their distinctive power? And how has this changed over time? Melissa Mohr gives us a badmouthed tour of the best fucking books on swearing . . .

The wordsmith and cultural historian debunks common myths about English, recommends the smartest writing about words, and says apostrophes are “orthographic squiggles” not worth fighting for.

Human traits are a product of natural selection—and the story of how we have evolved explains many of our psychological quirks today. Chris Paley, author of Unthink and Beyond Bad, recommends five of the best evolutionary psychology books—and explains how experimental data might finally get to the bottom of the question of free will.

The head of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University tells us about myths surrounding autism and Asperger’s, and what inspired his own research into the subject

Does the world look different in other languages? Are there words that cannot be translated? Is it OK to say disinterested when you mean uninterested? Lane Greene, who writes the Economist’s “Johnson” column on language, dispels some of the popular but misguided ideas many of us have about language.

Autism expert Simon Baron Cohen tells us about the links between empathy and language, and says our acts of cruelty to one another have at their root a failure to empathise.