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The Lavin Agency Speakers Bureau

A speakers bureau that represents the best original thinkers,
writers, and doers for speaking engagements.

Steven Pinker

Common knowledge—what we assume everyone knows—can help us make sense of life's biggest social, political, and economic questions.

One of the world's top public intellectuals | Author of Rationality, Enlightenment Now, and When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . . | Harvard Professor

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Chalking It Up to The Blank Slate

Lavin Exclusive Speaker

How do we know what everyone else is thinking? And how do our own thoughts about other people’s thoughts affect our everyday lives? Leading intellectual Steven Pinker, author of Bill Gates’s favorite book of all time, asks the big questions about human progress and sets out, in public, to answer them. In his latest book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . ., he reveals the truth behind common knowledge—the way we think about each other’s thoughts—and how it can help us make sense of many of life’s enigmas, from financial bubbles to social media mobs. Bill Gates calls it “one of the most insightful books I’ve read about what makes us human and how we understand each other.” Named by TIME as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World, Pinker draws on his incredible body of work, including the celebrated books Enlightenment Now and The Better Angels of Our Nature, to offer fascinating talks on who we are and where we’re going.

“Enlightenment Now is not only the best book Pinker’s ever written. It’s my new favorite book of all time.”— Bill Gates on Enlightenment Now

A provocative speaker, much in demand, Steven Pinker is a cognitive scientist who has been named by TIME as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. His keynotes have helped millions demystify the science behind human language, thought, and action. Pinker is a Harvard professor, a TED speaker, and a bestselling author, twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Highly respected in the scientific community, his work and opinions are extensively covered in the mainstream media, and have won a wide general audience.

His latest book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . ., is a riveting look into what we understand as common knowledge, and how they can help us make sense of topics as varied as financial bubbles and crashes, revolutions, diplomacy, social media mobs, and even the awkwardness of a first date. Steven offers fascinating and vital insight into the paradoxes of human behavior, and invites us to understand the ways we try to get into each other’s heads and the effect that has on our social, political, and economic lives. Jonathan Haidt, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Anxious Generation, writes that “Reading Steven Pinker is always a delight. If Pinker’s ideas become common knowledge, we’ll be far better equipped to handle the massive disruptions already arriving in our hyper-networked world.”

In his previous book, Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters, Pinker argues that we fail to take advantage of the most powerful tools of reasoning discovered by some of our best thinkers: logic, critical thinking, probability, correlation and causation. These tools are not a standard part of our educational curricula, and have never been presented clearly and entertainingly in a single book—until now. Recently named one of Amazon’s best science books of the year, Rationality is an enriching, inspiring, and captivating new read on how to harness rationality to improve our personal lives and advance social progress.

In his earlier book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress Pinker argued that, despite fear-mongering and political upheaval, the world is getting better: peace, prosperity, knowledge and happiness are on the rise. “The world is getting better, even if it doesn’t always feel that way,” wrote Bill Gates, in a review of the book. “I’m glad we have brilliant thinkers like Steven Pinker to help us see the big picture. Enlightenment Now is not only the best book Pinker’s ever written. It’s my new favorite book of all time.” The New York Times included the book in its year-end list of 100 Notable Books, and NPR and Esquire both named it as one of the best books of the year. Enlightenment Now was the follow-up to The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Had Declined, which was a #1 Amazon bestseller. Keynotes based on that book inspired audiences worldwide with its core message that, if you look at the facts, we are living in the most peaceful human era ever. The talks pointed the way to a better future for humankind.

Pinker’s other bestselling books include The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (“Required reading.” – Los Angeles Times) and How The Mind Works (“A model of scientific writing: erudite, witty, and clear.” – New York Review of Books). Pinker’s acclaimed “language” series includes The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language, Words and Rules, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, as well as The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century.

A native of Montreal, Steven Pinker is Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. Previously, he taught at Stanford and at MIT. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has won a number of teaching prizes, and his research on visual cognition and the psychology of language has received numerous awards, including the Troland Award from the National Academy of Sciences.

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Speech Topics

Politics & Society

When Everyone Knows That Everyone KnowsCommon Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life

We think about each other’s thoughts all the time, experiencing it as an awareness that’s public or “out there.” We call it “common knowledge”—and it has a momentous impact on our social, political, and economic lives.

In this riveting talk, Steven Pinker takes us into what we understand about how everyone else thinks. He shows how common knowledge is necessary for social coordination: how it helps us do everything from driving on the same side of the road to forming enduring friendships. And he reveals how it can give us insight into many of life’s enigmas, like financial bubbles and crashes, revolutions that come out of nowhere, and the eruption of social media shaming mobs. Along the way, he answers questions like:

Why do people hoard toilet paper at the first sign of an emergency?
Why, in American presidential primary voting, do citizens typically select the candidate they believe is preferred by others rather than their favorite?
Why does everyone agree that if we were completely honest all the time, life would be unbearable?

This talk, from one of the greatest public intellectuals of our age, is broadly applicable and widely fascinating for audiences of any kind.