Dr. Pinker translates his groundbreaking research into books and articles that are complex and thought-provoking, while still being accessible to the general reader. He is the author of the 2002 New York Times bestseller and Pulitzer Prize finalist The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. His earlier bestsellers include the 1998 Pulitzer finalist How The Mind Works; his 1994 classic, The Language Instinct; and the book popularizing his own research, Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language. His book, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, was released in September, 2007 to great acclaim.

A native of Montreal, Pinker received his BA from McGill University and his PhD in Psychology from Harvard, where he is currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology. Before assuming this endowed professorship at Harvard, he taught at Stanford and, for 21 years, at MIT. Pinker is also a fellow of several scholarly societies, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has also published countless academic and popular articles, including pieces in The New York Times, Nature, and TIME.

Pinker's research on visual cognition and the psychology of language has received numerous awards, including the Troland Award from the National Academy of Sciences and five prizes from the American Psychological Association. In addition to this recognition for his research, Pinker has won a number of teaching prizes, is included in Esquire's "Register of Outstanding Men and Women," and was named among Newsweek's "100 Americans for the Next Century."

Dr. Pinker's talks are brilliant and witty, laced with examples and illustrations that are both interesting and highly instructive. Able to provide non-specialists with a more profound understanding of the human mind, his lectures are perfect for any group that wants to get a peek into the science behind human thought and action.

In this lecture based of his new book, Steven Pinker shows how our words reflect the thoughts we think, the emotions we feel, and the relationship we have with one another. This sweeping and entertaining lecture ranges over a number of topics that lie at the core of our understanding of human nature but are also very much in the news.

Why do people frame their abstract ideas in concrete metaphors—and is skillful use of metaphor the key to winning elections? Why do people swear, and get upset when other people swear? And why do we veil our bribes, threats, and sexual come-ons in innuendo and euphemism, instead of blurting them out? As with the lectures based on his other books, Pinker covers profound topics in science and philosophy with a light touch and with deft use of examples from everyday speech and popular culture.

How does the mind work, and what consequences does it have for the ways we interact, agree and disagree, or develop tastes for some items and not for others? How do we understand one another, make decisions, and form opinions, as we navigate through the day-to-day world? World-renowned brain researcher Dr. Steven Pinker answers these, and other, fascinating questions, providing his audience with unique insight into why people do the things they do.

Dr. Pinker recognizes that, on the one hand, the mind is an engineering masterpiece: people can see, move, reason, and plan better than any foreseeable robot. On the other hand, the mind appears to be filled with quirks. He proposes that these puzzles can be answered by understanding the mind as a system of organs of computation, which allowed our foraging ancestors to deal with objects, tools, living things, and one another.