All in the Mind - Pinker on Words, Lakoff on Brains and Politics

All in the Mind is doing an encore of the show with Stephen Pinker talking about The Stuff of Thought, "his latest forensic excavation of language and its evolutionary delights."

The Stuff of Thought with Steven Pinker

Listen Now - 16082008 |

Why do we often avoid speaking our mind? Does swearing have an evolutionary function? What do linguistic taboos do to your brain? How are new words born? Acclaimed author of The Language Instinct and How the Mind Works, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker is a self-confessed verbivore. To him language offers a window into the human mind and how it works. He joins Natasha Mitchell in a feature interview to argue there's nothing mere about semantics.

Natasha Mitchell also takes a look at the press response to George Lakoff's new book - The Political Mind: Why You Can’t Understand 21st-Century Politics With an 18th-Century Brain.

Go read what she has found.

Tags: Natasha Mitchell, All in the Mind, Stephen Pinker, The Stuff of Thought, George Lakoff, The Political Mind, Why You Can’t Understand 21st-Century Politics With an 18th-Century Brain, Psychology, Politics, language, neuroscience