Professor Steven Pinker delivers the Gifford Lecture series entitled "The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and Humanity".

Contrary to the popular impression view that we are living in

extraordinarily violent times, rates of violence at all scales have been

in decline over the course of history. This lecture explores how this decline could

have happened despite the existence of a constant human nature.

conducts research on language and cognition, which has won prizes from

the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Institution of Great

Britain, the American Psychological Association, and the Cognitive

Neuroscience Society.

Recorded on Wednesday 29 May 2013 at McEwan Hall, the University of Edinburgh.