Steven Pinker at First Parish Church

Harvard Book Store welcomes Steven Pinker―Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, one of Time’s “100 Most Influential People in the World Today", and author of twelve books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Rationality―for a discussion of his new book When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . . : Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life.

There are two ticket options for this event. Tickets go on sale Monday, July 28th at 9am. Following the presentation there will be a book signing.

1. Book-Included Ticket: Includes admission for one and one hardcover copy of When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows pre-signed by Steven Pinker.2. Admission-Only Ticket: Includes admission for one.

Note: Books bundled with tickets may only be picked up at the venue the night of the event, and cannot be picked up in-store beforehand. Ticket holders who purchased a book-included ticket and are unable to attend the event will be able to pick up their book at Harvard Book Store up to 30 days following the event. This offer expires after 30 days. Please note we cannot guarantee signed copies will be available to ticket holders who do not attend the event.

From one of the world’s most celebrated intellectuals, a brilliantly insightful work that explains how we think about each other’s thoughts about each other’s thoughts, ad infinitum. It sounds impossible, but Steven Pinker shows that we do it all the time. This awareness, which we experience as something that is public or “out there,” is called common knowledge, and it has a momentous impact on our social, political, and economic lives.Common knowledge is necessary for coordination, for making arbitrary but complementary choices like driving on the right, using paper currency, and coalescing behind a political leader or movement. It’s also necessary for social coordination: everything from rendezvousing at a time and place to speaking the same language to forming enduring relationships of friendship, romance, or authority. Humans have a sixth sense for common knowledge, and we create it with signals like laughter, tears, blushing, eye contact, and blunt speech.But people also go to great lengths to avoid common knowledge—to ensure that even if everyone knows something, they can’t know that everyone else knows they know it. And so we get rituals like benign hypocrisy, veiled bribes and threats, sexual innuendo, and pretending not to see the elephant in the room.Pinker shows how the hidden logic of common knowledge can make sense of many of life’s enigmas: financial bubbles and crashes, revolutions that come out of nowhere, the posturing and pretense of diplomacy, the eruption of social media shaming mobs and academic cancel culture, the awkwardness of a first date. Artists and humorists have long mined the intrigues of common knowledge, and Pinker liberally uses their novels, jokes, cartoons, films, and sitcom dialogues to illuminate social life’s tragedies and comedies. Along the way he answers questions like:

• Why do people hoard toilet paper at the first sign of an emergency?
• Why are Super Bowl ads filled with ads for crypto?
• Why, in American presidential primary voting, do citizens typically select the candidate they believe is preferred by others rather than their favorite?
• Why did Russian authorities arrest a protester who carried a blank sign?
• Why is it so hard for nervous lovers to say goodbye at the end of a phone call?

Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He has won many prizes for his teaching, his research on language, cognition, and social relations, and his twelve books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Rationality. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, and one of Time’s “100 Most Influential People in the World Today.”

Masks are encouraged but not required for this event.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

First Parish Church, 1446 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, United States