Steven Pinker and Ola Rosling in conversation

There are many reasons to believe our world is changing for the worse: the rise of authoritarian populism, the #MeToo scandal, the refugee crisis, the dangers of climate change. But two prominent writers and thinkers, Steven Pinker and Ola Rosling, have both written accounts passionately challenging our perceptions, defining the ways in which humans have always progressed and will continue to do so.

In Enlightenment Now, Pinker argues that things are better than they’ve ever been. He uses quantitative data and facts to make a case for the Enlightenment values of science, reason and humanism, and present the reasons we must defend them.

Ola Rosling, son of the late Hans Rosling, is co-author of Factfulness, which presents a radical new explanation of why the world is a much better place than we think, and why we are systematically wrong in our perceptions of global trends.

Join them as they urge us to have a more fact-oriented perspective of the world around us, defend Enlightenment values, and show us how and why the world really is becoming a better place.

Running time: 90 minutes, no interval.

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