Why do humans engage in violence? Why do we cooperate in peace? How has violence changed over the course of human history? Are we living in unusually violent times? Steven Pinker presents the viewpoint that in fact violence has decreased over time because our peaceable motives have overridden our violent ones, and that media-driven illusions fool us into thinking that violence is constantly rising. This talk is part of the Survival symposium, a series of talks focusing on evolution and the challenges of building a better, safer and more survivable future. Watch more of the Survival symposium: http://bit.ly/2iKfYRi Subscribe to The Leakey Foundation channel: http://bit.ly/2iDR5GO Survival was presented by The Leakey Foundation in partnership with Harvard University's Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, NOVA, NOVA Labs, SMASH, and WGBH. Filmed on September 22, 2016, at the WGBH Yawkey Theater, Boston. About the speaker: Steven Pinker is a Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He is an experimental psychologist and one of the world’s foremost writers on language, mind, and human nature. He writes for publications such as the New York Times, Time and The Atlantic. Steven Pinker is the author of ten books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Stuff of Thought, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and most recently, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century.