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Start the Week: Rationality in an Irrational Age

Rationality in an Irrational Age

BBC Radio 4 - Start the Week, Rationality in an Irrational Age

Amol Rajan talks about rationality with Steven Pinker, Amia Srinivasan and Irving Finkel.

Amol Rajan talks to Steven Pinker about rationality and why it matters. Amia Srinivasan considers the politics of sex and Irving Finkel embarks on a quest for ancient ghosts.

In his new book, Rationality, the experimental psychologist Steven Pinker argues that human beings have the power to think, act and behave rationally, if given the right tools to do so. He asks why rationality so often plays second fiddle to opinion, bias and prejudice.  And he believes that in order to ensure our survival as a species we need to learn how to apply rational thought to our daily lives.

Our attitudes towards sexual desire may not always be regarded as rational.  Amia Srinivasan is Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford University and in ‘The Right to Sex’ she considers this universal topic from a modern feminist perspective – a collision of pleasure, ethics and gender politics.

If physical relationships are often the result of irrational decisions, then the belief in ghosts takes the human scope for irrationality to a whole new level.  In The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies, British Museum curator Irving Finkel goes right back to the beginning and shows how the Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians believed in the spirit world and considers why this enduring belief in ghosts is something that spans diverse cultures and historical periods.

Producer: Natalia Fernandez

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