Details

Do differences in personality and achievement come from differences in experience, differences in inheritance, or both? Are parents able to shape their children? How can we connect social and cultural explanations with biological and psychological ones? Is the impulse to create art, for example, really just a mating tactic? What can writers and artists tell us about human nature, and the universal qualities of the human species? In an exclusive UK appearance, Steven Pinker talks to Ian McEwan. Pinker is the Peter de Florez Professor of Psychology at MIT; his most recent book, The Blank Slate: the modern denial of human nature, (Penguin) is out this month. McEwan is the prize-winning author of numerous books, most recently Atonement.