Steven Pinker, the cognitive scientist and linguist, argues that despite the impression left by two world wars and nightly news coverage of atrocities, humanity is living through the most peaceful period in its history. He walks through centuries of data on homicide rates, war deaths, and everyday cruelty, from medieval torture and public executions to twentieth-century genocides, showing the trend lines bending sharply downward relative to population. Pinker addresses the obvious objection head-on: how a species that just endured history's bloodiest decades can also be its most peaceful, resolving it by comparing rates rather than raw totals. He offers explanations for the decline, touching on the spread of government authority, commerce, literacy, and changing norms around empathy and reason. The talk moves briskly through charts and historical examples rather than dwelling on any single case, building toward his broader claim that our sense of a violent present is a product of vivid memory and media exposure rather than the actual statistical record.