Fred Pinto's Substack

Will Race Ever Stop Dividing Us?

“Don’t use the lines about I have a dream,” Wyatt Walker, then an adviser to Dr. Martin Luther King, is said to have told him, moments before his famous…

Sep 18 • 

Fred Pinto

May 2025

Steven Pinker’s Case for Rational Optimism

Research shows that human beings have an inborn negativity bias: we tend to learn from, and use negative information far more than positive information…

May 29 • 

Fred Pinto

2

April 2025

Why Do Generations Clash? A Conversation With Social Psychologist and Author Dr. Jean Twenge

For most of history, the realm of culture changed very slowly. The memes we shared – not cute social media gifs, but the “units of cultural…

Apr 10 • 

Fred Pinto

March 2025

I Move, Therefore I Am: A Conversation With Neuroscientist and Philosopher Dr. Michael Mannino

Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” is probably one of the most famous lines in the history of Western ideas. Convinced of the need to “doubt…

Mar 7 • 

Fred Pinto

January 2025

The Science of Optimal Experience: A Conversation With NYT Best-selling author Steven Kotler

We’re all familiar with the glib screensaver dream: “a hammock on the beach, between two palm trees, cocktail in hand, looking out over the turquoise…

Jan 23 • 

Fred Pinto

2

December 2024

The Practical Learning Playbook, With Author, Podcaster and Serial Entrepreneur James Altucher

Mark Twain once wrote, “I’ve never let schooling interfere with my education.”In that spirit, some of our most successful entrepreneurs were either bad…

Dec 10, 2024 • 

Fred Pinto

1

October 2024

Building Powerful Teams: A Conversation with VaynerX’s Chief Heart Officer, Claude Silver

It seemed like too simple a question.Claude Silver had been toiling hard for years at the tireless grind of modern advertising.One day, she realized…

Oct 23, 2024 • 

Fred Pinto

1

1

September 2024

On Which “God” Do We Disagree? A Conversation With Iconographer and Religious Thinker Jonathan Pageau

When he was 5 years old, my son looked up to me after a bedtime story, and asked me: “Dad, does God exists?” If he hadn’t added the “s” at the end, I…

Sep 13, 2024 • 

Fred Pinto

1

1

June 2024

Will Diversity Tear Us Apart? A Conversation With Psychology Researcher Dr. Daniel A. Yudkin

“Hell,” Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote, “is other people.” The psychology literature on relationships confirms they can make life miserable. Forget enemies…

Jun 27, 2024

1

May 2024

The Price of Truth, With Pulitzer-Prize Winning Journalist, Author and Lawyer Glenn Greenwald

The truth can be an elusive thing. From early on, we learn that it’s easier to get things wrong than to get them right. When we understand something, we…

May 15, 2024

3

April 2024

Can Democracy Become More Rational? A Conversation with Author and Researcher Dr. Bjørn Lomborg

There’s something unmistakably toxic in today’s politics. Pick the issue, and its online offshoots are likely to be oversimplified, black-and-white…

Apr 2, 2024

1

March 2024

Optimizing Our Mental Frames: A Conversation With Unicorn Entrepreneur and Founder of Impact Theory, Tom Bilyeu

There’s a word that gets thrown around so much these days, many falsely assume it’s a flakey term straight out of the New Age book section. The word is…

Mar 5, 2024 • 

Fred Pinto

1