The Violence Paradox (BBC Four) | iPlayer
Blinded: Those Who Kill (BBC Four) | iPlayer
Ian Wright: Home Truths (BBC One) | iPlayer
Bloods (Sky One) | sky.com
Johnny Vegas: Carry On Glamping (Channel 4) | All 4
Feeling happier yet? I ask chiefly because some of us seem, on the cusp of release from lockdown, grimly resistant to mere possibilities of better things; of this vale of tears not, after all, being scheduled soon to tip from handcart to Styx. Granted, it all depends rather where you live, how wealthy you might be, and no one likes a smug smiler, but, sometimes, y’know… come
TV review: You may not believe it but the world is becoming less violent Professor Steven Pinker, author of The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined . (C) WGBH - Photographer: Jason Longo Billy Foley
Billy Foley
The Second World War was the most devastating conflict in the history of humanity.
Sixty-six million people lost their lives in six years, nuclear bombs eviscerated cities and around six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust.
At the battle of Stalingrad alone (one of the turning points in the war), almost two million are estimated to have perished in unimaginable suffering as two megalomaniacs fought for supremacy without consideration of the cost to their people.
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“It’s a sort of one-man Dragons’ Den – a Gordon Ramsay show, if Ramsay were effortlessly cool and into profit and advice instead of food and shouting.”
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Brain scans show that, when we tuck into a Mars bar or nibble on a square of Fruit & Nut, a specific region of our grey matter lights up with joy our pleasure centre.
Curiously, exactly the same area of our brains is stimulated when we carry out an act of calculated vengeance. The old saying, Revenge is sweet , is literally true, remarked psychologist Steven Pinker in his two-part study The Violence Paradox (BBC4).
With his greying rock-star curls and black leather jacket, Pinker looks like he d sacrifice all the letters after his name if only he could be the lead guitarist in a Led Zeppelin tribute band.