In his bestseller “The Better Angels of Our Nature,” Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker described the decline of violence in the world. In his new book, “Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress,” Pinker builds a persuasive case that life is getting better across a host of measures.

Looking at the news, we often think things are getting worse and worse. However, in your book, you make the powerful and deeply researched argument that things are actually getting better. Can you please explain this conundrum?

Pinker: Think about it: If you arrived in a new city and saw that it was raining, would you conclude, “The rain has gotten worse”? How could you tell, unless you knew how much it had rained before that day? Yet people read about a war or terrorist attack this morning and conclude that violence is increasing, which is just as illogical. In fact, rates of war have been roller-coastering downward since 1946, rates of American homicide have plunged since 1992, and rates of disease, starvation, extreme poverty, illiteracy and dictatorship, when they are measured by a constant yardstick, have all decreased — not to zero, but by a lot.

But even if civilization is improving from a birds-eye view over the long-term, things can get still worse for many years in the short-term, right?

Pinker: Progress is not the same as magic. There are always blips and setbacks, and sometimes horrific lurches, like the Spanish flu pandemic, World War II and the post-1960s crime boom. Progress takes place when the setbacks are fewer, less severe or stop altogether. Clearly we have to be mindful of the worst possible setback, namely nuclear war, and of the risk of permanent reversals, such as the worst-case climate change scenarios. … Of course life is bad for those people with the worst possible lives, and that will be true until the rates of war, crime, disease and poverty are exactly zero. The point is that there are far fewer people living in nightmares of war and disease.

)Here's how Hope Hicks explained her decision to resign as White House communications director, according to The New York Times' Maggie Haberman, who broke the story:
"She told colleagues that she had accomplished what she felt she could with a job that made her one of the most powerful people in Washington, and that there would never be a perfect moment to leave."

Simply put: This is a White House in crisis. Hicks' departure adds to that sense that the sky is falling around and on Trump. There's no spin to put out that. You can't polish a turd. And when you try to, it tends to get all over the place.

According to the United Nations, via www.waterless.com, more than 1 billion people lack access to fresh, drinkable water. Also, nearly 3 billion people have no access to water at least one month per year.

The UN estimates global demand for water will exceed supply in 2030, meaning more cities will mirror Cape Town, South Africa, which has essentially run out of water.

The following is a list of the seven cities likely to run out of water by 2030:

1. Sao Paulo, Brazil
2. Beijing, China
3. Moscow, Russia
4. Cairo, Egypt
5. Mexico City, Mexico
6. London, England
7. Miami, Florida

1. Get Support

2. Incorporate Basic Exercise

3. Get Plenty of Rest

4. Stock Up on Healthy Foods and Liquids

5. Attend Detox

The band is primarily notable today for their perceived ineptitude at playing conventional rock music; the band was described in one Rolling Stone article as "sounding like lobotomized Trapp Family singers."

On the topic of the album, Cub Koda wrote, "There's an innocence to these songs and their performances that's both charming and unsettling. Hacked-at drumbeats, whacked-around chords, songs that seem to have little or no meter to them ... being played on out-of-tune, pawn-shop-quality guitars all converge, creating dissonance and beauty, chaos and tranquility, causing any listener coming to this music to rearrange any pre-existing notions about the relationships between talent, originality, and ability. There is no album you might own that sounds remotely like this one."