The Poetry of Reality with Richard Dawkins

The inaugural episode of #ThePoetryOfReality is finally here! Join me & Ricky Gervais, actor, writer, irreverent comedian & poignant tragedian. CFI gave him the 2019 Richard Dawkins Award. Then I had an on-stage conversation with him & Richard Wiseman, psychologist, comedian & conjuror. Lots of laughs, lots to think about. See for yourself.

This is Christopher Hitchens's last interview. An abridged transcript was published in New Statesman at the time.

Richard Dawkins is in conversation with the host of Uncomfortable Conversations, Josh Szeps, in this episode of The Poetry Of Reality. Set on a stage in the heart of Brisbane, Australia, this exclusive chat flows through a string of riveting subjects, from the wonders of the natural world, and our relatives in the chain of evolution, to how science is taught in schools, religion's hold on people's lives, and the discernment of truth in the age of misinformation. Sprinkled with great humour, wit and courage, this is a discussion you won't want to miss out on.

Here is my conversation with Helen J on 'The Poetry of Reality', tackling the influence of gender ideology on society, the ideological lens, and its implications for scientific facts.

Is white privilege the modern day Original Sin? How is mass denial about the truth of gender, any different from Catholic transubstantiation? Is woke culture today's dogmatic religious mob?

Join me and Dr Peter Boghossian as we explore these questions and more in another episode of The Poetry Of Reality.

What is life? What came before the Big Bang? Why is natural selection so inherently cruel? How does one find meaning? Join Richard Dawkins in this Q&A with Taryn Southern, where he answers all your burning questions.

The origin of our universe is one of the greatest mysteries we face. Why is there something rather than nothing? How did we come to exist in a world with such precise laws of nature?

How we answer these questions determines everything, from the meaning of our lives to the secrets of our futures.

This episode of The Poetry Of Reality features Jack Symes in conversation with Richard Dawkins, joined by Jessica Frazier speaking on Hinduism, Silvia Jonas speaking on Jewish philosophy, and Richard Swinburne defending Christianity.

In this episode of The Poetry Of Reality, we sit in on an engrossing conversation between Richard Dawkins and Peter Singer on stage in Melbourne, Australia.

Peter Singer is a moral philosopher, known for his work in bioethics and being one of the intellectual founders of the modern animal rights movement.

He and Dawkins discuss everything from nature and evolution, to god and ethics, through the lens of their work as prolific authors and discoverers of truth. Tune in to listen to two great thinkers explore rich questions, around the survival of genes and human altruism, the suffering native to nature, reason and its application to morality, the role of design in the universe, and the meaning behind pain and consciousness.

I've long been wrongly accused of Islamophobia. This episode explains what I'm really phobic about.

In this episode I go beyond the abstract to the appalling treatment of Rana Ahmad, a brave young woman from Saudi Arabia. A student of physics, she became an atheist and had to flee from her family. She found refuge in Germany and published a book, Women Aren't Allowed to Dream, which became a Spiegel bestseller. She bravely speaks out about the dangers in the Muslim world faced by those accused of apostasy. In this episode I interview her and am deeply moved by her courage.

In February of this year, I toured Australia and New Zealand, being interviewed on stage by a different interviewer in each of six cities. One memorable stop was Perth, where I was interviewed by Tom Nash. I was touched that he began by asking me about my relationship with my beloved mentor, John Michael Cullen before Michael moved from Oxford to Australia.

During the interview with Tom, we discussed a great variety of topics including dogs, peacocks, memes, extraterrestrial life, and what is a woman?

Break the Science Barrier is a TV documentary that I presented on Channel 4 in 1996. It argues for the importance, for society, of scientific ways of thinking. In it, I interviewed David Attenborough, Alec Jeffreys, who discovered DNA fingerprinting, and Douglas Adams, who gave a wonderful impromptu eulogy for science. I also interviewed a man who was wrongly convicted of murder because none of the lawyers, on either side, knew anything about science. The program ends on a more positive note – what I later came to call Science in the Soul.

This episode features a conversation I had with Paula Kirby at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in Scotland, tackling themes of life as we know it - how it came to be on earth, and where else it may occur in our universe. 

We mused on the likelihood of alien lifeforms appearing god-like to humans, the probability of there being multiple versions of us in parallel universes, and other topics arising.

We live in a world that is bordering on Orwellian, where a baying mob of zealots intimidates us against speaking the truth, where culture wars feature censorship and heresy hunting.

Professor Jordan Peterson posed a question to me: Does woke count as a religion?

The answer is yes, and here's why.

The Origins Project Foundation, in collaboration with Atheists UK, presented a conference in Birmingham, where I had the pleasure of interviewing the founder himself, Lawrence Krauss, distinguished physicist and a dear colleague.

In this conversation, What resonated most strongly during our conversation was our shared belief in the transformative power of science to dispel ignorance and fear. Science is not merely a discipline but a beacon of light, guiding us out of the darkness of ignorance and towards a more enlightened, informed world.

I interviewed American biologist Jerry Coyne and author of 'Faith vs Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible' and 'Why Evolution Is True'.

We covered a myriad of controversial topics plaguing our world today: from the religious conflict in Gaza to modern-day struggles with freedom of speech, from the prospect of revolt against oppression to considering the demands of the Maori people, and also on affirmative action and the debate about race.

When language is warped to redefine "violence" as including the non-physical act of "misgendering" (Which I might see it as a mild discourtesy), yet excludes incitement to real violence, such as "If you see a TERF, punch them in the fucking face," and when obvious satire is characterized as bigotry, you have to wonder whether debate will be shackled not by fear of Big Brother or the Stasi, but by fear of each other. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This episode is the first of a series released in 1991 that pays homage to the scientist Michael Faraday who started the Christmas Lectures, making the wonders of science and the universe accessible to young people. The universe as we know it is 140 million centuries old, and our present century is a tiny spotlight in the ruler of time. We are lucky to be alive. I introduced an auditorium full of inquisitive young minds to this realization and more, on evolution, the purpose of human existence, and the breathtakingly magnificent creatures found in our world. With anecdotes, simple demonstrations, humor and role-play, we awakened our shared wonder about the natural world. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Michael Shermer is an American science writer, historian of science, and executive director of The Skeptics Society. He and I spoke about God, reason, morality, science and the future, in a good-humored discussion in Berlin, 2018, under the auspices of the German branch of the Richard Dawkins Foundation.

Climbing Mount Improbable is a 1996 popular science book by Richard Dawkins. The book is about probability and how it applies to the theory of evolution. It is designed to debunk claims by creationists about the probability of naturalistic mechanisms like natural selection.

Did you know the bee sees flowers in ultraviolet hues? The fourth part of the Christmas Lectures dives headfirst into the world from the perspective of animals, birds and insects. The idea that they all just exist for us humans is a myth. Are you curious how they actually experience the universe? How - much like the computer virus - they move with purpose and in perfect synchronicity. Indulge your curiosity and discover a whole new poetic perspective of the world.