“The Life Scientific” series at BBC Radio 4 highlights the life and thought of eminent scientists, often interviewing their friends and colleagues (I participated in one recently for Steve Jones). Tomorrow at 9 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. British time (4 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. U.S. Eastern time), the next show will feature Richard Dawkins (note that the following ad omits the evening broadcast). You can listen to the show here live, and it will be archived soon thereafter.
Richard may talk a bit about the new book he’s writing, which is an autobiography/memoir.
I hope he gets asked about the sad fact that the book continues to be misunderstood. Joan Roughgarden recently channeled Mary Midgley,
“Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene naturalizes Ayn Rand’s objectivist ethics and provides a seamless transition from evolutionary biology to normative human conduct…”
Roughgarden’s piece is depressingly bad:
“Sexual selection’s premise of near-universal sex roles during mating has met many counterexamples including species with multiple genders, homosexuality, gender switching and sex-role reversal.”
I have never seen sexual selection described as “near-universal”. To be important, as it surely is, it doesn’t have to be.
Jim Al-Khalili is an excellent science educator, he’s done some wonderful documentaries. Looking forward to hearing this podcast! I’ve listened to most of the Life Scientific series and they’re very good.
Yep … these are all podcast-able.
I checked the time zone difference then waited to listen only to find out they had daylight savings and I was an hour too late… It’s a such a stupid concept.
Catch again tonight 9.30 BST 8.30 GMT
Thanks, but it was available to download so I’ll listen to it on my own time. Also I won’t be at university then and my home internet is not really fast enough for streaming content.
I was surprised to hear Richard Dawkins saying that he had spent years trying to understand the evolutionary psychology for the belief in God.
Surely it’s obvious:
“The Selfish Gene is responsible for The God Delusion.”
For those who have an iPhone or iPad, you can download this through the ‘Podcast’ app (relatively new). So much easier than sitting in front of the computer.
http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/26/3118820/apple-podcasts-app-release
Both the iPad and iPhone gives me a rich podcast life.
Hate to say it that I’m coming round to RD’s way of thinking about the God Delusion, but I dont think I could be so zealous in my views. Oddly I’ve become more spiritual but also more aetheist since studying a short course in the origins of human behaviour (which I’d recommend to everyone). I’m fascinated by the nurture vs nature debate and believe there is more to be done to understand personality traits encoded within human DNA – aferall we’re really the most ridiculous type of animal there is on this planet. NB would love the aquatic ape hypothesis to be proven that would turn everything on its head again!