What Evolution Really Tells Us About Life | A Conversation with Steven Pinker

In this episode of The Poetry of Reality, Richard Dawkins engages in an insightful conversation with Steven Pinker about evolution, his motivation for writing The Blind Watchmaker, and a breakdown of his latest book, The Genetic Book of the Dead

Steven Pinker is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.

This was filmed in Boston, Massachusetts, as part of Richard Dawkins' tour.

[charlieanyama]

Richard Dawkins, my fulltime best atheist who has taught me to question EVERYTHING and seek for EVIDENCE ❤

[docjaramillo]

Kind, wise, knowledgeable and rational. More of this please and thank you. The boldness of these great thought leaders is so refreshing

[marjanavelkovrh]

Dear Richard Dawkins your message in yours books are very healthy for mental health, It keeps mental in good shape and all the rest follows. Love from Ljubljana. And from hreat,

[agaperion]

It seems this comment section needs a dissenting voice so I'll go ahead and say: I prefer the more conversational style of the interaction rather than it being a strict interview in which Dawkins speaks the majority of the time in response to short questions from Pinker. Contrary to some other people here, I don't think Pinker spoke too much. Also, I'd point out that Pinker referred to himself as an interlocutor, not an interviewer.

[gmathewn]

Two wonderful intellectuals and communicators. I can listen to them all day.

[johnnywatkins]

A few years ago a conversation between these two would have had hundreds of thousands of views by now

[kimanilumsden]

This was Pinker’s lecture on the ideas of Richard Dawkins. I couldn’t get to the end. It was too hard to see Dawkins and not hear him.

[Denverspirit]

are the chairs huge or are the people tiny ?

[unclerhombus]

Steven Pinker is a long-worded guy. I wanted to hear Richard speak more.

[John-qqj]

I was at this show. So excited to hear Richard Dawkins but Steven Pinker just kept talking incessantly and rather than ask Dawkins about a topic went on and on about how he understood it and how he interpreted it and hardly gave Dawkins a word in edgewise

[KrisAlHinnawi]

An illuminating conversation..I read most of Dawkin's books and I always have thirst to read more..Keep enlightening minds...

[seaglider]

Two of my favourite Intellectuals, I love listening to and reading their work. The question "do you wish religion never existed?" is malformed. It is like wondering if you wish we'd understood genetics, biochemistry and physics from the beginning of humanity. It is not possible for us to be born with scientific knowledge and it may have been inevitable that we tried to answer what is happening and why we exist, through religion. We don't know but we can hope that the sway of religion dies off as soon as possible.

[НереальнаяАвстралия]

I love them both! Such a reviving conversation.

[johnbush]

I enjoyed Stephen Pinkers contribution to the conversation. Their minds fuse ideas well. I dont agree with the people complaining

[tow.JanWinnicki]

Dawkins, as always, concise, eloquent, extremely patient and polite. Pinker, on the other hand, is the epitome of the Harvard scholar. Unnecessarily verbose, self-edifying, and grandiose. Serwus!

[j-md-be]

Indeed many, myself included, had the same epiphany regarding Richard Dawkins and Gould.

[davidanderson]

My ultimate perfect dinner party guest list. Thanks guys! D.A. NYC

[FilipeBrasAlmeida]

Fantastic conversation. Knowledge, wisdom, insight, experience, humanism, and perhaps most exciting of all, outstanding use of the English language.

[jakec]

The discussion from 1:27:22 to 1:30:45 is fascinating.

[hussainjohn]

Both are prominent, and profound . both help me to think beyond known.