CBC Digital Archives

Writers & Company: Richard Dawkins on Darwinism

Highlighting books and their authors, new works and old classics, fiction and non-fiction, the CBC Radio program Writers and Company is devoted to the world of reading. Hosted by thoughtful and knowledgeable broadcaster Eleanor Wachtel since its creation in 1991, the program features the best in the written word from Canada and around the world.

The subject of Darwinist evolution seemed seemed unlikely to send books flying off the shelves, but Oxford University biologist Richard Dawkins accomplished just that with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. The book was translated into at least 11 languages and launched Dawkins as a writer of books about science for a popular audience. In this 1996 interview for CBC Radio's Writers and Company, Dawkins says the "complexity and beauty of life" inspires him as a scientist and a writer.
• In this clip, Dawkins says he is troubled by "an alarming upsurge of fundamentalist creationism" in the United States. Ten years later, he wrote The God Delusion, another bestseller, in which he argues that religious belief in a supernatural creator is false. On a scale of one to seven, from total certainty that God exists to total certainty that there is no God, Dawkins rates himself a six: "I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable," he writes, "and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there."
Medium: Radio
Program: Writers & Company
Broadcast Date: Nov. 10, 1996
Guest(s): Richard Dawkins
Host: Eleanor Wachtel
Duration: 47:56
Photo: Canadian Press image archive

Last updated: March 20, 2012

Page consulted on August 21, 2012

All Clips from this Topic

Related Content

Writers & Company: A portrait of Henry James

Three literary experts on the works of Henry James explore recent film adaptations of his nove...

Writers & Company: Pat Barker's Regeneration

The author of a First World War trilogy takes inspiration from her grandfather's experience.

Writers & Company: Michael Ondaatje reads fro...

Novelist Michael Ondaatje reads from his Booker-winning The English Patient, now an O...

Writers & Company: Elie Wiesel, haunted by Au...

World-renowned author Elie Wiesel on his groundbreaking Holocaust memoir, Night, and ...

Writers & Company: Barbara Kingsolver goes ho...

The Kentucky-born author reads from a short story and a novel and talks about her own history.