I have long wanted to meet John McWhorter. He’s an extremely well-known public intellectual and opinion leader who, in my opinion, always talks sense. I have this rather eccentric idea that before becoming a public intellectual, you need to earn your credentials by having something important and interesting to be intellectual about, and John McWhorter qualif ... Show More
Oct 2025
If God designed it, why is it so badly built?
In this episode, Richard Dawkins revisits a 2012 conversation from the Great Minds program, produced by the Educational Broadcasting System in South Korea. He examines why life looks designed yet is full of flaws, showing how imperfections in nature reveal the true workings of ev ... Show More
13m 46s
Sep 2025
Why Ants Tear Off Their Own Wings
In this episode, Richard Dawkins revisits a 2012 conversation from the Great Minds program, produced by the Educational Broadcasting System in South Korea. Drawing on themes from his book Flights of Fancy, Dawkins explores humanity’s ancient dream of flight, the physics that gove ... Show More
15m 47s
Sep 2025
Why Ideas Spread Like Viruses
In this episode of The Poetry of Reality, Richard joins a live audience in Edinburgh to discuss his latest book, The Genetic Book of the Dead. In this wide-ranging conversation, he reflects on how DNA preserves the story of evolution, describing organisms as “living books” that r ... Show More
1h 15m
Sep 2023
Episode 4: John McWhorter
I recently started learning French, and the process has made one thing clear to me: There’s a lot I don’t understand about how languages work. So, I turned to John McWhorter, a linguist who has dedicated his career to demystifying the roughly 7,000 languages spoken around the wor ... Show More
30m 13s
Aug 2022
John McWhorter Describes Human Language's 20,000-Year Journey from Proto-Sumerian to Ebonics
Language not only defines humans as a species, placing us head and shoulders above even the most proficient animal communicators, but it also beguiles us with its endless mysteries. How did different languages come to be? Why isn't there just a single language? How does a languag ... Show More
54m 6s
Aug 2025
Is The Racial Reckoning Over? John McWhorter on language, art, and defunding the grammar police
<p>This is the full version of the Aug 4 episode, now available to all subscribers. </p> <div><br /> <div>Author, New York Times columnist, and superstar linguist John McWhorter returns to the pod to catch us up on what's been on his mind now that the Woke Emergency is over . . . ... Show More
1h 11m
Nov 2023
394. A Conversation About God | Dr. John Lennox
Dr. Jordan B Peterson sits down with mathematician, author, and theologian Dr. John Lennox. They discuss the axioms and dangerous aims of transhumanism, the interplay between ethical faith, reason, and the empirical world, that makes up the scientific endeavor, and the line betwe ... Show More
1h 32m
Sep 2025
The link between evolution and language | Richard Dawkins
Languages drift, adapt and evolve much like living species. In this wide-ranging conversation, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and linguist John McWhorter trace the parallels between biology and speech, from random mutations to cultural selection. They show how both genes ... Show More
22m 45s
<p>Talking about language with one of the world's top linguists, Professor David Crystal.</p> <p>italki offer: <a href= "http://www.teacherluke.co.uk/talk">http://www.teacherluke.co.uk/talk</a></p> <p>Episode page: <a href= "http://wp.me/p4IuUx-7NH">http://wp.me/p4IuUx-7NH</a> </ ... Show More
