The Lost Art of Taking the Piss with Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins is best known as a formidable evolutionary biologist and biting critic of religion. But when he wants a break from polemics and proofs, he turns to P.G. Wodehouse for a belly laugh.
Wodehouse’s satire skewered British aristocrats, Hollywood phonies, and self-important moralists with surgical precision. In this episode, Shilo Brooks sits down with Dawkins to find out why the British humorist remains one of the sharpest writers in the English language.
The conversation ranges from Wodehouse’s outrageous similes and linguistic brilliance to his internment by the Nazis during World War II and to a larger question: why has humor been evacuated from modern intellectual life?
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