Welcome to Star Talk.

You're a place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.

Star Talk begins right now.

This is Star Talk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist.

And today we're going to feature an exclusive interview with the one and only Richard Dawkins.

Richard Dawkins has a new book called Books Do Furnish A Life, which will spend a lot of time talking about because it goes everywhere and that's where we want to go.

Richard Dawkins professionally is an ephologist, an evolutionary biologist, an author, popularizer of his field and science in general and rational thinking all around.

And so much of what he does is what we celebrate here on Star Talk. So we've got him. Richard, welcome back to Star Talk. This is not your first rodeo with us.

It's such a pleasure, Neil. Thank you very much.

Yeah, I was looking at your book. Oh my gosh, Richard, dare I say, dare I even suggest that if anyone read only one book of yours, it should be this because this to me reads like a cross section of everything.

You have cared about and expressed professionally and in the public with regard to what your life has been about. Is that a fair characterization of what?

Very interesting. I never thought of that before. Neil, thank you. It does span much of my career ever since I started reviewing books, I suppose, and writing forwards to books.

So yes, it's a good slice of my increasingly alarmingly long career.

I'm worried because people who start sort of collecting their life's works, it's almost like they're ready to die. And I don't want you dying anytime soon. So just that that's why I was worried when, oh, let me check this heart rate.

Let me reassure you, Neil. I've got two books, two other books coming out. One in November and one not quite sure when, but anyway, the one in November.

I'm very much. And so I'm not checking out any time soon. Okay, stay alive at least until your last book gets published.

I'm also, I noted in the first section of the book called Front Matter, there's a list of all of your previous books. And I went down the list and forgive me, Richard, I haven't read all 30 of them.

15 or so. No, but I've read like three and a half. Okay, and I got the list. I've read the selfish gene. I've read the blind watchmaker. I've read the God delusion. And I've read parts of other books.

And I can say that each one of the books is a jewel. It's a jewel of writing. It's a jewel of science communication. It's a jewel of intellect. So I will extrapolate and declare that every one of these books is a jewel and it forms a crown of some kind of the jewel crown that is a gift to civilization of how you think and how you would welcome others to think to make a better world.

So I'm not going to find what can I say? I mean, I'd love to think that.

Okay, so let's go straight into some of these topics. I very much embraced your organization of the book. There's sections and each section sort of delves into an area of science as it relates and as it is received by the public.

So I'm honored actually to be mentioned in your first section where you recount an interview that we had in my office at the Hayden Planetarium.

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