Sex, Death and the Meaning of Life

Life After Death (1x2)

: 22, 2012

Richard Dawkins explores what science can tell us about death. It's a journey that takes him from Hindu funeral pyres in India to genetics labs in New York. Dawkins brings together the latest neuroscience, evolutionary and genetic theory to examine why we crave life after death, why we evolved to age and how the human genome is something like real immortality — traits inherited from our distant ancestors that we pass on to future generations. He meets a Christian dying of motor neurone disease, reminisces about the Wall Street Crash with a 105-year-old stockbroker, and interviews James Watson, the geneticist who co-discovered the structure of DNA. Dawkins admits to sentimentality in imagining his own church funeral, but he argues we must embrace the truth, however hard that is. In a television first, he has his entire genome sequenced to reveal the genetic indicators of how he himself may die.