Robert Wright

Robert Wright, co-founder of Bloggingheads.tv and a Schwartz senior fellow at the New America Foundation, answers some difficult questions in his latest book, The Evolution of God. “One of the biggest questions in the world is whether the major religions can get along with each other. That’s one of the primary questions I try to address,” he said. But at least one of Zócalo’s more trivial queries gave him pause. When asked to describe himself in five words or fewer, Wright said, without hesitation, “Can’t I describe my parents instead? My mother was charitable and my father was responsible. That I know.” Still, he came up with an answer for us. Read on to find out more about Wright.

Q. What do you wake up to?
A. I wake up happy if I’ve gotten a good night’s sleep, which happens about half the time.

Q. What music have you listened to today?
A. “Free Bird,”…some Pink Floyd, “Whiter Shade of Pale.” The classics from my youth have been on the radio in my rental car today.

Q. What do you find beautiful?
A. People making friendly contact across cultural boundaries.

Q. What’s your favorite word?
A. Maybe it’s just on my mind because of the book, but I like the word salvation, and I’d like to think I’ve attained it.

Q. How would you describe yourself in five words or fewer?
A. Easily distracted, self-conscious, reasonably ambitious, idealistic, cynical.

Q. When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A. A baseball player.

Q. What’s your favorite cocktail?
A. I don’t drink.

Q. What’s your greatest extravagance?
A. When I buy a computer every couple of years.

Q. If you could only take one more journey, where would you go?
A. Asia, that’s the only major part of the world I haven’t been.

Q. What profession would you like to practice in your next life?
A. The Michael Jordan of my era.

Q. What is your favorite holiday?
A. Thanksgiving, because it’s less materialistic than Christmas and the sentiments surrounding it are good ones.

Q. What is your fondest childhood memory?
A. Every year, getting the Sears Christmas catalog in the mail and looking at the toy pages, which were in color unlike the other parts, which were in black-and-white.

Q. What is your most prized material possession?
A. My computer.

Q. What promise do you make to yourself that you break the most often?
A. Don’t look back.

Q. What should you throw away but haven’t been able to part with?
A. Tons of T-shirts that various people gave me.

Q. Who is the one person living or dead who you would most like to meet?
A. That would be Jesus.

To read more about Wright’s lecture, click here.

*Photo by Aaron Salcido.