Who: Richard Dawkins
Age: 65
Know him as: Evolutionary scientist and author, most recently of "The God Delusion."
Wonder is sexy. Knowledge is sexy. And embodying both as much as any man in the world today is a man in a tweed jacket riding his bike around the Oxford University campuses, the damp English breeze sweeping a curtain of silver hair from the delicate bones of his face. Yes, those cheekbones, those piercing eyes, that pursed bow of a mouth -- but that brain, oh that brain, oh, god, that brain -- is what makes Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist and the most famous atheist in the world, the sexiest man around.
Dawkins is the professor I never had an affair with, whose very sentence structure threatens to weaken my concentration on the content of his words. Call me deluded: I ache for his atheism; I reel from his reasoning. He is my James Bond, a well-attired, fearless seeker of truth in the face of nihilism.
I dream of his perfectly-accented voice -- Oxbridge softened by a childhood spent in, sigh, East Africa -- whispering to me from his latest book, "The God Delusion," a defense of endless curiosity in the face of omnipresent theism. "If the demise of god will leave a gap, different people will fill it in different ways. My way includes a good dose of science, the honest and systematic endeavor to find out the truth about the real world." Take me with you, Richard: You put the "sex" in sexagenarian. Let us clinch in a godless embrace, crying out to what we know does not exist, searching, searching evermore.
-- Lauren Sandler
Who: James Blake
Age: 26
Know him as: Tennis star
James Blake has such an inspiring narrative it's almost comical to read over it. Inspired to play tennis after hearing Arthur Ashe speak in Harlem, he kept at it through five years during his teens -- the key development period for a tennis player -- while wearing a full-length back brace 18 hours a day (he took it off for practice). His smarts and big forehand got him to Harvard, but he dropped out soon to try his hand at the professional tour. No flash-in-the-pan phenom, he slowly but surely scythed his way up the rankings, but during his big break in 2001, as he pushed No. 1 Lleyton Hewitt to five sets at the U.S. Open, the match was marred by Hewitt's obnoxious accusation that a black line judge was favoring Blake. After he cramped up and lost the match, Blake gallantly accepted Hewitt's apology, and gave tennis fans the first glimmer of his style and class. He rose from No. 212 at the end of 2000 to No. 28 at the end of 2002, and began seeing his chiseled features and kilowatt smile featured in major magazines. But then came 2004, a dark year that saw him break his neck in a freak practice accident, develop a debilitating case of shingles that blurred his vision and kept him off balance, and, tragically, lose his father to cancer.
When he returned to the tour full-time, there wasn't a lot of optimism that Blake, now in his mid-20s, could really recover his mid-20's ranking. But the past two years have seen him burst into the top 10 (as high as No. 5) and become the top-ranked American player. And best of all, he's done it all with charming modesty and ego-free thoughtfulness. Grace under true pressure, resilience to life's random cruelty, and biceps like bronzed cantaloupes. Now that's hot!
-- Salon staff
Who: Bruce Springsteen
Age: 57
Know him as: Rock god
A year ago, I sat in the front row of a Bruce Springsteen concert in Atlantic City, N.J. I've spent dozens of nights with Bruce over the years, but we'd never been this physically close; he'd never looked at me like this before. It was an amazing night, and he went forever, playing for more than two hours. On the last song, he stood, walking offstage and sucking on his harmonica, breathing hard, his eyes closed in ecstasy. He was spent, exhausted and completely turned on. Really. He was.
In truth, I didn't need to be front row to feel his fire. It was just one particularly intimate glimpse at what he does for fans, whether they're standing at his feet or sitting in the nosebleed seats: At 57, Springsteen puts out like a 23-year-old, every time he goes onstage.
From his Harley-in-heat days to nights he woke up with his sheets soaking wet and a freight train running through the middle of his head, Springsteen has been catholic in his erotic enthusiasms, both literal and figurative.
He started as the hyperactive, hormonal kid, wiggling around a stage in silly hats and scraggly facial hair, closing his eyes and spitting out lyrics about how "little Early Pearly came by in her curly-whirly" as if they were prophecy. He was god's gift, man, and watching him onstage, you knew he knew it.
It was later that he became the balladeer of the badlands, elbow-deep in American restlessness, earnestly balancing his love for girls and cars, and fantasizing about women who were single mothers or who'd "been around a time or two." Eschewing a prettified version of sex, Springsteen opted for an arousingly real one. "You ain't a beauty but hey, you're alright," he sings, and it's one of the hottest lyrics ever written. This is what it means: I want to have sex with you.
But it's never been just about scoring with the girls. Springsteen sweats buckets through his shows, guitar-dueling with his buddies, dancing with "big man" Clarence Clemons; he even penned a love song, "Bobby Jean," about Stevie Van Zandt.
As he's grown up, his passions have become broader. His commitments to working people, to politics, to monogamy and marriage and to his children have deepened, becoming more emotional and making him, in turn, even foxier.
He still skids across the stage on his knees and turns himself upside down on his mic stand, the 15-year-old with a diagnosable need to impress the girls. But he's also the political thinker who finally lost his partisan virginity in 2004, delivering goose bumps to the goose-bump-resistant Kerry campaign with his rededication of "No Surrender." Lately, he's been transforming century-old songs about steel driving into knee-weakeners (listen to him growl, "I'm swinging 30 pounds from my hips on down" on "John Henry"). This fall, weeks after papers reported that his marriage was ending, he and his wife took the stage in Bologna, Italy, to sing a waltz arrangement of "If I Should Fall Behind" ("Everyone dreams of a love lasting and true/ But you and I know what this world can do/ So let's make our steps clear that the other may see/ I'll wait for you and should I fall behind/ Will you wait for me").
Springsteen's is the hardest-working ass in show business; at some point, he committed to making love to every audience who paid to see him. He labors to reach us, to expose his passions and his doubts; he sweats and grunts and giggles and makes mistakes and tells bad jokes and gets angry. But mostly, he just hits it. Every night. Every note. And what could be sexier than that?
-- Rebecca Traister
Next page: Our new angst god, our host with the most and a man who makes us bark