195 | Richard Dawkins on Flight and Other Evolutionary Achievements

195 | Richard Dawkins on Flight and Other Evolutionary Achievements

Evolution has equipped species with a variety of ways to travel through the air — flapping, gliding, floating, not to mention jumping really high. But it hasn't invented jet engines. What are the different ways that heavier-than-air objects might be made to fly, and why does natural selection produce some of them but not others? Richard Dawkins has a new book on the subject, Flights of Fancy: Defying Gravity by Design and Evolution. We take the opportunity to talk about other central issues in evolution: levels of selection, the extended phenotype, the role of adaptation, and how genes relate to organisms.

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Richard Dawkins received his Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Oxford. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, where he was previously the Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science. He is an internationally best-selling author, whose books include The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, and The God Delusion. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature.


Jaksot(420)

227 | Molly Crockett on the Psychology of Morality

227 | Molly Crockett on the Psychology of Morality

Most of us strive to be good, moral people. When we are doing that striving, what is happening in our brains? Some of our moral inclinations seem pretty automatic and subconscious. Other times we have...

20 Helmi 20231h 11min

226 | Johanna Hoffman on Speculative Futures of Cities

226 | Johanna Hoffman on Speculative Futures of Cities

Cities are incredibly important to modern life, and their importance is only growing. As Geoffrey West points out, the world is adding urban areas equivalent to the population of San Francisco once ev...

13 Helmi 20231h 12min

AMA | February 2023

AMA | February 2023

Welcome to the February 2023 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Pa...

6 Helmi 20233h 7min

225 | Michael Tomasello on The Social Origins of Cognition and Agency

225 | Michael Tomasello on The Social Origins of Cognition and Agency

Human beings have developed wondrous capacities to take in information about the world, mull it over, think about a suite of future implications, and decide on a course of action based on those delibe...

30 Tammi 20231h 22min

224 | Edward Tufte on Data, Design, and Truth

224 | Edward Tufte on Data, Design, and Truth

So you have some information — how are you going to share it with and present it to the rest of the world? There has been a long history of organizing and displaying information without putting too mu...

23 Tammi 20231h 16min

223 | Tania Lombrozo on What Explanations Are

223 | Tania Lombrozo on What Explanations Are

There are few human impulses more primal than the desire for explanations. We have expectations concerning what happens, and when what we experience differs from those expectations, we want to know th...

16 Tammi 20231h 10min

222 | Andrew Strominger on Quantum Gravity and the Real World

222 | Andrew Strominger on Quantum Gravity and the Real World

Quantum gravity research is inspired by experiment — all of the experimental data that supports quantum mechanics, and supports general relativity — but it's only inspiration, not detailed guidance. S...

9 Tammi 20231h 24min

221 | Adam Bulley on How Mental Time Travel Makes Us Human

221 | Adam Bulley on How Mental Time Travel Makes Us Human

One of the most powerful of all human capacities is the ability to imagine ourselves in hypothetical situations at different times. We can remember the past, but also conjure up possible futures that ...

2 Tammi 20231h 20min

Suosittua kategoriassa Tiede

tiedekulma-podcast
rss-mita-tulisi-tietaa
rss-poliisin-mieli
utelias-mieli
rss-metsantuntijat-podcast
rss-duodecim-lehti
mielipaivakirja
rss-luontopodi-samuel-glassar-tutkii-luonnon-ihmeita
docemilia
filocast-filosofian-perusteet
menologeja-tutkimusmatka-vaihdevuosiin
rss-bios-podcast
rss-astetta-parempi-elama-podcast
rss-tiedetta-vai-tarinaa
rss-lapsuuden-rakentajat-podcast
rss-sosiopodi
rss-miljonaarien-tasavalta