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.

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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(416)

AMA | September 2025

AMA | September 2025

Welcome to the September 2025 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 P...

8 Syys 20253h 30min

327 | Cass Sunstein on Liberalism

327 | Cass Sunstein on Liberalism

"Liberalism," divorced from its particular connotations in this or that modern political context, refers broadly to a philosophy of individual rights, liberties, and responsibilities, coupled with res...

1 Syys 20251h 10min

326 | Natalie Batalha on What We Know and Will Learn About Exoplanets

326 | Natalie Batalha on What We Know and Will Learn About Exoplanets

In a relatively short period of time, exoplanets (planets around stars other than our Sun) have gone from an intriguing conjecture to an active field of scientific study, with over 5,000 confirmed dis...

25 Elo 20251h 12min

325 | Alvy Ray Smith on Pixar, Pixels, and the Great Digital Convergence

325 | Alvy Ray Smith on Pixar, Pixels, and the Great Digital Convergence

The world is becoming pixelated. As computers and other digital devices become ubiquitous, human knowledge and communication and information is gradually being converted into, and manipulated as, stri...

18 Elo 20251h 26min

324 | Elizabeth Mynatt on Universities and the Importance of Basic Research

324 | Elizabeth Mynatt on Universities and the Importance of Basic Research

It is not manifestly obvious that universities should be where most scholarly research is performed. One could imagine systems that separated out the tasks of "teaching students" and "generating new k...

11 Elo 20251h 13min

AMA | August 2025

AMA | August 2025

Welcome to the August 2025 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 Patr...

4 Elo 20253h 39min

323 | Jacob Barandes on Indivisible Stochastic Quantum Mechanics

323 | Jacob Barandes on Indivisible Stochastic Quantum Mechanics

The search for a foundational theory of quantum mechanics that all physicists can agree on remains active. Over the last century a number of contenders have emerged, including Many-Worlds, pilot-wave ...

28 Heinä 20252h 58min

322 | Philip Pettit on Language, Agency, Politics, and Freedom

322 | Philip Pettit on Language, Agency, Politics, and Freedom

When we think of the capacities that distinguish humans from other species, we generally turn to intelligence and its byproducts, including our technological prowess. But our intelligence is highly co...

21 Heinä 20251h 20min

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