An ornithologist is someone who studies birds. I've actually never met an ornithologist, but I have a pretty clear picture in my head of what they might be like, soft-spoken, introverted,

and only interesting to other bird lovers. My guest today, Yale University ornithologist,

Richard Prum, definitely shatter those stereotypes. Here I was doing the job of science,

ducks and anatomy and looking at papers about genetics, and all of a sudden there we are with these profound political

implications of the work. Welcome to people I mostly admire with Steve Leavitt.

The topics Richard Fromes tackled are shockingly broad, from explaining the emergence of feathers and dinosaurs to the evolution

of beauty, to the benefits of integrating cultural studies into biology. In each case his ideas have directly challenged mainstream

biology. His stories have won the day on some topics. In other areas he's still

engaged in what is often a heated debate.

So as far as I can tell Richard,

you know just about everything there is to know about birds. And I've never actually my entire life talked to someone who knew

anything about birds so I've got a lifetime's worth of questions and I'm just gonna

start bombing the Mayhew. Go for it.

Let's start at the beginning.

How did birds even develop feathers in the first place?

Obviously, it's an amazing gift to be able to fly,

but it doesn't seem like the intermediate steps along the way would be very useful.

Yeah, most people have seen the question of the evolutionary origin of feathers as essentially related to the remarkable capacity of living birds to fly around.

That was such a powerful notion that people said, oh, feathers are critical to flight, so they

must have evolved for flight.

And that led to an unproductive century of noodling about how feathers likely evolve from scales.

Feathers grow out of the skin. They have lots of features similar to scales, but in fact

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