Welcome to the Colette Podcast. My name is Claire Lehman and I am editor and chief of Colette.

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Welcome to the Colette Podcast. I'm Jonathan Kay.

And I come to you amidst the tumult of many red-hot culture wars,

over abortion, gender, the January 6th riot in the United States, COVID, but today we're not going to talk about any of those things.

Even if my guest, famed evolutionary biologist and author Richard Dawkins, is no stranger to such debates.

Instead we're going to talk about his new book on the science and wonder of flight.

In flights of fancy, Define Gravity by Design and Evolution, flight of of some of nature's most astonishing flying creatures, from the six meter

wing span of the Argentavus down to the tiny hummingbird, and the various

insects, dinosaurs, and even glider-equipped rodents and fish that use principles of flight to travel through the air.

And we humans make an appearance as well, not only as creators and pilots of manufactured flying craft, but also as dreamers and mythmakers, fascinated

by the balletic feats we observe in the skies above us.

Richard Dawkins joined me from his home in Oxfordshire. Here's the recording of our interview.

Why flight? Why not burrowing or running or hopping? Oh well that would be very nice too. mean, I could imagine that for the next book or the one after.

The book is about dreaming of flying and that many of us do dream of it and try to design machines to do it.

I think it's a fairly obvious topic for a biologist interested in science generally to tackle.

It isn't just dreams, in some cases it's delusions.

You talk about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of course of the

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