
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Bright colors, long tails, and dances of seduction: they may hurt a bird's chances of survival in the wild, but they seem to increase the chances of reproduction. Is this all part of natural selection or is sexual selection its own force in the bird world? Is there such a thing as beauty for beauty's sake? What can we learn from birds about the human experience of beauty? Listen as author and naturalist Matt Ridley speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about a puzzle that kept Darwin up at night and that still troubles modern evolutionary biologists.
4.7
41724,172 ratings
Bright colors, long tails, and dances of seduction: they may hurt a bird's chances of survival in the wild, but they seem to increase the chances of reproduction. Is this all part of natural selection or is sexual selection its own force in the bird world? Is there such a thing as beauty for beauty's sake? What can we learn from birds about the human experience of beauty? Listen as author and naturalist Matt Ridley speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about a puzzle that kept Darwin up at night and that still troubles modern evolutionary biologists.
2,268 Listeners
1,830 Listeners
987 Listeners
78 Listeners
2,425 Listeners
5,126 Listeners
378 Listeners
475 Listeners
22 Listeners
31 Listeners
6,551 Listeners
129 Listeners
2,003 Listeners
727 Listeners
694 Listeners
431 Listeners
8,574 Listeners
413 Listeners
145 Listeners
687 Listeners