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b'We live in the golden age of dragons \\u2013 they appear in Game of Thrones, most film adaptations of the works of J.R.R. Tolkein, and nearly everything tangentially related to fantasy. They date back millennia, appearing in every cultures mythology, from ancient Greece and India to medieval Europe and China to the badlands of modern America.

But what do they represent? Today\\u2019s guest is Scott Bruce, a medievalist and author of the Penguin Book of Dragons. He\\u2019s here to explain the meaning of dragons in myth and legend. We discuss their origins in the deserts of Africa; their struggles with their mortal enemies, elephants, in the jungles of South Asia; their fear of lightning; the world\\u2019s first dragon slayer, in an ancient collection of Sanskrit hymns; the colossal sea monster Leviathan; the seven-headed \\u201cgreat red dragon\\u201d of the Book of Revelation; the Loch Ness monster; the dragon in Beowulf, who inspired Smaug in Tolkien\\u2019s The Hobbit; the dragons in the prophecies of the wizard Merlin; a dragon saved from a centipede in Japan who gifts his human savior a magical bag of rice; the supernatural feathered serpent of ancient Mesoamerica; and a flatulent dragon the size of the Trojan Horse.
Nearly a quarter of the selections are translated into English for the first time, from medieval European sources translated directly from the Latin, to medieval Greek stories. Bruce also dug deeply into obscure early modern and 19th century sources, like the reports of dragon sightings from two American newspapers around the turn of the 20th century.

I\\u2019ll conclude with a cautionary quote from Ursula K. Le Guin: \\u201cPeople who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.\\u201d'