Given how deeply air transportation is woven into modern life, it’s surprising that the precise workings of aerodynamic lift remain a topic of debate among the experts. To sort all this out, I met on a video call last month with Paul Bevilaqua, retired from Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, and Haithem Taha of the University of California, Irvine. I learned about several myths and at least one collapsing theory. Here is our discussion, lightly edited and compressed.