Tag: Matt Ridley

Evolutionary Ideas and COVID-19 Controversies feat. Matt Ridley

unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc | 8 November 2023 | 0h 56m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Matt Ridley covering most of his books. Discusses the integral role freedom, idea exchange, and trade play in driving innovation; the concept of creative destruction and how it’s essential for large corporations to reinvent themselves to stay competitive or be allowed to cease to exist suddenly; the debate surrounding the origin of COVID-19, its implications for virology; the spread of false information in our interconnected world; and the impact of China’s rise on global innovation.

This site has many more interviews with Matt Ridley – my favourite author.

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Matt Ridley – How Innovation Works

Ideas Having Sex | 21 November 2022 | 1h 03m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Matt Ridley about his book How Innovation Works. Discusses elements of innovation: the exchange of ideas; serendipity; simultaneous invention, the asymmetry between how obvious innovation looks looking back but not forward in time; his book Viral about the origins of covid-19 and his consternation at the lack of appetite to properly investigate those origins, and more.

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Steam Engines and Transport Innovators

Patented: History of Inventions | 16 March 2022 | 0h 34m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Matt Ridley, the author of How Innovation Works, discussing the invention of the steam engine and the innovations in transport from the steam engine to human flight to space travel.

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Ridley on Trade, Growth, and the Rational Optimist

EconTalk | 18 October 2010 | 0h 59m | Listen Later | iTunes | Spotify
Interview with Matt Ridley about his book The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves. Discusses why he is optimistic about the future and how trade and specialization explain the evolution of human development over the millennia. Argues that life is getting better for most people and that the underlying cause is trade and specialization. Discusses the differences between Smith’s and Ricardo’s insights into trade and growth and why, despite what seems to be strong evidence, people are frequently pessimistic about the future. Also addresses environmental issues.

My favourite author, discusses my favourite book, on my favourite podcast. Merry Christmas.

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Purely By Coincidence

The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg | 16 November 2021 | 1h 07m | Listen Later | iTunes | Spotify
Interview with Matt Ridley about his book Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19, co-authored with Alina Chan. Discusses the evidence that covid-19 could have emerged from a lab, the implications for virological research, how to prepare for future pandemics, science more generally, and climate change.

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COVID, Innovation, and Optimism with Matt Ridley

The James Altucher Show | 23 November 2021 | 1h 14m | Listen Later | iTunes | Spotify
Interview with Matt Ridley about his book Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19, co-authored with Alina Chan. Discusses the purpose, and journey of writing the book against the context of his earlier books, especially The Rational Optimist. Considers whether we should be optimistic about the pandemic, whether anything good will come out of it, and why it is so hard to look for the origin of the virus.

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Alina Chan: Covid-19: What is the Real Truth? The Origin?

The James Altucher Show | 16 November 2021 | 1h 00m | Listen Later | iTunes | Spotify
Interview with Alina Chan about her book Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19, co-authored with Matt Ridley. Discusses their investigation into the source of covid-19; why Covid-19 is much deadlier than other flu-like diseases; and the role of viruses in the world and whether there could be another virus that can eliminate the covid-19 virus.

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Matt Ridley: Evolutionist, Thatcherite, and Writer

Razib Khan’s Unsupervised Learning | 18 March 2021 | 1h 10m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Matt Ridley about his 1999 book Genome and how its insights on genomics have held up since. Touches on his other books and discusses the relevance of evolution to everything, why Francis Crick is going to get “cancelled” at some point, if he’s still a happy Thatcherite, Britain’s response to Covid-19; and the origin of Covid-19 (his next book project).

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