Matt Ridley is the author of provocative books on evolution, genetics and society. His books have sold over a million copies, been translated into thirty languages, and have won several awards.
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Matt Ridley's latest book Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19, co-authored with scientist Alina Chan from Harvard and MIT's Broad Institute, is now available in the United States, in the United Kingdom, and elsewhere.
I have an article in Spiked! on the the tyranny of consumer choice:
This summer at TED Global in Edinburgh, a lively networking conference, there was a talk on one of the true and terrible scourges of the modern world. This is a bit of a theme for TED. The same scourge was bravely but mercilessly exposed at TED Global three years ago in Oxford and nine years ago at the ur-TED itself in California. All three talks went down well with the hip folk who attend TED meetings. They nodded in agreement that this scourge must end, and soon.
The scourge in question? The thing that deserved as prominent a castigation as disease and poverty and tyranny? Too much choice. Yes, the pressing and urgent issue we face is that when we enter a supermarket, we find tens of brands of cereal and it is making us – wait for it – anxious. Oh woe.
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