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Welcome to Matt Ridley's Blog

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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.

Please note that this blog does not accept comments. If you're reading this blog and want to respond then please use the contact form on the site, or comment on his Facebook page. You can also follow him on Twitter @mattwridley.

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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.

    Archive for tag: book-reviews

  • Pleasures of sex and berries

    Published on: Sunday, 13 September, 2020

    Hart explains why we’re adapted to the environment we evolved in, rather than the one we inhabit

    My review of Unfit for Purpose: When human evolution collides with the modern world by Adam Hart, for The Critic:

    Our ancestors have spenta few hundred years in cities at most. Before that, they spent a million years or more on what was essentially a perpetual camping trip, most of it in Africa. Little wonder then that people are more easily scared of snakes than cars, of deep water than speed, of spiders than guns. We are, to a significant extent, adapted to the environment we evolved in, rather than the one most of us now inhabit.

    This mismatch explains quite a lot about our modern problems, and Adam Hart, an entomologist and broadcaster, has set out to see just how far, and how convincingly, mismatch can explain things like allergies, obesity, and our addiction to drugs, social media and even fake news. His book is especially valuable because it does not fall for simplistic “just-so” stories without checking the actual evidence first.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: adam-hart, biology, book-reviews
  • Book Review: A Dominant Character by Samanth Subramanian — the stupidity of a brilliant mind

    Published on: Wednesday, 02 September, 2020

    JBS Haldane was a polymath — but his communist faith blinded him to the truth about the Soviet Union

    My article for The Times:

    When he knew he was dying, the scientist JBS Haldane wrote that he hadn’t walked on the seafloor from England to France, but he had been wounded in war, known the love of two women, tried heroin and bhang, eaten 60g of hexahydrated strontium chloride in an attempt to change the acidity of his blood, and spent 48 hours in a miniature submarine.

    His spine was permanently damaged by the convulsions brought on by more than 100 self-experiments, during the Second World War, inside decompression chambers filled with various gases, trying to understand how to save submariners’ lives.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: samanth-subramanian, book-reviews
  • The First Review of How Innovation Works and Other News

    Published on: Tuesday, 11 February, 2020

    "An enthusiastic history of human technical innovation"

    From the Kirkus review of How Innovation Works:

    Kirkus is an "advance reviewer" that primarily servers publishers and other reviewers, but feel free to reach out if you're in media and would like to request your own review copy, publish an article, do an interview, etc.

    How Innovation Works will be released in the UK on May 14th and in the US on May 19th, but is available to pre-order now.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: kirkus, how-innovation-works, book-reviews
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