Why Science Lost Its Way

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Today's guest is the science writer Matt Ridley, author of best-selling books such as The Red Queen, The Rational Optimist, and, with Alina Chan, Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19. At a live event filmed in New York City, Ridley tells Nick Gillespie that political and cultural elites had already turned science, our best tool for understanding and improving the world, into a centralized, hyper-politicized priesthood even before COVID.

He walks through the collapse of public trust in 2020 as experts flipped on masks and transmission, declared Black Lives Matter protests safe but religious services dangerous, and insisted on certainty where none existed. Ridley also explains how the lab leak hypothesis went from being a forbidden conspiracy theory to the most plausible explanation for the pandemic.

He shares his thoughts on why climate alarmism is finally waning, the future of innovation in an age of overregulation, why he's bullish on the future of nuclear power and AI, and how America can spark a new technological renaissance—even when leaders seem determined to smother dissent.

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0:00—Introduction
1:59—Bill Gates' climate change reversal
6:15—How COVID diminished public trust
14:27—Centralization and confirmation bias
17:53—Vaccine skepticism
21:29—Sex and evolutionary theory
29:47—Politicization of science
31:34—COVID lab leak theory
37:50—Human progress
46:10—The role of storytelling

Producer: Paul Alexander
Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser
Illustration: Eddie Marshall