This is the Reason interview with Nick Gillespie, where I go deep with the artists, entrepreneurs,

and visionaries who are making the world a more libertarian, or at least a more interesting place,

by championing free minds and free markets. Before we start today's episode, I want to urge you

to donate to Reason's annual Webathon. This is the one time a year when we ask our online audience to support our principled libertarian journalism with tax deductible donations.

Click on the link in the show notes or go to reason.com slash donate. Your support is absolutely vital to our efforts, and Lord knows we've got our work cut

out for us in the coming year. My guest today is the brilliant science writer Matt Ridley.

He exemplifies what this podcast and reason are all about. He's author of best-selling books

such as The Red Queen, The Rational Optimist, and Viral, The Search for the Origins of COVID-19.

In a live event filmed in New York City, Matt and I discuss how science, our best tool for

understanding and improving the world, has turned into a centralized hyper-politicized priesthood

even before COVID. Matt walks through the collapse of public trust as experts

flipped on mass and transmission during the pandemic, declared BLM protests safe, but religious

services dangerous, and insisted uncertainty where none existed. He explains how the lab leak

hypothesis went from forbidden conspiracy to the most

plausible explanation. We also get into the fight over climate alarmism, the future of innovation

in an age of over-regulation, and why he's bullish on nuclear and AI. Matt also makes the case

for how America can spark a new technological

renaissance, even as political and scientific elites seem determined to smother dissent. Here is

the reason interview with Matt Ridley. So Matt Ridley, Lord Ridley, I want to start bringing up something that Bill Gates said recently, where he said, we need to make improving human welfare the top priority of our energy and climate efforts.

And this was, he took a lot of people back because he was saying that climate change is important.

The environment is important.

But it's actually more important that we make life better for the people who are here and now.

...