We’re taking a break from new episodes for a couple of weeks, but in the meantime, enjoy this treasure from the Free Thoughts vault where Matt Ridley joins us t to discuss his book, The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge (2015). In it, he theorizes that much of the order we see in the natural world and in human culture and society is the result of unplanned, bottom‐up, emergent evolution. Is there a way to introduce these evolutionary pressures to government? Is there a bias to thinking that the world operates by design, from the top down? Does this bias have an origin in our evolutionary psychology? Is it reflected in how we view history?

Ridley’s newest book, The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge (2015).

Ridley’s bestselling book is an optimistic look at progress and economic history: The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (2011).

Also from Matt Ridley, The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation (1998). Libertarianism.org has a video from 1983 of professor and Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek talking about cultural evolution and the origins of tradition in society.

Ridley mentions the ideas and management practices of Mike Bracken, the UK government’s former digital chief. Here’s an extended interview with Bracken about his ideas for government and why he chose to leave.

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