Ep151 "Can One Be a Rational Optimist About the World?" with Matt Ridley

[gentle music] How do ideas have sex? And why does that matter for innovation? Why do brains tend to systematically misread the future? Why do we feel that the world is getting worse when by almost all the measures we can make, it's getting better? What if optimism is actually the more rational stance? Is optimism a personality trait, or can it be evidence-based? If innovation isn't primarily about lone geniuses, what is it really about? Today, we're joined by scientist and author Matt Ridley as we talk about what it means to be, in Ridley's term, a rational optimist.