Evolution, progress and economics.

Matt Ridley, an Oxford-educated zoologist, turned to journalism in 1983 when he got a job as The Economist's science reporter. He soon became the magazines Washington correspondent and eventually served as its American editor.

Ridley has written several acclaimed books that combine clear explanations of complex biology with discussions of the sciences implications for human society. In the reason.tv interview, Ridley discusses some of the themes in The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature; The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation; Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters; and Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience, & What Makes Us Human; as well as his forthcoming book which seeks to understand how and why human progress happens.

Paul Feine and Alex Manning interviewed Ridley in the Milton and Rose Friedman Reading Room at Chapman University in Orange, California. About 9 minutes.