COVID Cover-Up, Nuclear Fear & Innovation | With Matt Ridley

Matt Ridley joins Alex Buxeda to talk about sex, why COVID most likely came from a lab and why the idea was suppressed, why the West turned against nuclear power, and why renewables deliver a poor energy return. They also talked about how cheap energy sparked the Industrial Revolution, why patents hurt innovation, and his upcoming book, The Rational Pessimist.
0:00 Teaser: the lab leak evidence and censorship
1:44 Intro
2:08 What is sex and why did it evolve?
4:58 Sexual selection: was the big brain for seduction?
6:01 Costly display and the handicap theory
7:35 Why is nuclear so unpopular in the West?
9:22 Biofuels, organic lettuce and energy return
10:39 Medieval wheat vs. modern farming
13:09 The hidden cost of backup for renewables
14:06 Germany's multi layered energy 'transition' failure
14:59 Follow the money: why renewables win politically
17:33 Energy, matter and living standards
18:26 Plants, cows and lions: the energy surplus
19:37 Cooking as an energy innovation
22:05 What really caused the Industrial Revolution?
24:17 Culture or energy? The steam engine and heat-to-work
26:28 Mitochondria, fire and energy return
28:02 COVID origins and the book "Viral"
29:17 The first clues pointing to a lab leak
30:27 Why the lab leak theory was censored
32:17 The blockers of 2020
33:27 Why the media didn't investigate
33:54 The evidence for a lab leak
35:13 A catastrophe the world won't face
36:02 Accountability and news that goes stale
39:05 Why no one wants to revisit the pandemic
39:43 The cost-benefit of lockdowns
40:37 Do patents help or hurt innovation?
43:21 Why "intellectual property" is a misnomer
44:39 Shakespeare and a world without copyright
46:32 Copyright for 70 years after death
47:06 Simultaneous invention: the light bulb
48:25 Would we have search engines without Google?
49:33 Inevitable looking back, unpredictable looking forward
50:41 Napster and the music industry
51:24 The Munk debate: are our best days ahead?
53:17 The Rational Pessimist
54:17 Stoicism vs. Freud
55:24 The price of denying human nature
56:09 Why understanding ourselves matters
57:24 The evolution of virtue
57:55 Today's "endarkenment"
58:35 Closing
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