Please join the Competitive Enterprise Institute for a wide-ranging conversation with singular wit Matt Ridley. Biologist and prolific author, Ridley has been a pioneer of liberalism in the hard sciences for more than three decades. Iain Murray, CEI vice president and fellow countryman, will interview Ridley on the arc of his literary legacy to date and where he is headed next.
The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, 1993
The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation, 1996
Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, 1999
Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience, & What Makes Us Human, 2003
The Agile Gene: How Nature Turns on Nurture, 2004
Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code, 2006
The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, 2010
The Evolution of Everything: How Ideas Emerge, 2015
How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom, 2020
Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19, 2021
Birds, Sex and Beauty: The Extraordinary Implications of Charles Darwin’s
Strangest Idea, 2025
When: 12:30 – 2:00 pm
Friday, November 14, 2025
Luncheon followed by interview.
Where: Competitive Enterprise Institute, 1310 L St NW, 7th Floor, Washington, DC 20005
Questions: [email protected] or 202.331.2764
Register
Matt Ridley is a science writer, journalist, and businessman. He is a columnist for The Telegraph, The Times (London), and The Wall Street Journal, and is featured regularly in The Spectator, Daily Mail, and Spiked. He served in the House of Lords from 2013 to 2021, sitting on the science and technology select committee and the artificial intelligence select committee. With BA and DPhil degrees from Oxford University, he spent nine years at The Economist as science editor, Washington correspondent, and American editor. He later became the founding chairman of the International Centre for Life in Newcastle, as well as non-executive chairman of Northern Rock plc and Northern 2 VCT plc. He was the 2012 Julian L. Simon Memorial Awardee and two years later became the first Simon awardee to keynote CEI’s gala (pictured above).