Matt Ridley on Innovation, coffee bans, Global Greening, and Dicamba

About this episode

Matt Ridley, author of "How Innovation Works," joins Vance for a wide-ranging conversation connecting evolutionary biology to technological innovation, historical resistance to new inventions (coffee, potatoes, umbrellas, margarine), and the corruption of institutional science. Ridley argues innovation and evolution are the same underlying process — creating improbable, complex order from energy — and traces this through prehistoric farming, dog domestication, and modern biotech. A large middle section covers historical bans on coffee (funded by threatened wine/beer interests, and by kings fearing coffeehouse gossip) as a parable for modern resistance to GMOs and neonicotinoid pesticides, with Ridley arguing that fear-mongering activists and "over-weening bureaucracies" have effectively banned biotech across Europe. He recounts being viciously attacked over his "global greening" CO2-fertilization article, only to have critics later claim they "always knew that was true." The conversation turns sharply institutional in its back half: Ridley argues peer review has become a gatekeeping mechanism corrupted by cronyism and asymmetric anonymity, citing the Lancet's fraudulent hydroxychloroquine paper as a case study, and proposes that true peer review is really public/market judgment (citing Google Glass's commercial failure as an example). The episode closes on VR/telepresence technology as a concrete illustration of innovation finally reaching consumer accessibility.

“The peer review process has been irredeemably corrupted and spoiled for some time now... it's turned into a way for gatekeepers to keep mavericks out of science.”

“There's a gatekeeper effect from peer review. There's a you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-your-back effect whereby chums give each other's papers good or bad reviews, depending on whether they're chums or enemies.”

“The true peer review is the world... you put it out there and the world decides whether it's good enough... the true judges of whether a technology is any good are the public.”

Key moments

• Ridley links CRISPR-era biotech directly to prehistoric farming and dog domestication as the same unconscious/emergent innovation process (windows).
• Extended history of coffee bans — funded by competing wine/beer industries using paid "scientists," and by kings fearing coffeehouse political gossip (institutions).
• The Swedish king's "double blind" murderer coffee-vs-tea experiment story — a darkly comic early RCT anecdote.
• Vance reveals he personally took public backlash for repeating Ridley's "global greening" argument online (bubbles/mob).
• Ridley's core argument that peer review has become gatekeeping, is asymmetrically anonymous, and that "the true peer review is the world" (institutions/mob).
• Ridley connects the EPA's dicamba registration reversal and EU neonicotinoid bans to the same institutional/activist pattern harming agricultural innovation (institutions).
• Vance's Jackie Joyner-Kersee VR anecdote as evidence consumer VR/telepresence tech has finally "arrived" (windows).

Notable quotes

“The first person to die was the doctor... the second was the king... the third was the tea drinker... the last person to die was the coffee drinker.”

“The peer review process has been irredeemably corrupted... it's turned into a way for gatekeepers to keep mavericks out of science.”

“Do you know what now about seven years after that original article, do you know what they now say about me? They say, yeah, but of course that's true.”

“The wine and beer industries campaign against it... the professor basically says, well, give me a million pounds and I'll prove it's bad for you.”

Predictions made in this episode

• VR/telepresence technology has crossed from experimental novelty into genuine consumer accessibility and will become a significant medium for interviews, entertainment, and shared experiences.
• The global greening effect (CO2-driven vegetation increase) will continue for several more decades, reducing water use per unit of crop/vegetation growth.