Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature
    The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature
    The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature
    Audiobook12 hours

    The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature

    Written by Matt Ridley

    Narrated by Simon Prebble

    4.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    “A terrific book, witty and lucid, and brimming with provocative conjectures.” (Wall Street Journal) from the author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller Genome

    Brilliantly written, The Red Queen compels us to rethink everything from the persistence of sexism to the endurance of romantic love.

    Referring to Lewis Carroll's Red Queen from Through the Looking-Glass, a character who has to keep running to stay in the same place, Matt Ridley demonstrates why sex is humanity's best strategy for outwitting its constantly mutating internal predators. The Red Queen answers dozens of other riddles of human nature and culture—including why men propose marriage, the method behind our maddening notions of beauty, and the disquieting fact that a woman is more likely to conceive a child by an adulterous lover than by her husband. The Red Queen offers an extraordinary new way of interpreting the human condition and how it has evolved.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateJan 18, 2011
    ISBN9780062073075
    Author

    Matt Ridley

    Matt Ridley's books have sold over a million copies, been translated into 31 languages and won several awards. His books include The Red Queen, Genome, The Rational Optimist and The Evolution of Everything. His book on How Innovation Works was published in 2020, and Viral: the Search for the Origin of Covid-19, co-authored with Alina Chan, was published in 2021. He sat in the House of Lords between 2013 and 2021 and served on the science and technology select committee and the artificial intelligence select committee. He was founding chairman of the International Centre for Life in Newcastle. He created the Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal in 2010, and was a columnist for the Times 2013-2018. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He lives in Northumberland.

    More audiobooks from Matt Ridley

    Related to The Red Queen

    Related audiobooks

    Biology For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Why Females Decide What’s Beautiful

      Nov 23, 2017

      Michael J. Ryan, a professor of zoology, didn’t call his forthcoming book, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Frog Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask), but he sure could have. For 40 years, Ryan has studied the tiny tungara frog, mostly on the tro

      7 min read

    • Article

      Yes, Life in the Fast Lane Kills You: New insights into mitochondria reveal how life expends energy.

      May 5, 2016

      Nick Lane is an evolutionary biochemist at University College London who thinks about the big questions of life: how it began, how it is maintained, why we age and die, and why we have sex. Shunning the habit of our times to regard these as questions

      11 min read

    • Article

      3 Science Books Compellling Enough to Speak to All Readers

      Aug 30, 2017

      Bob Berman's 'Zapped,' Max Tegmark's 'Life 3.0,' and Richard Dawkins's 'Science in the Soul' succeed in turning science books into good summer reads.

      3 min read

    • Article

      1 All About Us

      Jan 29, 2019

      1 All About Us
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Limits of Diversity

      Dec 20, 2016

      The Limits of Diversity
      8 min read

    • Article

      Edward O.wilson

      Jul 1, 2020

      Edward O.wilson
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Cosmopolitan Ape: Empathy, morality, community, culture—apes can have it all!

      Apr 29, 2013

      The next time you mutter under your breath about the big gorilla in the next office, you might want to reconsider. The insult may reflect badly on you. Renowned primatologist Frans de Waal has spent decades studying chimpanzees and bonobos and found

      14 min read

    • Article

      The Tricky Problem with Other Minds

      Aug 29, 2019

      Human “exceptionalism” is for many people an unquestioned assumption. For the religious, it is a God-given fact; for humanists, it is a celebration of our unique mental capacities. No other species has created music, art, literature, or built skyscra

      20 min read

    • Article

      Do Aliens Have Inalienable Rights?

      Apr 13, 2017

      Last January I was walking with my granddaughter along a beach near Melbourne when we noticed several people gathered around a rock pool, peering into the water. Wondering what had attracted their attention, we went over and saw that it was an octopu

      5 min read

    • Article

      Jane Goodall

      Apr 1, 2024

      Jane Goodall
      7 min read

    • Article

      Just Because It’s Natural Doesn’t Mean It’s Good

      Aug 19, 2020

      What do anti-vaxxers and anti-GMO campaigners have in common? Underpinning both “antis” is a shared belief that because vaccines and GMOs are “unnatural,” they’re bad, which for many people—whatever their feelings about vaccines and GMOs—segues into

      9 min read

    • Article

      Consciousness Doesn’t Depend on Language

      Sep 26, 2019

      The contrast could not have been starker—here was one of the world’s most revered figures, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, expressing his belief that all life is sentient, while I, as a card-carrying neuroscientist, presented the contemporary

      9 min read

    • Article

      Fangs For The Memories

      Feb 12, 2023

      Fangs For The Memories
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Decision To Create Life

      Jul 30, 2018

      The Decision To Create Life
      5 min read

    • Article

      How Women Drove Evolution: Cat Bohannon On Her Radical New History Of Humanity

      Sep 30, 2023

      While appearing on a podcast recently to publicise her first book, Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Evolution, Cat Bohannon found herself having to reassure the pregnant producer. In the book, which puts women back at the heart (an

      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Red Queen

    4.5/5

    81 ratings17 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      I've meant to read this book for the last twenty years. I finally got around to doing it this year, and... I realized halfway through that I've read it already. Oops. I have a terrible memory thanks to one of my medications, so The Red Queen completely slipped my mind. {pause} Yep, I read it in August of 2001. I forgot I'd put it in my old homemade book database. I gave it a score of 4 out of 5, same as I did this time. I feel silly, but I'm glad I reread it. Good book.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      I listened to this on audiobook, and perhaps that made some sections less compelling and easy to find my attention drifting. The main premise, that of the "Red Queen," is an interesting one - that we evolve only to ultimately stay in approximately the same place we have been in relation to our environment and our competitors. When he talked about why some traits were more likely to succeed than others, and why we didn't all just end up reproducing asexually, I was attentive. But when he went off on seeming tangents about algae or other limited creatures, I was a bit less intrigued. He takes a strict evolutionary approach to why human behavior is the way it is, and he has no patience for social scientists. Anthropologists, sociologists; they're all just a bunch of people chasing their tails trying to explain things that only make sense when scientifically explained! Also singled out for distaste: feminism and political correctness, which Ridley is sure will shut down research into the differences between men's and women's brains. As is probably clear, I didn't much care for his attitude at times. The book is twenty years old, so there are several things he mentions as "current research" or "awaiting results" that I'm pretty sure have already been nailed down with a lot more information, but that's to be expected.Overall, I found it a somewhat dry read with interesting bits dispersed throughout.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      "The Red Queen" by Matt Ridley is an enjoyable, interesting, but slightly flawed biology book. Ridley's thesis is that sexual selection (in animals of all sorts, not just humans) is responsible for the development of many important traits, rather than pressures from the environment (such as the needs to find food, traverse the landscape, avoid predators, etc.). The importance of sexual selection can be easily overlooked, as we seek some sort of environmental advantage in every evolved trait. But the most powerful drivers of evolution are "Red Queen" races- instances where the goalposts keep moving, like an arms race, so you have to keep changing in order simply to maintain your genes' commonality from generation to generation. Predatory/prey and organism/parasite are two such relationships, but arguably, an even more acute one arises from competition between members of the same species for mates, and in particular, for the highest-quality mates, whose genes or nurture will give one's offspring the best odds of success.Most of the book focuses on non-human animals, and this is where the book is strongest. Ridley builds off of the gene-centered view of evolution first brought to prominence by Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene," and some of Ridley's best content focuses on the ways whereby what promotes the commonality of a gene differs from what helps the organism to survive and reproduce. (Perhaps reading Dawkins' book would provide more detail on these things.) Another good part of Ridley's book is his discussion of why sexual selection persists and became common, even though it carries a tremendous, 4x penalty over asexual reproduction in terms of passing a single organism's genes to the next generation (half as many children, each of which has half of a single parent's genes).Ridley shows that humans, like all animals, have been shaped by the pressure of sexual selection as an evolutionary driver. However, Ridley doesn't spend much time on fairly simple examples like height, which would seem to be comparatively easy to prove (a preference for tall men is common among women across many cultures, and that results in taller children of both sexes, changing the goalposts for what counts as "tall"). Instead, Ridley tries to explain aspects of "human nature" as results of evolutionary effects of sexual selection. He may be right to varying degrees, depending on which trait one is considering, but the connections are more tenuous, and it's harder to even measure the strength and commonality of various parts of "human nature." He also gets a little overly-defensive about his views, apparently out of a fear that someone might accuse him of promoting sexism, racism, or provide backing to eugenics (each of which he explicitly disavows).My favorite part of the section on humans concerned not human nature per se, but the development of intelligence. Ridley points out that the levels of intelligence achieved by homo sapiens are vastly in excess of what is required to solve any of the problems or challenges people encountered in prehistoric Africa. The most likely explanation, Ridley claims, is that intelligence was helpful in securing mates (whether via being charming, good at judging others' character, trickery, etc.), and only the challenge posed by the need to compete with and outwit other humans could explain the relentless march toward greater and greater intelligence in human ancestors. (He does not address why other animals, many of whom also compete for mates, might not face the same pressure for intelligence.)Overall, I found the book to be interesting, but some of the best parts felt like a trailer for Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene," and some of the other parts felt like a bit too much speculation, leaving me uncertain of what actually is the cause of various biological features. At the least, the book does a good job giving you a feel for the terrifying complexity of disentangling the reasons behind the evolution of a particular animal: you have to understand what happens over vast time scales, at the level of proteins and genes (sometimes orthogonal to or even contrary to the organism's interests), at the level of survival in the environment, and in the context of a competition for the best mates with strongly cultural aspects. It makes me feel that one must be humble when espousing a theory purporting to explain the workings of evolution: though the core concept of survival and propagation of genes seems simple, it is anything but.For those readers interested in a look at evolution outside the context of biology, as a substrate-independent algorithm for finding niches, optimizing, and seeking out new local maxima of welfare, I recommend "The Origin of Wealth" by Eric Beinhocker. Beinhocker's book is far superior to "The Red Queen" and provides a very helpful framework for understanding the effects of evolution without respect to biology. This then makes biology an application of a more general principle, which may be more intellectually satisfying.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      An interesting view of mating rituals and genetics.
    • 5/5
      This book was fun. It asks alot of questions that a smooth brain like me would never think to. Like, why do we have sex? More importantly than asking these questions though is this book manages to answer them somewhat fairly while giving competing views.
    • 5/5
      This is a book targeted at biologists and not, alike. It consists of a, not completely unbiased review of our knowledge on the subjects of a human evolution and inherent nature beautifully stated by a superfluous pen with a deep understanding and fiery passion on the subject. It is an educational read but the wit and humor is not secrigiced in the altar of scientific accuracy or logical argument. I found this book both stimulating, informative and entertaining. This is also helped by a fantastic audio.
    • 4/5
      Interesting book that opened many points. I found it occasionally superstitious as it makes presumptions that I am aware from other books have been proven false. For a book written 30 years ago that is a fair mistake to make, though. :)
    • 4/5
      Although this is a well-written, interesting book, I couldn't help feeling that it was covering some familiar ground -- you may feel the same way if you have read a lot of Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins. I enjoyed another of Matt Ridley's books, Genome, immensely, probably because much of it was new to me.
    • 5/5
      This book was fascinating, and I wanted to send it my brother who had espoused and lived its survivalist reproductive views, but now he's senile.
    • 5/5
      Referring to Lewis Carroll's Red Queen from Through the Looking-Glass, a character who has to keep running to stay in the same place, Matt Ridley demonstrates why sex is humanity's best strategy for outwitting its constantly mutating internal predators. The Red Queen answers dozens of other riddles of human nature and culture -- including why men propose marriage, the method behind our maddening notions of beauty, and the disquieting fact that a woman is more likely to conceive a child by an adulterous lover than by her husband. Brilliantly written, The Red Queen offers an extraordinary new way of interpreting the human condition and how it has evolved.
    • 5/5
      Matt Ridley has done an exceptional job in this book to provide insights on Evolution and the role played by Sex in the process. I have read a couple other books, Selfish Gene and Why Evolution Is True on the topic of evolution but the perspective taken by Matt is unique and remarkable.The book can be vaguely divided into two parts. The first part talks about what sexual selection is and how sexual reproduction happens. There's a deep dive that talks about Meiosis mentioning Recombination and Outcrossing. This information is crucial to understanding many of the concepts in the book.The second part of the book is about how two genders of the same species differ and the reason for those differences - just as the title says 'Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature'.Chapters 6 and 7 are truly interesting and talk about polygamy in men and monogamy in women. "Polygamy and 3-D spatial skills seem to go together in several species." - Brilliant!Witty and kept me curious till the end.
    • 4/5
      This book looked at sexual selection as force in evolution. Written in 1993, it provided a timely examination of competing theories. Ridley is a tenacious commentator, bringing common and critical sense to the biological and anthropological equivalents of the question: why is there something rather than nothing.
    • 5/5
      The reasons and the evolution of sexual reproduction. The title refers to the red queen in Alice in Wonderland, who ran very fast but stayed in the same place, which Ridley illustrates with fine language skills which have won him prizes for science writing.
    • 4/5
      The Red Queen is an interesting presentation of the roll of sex in evolution, and the evolution of sex. It provided much food for thought, especially the roll of parasites in driving evolution, the idea of the red queen (things evolve to stay even, there is no long term winning). I liked the authors dealing with the nature vs nurturing conflict, that they are both always involved. Especially towards the end, it seemed schools of thought were flippantly tossed on the trash heap rather than more thoughtfully analyzed. Most any theory has something to add.
    • 3/5
      While interesting and stimulating, in the end it became all a bit too much, especially as the style remains unchanged until the very last page. Glad I finished it.
    • 3/5
      Tthis was both an interesting and irritating book. The words ‘aggrieved’ and ‘beleaguered’ would apply to his first few chapters as well as his summation, but I try to remember that the book was written 16 years ago, when the various divisions of social and biological sciences may have been more at odds. Ridley has little or no patience for anthropologists, sociologists, and even sociobiologists (that last surprised me a little) – evolution explains it all.What does it explain? Well, why so many species in the world reproduce sexually, in spite of the biological expense and complication. And what that method does to push evolution along, in ways we might or might not be willing to recognize. His primary theory is that the exchange of DNA caused by sexual reproduction (as opposed to budding, splitting, and other asexual methods) has to do with the race between any organism and its parasites and diseases. He makes a pretty persuasive argument, with many examples from both current and ancient species.His second thesis rests on how this arms race creates a feedback loop of reinforced inherited characteristics, some obvious, some almost chance. Again, many examples support his thesis. Where he gets most defensive is concerning the examples of our own species – that is where the book feels most out of date. I think we have become more sophisticated about our own responses as we have had the advantage of enhanced brain imaging of various kinds in the intervening decade and a half.His querulous defensiveness left me wondering how he chose his evidence. The text is lavishly footnoted, but most of the evidence itself is hidden, and I wonder how much the selection is biased to prove his points, intentionally or not. Without copious research in his tracks, I don’t think there’s any way to tell.I wonder if this is why I don’t read more non-fiction – I can trust the fiction to be fiction, but with non-fiction, I’m constantly asking myself “how does he know? And would I agree with his interpretation?”
    • 4/5
      An eloquent exposition of the known facts and the then currently likely explanations for them. Written in 1993 but still a great overview. I am no expert on the subject but do follow it, and I think that nearly all of his content stands up today. Part of the reason for this is his wonderful habit of not just giving the summary but looking into to hows and whys of the conclusion the scientists have come to. I find the very concept of the books title to be a deceptive one. At first glance you think, "hey that's clever, what a fascinating glimpse into a rather strange set of circumstances that bring out such an effect". By the time you are half way through the book you begin to realise that in fact this quirky little twist on the game of life is almost all pervasive and you are surrounded.By the end of the book you have a new lens through which to view the world. Not many books do this, and hardly any of them do it using reality and logical thought, so this must be a keeper.So ignore the various political pot shots taken at him (I speak as one who would happily cheer the mob onwards) and enjoy the quality of the writing and the fact you now have another way to think about the world.