Works in Progress Podcast
by Works in Progress
Latest episode
Can we switch off diseases?
Can we switch off diseases?
About this podcast
Works in Progress is an online magazine devoted to new and underrated ideas about economic growth, scientific progress, and technology. Subscribe to listen to the Works in Progress podcast, plus Hard Drugs by Saloni Dattani and Jacob Trefethen.
Episodes
The newest 20 of 43 episodes
- Can we switch off diseases? · 1 h 16 min · Episode 43** We’ve paused the Works in Progress podcast feed, so head over to our dedicated Hard Drugs podcast feed to listen to future episodes, if you hadn’t subscribed there already!…
- Are miracle drugs hiding in plain sight? · 2 h 32 min · Episode 42** We’ve paused the Works in Progress podcast feed, so head over to our dedicated Hard Drugs podcast feed to listen to future episodes, if you hadn’t subscribed there already!…
- Issue 24: Rats, The Glorious Revolution and the secret to ultra-Orthodox fertility · 1 h 0 min · Episode 41Alberta is the only part of the world that has people but not rats. Rats came to the new world on ships to New York, Boston and Philadelphia during the Industrial Revolution…
- The lost art of building cities · 1 h 25 min · Episode 40In the nineteenth century, cities often grew a thousandfold while increasing wages, the size of homes, and delivering great public goods like electricity and plumbing to their…
- Inventing the second malaria vaccine with Katharine Collins · 2 h 15 min · Episode 39Malaria is caused not by a virus or bacterium, but by a complex, shape-shifting parasite that has evolved alongside us for millennia. This has made vaccine development a brutal…
- Where did all the good sculptors go? · 1 h 19 min · Episode 38The Trump administration wants to bolster traditional art. Their attempt to revive sculpture, a mass statue-building program, is doomed. America doesn’t have the sculptors…
- The evolution of bacteria · 11 min · Episode 35Generations of microbes evolve in hours, not millennia. By speeding up Darwin’s clock, scientists have watched evolution happen in real time, and it’s changed how we understand…
- What is local government good for? · 1 h 2 min · Episode 37Local government works best when areas can compete with each other and capture some of the upside of economic growth. Ben sits down with Judge Glock to discuss how…
- Washer woman: The invention of dishwashers · 9 min · Episode 34In 1965, married American women did 34 hours of housework weekly. By 2010, that had fallen to 18 hours. The dishwasher wasn’t the only cause, but it certainly helped. You can see…
- The triumph of logical English · 41 min · Episode 33English prose has become much easier to read. But shorter sentences had little to do with it. You can see the images, graphs and read the article at…
- How to speed up clinical trials · 56 min · Episode 36Drug development has never been more expensive, in terms of output per dollar spent. This trend, called Eroom's law, is surprising, considering incredible technological advances…
- How to spot a monopoly: Measuring competition · 25 min · Episode 32Competition makes capitalism work. A new method for measuring it may be the holy grail of economic regulation. You can see the images, graphs and read the article at…
- The death rays that guard life: We can use ultraviolet light to disinfect public spaces · 25 min · Episode 29We disinfect water before we drink it. Germicidal ultraviolet could make airborne disease as rare as those carried by water. You can see the images, graphs and read the article…
- Issue 23: Egg freezing, Australian refugee policy and ASML · 1 h 5 min · Episode 31You should freeze your eggs. Contrary to popular myth, egg freezing works very well and if you freeze your eggs in your twenties or early thirties, you have a very good chance of…
- Inflatable space stations: Creating artificial gravity so we can live in space · 19 min · Episode 28If we ever want to live in space, we need to work out a way of creating artificial gravity. You can see the images, graphs and read the article at…
- The algorithm will see you now: Why radiologists haven't been replaced by AI · 22 min · Episode 27Radiology combines digital images, clear benchmarks, and repeatable tasks. But replacing humans with AI is harder than it seems. You can see the images, graphs and read the…
- Did status signaling ruin architecture? · 1 h 27 min · Episode 30There are basically no ugly buildings from before 1930. There are definitely none from before 1830. Why? Is it survivorship bias? Have we demolished all the ugly old buildings…
- Sunscreen for the planet: Geoengineering a cooler planet · 23 min · Episode 26The world is warming faster than we can cut emissions. Volcanoes are already cooling the planet, with particles that reflect sunlight. Maybe we can too. You can see the images…
- How to redraw a city: Land readjustment in Japan · 35 min · Episode 25Japan faced some of the world’s toughest planning problems. It solved them by letting homeowners replan whole neighborhoods privately by supermajority vote. You can see the…
- Longevity · 1 h 25 min · Episode 24There are some animals that can live for hundreds of years. Do the secrets to human longevity lie in a lobster's ability to regrow felled limbs, in a Greenland shark's ultra-slow…
