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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.
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Can we switch off diseases?
** 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! https://harddrugs.worksinprogress.co/ ** What if treating diseas
Are miracle drugs hiding in plain sight?
** 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! https://harddrugs.worksinprogress.co/ ** GLP-1 drugs like Ozempi
Issue 24: Rats, The Glorious Revolution and the secret to ultra-Orthodox fertility
Alberta 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. From there they spread west at a rate of 24 kilometers a year and
The lost art of building cities
In 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 people. What made them so extraordinary? They had a hybrid of la
Inventing the second malaria vaccine with Katharine Collins
Malaria 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 challenge. In this episode, Jacob and Saloni are joined by Kath
Where did all the good sculptors go?
The 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, foundries, and workers to make hundreds of bronze or marble sculptu
The evolution of bacteria
Generations 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 natural selection. You can see the images, graphs and read the
What is local government good for?
Local 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 well-structured local incentives helped make Loudoun County, Virginia, the g
Washer woman: The invention of dishwashers
In 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 images, graphs and read the article at https://worksinpro
The triumph of logical English
English 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 https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-logical-triumph-of-english/ (https://worksinprogress.c
How to speed up clinical trials
Drug 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. Ben and Saloni talk to Ruxandra Teslo about why this has happ
How to spot a monopoly: Measuring competition
Competition 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 https://worksinprogress.co/issue/how-to-spot-a-monopoly/ And you can find
The death rays that guard life: We can use ultraviolet light to disinfect public spaces
We 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 at https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-death-rays-that-guard-l
Issue 23: Egg freezing, Australian refugee policy and ASML
You 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 having a child. European leaders are looking to copy Australi
Inflatable space stations: Creating artificial gravity so we can live in space
If 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 https://worksinprogress.co/issue/inflatable-space-stations/ (https://www.youtube.com/redirect
The algorithm will see you now: Why radiologists haven't been replaced by AI
Radiology 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 article at https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-algorithm-will-see-
Did status signaling ruin architecture?
There 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 and only kept the most beautiful and prestigious buildings? Is i
Sunscreen for the planet: Geoengineering a cooler planet
The 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, graphs and read the article at https://worksinprogress.co/issue
How to redraw a city: Land readjustment in Japan
Japan 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 images, graphs and read the article at https://worksinprogress.co/i
Longevity
There 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 metabolism, or in an elephant's extreme cancer resistance? Ar
Two is already too many: Why South Korean birth rates are so low
Every hundred South Koreans today will have only six great-grandchildren between them. The rest of the world can learn from Korea’s catastrophe to avoid the same fate. You can see the images, graphs and read the article at https://worksinpr
Should everyone be taking statins?
Heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, but it’s also one of medicine’s biggest success stories. Since the 1950s, the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease has fallen dramatically, thanks to public health efforts, emergen
Why Europe has stagnated
Europe is now much poorer than America. Is it because Europe doesn’t have a big tech giant? Can we blame the bureaucrats in Brussels? What happened to make Germany ban combustion cars? Should we turn Europe into a playground for American an
Inflation in Rome, Weimar Germany and Soviet Russia with Mark Koyama
People hate inflation. It undermines faith in the government so people obstruct policies that require faith in the state, like nuclear power, and in democracies it drives them to vote for extremist parties. Ben and Pieter sit down with econ
The nuclear renaissance
In the mid twentieth century, nuclear power was meant to be the cheap and clean energy of the future. Now, nuclear power is expensive, maligned and unpopular. Ben, Sam and Alex discuss what went wrong in most of the world and, surprisingly,
The first cancer vaccine
Hepatitis B is a tiny virus that causes hundreds of thousands of deaths from liver disease and cancer each year. The vaccine against it became the first of many milestones: it was the first viral protein subunit vaccine, the first recombina
The history of vaccines
Before vaccines became routine, they were risky experiments. In this episode, Jacob and Saloni travel back to the world of smallpox, cowpox, and cow-based “vaccine farms” to see how scientists stumbled toward the first vaccines against infe
Should we ban ugly buildings?
The YIMBY movement is divided about whether there is a tradeoff between building more homes and building beautifully. Ben, Sam and Samuel talk about how aesthetic regulations can make building more popular by generating goodwill from the pu
The economics of the baby bust with Jesús Fernández-Villaverde
Why are birth rates plummeting across the developing world? Why should we even care about the baby bust? Where can we find the most elastic baby? Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, Professor of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, explains
Will AI solve medicine?
Artificial intelligence is transforming how we discover and develop new medicines. But how far can it really take us? In this episode, Jacob and Saloni trace the path of drug development from discovery to testing, manufacturing, and deliver
