Tag: Progress Studies

Will Marshall – Indexing the Earth

Invest Like the Best | 16 November 2021 | 0h 49m | Listen Later | iTunes | Spotify
Interview with Will Marshall, the co-founder and CEO of Planet, which has successfully built and deployed 450 satellites into space, to create a time series of images for every place on Earth. Describes how space is going through an internet moment where cost reductions and performance enhancements have led to a seismic shift in what’s possible, and how that can drastically improve life on Earth through unique datasets like the one Planet is piecing together.

Terence Kealey: Research and Development

The Human Progress Podcast | 22 October 2021 | 1h 04m | Listen Later | iTunes | Spotify
Interview with Terence Kealey discussing the origins of innovation and how to sustain it into the future. Sets out the arguments against government funding of research and development.

James Breiding on Small-Nation Success

American Purpose’s Bookstack | 26 February 2021 | 0h 36m | Listen Later | iTunes | Spotify
Interview with James Breiding about his book Too Small To Fail: Why Some Small Nations Outperform Larger Ones and How They Are Reshaping the World. Discusses lessons from eight small economies about the factors that have allowed them to successfully tackle problems that trip up larger countries.

We Can’t Have Medical Progress Without Risk

KERA’s Think | 29 September 2021 | 0h 33m | Listen Later | iTunes | Spotify
Interview with Paul Offit about his book You Bet Your Life: From Blood Transfusions to Mass Vaccination, the Long and Risky History of Medical Innovation. Describes the history of the risks run and sacrifices made to progress the medical technologies and lifesaving therapies that we rely on.

The Long Economic Shadow of World War II in Europe

The Economic History Podcast | 1 October 2021 | 0h 59m | Listen Later | iTunes | Spotify
Interview with Tamás Vonyó arguing that the long-run variation in the postwar performance of European economies is mainly due to the deleterious effects of WWII rather than communism versus market economies. Discusses the comparative wartime destruction across regions using his “5 D’s” framework; contrasts the growth experiences of Western Europe and Eastern Europe with these initial starting points; revisits the 1980s collapse of the Eastern Bloc, reconsidering the role of factor inputs as a cause of socialism’s failure rather than productivity/innovation deficiencies.

Holden Karnofsky on The Most Important Century

80,000 Hours Podcast with Rob Wiblin | 19 August 2021 | 2h 19m | Listen Later | iTunes | Spotify
Interview with Holden Karnofsky about his article series The Most Important Century. Discusses the case that we live in an incredibly important time; how achievable-seeming technology could lead to unprecedented productivity, control of the environment, and more; how economic growth is faster than it can be for all that much longer; forecasting transformative AI; and the implications of living in the most important century.

The Great Slowdown and Why It’s Good, with Danny Dorling

Intelligence Squared | 5 May 2020 | 0h 59m | Listen Later | iTunes | Spotify
Interview with Danny Dorling about his book Slowdown: The End of the Great Acceleration―and Why It’s Good for the Planet, the Economy, and Our Lives. Argues that fertility rates, growth in GDP per person, and even technological progress have all steadily declined since the 1970s. Rather than lament this turn of events, Dorling says we should embrace it as a moment of promise and a move toward stability.

Jared Rubin: Christianity and Capitalism

Razib Khan’s Unsupervised Learning | 19 August 2021 | 1h 02m | Listen Later | iTunes | Spotify
Interview with Jared Rubin about his book Rulers, Religion, and Riches: Why the West Got Rich and the Middle East Did Not. Argues that the ideological content of Western Christianity mattered to the development of capitalism and liberal institutions. Discusses the role of legitimating ideology and why Islam managed to check the rise of the capitalist class notwithstanding that Muhammad was a merchant.