Works in Progress Podcast

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 laissez-faire and top-down control. Landowners could build almost anything they liked but street networks were laid out with near-Soviet thoroughness decades in advance. Transport and utilities, meanwhile, ran as regulated monopolies. They were funded by users, turned a profit, but prices were controlled. Samuel, Ben and Aria discuss what made this system work and why it was dismantled.

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 Katharine Collins, who co-invented the second malaria vaccine, called R21, during her PhD. They discuss the gruelling process of reverse-engineering a vaccine and eureka moments along the way. They ask whether the biggest barriers to new vaccines are scientific or financial, and what it will take to finally eradicate one of natureʼs most vicious killers. Hard Drugs is a podcast from Works in Progress about medical innovation presented by Saloni Dattani and Jacob Trefethen. You can watch or listen on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts. Saloni’s substack newsletter: https://www.scientificdiscovery.dev/ [https://www.scientificdiscovery.dev/] Jacob’s blog: https://blog.jacobtrefethen.com/ [https://blog.jacobtrefethen.com/]  Acknowledgements: * Aria Babu, editor at Works in Progress * Graham Bessellieu, video editor * Alice Edwards, captions * Abhishaike Mahajan, cover art * Atalanta Arden-Miller, art direction * David Hackett, composer Works in Progress & Coefficient Giving  Thesis * Katharine Collins (2014). R21, a novel particle based vaccine for a multi-component approach to malaria vaccination. Books * R. Killick-Kendrick (2012). Rodent Malaria. * Michael Kremer and Rachel Glennerster (2004). Strong Medicine: Creating Incentives for Pharmaceutical Research on Neglected Diseases. Articles and reports * Saloni Dattani (2023). Why we didn’t get a malaria vaccine sooner. https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-we-didnt-get-a-malaria-vaccine-sooner/ [https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-we-didnt-get-a-malaria-vaccine-sooner/]  * Jerome P Vanderberg (2010). Reflections on Early Malaria Vaccine Studies, the First Successful Human Malaria Vaccination, and Beyond https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2637529/ [https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2637529/] * Pratik Pawar (2022). It Took 35 years to Get a Malaria Vaccine. Why? https://undark.org/2022/05/25/it-took-35-years-to-get-a-malaria-vaccine-why/ [https://undark.org/2022/05/25/it-took-35-years-to-get-a-malaria-vaccine-why/]  * Ernst R. Berndt, Rachel Glennerster, Michael R. Kremer, Jean Lee, Ruth Levine, Georg Weizsacker & Heidi Williams (2005) Advanced Purchase Commitments for a Malaria Vaccine: Estimating Costs and Effectiveness. https://www.nber.org/papers/w11288 [https://www.nber.org/papers/w11288]  * Ryan Duncombe, Karam Elabd and Justin Sandefur (2024). Avoiding Another Lost Decade on Malaria Vaccines https://www.cgdev.org/publication/avoiding-another-lost-decade-malaria-vaccines [https://www.cgdev.org/publication/avoiding-another-lost-decade-malaria-vaccines]

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 sculptures. North Korea would be in a much better position. Sam and Samuel sit down with our Art Director, Atalanta, a sculptor by training, and talk all things sculpture. They discuss how art education has become de-skilled, how sculpture has always been the best art form for mass production and the surprising places the tradition has been kept alive.

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 article at https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-evolution-of-bacteria-2/ [https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqa0JMY2xqV3JtdzlndDBfUUNjaGJTVUJQXzYyUXxBQ3Jtc0tsRWpvVF9nellCNGQ0QTNSWXV5YWxVRTRzTXVWQnpfUjE2VThIa1M5WUZmVnc3WFNTWVFxRGl6ako1YzRCSmJwb2lNUXBXVlNBLWM3YlRPV0JNelQ0S0tpaFVKa1FQVjlkLUZyQlZXbVcxT3c3a1hxSQ&q=https%3A%2F%2Fworksinprogress.co%2Fissue%2Fhow-to-redraw-a-city%2F&v=4PHkvM1PVo0] And you can find the rest of Works in Progress at worksinprogress.co Words by Kevin Blake Read by Stuart Ritchie Music by David Hackett

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 global capital of data centers — and helped France build so many nuclear power stations. They discuss which public goods local government is best placed to provide, why America has better housing outcomes than its reputation suggests, and when national government needs to constrain local power. Read Judge Glock's piece on why water in America is too clean here: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-gold-plating-of-american-water/