Works in Progress Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

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Works in Progress Podcast

Works in Progress

Technology

History

Frequency: 1 episode/9d. Total Eps: 42

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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Apple Podcasts

🇬🇧 Great Britain - technology
14/08/2026
#95
🇨🇦 Canada - technology
05/07/2026
#99
🇬🇧 Great Britain - technology
02/07/2026
#81
🇬🇧 Great Britain - technology
29/06/2026
#71
🇬🇧 Great Britain - technology
28/06/2026
#60
🇨🇦 Canada - technology
26/06/2026
#82
🇫🇷 France - technology
26/06/2026
#86
🇬🇧 Great Britain - technology
23/06/2026
#89
🇫🇷 France - technology
23/06/2026
#93
🇬🇧 Great Britain - technology
22/06/2026
#90

Spotify

🇬🇧 Great Britain - technology
11/06/2026
#50
↗
🇬🇧 Great Britain - technology
15/05/2026
#50
↘
🇬🇧 Great Britain - technology
14/05/2026
#48
↘
🇬🇧 Great Britain - technology
13/05/2026
#47
→

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

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https://www.scientificdiscovery.dev/
20 shares
https://blog.jacobtrefethen.com/
20 shares
https://worksinprogress.co/print/
5 shares

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVrn8_8aKO8

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RSS feed quality

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Score global : 48%

Publication history

Monthly episode publishing history over the past years.

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Latest published episodes

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Samuel Hughes on The Great Downzoning

Episode 2

Friday, June 27, 2025 • Duration 01:09:32

Before the twentieth century, most cities were highly permissive about what people were allowed to build on their land. Nearly all Western householders lost these liberties during the first half of the twentieth century. Samuel Hughes calls this phenomenon The Great Downzoning. In the first episode of the Works in Progress Podcast, he describes how and why this happened, and what it means for modern pro-housing campaigners.

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Lenacapavir: The miracle drug that could end AIDS

Episode 1

Wednesday, June 11, 2025 • Duration 04:53:46

Lenacapavir is a new HIV drug that blocks infections with an efficacy rate of nearly 100%, and it could completely change the fight against HIV worldwide. Saloni and Jacob talk about the development and prospects for this new drug, as well as the history of HIV, the initial discovery of retroviruses, and how HIV was transformed from a death sentence to a manageable condition.

Hard Drugs is a new podcast from Works in Progress and Open Philanthropy about medical innovation presented by Saloni Dattani and Jacob Trefethen.

00:00 Intro
03:52 How was HIV discovered? Where did it come from, and how does it attack the body and cause AIDS?
38:10 Antiretrovirals: How did scientists develop breakthrough HIV drugs — from azidothymidine to protease inhibitors to PrEP?
1:51:35 How does prevention and treatment work today?
2:19:03 HIV’s capsid and the breakthrough of lenacapavir, the first-approved HIV capsid inhibitor
2:50:36 How to develop long-lasting treatments
3:14:45 Lenacapavir’s near 100% efficacy in clinical trials
3:48:40 The impact of global programs against HIV, and can we now end HIV?

Saloni’s substack newsletter: https://www.scientificdiscovery.dev/

Jacob’s blog: https://blog.jacobtrefethen.com/

Books:

How to Survive a Plague — by David France (2016). [Mentioned as a history of the science and activism against the AIDS epidemic, and the protease-inhibitor breakthrough.] https://surviveaplague.com/
And the Band Played On — Randy Shilts (1987). [Mentioned as an account of the early years of AIDS.] https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780312374631/andthebandplayedon/
Drug development stories: From bench to bedside — Elsevier (2024). [Mentioned as containing a history of the development of lenacapavir] https://shop.elsevier.com/books/drug-discovery-stories/yu/978-0-443-23932-8

Retrospectives:

The development of antiretroviral therapy and its impact on the HIV-1/AIDS pandemic — Samuel Broder (2015). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.antiviral.2009.10.002
History of the discoveries of the first human retroviruses: HTLV-1 and HTLV-2 — Robert Gallo (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.onc.1208980
A Look at Long Acting Drugs — Anne de Bruyn Kops for Open Philanthropy (2025). https://bit.ly/long-acting-drugs-op
How To Save Twenty Million Lives, with Dr Mark Dybul — Statecraft (2023) https://www.statecraft.pub/p/saving-twenty-million-lives
The Road to Fortovase. A History of Saquinavir, the First Human Immunodeficiency Virus Protease Inhibitor — Redshaw et al. (2000) https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-57092-6_1

Articles:

The origin of genetic diversity in HIV-1 — Smyth et al. (2012). [Mentioned as a review about HIV’s recombination, which described it as “a primitive form of sexual reproduction”] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168170212002122
PF74 Reinforces the HIV-1 Capsid To Impair Reverse Transcription-Induced Uncoating — Rankovic et al. (2018) https://doi.org/10.1128/JVI.00845-18
Twice-Yearly Lenacapavir for HIV Prevention in Men and Gender-Diverse Persons — Kelley et al. (2024) https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2411858
Twice-Yearly Lenacapavir or Daily F/TAF for HIV Prevention in Cisgender Women — Bekker et al. (2024) https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2407001
The evolution of HIV-1 and the origin of AIDS — Sharp and Hahn (2010) https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2010.0031
Pathogenic mechanisms of HIV disease — Moir et al. (2011) https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-pathol-011110-130254
Estimating per-act HIV transmission risk: a systematic review — Patel et al. (2012) https://journals.lww.com/aidsonline/fulltext/2014/06190/Estimating_per_act_HIV_transmission_risk__a.14.aspx
The structural biology of HIV-1: mechanistic and therapeutic insights — Engelman and Cherepanov (2012) https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro2747
Challenges and opportunities in the development of complex generic long-acting injectable drug products — O’Brien et al. (2021) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jconrel.2021.06.017
Making a “Miracle” HIV Medicine — Nahas (2025) https://press.asimov.com/articles/hiv-medicine
Highly active antiretroviral therapy transformed the lives of people with HIV — Dattani (2024) https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/highly-active-antiretroviral-therapy-transformed-the-lives-of-people-with-hiv

Videos:

Mini-Lecture Series: HIV Capsid Inhibitors: Mechanism of Action — David Spach, National HIV Curriculum (2024) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ9KDxV5Zbs&ab_channel=NationalHIVCurriculum

Image credits:

Mini-Lecture Series: HIV Capsid Inhibitors: Mechanism of Action — David Spach, National HIV Curriculum (2024) [Multiple diagrams of HIV capsid and lenacapavir’s effect.]
Saloni Dattani; Our World in Data (2024) Highly active antiretroviral therapy transformed the lives of people with HIV. [Graph of decline in HIV/AIDS mortality after HAART was introduced.]
Engelman and Cherepanov (2012). The structural biology of HIV-1: mechanistic and therapeutic insights. [Diagram of HIV’s entry into the cell.]
Susan Moir, Tae-Wook Chun, Anthony S Fauci (2011). Pathogenic mechanisms of HIV disease. [Diagram of HIV replication rates over time, contrasting acute and chronic infection.]
Saloni Dattani, adapted from Patel et al. (2014). Estimating per-act HIV transmission risk: a systematic review. [Bar chart of risks of contracting HIV from different sources when unprotected.]
Thomas Splettstoesser under CC-BY. [Diagram of HIV’s internal structure.]
Twice-Yearly Lenacapavir or Daily F/TAF for HIV Prevention in Cisgender Women — Bekker et al. (2024) [Chart of lenacapavir’s efficacy.]
Our World in Data based on Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (2024). [Chart of global HIV deaths over time.]

Acknowledgements:

Douglas Chukwu, researcher at Open Philanthropy
Sanela Rankovic, Acting Instructor at the In...

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Stian Westlake on the intangible economy and paying for social science

Episode 3

Friday, July 11, 2025 • Duration 58:41

Why does London dominate Britain's economy, whereas Germany's is spread out across the whole country? Why don't restaurants scale well? What kind of social science research (if any) should the government be funding? Stian Westlake – Executive Chair of the Economic and Social Research Council and author of Capitalism Without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy – joins the Works in Progress podcast to discuss these questions.

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How Henry VIII accidentally started the Industrial Revolution, with Anton Howes

Episode 4

Tuesday, July 29, 2025 • Duration 01:11:47

Historian Anton Howes discusses how Henry VIII turned Britain into an economic backwater – making it the unlikeliest place for the Industrial Revolution to happen. But, he explains it only took a small cabal of people who understood the problems of the time to turn the fate of the country (and thus, the world) around.

You can learn more about the history of the Industrial Revolution on Anton's Substack, Age of Invention. And you can learn more about progress at Works in Progress.

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The underrated economics of land with Mike Bird

Episode 5

Friday, August 15, 2025 • Duration 01:15:45

Why is Chinese housing so expensive despite being oversupplied? How did land reforms in Russia lead to the Bolshevik revolution? What killed Georgism? The Economist’s Wall Street Editor, Mike Bird, discusses the underrated economics of land.

You can preorder Mike's book here and read more about land readjustment in Works in Progress Issue 19.

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Proteins: Weird blobs that do important things

Episode 7

Wednesday, September 3, 2025 • Duration 19:49

This episode kicks off a mini-series on proteins, drug development and AI. Saloni and Jacob explore the world of proteins, including how proteins fold into complex shapes, why that complexity matters and how crowded and dynamic the inside of a cell really is; and they exchange surprising statistics about proteins.

Hard Drugs is a new podcast from Works in Progress and Open Philanthropy 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/

Jacob’s blog: https://blog.jacobtrefethen.com/

Books:

Ron Milo and Rob Phillips. Biology by the numbers https://book.bionumbers.org/
Carl Ivar Branden and John Tooze (1999) Introduction to protein structure https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.1201/9781136969898/introduction-protein-structure-john-tooze-carl-ivar-branden

Articles:

Niko McCarty (2023). Biology is a burrito. https://www.asimov.press/p/burrito-biology
Rhiannon Morris, Katrina Black, and Elliott Stollar (2022) Uncovering protein function: from classification to complexes. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9400073/

How to become President of China with Dan Wang

Episode 6

Wednesday, August 27, 2025 • Duration 01:18:44

Is it better to be run by engineers, lawyers or regulators? Can you build an economy on luxury handbags or do you need advanced manufacturing? Dan Wang, author of Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future discusses why China outbuilds America, how the young and ambitious succeed in China, and the secret to finding the best Chinese restaurants.

You can order his new book here, read his annual letters on China here, and check out London's best Suzhou noodles here.
If you want more from Works in Progress you can read the magazine here or listen to our episode about land in East Asia here.

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Why feminism worked best in the West with Alice Evans

Episode 8

Wednesday, September 10, 2025 • Duration 01:16:51

Social scientist Alice Evans talks about why, despite a superficially similar feminist movement in East Asia, Western feminism has been much successful. Alice, Sam and Aria talk about dating markets, drinking culture at work, top-down media control, and what tax policy is best for motivating people to have more children.

For more of Alice's work, check out her Substack.

Go to worksinprogress.co to read more from Works in Progress.

References

Flowers of Fire: The Inside Story of South Korea's Feminist Movement and What It Means for Women' s Rights Worldwide Paperback by Hawon Jung
The clan and the corporation: Sustaining cooperation in China and Europe by Avner Greif and Guido Tabellini
The Swedish Theory of Love: Individualism and Social Trust in Modern Sweden by Henrik Berggren and Lars Trägårdh
Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization Hardcover by Edward Slingerland

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100 years of insulin in 15 minutes

Episode 9

Tuesday, September 16, 2025 • Duration 17:31

A hundred years ago, insulin was scraped from pig pancreases. Today, it’s made by bacteria in giant tanks. In the second part of a mini series on proteins, drug development and AI, Saloni tells the story of how insulin went from a crude animal extract to the first genetically-engineered drug, kickstarting the biotech industry along the way.

Hard Drugs is a new podcast from Works in Progress and Open Philanthropy about medical innovation presented by Saloni Dattani and Jacob Trefethen.

Saloni’s substack newsletter: https://www.scientificdiscovery.dev/

Jacob’s blog: https://blog.jacobtrefethen.com/

Books:

Genentech: The beginnings of biotech by Sally Smith Hughes

Articles:

FDA (2007). Celebrating a Milestone: FDA's Approval of First Genetically-Engineered Product https://fda.report/media/110447/Celebrating-a-Milestone--FDA%27s-Approval-of-the-First-Genetircally-Engineered-Product.pdf
Genentech (2016). Cloning Insulin https://www.gene.com/stories/cloning-insulin
Arthur Riggs (2020). Making, Cloning, and the Expression of Human Insulin Genes in Bacteria: The Path to Humulin https://academic.oup.com/edrv/article/42/3/374/6042201

Podcasts:

Novo Nordisk (Ozempic) by the Acquired podcast https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/novo-nordisk-ozempic

How traffic modernism ruined cities with Nicholas Boys Smith

Episode 10

Friday, September 26, 2025 • Duration 01:12:38

Nicholas Boys Smith joins Ben and Sam to explain how to plan spaces that people like; dense, sociable and, above all else, beautiful. He says people don't like new buildings because they don't trust what planners and architects are going to do to the places that matter to them. As an alternative he presents his playbook for how YIMBYs can win over the public.

If you liked this episode, you'll enjoy our first episode on The Great Downzoning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAcEfeLlqLo

For more from Works in Progress: worksinprogress.co/print

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Works in Progress Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Works in Progress Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

Other97

Youtube6

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

Similar podcasts and content

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Other97

Youtube6

ncbi.nlm.nih6

Apple Podcasts

Spotify