The Works in Progress Newsletter

The Works in Progress Newsletter

Home
Features
Notes on Progress
Podcast
Hard Drugs
Books in Progress
Website
Print
The Update
Archive
About
Issue 22: Why Europe doesn’t have a Tesla
Plus: Why communist reforms almost always failed, the golden age of vaccines, and the everything plant.
 • Works in Progress
Why Europe doesn’t have a Tesla
Restrictive labor laws are making Europe's superstars fall far behind.
 • Pieter Garicano
Inflation in Rome, Weimar Germany and Soviet Russia with Mark Koyama
Episode 12 of of the Works in Progress podcast is about how inflation undermines state capacity.
 • Works in Progress, Ben Southwood, Pieter Garicano, and Mark Koyama
1:17:19
Learning about longevity from long-lived animals
The secrets to extending human lifespans might lie in the animals that can already live for centuries.
 • Aria Schrecker and Works in Progress
How writing about nineteenth-century cities changed my mind
More pro-planning, less fussed about privatisation, more pro-monopolies
 • Samuel Hughes
Many Victorian cities grew by tenfold in a century
Could ours do the same?
 • Samuel Hughes

January 2026

The nuclear renaissance
Episode eleven of the Works in Progress Podcast has some radioactive hot takes
 • Ben Southwood, Sam Bowman, and Alex Chalmers
1:21:18
American water is too clean
Clean drinking water is a modern miracle. But it has become expensive, and it doesn’t need to be.
 • Works in Progress and Judge Glock
Why America needs fewer bus stops
Removing them can turn a service people tolerate into one they’re happy to use.
 • Works in Progress
The golden age of vaccine development
The first vaccine was a lucky accident. Now we can design new vaccines in weeks, atom by atom.
 • Saloni Dattani and Works in Progress
The book of discoveries
Long before modern science, Europeans learned to see their own time as an age of invention rather than decline.
 • Works in Progress and Virginia Postrel

December 2025

© 2026 Works in Progress · Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start your SubstackGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture