What Could
Go Right?
The Podcast

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The Progress Report: Clean Up on Aisle Everest

Featuring Zachary Karabell and Emma Varvaloucas

On this week’s episode of The Progress Report, Zachary and Emma dig up the good news buried beneath the usual headlines, celebrating Costa Rica’s leap into high-income status and the upward mobility of Cape Verde and Samoa, marveling at Paris’s historic $1.4 billion effort to make the Seine swimmable again for local residents, highlighting a Supreme Court decision that keeps crucial phone and internet subsidies alive for rural and low-income Americans, and exploring how drones are helping clear decades of trash from Mount Everest. Plus! They share a listener’s inspiring idea to end every conversation with a piece of good news.

What Makes Societies Thrive?

Featuring Johan Norberg

What made history’s golden ages thrive? Zachary and Emma speak with Johan Norberg, historian, documentary filmmaker, and author of Peak Human: What We Can Learn from the Rise and Fall of Golden Ages. Johan discusses what special societal qualities produced golden ages across history, as well as why these civilizations declined, what we can learn from their setbacks, and why the cyclical nature of history should bring optimism in today’s world. Johan also explores recent political developments in his native Sweden.

The Progress Report: A Robot Saved My Heart

Featuring Zachary Karabell and Emma Varvaloucas

This week on The Progress Report, Zachary and Emma bring more uplifting headlines you won’t find in your usual news feed. America’s prison population is dropping fast, thanks to a dramatic decrease in youth incarceration. The first fully robotic heart transplant in the U.S. marks a giant leap for medical innovation, eliminating the need for open-chest surgery and speeding up recovery for patients. Nepal is quietly staging an electric vehicle revolution, with 70% of new cars now electric and nearly universal access to the power grid.

ALL EPISODES

Featuring Zachary Karabell and Emma Varvaloucas

The Progress Report: Clean Up on Aisle Everest

On this week’s episode of The Progress Report, Zachary and Emma dig up the good news buried beneath the usual headlines, celebrating Costa Rica’s leap into high-income status and the upward mobility of Cape Verde and Samoa, marveling at Paris’s historic $1.4 billion effort to make the Seine swimmable again for local residents, highlighting a Supreme Court decision that keeps crucial phone and internet subsidies alive for rural and low-income Americans, and exploring how drones are helping clear decades of trash from Mount Everest. Plus! They share a listener’s inspiring idea to end every conversation with a piece of good news.

Featuring Johan Norberg

What Makes Societies Thrive?

What made history’s golden ages thrive? Zachary and Emma speak with Johan Norberg, historian, documentary filmmaker, and author of Peak Human: What We Can Learn from the Rise and Fall of Golden Ages. Johan discusses what special societal qualities produced golden ages across history, as well as why these civilizations declined, what we can learn from their setbacks, and why the cyclical nature of history should bring optimism in today’s world. Johan also explores recent political developments in his native Sweden.

Featuring Zachary Karabell and Emma Varvaloucas

The Progress Report: A Robot Saved My Heart

This week on The Progress Report, Zachary and Emma bring more uplifting headlines you won’t find in your usual news feed. America’s prison population is dropping fast, thanks to a dramatic decrease in youth incarceration. The first fully robotic heart transplant in the U.S. marks a giant leap for medical innovation, eliminating the need for open-chest surgery and speeding up recovery for patients. Nepal is quietly staging an electric vehicle revolution, with 70% of new cars now electric and nearly universal access to the power grid.

MEET OUR
HOSTS

Zachary Karabell

Zachary Karabell is the founder of the Progress Network. He is an author, columnist, and investor and president of River Twice Capital. He is also the author of 13 books, most recently Inside Money: Brown Brothers Harriman and the American Way of Power.

Zachary Karabell

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Emma Varvaloucas

Emma Varvaloucas is the Executive Director of The Progress Network. An editor and writer specializing in nonprofit media, she was formerly Executive Editor of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review and is the editor of two books from Wisdom Publications.

Emma Varvaloucas

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Testimonials

This podcast is optimistic without being naive. Deeply historically based reflections met with global comparisons on the troubling issues we face today. Excited for the next conversation!

Katelyn

Love this fresh perspective—a welcome listen during these transitional times.

Lara

What Could Go Right? is one of the best projects on the Internet. Chin up, people—believe it or not, we're somehow moving in the right direction in many ways.

Chris

Your podcast with Anne-Marie Slaughter was fabulous. . . . More things like this and thank you for your platform of caring, brilliant leaders. We need your perspective to heal!

Cheryl