The Progress Report: Science Tastes Like Chicken

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Zachary Karabell: What could go right. I’m Zachary Karabell, the founder of The Progress Network, joined by my co-host Emma Varvaloucas, the Executive Director of The Progress Network, and this is our weekly progress report. So Emma, what do you have for us this week?

Emma Varvaloucas: This week I have a very quirky collection of things. I feel like it’s always a bit quirky, but my very hardworking colleague that does a lot of the research for us to scour the internet for these stories is on vacation. Good for him, but harder for us because our scouring abilities are limited.

Zachary Karabell: So you have gotten quirky.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yes, I’ve got quirky. The scarcity has made me quirkier as an economic force. So we didn’t know what was gonna happen. So we’re gonna start with Nigeria because why not? I feel like, like one of the common themes, some of the stuff I’m gonna talk about today is like it’s, we’re not sure if it’s progress.

It depends on from which perspective you look at it, which is really the case with everything that we talk about. I feel like some of this stuff today is especially so, so very interesting story from Rest of World, which is a great news outlet, which covers the rest of the world if we’re not apparent

Zachary Karabell: Funny enough.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yeah. They have this fascinating piece about how Starlink has become Nigeria’s second largest internet service provider set to become the country’s first largest internet service provider by 2026. You ask Nigerian officials, they’re not so happy about this for obvious reasons. No government communications or anything like that is being put on Starlink servers.

But if you ask like normal Nigerians they’re very happy because the internet that they are used to, not a lot of access to broadband, internet spotty, unreliable, slow, and they’re very happy with Starlink. And apparently the little Starlink like setup kits are selling like hotcakes across Nigeria.

Zachary Karabell: How did selling like hotcakes become just a phrase, like, is that the best selling thing that we can think of? Like do hotcakes sell, especially well such that like that and it’s the best. Invented since sliced toast. I think that one’s probably more ironic.

Emma Varvaloucas: I always heard sliced bread.

Zachary Karabell: Sliced bread. Sorry.

Emma Varvaloucas: Oh, sliced toast.

Zachary Karabell: Totally right. Sliced bread. Sliced toast, I guess, is a derivative of sliced bread, so it’s kind of on the same spectrum.

Emma Varvaloucas: So a very quick Google said there, apparently there’s a theory that sell like hotcakes might have originated from the popularity of pancakes or griddle cakes sold at faires carnivals and other public events.

Zachary Karabell: There you have it. I think maybe like selling like toilet paper, like something that we need.

Emma Varvaloucas: But that’s like a stable, like consistent thing, right? Like this is like people are lining up in delight, maybe selling like toilet paper during the pandemic, but that seems like a too long to be a good replacement option.

Zachary Karabell: So is this of any Elon Musk concern? I mean, there is always this concern about one company becoming so dominant in global internet access and then using its transnational market power. There’s no evidence yet that starling’s actually doing that or that Musk is interested in that, although given Musk’s next incarnation as the master of DOGE after his last next incarnation as the master of Twitter and X, I would think that’s a concern – 

Emma Varvaloucas: I mean, that’s exactly why the Nigerian officials are concerned. They’re like, what happens if we all go over to Starlink and then he decides to turn it off or. Decides to use that leverage to get, I don’t know what, but something that he wants.

Zachary Karabell: I guess in this case it would just be increasing pricing, right? I mean, that would be the most logical incentive unless he’s some sort of, you know, evil genius. I mean, look, I know plenty of people think he’s an evil genius for all sorts of reasons. He has yet to demonstrate a desire for like Dr.Evil level control of all global data.

Emma Varvaloucas: I mean, he is smart enough to know, like he has different pricing set in place in different countries in Africa. So like he is aware of like what the. Markets will bear, obviously. Yes. I guess he could like drive up prices and like send Nigerians into, you know, into paying like Comcast level or Verizon level prices for the internet the way we do in the United States.

But there are, I mean, there’re all alternatives. There are other internet service providers in Nigeria. It’s just that there not particularly great.

Zachary Karabell: I mean, the thing about Starlink I’ve noticed. Us too in, in certain places. Like it’s really good. I mean, it is a solution to a set of problems that there were earlier satellite, very clunky, incredibly expensive, really slow, and this is the first one that just works like everywhere on the planet. You can just set up a Starlink in the middle of the Sahara.

It will work. I guess there’s longer term questions about satellite congestion, like that’s a whole other issue. I think we once talked about this. We did a space episode and the satellite congestion in whatever orbit that these things need to be. It is gonna become an increasing issue and that could, I guess, jeopardize if you’re really dependent on Starlink at some point in the future.

Everything has vulnerabilities, but it really works. I mean, you have to certainly hand it to Starlink. It is a magnificent product that creates seamless connectivity everywhere in the world.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yeah I mean, I’ll say two more things about that. The first is I’ve had some internet problems in Greece and I did have people suggest Starlink to me. I never actually did it, and now I’m getting fast internet in my Athens apartment in a couple of months. So, very exciting stuff without Elon Musk, but, I was curious. I was thinking about it. And the second thing is that, I mean, per the evil genius note, you know, Elon Musk did set up Starling for Ukraine. Like I don’t think that he is somebody who is really trying to do evil in the world. I think he’s been, went a little bit gaga from the disinformation on his own social media.

But I don’t think he wants to like bury Nigerians in like high cost internet prices. But I could be wrong about that.

Zachary Karabell: So moving on from Starlink to drum roll, please. I can’t do that sound.

Emma Varvaloucas: From to a chunk of chicken. Let’s talk about a chunk of chicken. A chunk of chicken. Chicken of the sea. So. I guess if you’re into the whole lab grown meat thing, you know that lab grown meat is very hard to grow in like a, not natural, so to speak, but a chunk of meat that you’re used to eating as a human being.

Right? It’s like most of the lab grown meat stuff, it’s very thin. Or it’s like minced meat. ’cause they have trouble. Growing it large enough, but a team of researchers in Japan has managed to grow an 11 gram chunk of chicken. It’s like chicken nugget size, one centimeter thick, might not sound like a lot, but enough to be a chicken nugget.

They’ve done it through this like innovative way of having these fibroids membranes outside of it that feeds it nutrients and lets it grow. Anyway, I’m not gonna get into the science of that because I don’t totally know what’s going on, but apparently they think that the product could be on market in five to 10 years.

Might really change up the lab grown meat space. Make it more scalable, make it more popular, and make it less expensive

Zachary Karabell: Well, there you go. Artificial chicken nuggets coming to a McDonald’s near you in 2035

Emma Varvaloucas: in Japan, at least at first,

Zachary Karabell: I mean, look the amazing thing about the prospect of lab grown meat, unlike the Impossible Burger or other, you know, synthetics, it’s actually meat, right? It’s genetically

Emma Varvaloucas: lab grown.

Zachary Karabell: Yeah.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yeah. It’s not a replacement.

Zachary Karabell: The environmental benefits of that, at least notionally, would be unbelievable.

I mean, it would be disruptive economically, and we would have to consider the fact that there’s a whole global industry of meat production that has grown up everywhere in the world that would be hugely disrupted. It’ll likely take many years. So, but we should remember, I mean, I’m always, I always think about this as kind of the cautionary tale, right?

Robotics. Has been unlocked huge productivity, but it’s also disrupted huge swaths of every country that had an economy or regional economies that depended on it. We should be cognizant of that as we head into these ages. We talk about the same with ai, so, but methane emissions use of agricultural lands, less fertilizers to grow the crops that those agricultural lands, you know, on and on down the chain could be massively beneficial.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yeah, well put. I mean, yeah, like any of the stuff that we cover with progress, like I said, it’s you take one step forward, not necessarily you take two steps back. Progress forward always creates new problems that you then have to. Problem solve, so might be one of those

Zachary Karabell: All right, next. We’ve gone from Starlink in Nigeria to artificial chicken nuggets in Japan to.

Emma Varvaloucas: We’re getting quirkier and quirkier. Just a warning before I started on this one, I, you know, this is a funny episode of the progress report. I just, I really swung from the fences with the, with this one. This is from an, a great ally called Monga Bay. We get a lot of our good environmental news from Monga Bay, and they have an article about a new sperm bank that they’re developing for pangolins.

If you don’t know what pangolins are, they’re like the quote unquote scaly anti teeters. They’re not actually anti teeters, but they’re the mammal that like curls up a little ball when they’re threatened and they have the scales on the outside. Very cute, very endangered. The eight known species of pangolins are collectively the world’s most trafficked mammal.

Some populations have declined by over 50% in the last 15 years, so, very threatened. And they are trying to create a res, a reservoir of genetic material, so they’re creating a sperm bake. If you want, I can go into detail about how they’re creating this sperm bank, but that’s, we need consent for that first.

Zachary Karabell: Wow. Huh, good to know. Pangolin,yes, that is quirky Pangolin sperm banks in Singapore as a remediation for species level extermination, extinction of pangolins, whose meat is coveted in multiple countries. Hence why-

Emma Varvaloucas: I dunno if it’s the meat or if it’s, I believe it’s the scales. Yeah, I think it’s a traditional medicine thing.

Zachary Karabell: The interweb says it’s both. It’s for both, but yes.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yeah.

Zachary Karabell: I see. It’s a luxury meat and it’s scales. Okay. Then coming to a sperm bank near yo

Emma Varvaloucas: Yes. They have not created a bank of eggs, so unsure what we’re gonna do with the sperm, but that’s a slight wrinkle, they’re trying to avoid an invasive procedure on the key little female pangolins, but the male ones are easier. So, and if anyone would like to know how they have accomplished this, you can go on to long bay.com and hear about it.

I warned you. I warned you that –

Zachary Karabell: We were fairly warned. I hope everyone has made it through this far to the end of our quirk, so thank you for listening. Please send us your quirky news items that you think we should highlight to hello@theprogressnetwork.org and we’ll highlight them if they’re highlight a bowl or worth highlighting.

Please tune in for our longer form, What Could Go Right podcast sign up for the What Could Go Right newsletter. We’re very committed to the What Could Go Right moniker at The Progress Network and we will be back with you next week. And thank you, Emma for co-hosting.

Emma Varvaloucas: Thank you Zachary, and thanks everyone as always for listening.