Volcanoes are erupting in The Philippines, but on-fire Australia received some welcome rain. The Iran war cries have been called off and The Donald’s military powers are about to be hamstrung by the Senate. Meanwhile, his impeachment trial is starting, and we’re all on Twitter for a front-row seat.

The Progress Report: FDA Approves HIV Prevention Gamechanger
Featuring Zachary Karabell and Emma Varvaloucas
On this week’s Progress Report, Zachary and Emma spotlight the stories that prove the world is moving forward, from Ireland’s bold move to end coal power to major U.S. brands ditching synthetic food dyes to breakthrough HIV prevention. They also cover how aviation safety is getting a high-tech upgrade as airlines roll out new cockpit alert systems that warn pilots about potential runway mix-ups and risky landings. Last, tune in to see if they stick the landing after a diversion into a joke from a problematic comedian.
Prefer to read? Check out the Audio Transcript
Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription software errors.
Zachary Karabell: What Could Go Right? I’m Zachary Karabell, the founder of The Progress Network, joined as always by Emma Varvaloucas, the Executive Director of The Progress Network, and this is our weekly Progress Report, which is our shorter form podcast and adjunct to our longer form podcast where we interview people and have a discussion.
And in these progress reports, we highlight some news of the week or the month or the year that. All of us likely would have missed buried under the tsunami of bad news. News is really good. News is really positive. Good news does not attract the same attention as bad news. So it has been, and likely so it ever shall be, but our endeavor here is to say, Hey, wait a minute.
In spite of all of the things that are going wrong, there are a few things that are going right and some of the proof points of things going right is some news of the world. Where things are, in fact, yes, going right. And so Emma Varvaloucas and her team at The Progress Network spend their days zealously combing the planet for stories that illuminate the better angels of human nature rather than.
Focusing on all the bad things that humans do, which we tend to focus on daily, if not hourly, if not minutely. Can you say minutely, Emma? I don’t think minutely is a word. And we wouldn’t say minutely because that doesn’t make any sense either. So tell us ye, who are the Lord of all good news things? What have you found this week?
Can I say the Lord? The master, the mistress, the prima. The Empress-
Emma Varvaloucas: Empress is a good one.
Zachary Karabell: The creator. I don’t know. Whatever.
Emma Varvaloucas: Definitely not master, but I’ll take the empress. I like that one. Okay. Okay, so. Let’s start with Ireland. Let’s give Ireland some credit for growing, for joining a small but mighty group of European countries that have completely ended coal power generation.
Zachary Karabell: So wow, it is a short list. No more in coal Ireland.
Emma Varvaloucas: No more coal Ireland. The United Kingdom was the last to do this in 2024. And there is also a, maybe not slew, a slew is maybe too strong of a word, but there are other countries that to follow. Ireland’s lead Greece in 2026 Slovakia, Spain and Italy later this year.
France and Hungary in 2027 and Denmark in 2028. So we’ll see how that goes. But the EU is definitely making a concerted effort to say adieu to coal forever,
Zachary Karabell: say adieu to coal. Sounds like a, I don’t know, bumper, sticker, t-shirt, something like that. And the United States was heading in that direction. I know the Trump administration doesn’t want it to, I mean, mostly because natural gas and some renewables are.
Cheaper, easier, cleaner, all that. So we’ll see how long that takes for the United States. But coal still is double digit percentages of US energy production, something like 15%, but that’s down massively from even 10 or 12 years ago. So the United States is certainly heading in a similar direction, albeit at a slower and more free market pace rather than a government mandated pace.
Emma Varvaloucas: You might say that we’re puttering along with our coal phase out.
Zachary Karabell: Yes. You might say that we’re puttering along.
Emma Varvaloucas: No, what you say is true. Let’s stay in the US, not talk about coal. But talk about synthetic food coloring. This one is for fans of RFK Junior. There are any that, listen to our podcast, some really big US food brands.
Kraft Heinz, general Mills, Pillsbury, Nature Valley, and Yle are among them, have announced that they’re going to remove all synthetic food coloring from all of their products by the end of 2027. Some of them have earlier timelines for specific realms of their products, like they’re taking it out of kids’ food earlier and things like that.
But they’re all going to reach complete elimination by 2027, and that is in fact due to increased scrutiny from RFK Juniors. Department of Health and her human services, but also, and I didn’t quite realize this, there are bands of fomenting in nearly half of the states anyway, so it’s actually also a state-led effort to get rid of these synthetic food does.
Zachary Karabell: It’s so weird. I think I remember when yo play became a major brand and somehow I thought at the time, maybe ’cause it sounded French or maybe it was the way they marketed that it was a healthy brand of yogurt, which is just. So untrue. I mean, it’s delicious, but healthy would not exactly be in the top three things that you would use to categorize yo play.
Emma Varvaloucas: It’s funny because I had the exact same reaction about Nature Valley. I eat their granola bars and I was like, there’s synthetic food Diet Nature Valley products. You’re called Nature Valley. I mean, clearly I was duped by some good marketing there.
Zachary Karabell: Absolutely. I think you were mistaking. That dyes can actually reside in, in a natural valley.
Emma Varvaloucas: Wow. I mean, natural dyes could reside in a natural
Zachary Karabell: valley. That’s right. So for all you know, it’s the natural dyes in Nature Valley. Yeah, I was struck by that too. And the Texas was so aggressive about this. Look, this is one of the sub currents there, there is actually, maybe we should focus on this in a longer episode, but the whole Maha movement make America healthy again.
Like there’s a lot to that one as ae. It’s been a long time coming. America is amongst the least healthy eaters in the world now that partly ’cause we have a lot of cheap calories. And it is definitely true that a lot of the rest of the world is getting progressively less healthy as well. IE. In terms of food consumption, a lot of the rest of the world’s becoming much more American, higher rates of obesity, more junk food, more sugar, more processed.
So there’s a convergence, an unfortunate convergence around the world. As the world becomes more affluent and more generally middle class, it’s actually eating on aggregate, probably a bit less well, but. That aspect of the Trump movement and of RFK JR is likely to be a very positive one in the focus on diet, focus on additives.
We’ve had these waves in the United States. We certainly had them in the seventies. A lot of the food labeling is now very familiar to us. The. Just breaking down the food that we eat with labels comes out of that. People should know what they’re eating and be attentive to it, but we should at least genuflect for a brief moment that there are some constructive things coming out of this administration.
Emma Varvaloucas: Yeah, and actually I think we are gonna talk a little bit. I don’t wanna make promises, but I think that we do have an episode planned for August in which we are going to touch on some of this Maha movement stuff. So stick with us rather summer and we’ll get an expert on here to, to tell us more about the good parts, the bad parts, the medium parts.
All the parts.
Zachary Karabell: All the parts.
Emma Varvaloucas: Let’s stay in the us. FDA has just approved Lena Kavir. We have definitely talked about this on the podcast before, but for those who are not familiar, this is the twice a year shot to prevent HIV. Right now, if you want to have effective HIV prevention, you need to take a pill once a day.
Obviously, a lot of people would much prefer to get a shot twice a year, then take a bill once a day. Or even remember to take a pill once a day. It’s about the same cost right now, or will be around the same cost as those daily prep pills in the us. But Gilead has inked deals with generics to be produced abroad in 120 low income countries.
It is not. Everywhere where it needs to be or will not be everywhere it needs to be. Some of the countries that it doesn’t have deals with yet are countries that have high HIV incidents, and there’s a push to make it even cheaper than what they’re currently offering it for. But this is the first step in really getting it out to the world because the US is gonna approve it first.
It’s an American product. European approvals are gonna follow next, and then all of the rest of the international approvals are gonna follow after the European ones. So, this is a kind of one of those silver lining moments on a kind of dire situation going on after the cuts to U-S-A-I-D and the HIV and international AIDS scene.
It’s kind of unclear how much of PEPFAR. Or any of PEPFAR is being cut or was cut might not be a surprise to learn that. A lot of the Doge cuts and what’s actually happening now in the State Department where U-S-A-I-D was moved is unclear. So that still might be going on, but it’s probably not going on with nearly as much.
Money and power as it used to, and obviously a lot of services were already disrupted. So the entire sort of HIV and AIDS international scene right now is not particularly positive, but the entry of Lena Kavi onto the global scene is 100% a, a silver lining. It could really be a game changer for people.
Zachary Karabell: There was a, I think a Washington Post report, there’s also New York Times that tried to untangle exactly. This question that you just raised, which is how much were many of these programs actually eliminated? So initially it seemed like all the USID was gonna be gutted, and U-S-A-I-D as an agency is completely gutted.
But many of those programs continue to live, but we don’t really, it’s, as you just said, it is currently unclear. Exactly what levels and how much funding. So the Washington Post tried to break this down. There’s actually it’s not as dire as it seemed initially.
But it’s in flux. And I’m sure if you were anybody in any of these programs like pepfar, administering the chaos and the uncertainty and the, you know, on again, off again on again, off again, firing, hiring, rehiring.
Rehiring is just totally disruptive to anybody effectively doing anything irrespective of whether or not the money is coming through or dribbling or drab through. So this is not to sugarcoat just how destructive some of these cuts were for these types of programs, but. We’re still not exactly clear about how much of this is gonna remain on the other side of the morass.
Emma Varvaloucas: Yeah, and I don’t know if the Washington Post article got into this, but there was a ton of behind the scenes particularly from Christian activists and aid groups of lobbying through their Republican representatives to get their programs back onto the U-S-A-I-D budget. So, yeah, even aside from pepfar, which is this massive program, what other small programs are still going through, or who knows?
Who knows. Let’s do a last one about the US before we go. Obviously, people are going to be aware of many of the high profile aviation incidents in the last year, near misses on runways and taxiways, and Wall Street Journal had an interesting article about House Southwest Airlines as well as some other airlines like Alaska Airlines, bowing there too, but using a different system than what the article’s about are adding these cockpit alert systems.
So you can kind of think about them like in the newer cars now when you’re backing up and it has that video screen and it beeps at you if you’re about to hit a wall or another car or something like that, which are very irritating when you drive a of race, by the way. Hate those.
Zachary Karabell: And they’re always basically saying you’re about to hit something when you still have four feet, which,
Emma Varvaloucas: and I get in.
Zachary Karabell: In Nebraska is basically a head-on collision. But in New York City, when you’re parallel, parking is basically an open acreage.
Emma Varvaloucas: And in rural Greece where there’s ferns and plants everywhere and they can’t tell the difference between parking next to a plant, which you need to do, and hitting a car, it’s even more irritating.
So yeah, I am with you on that. However, these alert systems. Less annoying for pilots, more useful. They do things like, by the way, air traffic control is supposed to be doing these things too. And they do, but the idea is to get to the pilots even faster. They will alert you if you are on a taxi way instead of a runway, for instance, which is what that has happened.
I
Zachary Karabell: think that’s a, I think that’s a good thing probably to know the difference between the two.
Emma Varvaloucas: Yes. And that you’ve gone on to the wrong one.
Zachary Karabell: Oh, this is a runway.
Emma Varvaloucas: Yep. And it also gives alerts about like descending too quickly or too sharply, or landing with too much speed. Just so you know, there has been some aviation industry response to some of these kind of nerve wracking occurrences that have happened recently.
Zachary Karabell: Good to know. Although even so, right? Aviation flying remains astonishingly safe relative to other. Machine modes of transport. I mean, it’s safer than helicopters, safer than driving, certainly safer than tests. Certainly safer than SpaceX, rockets, nothing. Not knocking. SpaceX, rockets just, they do blow up.
So what’s, I think still astonishing about aviation globally for the. All the vast expansion of it. The need for more pilots, countries, India, China, around the world, really aggressively expanding their domestic and civil aviation fleet. I find it extraordinary that there are so few accidents, right?
Particularly when, you know, in the United States, we now know we’ve been dealing with. Antiquated equipment is almost generous to describe
Floppy disks, little models of planes being shuffled around on a board. So the fact that there isn’t more problems to me is extraordinary.
Rather than the fact that there are problems.
Emma Varvaloucas: Listen, every once in a while I wake up and kind of marvel the fact that we can hurdle ourselves through the sky at, you know, incredible speeds and get to the other side of the planet in our, so I’m still there sometimes really
Zachary Karabell: Louis ck I don’t know if I’m allowed to tout anything by Louis cck, but maybe we can leave that for another episode.
Does have a great routine about the flying dynamic of people, you know, saying, oh God, I was so uncomfortable. My neck hurts and I was squinched in the seat. And he is like, you just flew through the air for six hours. And transported yourself in a way that would’ve taken human beings months of arduous and potentially lethal travel.
So let’s just acknowledge that one from a moment we can detach it from the Louis ck, you know, don’t wanna deal with him thing.
Emma Varvaloucas: I mean, it’s so unfortunate ’cause he was so funny. You know, it turned out to be such a creep. But, you know, artists
Zachary Karabell: in the art, who knows what that line is? How to separate them out.
Can you separate them out? Count Emma? Skeptical.
Emma Varvaloucas: Yeah. I’m not a compartmentalize at all. I can’t do it. I’m like, sorry, you’re dead to me. Louis Kay. Y’all find someone else who’s funny. You know, you
Zachary Karabell: see. But 50 years from now, it’ll all be forgotten. Will this stuff be remembered? Who knows?
Emma Varvaloucas: Oh, he’s a
Zachary Karabell: Picasso.
Caravaggio kill people. Rape people, treat people badly, and yet we look at the art. You don’t need to go.
Emma Varvaloucas: You don’t need to go 50 years from now. Louis K was already touring Greece like two or three years ago. Like he was fully forgiven. I don’t even sure if he even like reached Europe, that whole controversy.
So he’s fine. I wouldn’t worry about him.
Zachary Karabell: The plane made it across the Atlantic. His controversy didn’t.
Emma Varvaloucas: Exactly.
Zachary Karabell: All right, so on that bizarre off topic note in our little disposition, elliptically. Dealing with Me too. And Louis CK. We can thank you for listening today. We will be back with you next week’s the 4th of July.
We’ll still be back with you next week. And thank you all for listening. Thank you to the Podglomerate for producing, and thank you to Emma and her team for finding all of these non Louis CK tidbits.
Emma Varvaloucas: Our pleasure to ignore Louis CK.
Meet the Hosts

Zachary Karabell

Emma Varvaloucas