The Progress Report: Vatican City Runs on Pure Sunshine

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Zachary Karabell: What Could Go Right? I’m Zachary Karabell, the founder of The Progress Network, joined as always by my co-host, Emma Varvaloucas, the Executive Director of The Progress Network, and this is our weekly short form podcast, the Progress Report, where we look at news items of the week, not necessarily that happened this week, but that we have discovered or unearthed, or excavated for you this week that you likely would have missed under the mountain of negative news.

Almost redundant to say negative news. News is almost by definition negative. Hence our point at The Progress Network to try to bring to the fore some things that are a little more constructive and a bit more positive and a bit more hopeful about the future that we are all creating daily in our present.

And that is unknown. Even though we act with some degree of false certainty, that we know that the outcome is going to be negative, we meaning the collective us, not we, meaning Emma and I, because we try to see what there is that could point in a more constructive direction, a future that we wanna live in, a future of our hopes, not of our fears.

And one of the ways in which you can see that is by trying to find some glimmerings of hope. And there are stories galore around the world at all times of human beings coming together to solve human and to some degree, nature, natural problems. But mostly, many of the problems that beset us are problems that we’ve created.

And many of the solutions, of course, are problem, are solutions that we will discover. So Emma Varvaloucas, who spends her living end. Not non-living.

Emma Varvaloucas: Don’t, don’t make that joke. That’s too, too close to home.

Zachary Karabell: I know.

Who spends her waking and dreaming days looking, searching, querying the world, the internet, the inner web for good stories.

What have you found for us this week, Emma?

Emma Varvaloucas: We have some fun ones today. I’ve always tried to keep it a little bit fun over here on the Progress Report. So a university student in West Virginia, just a normal college student, a microbiology student, believes that she has found the fungus that was used to produce LSD.

This has been a long mystery about what exact fungus it was. I don’t know if everyone knows the story, but it’s like, you know, guy tooling around in his lab, tooling around with some fungus, accidentally gets high, bikes around, is really the SparkNotes version of that, of that story. But nobody knew which fungus it was.

And this microbiology student found a fungus that is in morning glory plants, and it seems to produce very similar effects to LSD. So they think that this is the fungus. They are naming it as a new species of fungus, and she got to name it. She called it Periglandula Clandestina, which I thought was cute.

Zachary Karabell: And of course, now we know why it was called Morning Glory in the first place.

Emma Varvaloucas: Well, certainly if you wanna start your day with some coffee and a little tab of something, something.

Zachary Karabell: Yeah. Well, I mean, there’s that, right? People knew what they were talking about, even if they didn’t quite know what they were talking about.

I mean, I’m not sure that counts as good or bad news. It’s certainly fascinating news that we have discovered the source of, I guess the the er source of today’s psychedelic renaissance.

Emma Varvaloucas: I think it’s good news, mostly because of the pharmaceutical applications that could arise. They’ve been using LSD to treat conditions like depression, PTSD, things like that.

So if they actually know the source. What can be done with this fungus? I still think if at the end of the day we like come up with something that’s beneficial for people’s mental health and that’s not a black market drug, it’s probably overall a good thing.

Zachary Karabell: Yes, and we did a longer form podcast last year with Oshan Jarow, who is a journalist, but his real beat is looking into all things psychedelics. So if you wanna check that out for a deeper dive into the deep unconscious, it’s there for you on the What Could Go Right? podcast page.

So what do we have next?

Emma Varvaloucas: I have another fun one, and then I’ll move into like serious matters, but I don’t know. I’m on that, the morning glory kick this morning. It’s actually evening here, but still. We have a new country that is being run entirely on renewables.

Would you like to make a guess?

Zachary Karabell: Oh dear. There’s probably no way that I’m gonna guess this, although if it’s an entire country run on renewables, it is almost certainly a small country.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yes. And I’m gonna give you another hint. They were very recently in the news.

Zachary Karabell: They were very recently.

Emma Varvaloucas: Big news.

Zachary Karabell: In the news. Big news. Ooh. You know, one’s always tempted to say like Norway, Denmark, but I don’t think they’re not yet at all on all renewable. So it’s not them. Big news. Geez, I don’t know. Lesotho. No, can’t be Lesotho, which is in the news for, you know, suffering huge tariffs for no particular reason. Gimme a continent.

Emma Varvaloucas: Europe.

Zachary Karabell: Europe! Oh dear. Vatican City.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yes, you got it. I’m so proud of you. That was excellent. Good job. Yes.

I know. People are like, who cares? It’s Vatican City. They’re like the size of. A few buildings, but still.

Zachary Karabell: Gotta start somewhere.

Emma Varvaloucas: It’s a very short list of countries that are on renewables and most of them are just like blessed with geothermal and things like that.

But this was a dream of, of Pope Francis before he died, that he wanted to run Vatican City on renewables and they’re actually being run on all solar. They’ve built a like solar roof, so to speak, on one of the buildings that they own in Rome, and it’s gonna power all of Vatican City.

Zachary Karabell: Cool.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yeah.

Zachary Karabell: Cool on days when you need it to be cool and presumably warm on days he needed to be warm, so, but it’s summer, so it’s cool.

Emma Varvaloucas: I think it was Pope Francis, he had the first e Popemobile.

Zachary Karabell: I’m sure My friend Austen Ivereigh, who knows all things, all things Papal, can correct us.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yeah. Well, if we’re wrong, someone let us know.

Let’s move on to Brazil. Brazil is one of the most murderous countries in the world. Sorry about that, Brazil. But they have seen a 20% drop in recorded homicides over a decade. And one of the reasons is I think really, really substantive and, and a great move and a note for progress. And the other one I think is really hilarious.

So the first one is that Brazil’s two largest criminal factions. They are called PCC, and I’m so sorry for my pronunciation, Comando Vermelho. Somebody please correct me on that. So they have signed a non-aggression pact which made a big difference. They had some shifts in public security policies as well. But the other thing that’s contributing to this declining homicides is that people are literally aging out of violent crime.

The population is getting geriatric and older, and they’re just like, eh.

Zachary Karabell: Eh.

Emma Varvaloucas: Can’t be bothered anymore.

Zachary Karabell: So too, you know, it’s like I can stay home and binge on Netflix. Or I could go like eliminate that rival gang member. It’s seven o’clock. I think I’m, I think I’m in for the evening.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yeah. Yeah. It’s bedtime.

Zachary Karabell: Uber Eats, Netflix and Chill is a much better outcome than gang warfare, tonight at least.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yes, I do kind of love this though, because it does remind you that so much stuff in the world happens that’s not necessarily intentional. And I feel like we forget about that, where it’s like you see these kind of bad actors and you just kind of assume that everything is gonna be molded to their hands.

But actually there’s just like stuff that happens sometimes. Like your population gets old and doesn’t wanna.

Zachary Karabell: Doesn’t want to kill anymore. Too tired. I’m just too tired, man. It’s like exhausting.

Emma Varvaloucas: My knees, you know, my knees are not what they used to be.

Zachary Karabell: Oh my God, that’s so true. The, the less elevated, more cotedian explanations for dramatic change.

But it’s true. I mean, most violence in most societies has always been young men, such that, like every society in the world, we’ve talked about this before, has always tried to figure out like, what do we do about young men? How do we channel their energies if we’re not fighting wars? Right?

The entire invention of the modern sports industry stems from 19th century Great Britain when when there was too much peace. And Matthew Arnold at the rugby school said, Hey, maybe if we get these young boys to channel all their aggressions onto the playing fields, they won’t do as much societal, upheaval, damage, chaos. And all the Middle East had this issue of what do we do about the shabab, the young men?

So you’re right, like they get older and people are like, Ugh. Can’t be bothered.

Emma Varvaloucas: It does make you think about like the world as a whole, right, ’cause the world population is aging. And I’m curious when we reach a certain point where, you know, people aren’t getting boring anymore. Maybe even in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Like, are we just gonna have a geriatric world that’s difficult to pay for not enough people working, but also like really peaceful?

Zachary Karabell: And doing a lot of morning glory.

Emma Varvaloucas: And doing a lot of morning glory, because by now, by that point, the fungus will be everywhere in pills or something.

Zachary Karabell: I didn’t do this in my twenties. I might as well do it now.

Emma Varvaloucas: They don’t Netflix and chill anymore. They fungus and chill.

All right. They we’re, we’re very non-serious today. This one’s serious.

Zachary Karabell: Murder rates going down and violence is serious.

Emma Varvaloucas: No, that is serious.

Zachary Karabell: We’re just being, we’re just being jocular about it. We’re serious. Topic done with a certain av amusing.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yes, but you’re right. A 20% drop in homicides is no joke.

Let’s talk about our last piece of good news. There’s been a breakthrough in the search for an HIV cure. They haven’t found a cure. That’s not the news, that… you really would’ve seen that everywhere if that were the case.

But one of the challenges for scientists is that the virus is able to hide itself. I didn’t know this. It’s it, it conceals itself, this Guardian article says, inside of certain white blood cells, and now researchers in Melbourne have found a way to make the virus visible. So now that they know where it is, potentially they can fully clear it from the body. So. Pretty cool. They’re basically encasing it in fat that’s how they are. Making it visible. They’re like forming a little fat bubble around it. This is also, by the way, uses mRNA tech so this is another like mRNA tech post pandemic doing stuff story. So the mRNA, they cover the virus and fat. The mRNA then tells the cells like, reveal the virus, reveal yourself, and it is revealed.

So, yeah. That’s cool.

Zachary Karabell: I like how you did that, reveal itself. It’s very, that was very Harry Potter reveal. Like it’s some sort of, you know, spell that’s been lifted on the virus.

I think many people are under the misconception that HIV has been cured, whereas in fact it has simply been managed with very, very effective retroviral and ongoing medicines. But the underlying infection remains present. If you have it, even though it’s no longer lethal the way it was because of the, you know, the drugs that are available. So this is like the next stage of you can actually remove it or, or eliminate it from your system rather than just manage it.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yeah. And there’s been like something like five people that have managed to clear HIV outta their system, but they’re like medical anomalies, like medical miracle people.

That’s just, just happened. So lots of developments with HIV, like the injection that we spoke about on the podcast a few months ago that only needs to be done twice a year, potentially maybe once a year, has also been a big breakthrough. So it feels like a lot is going on around that topic right now. And we’ll see.

Zachary Karabell: That’s what we got for you this week.

Little bit of fungus, little bit of HIV, little bit of murder, all pointing in the right direction. I mean, murder is not pointing in the right direction. The decline in murder is pointing in the right direction. Just in case there was any lack of clarity in what I just said.

Thank you for listening this week. We will be back with you next week with more stories of the week that are quirky, interesting, but overall pointing in a more quirky, interesting enlivening future.

Send us your ideas. If you’ve got some stories you wish us to focus on, send them to hello@theprogressnetwork.org. And thank you as always for listening and tune into our longer form podcast, interview podcast as well.

And that’s what we got this week. Thank you, Emma.

Emma Varvaloucas: Oh, of course. And I forgot to thank our podcast team because our podcast team were the ones that sent me that final article about the HIV breakthrough. So thank you to our podcast team for all the usual stuff, and also for that tip. And thank you to all of you for listening, as always.