E20: “Good vs Evil” — the best podcast episode of the year, declining global poverty, crop yields continue to increase through 2025 and more.
Tony Morley, September 23rd, 2025
“We're going to pander to the evil? No. What makes the West great is that we do good after evil, not evil after evil.” — Charlie Kirk
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With Charlie Kirk’s tragic passing on September 10th, 2025 — and considering the significant debate around freedom of speech, I’d like to take a moment to share what I believe is possibly the most important and poignant commentary I’ve thus far come across, and that is “Good vs Evil,” Context by Brad Harris.
“Objective goodness is what reliably reduces suffering and expands human flourishing.”
It's not often that I'm left intellectually gobsmacked, but every spoken word of this new podcast episode, "Good vs Evil," had me wishing aloud that I had spoken or written these words. If you listen to just one podcast in 2025, make it this 28-minute episode. Brad Harris is also the author and presenter of the podcast "How it Began," a hugely engaging series on the history of progress.
“If ideas you don't like are a form of violence, then responding against those ideas with violence becomes justified."
Most crops see steady harvest increases over a 60 60-year period
“Most crops, with the exception of sorghum and millet, have seen steady increases over the past 60 years, and that trend is expected to continue this year.” — The world is on track for record harvests this year, Hannah Ritchie
“It’s not uncommon for people to tell me that global food production is already collapsing due to climate change. They are then surprised to hear that we typically hit record harvests year after year (even as things get hotter).”
Hannah Ritchie
The latest World Bank data counts 125 million more people as living in extreme poverty — but the world has not gotten poorer
“In June 2025, the World Bank announced a major change to this line, raising it significantly, from $2.15 to $3 per day. As a result, 125 million people who would not have been counted as extremely poor before June are now included.”
While that might not sound like good news, it means we’re globally nudging up what it means to be at the very bottom of the socio-economic scale and how we measure it. Globally, extreme poverty is increasingly decreasing, generation after generation.
Joe Hasell
A new Ai system may be able to predict your risk of 1,000 diseases—decades in advance.
We’re collectively closing in on Ai systems that can quickly and accurately estimate the risk of more than 1,000 diseases based on medical records. The breakthrough is a significant foreshadowing for the direction of personalised medicine and the future likely success of predictive health algorithms.
“The model, called Delphi-2M, uses health records and lifestyle factors to estimate the likelihood that a person will develop diseases such as cancer, skin diseases and immune conditions up to 20 years ahead of time.”
Gemma Conroy, Nature magazine
Global childhood poverty has been falling gradually for decades, but certainly too gradually
Extreme poverty disproportionately impacts children, and while the good news is that global extreme poverty in general, and childhood poverty has been falling gradually for decades, the progress has been slower than optimal and much remains to be done.
Reducing trade barriers, encouraging economic growth, and driving policies that seek to improve, or at the very least not impede, economic mobility will go a long way toward reducing the prevalence and impact of extreme poverty.
World Bank Group
The image of capitalism has slipped to 54% in U.S.
The collective outlook on capitalism has declined by approximately 6% in the United States, and while not a catastrophic trend, it highlights a key misunderstanding in modern Western culture as to the role capitalism plays in fostering prosperity, reducing poverty, and enabling progress and flourishing, both domestically and globally.
“Americans are more positive toward capitalism than socialism, but the 54% viewing capitalism favorably is down from 60% in 2021 and near that level in most prior years. Americans remain more negative (57%) than positive (39%) toward socialism, with little movement in these attitudes over time.”
Jeffrey M. Jones
A new daily GLP-1 tablet containing the drug orforglipron could help reduce weight by 20% in 72 weeks
GLP-1 drugs continue to show incredible promise in helping patients reduce and control their weight. In a trial of the new drug orforglipron in 3,127 adults, it was shown that one in five people who took the once-a-day tablet for 72 weeks lost 20% or more of their body weight. The trial continues to show how powerful GLP-1 drugs are in managing weight, particularly in light of the ease of delivery and relatively mild side effects.
Andrew Gregory
“Among patients taking the highest doses, 54.6% had a reduction of 10% or more of body weight, 36% had a reduction of 15% or more, and 18.4% had a reduction of 20% or more.”
Why We Are Better Off Than a Century Ago
“Our ancestors built grand public systems to conquer hunger, thirst, darkness, and squalor. That progress can be lost if we forget it.” — Charles C. Mann
“Another way of saying this is that I, like billions of others, have benefited from the progress humankind has made during the last century.”
Charles C. Mann
What is the recipe for human progress?
What fosters and drives human progress? In this op-ed extract for CapX from Carl Benedikt Frey's larger work, ‘How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations’ (2025), Carl asks and seeks to answer that very question.
“What the Valley’s history shows is that a competitive and decentralised system is key to discovery, especially when barriers to horizontal movement are absent.”
“By allowing for variations in policy and governance at the state and local levels, federalism provided an institutional laboratory, which proved crucial to America’s continued progress.”
Carl Benedikt Frey
Can we improve global security through poverty reduction? António Guterres thinks the answer is yes.
“A more secure world begins by investing at least as much in fighting poverty as we do in fighting wars,” — António Guterres, “UN chief argues that investing in fighting poverty instead of wars would make a more secure world.” He’s probably not wrong.
EDITH M. LEDERER
CRISPR Offers New Hope for Treating Diabetes
“Gene-edited pancreatic cells have been transplanted into a patient with type 1 diabetes for the first time. They produced insulin for months without the patient needing to take immunosuppressants.”
Javier Carbajal
Your risk of dying from chronic disease has dropped — if you live in these countries
“The chance of dying from chronic illnesses such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes declined in four out of five countries between 2010 and 2019, finds a study of 185 countries”
“The latest study is the first to investigate the change in NCD-mortality across countries. It finds that, from 2010 to 2019, the probability of dying from an NCD before the age of 80 fell in 152 countries for women and 147 countries for men.”
Mohana Basu
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