The Human Progress Podcast

The industrial food system is often treated as a symbol of everything people distrust about modernity: too processed, too corporate, too artificial, and too detached from land and labor.
That critique obscures one of the greatest achievements in human history: modern food production has made food cheaper, safer, more abundant, and more varied than ever before.
In this episode of The Human Progress Podcast, Adam Omary speaks with political scientist Jan Dutkiewicz about his new book Feed the People: Why Industrial Food Is Good and How We Can Make It Even Better. They discuss the great achievements of the industrial food system, the panic over processed foods, nostalgia for preindustrial agriculture, and how to make food healthier and more sustainable without giving up the system that feeds us.

Roger Pielke Jr. joins Marian Tupy to discuss the latest climate research and how to think clearly about climate change.

Samuel Gregg joins Chelsea Follett to discuss the rise of a more interventionist economic consensus and the case for markets in modern America.

Check out his book, The Next American Economy: Nation, State, and Markets in an Uncertain World.

Steven Pinker joins Marian Tupy to discuss the so-called "crisis of meaning," the decline of religion, and what can give life purpose in a modern, largely secular world.

Our editor Marian Tupy speaks with writer and policy scholar Brink Lindsey about his new book The Permanent Problem: The Uncertain Transition from Mass Plenty to Mass Flourishing.

They discuss why material abundance produces dissatisfaction, the decline of marriage and community, bureaucratic stagnation, and the cultural and institutional innovations needed to produce mass satisfaction without scarcity.