Show Notes
Meet Bryan Walsh, an editorial director at Vox, where he leads Future Perfect – an ambitious solutions journalism project that focuses on the policies and technologies that will make the future a better place. As a former foreign correspondent and climate writer for Time and the author of End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World, Bryan has spent more than two decades tracking humanity’s gravest threats. Today he is focused on highlighting the under-reported progress that shows we still have room to bend the story in a better direction.
Topics discussed: the good news hiding behind everyday conveniences; George Washington’s candles as perspective; why the report card for humanity is “incomplete”; negativity bias, doomscrolling, and the allure of bad headlines; local crime statistics versus national fear of rising violence; how American political psychodrama dominates the global news feed; what AI overviews and chatbots are doing to online media traffic; the economics of journalism after print advertising and social media; Future Perfect’s origin story and focusing on what matters most; philanthropy, foreign aid cuts, and momentum in development gains; why solutions journalism can feel like eating your vegetables; the narrative deficit and hero deficit in progress reporting; pandemic vaccines as an under-appreciated scientific and moral triumph; hope as a life preserver rather than a prediction and creating a media ecosystem that rewards depth, nuance, and solutions. Find Out More: Future Perfect – Vox Media Are you interested in how 80,000 Hours can help you use your career to make a difference? Check out their podcast on Apple,Spotify or where ever you listen to your podcasts. This podcast is hosted by Angus Hervey and Amy Davoren-Rose from Fix The News. Audio Producer/Director Anthony Badolato, Hear That? If you love this episode, please share, leave a review. You can get in touch with the team via email [email protected]
More from Fix The News
What happens when the systems we've relied on stop working? And who gets to decide what comes next?
How do you get the world to pay attention to a problem it thinks it's already solved? Around a billion children are exposed to dangerous levels of lead. It can be hiding in cookware, spices and cosmetics, or released through industries like battery recycling. For a child, exposure can mean losing up to six IQ points - irreversible damage that, multiplied across hundreds of millions of children, becomes an enormous drain on human potential. And yet, unlike so many global challenges, we already know how to prevent it. Meet Drew McCartor, President of Pure Earth. For the past 17 years, Drew and his colleagues have been sounding the alarm about lead poisoning: gathering evidence, understanding the scale of the problem and building the playbook for how to solve it. Now, after decades of “yelling into the void”, the world is finally paying attention - and Drew believes we have an opportunity to eliminate lead poisoning altogether. In this episode: Why around a billion children are exposed to dangerous levels of lead The surprising places lead is still hiding - from cookware to spices What losing four to six IQ points means for a child - and an entire country How a Craigslist ad led Drew from unpaid intern to President of Pure Earth Why Pure Earth spent years wondering if they were crazy The young boy in Bangladesh who brought the human cost of lead poisoning home for Drew What changed when the world finally started paying attention Why Drew believes we can eliminate lead poisoning altogether About the title: A Useful Truth comes from a 1786 letter by Benjamin Franklin about lead poisoning: “You will observe with concern how long a useful truth may be known and exist before it's generally received and practiced upon.” Almost 250 years later, it feels remarkably apt.
What if we could catch the next pandemic before it starts?
What if the knowledge we need most for the future is something we’ve spent centuries forgetting?
Five years ago, the Taliban banned girls from the classroom. One school refused to stop teaching.