The Best of Works in Progress
10+ most popular Works in Progress articles, as voted by our community.
Works in Progress @stripe is an online magazine featuring writing on new & underrated ways to improve the world. Want to pitch us a piece? Send us a DM.
Works in Progress on Economics
We don’t have a hundred biases, we have the wrong model
Behavioral economics has identified dozens of cognitive biases that stop us from acting 'rationally'. But instead of building up a messier and messier picture of human behavior, we need a new model.
Works in Progress on Economy
Why skyscrapers are so short
The height of skyscrapers is limited by physical, economic and regulatory barriers, but we should want to overcome them and build taller. Here's how we can do it.
Works in Progress on Housing
The housing theory of everything
Western housing shortages do not just prevent many from ever affording their own home. They also drive inequality, climate change, low productivity growth, obesity, and even falling fertility rates.
Works in Progress on Science
The elements of scientific style
Scientific papers are dense, jargon-filled, and painful to read. It wasn’t always this way – and it doesn’t have to be.
«Journals are increasingly seen as a point of friction in science as opposed to what they used to be: a tool to facilitate communication»
The most dangerous substance known to man
We have learned to fear plutonium – one of the world’s most useful materials. But as long as you don’t eat it, you’re probably safe.
Works in Progress on Weight Loss
The future of weight loss
We have eradicated smallpox, cured many bacterial diseases, and invented a vaccine for Covid-19 within the year. But for a very long time we haven't had a single good treatment for obesity.
Popular
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The housing theory of everything
Western housing shortages do not just prevent many from ever affording their own home. They also drive inequality, climate change, low productivity growth, obesity, and even falling fertility rates.
«housing inequality, not income inequality, primarily determines how much wealth inequality there is in most Western countries.»
THE MAINTENANCE RACE
The world’s first round-the-world solo yacht race was a thrilling and, for some, deadly contest. How its participants maintained their vessels can help us understand just how fundamental maintenance…
Womb for improvement
Pregnancy can be arduous, painful and for some women impossible. New technology may allow more women to have children, and save the lives of more prematurely born infants. How do we get there?
How we fixed the ozone layer
The story behind humanity's greatest environmental success is too rarely told and too often taken for granted. This is how humanity fixed the ozone layer and why it matters.
«Can we extrapolate any of the lessons from the task of fixing the ozone layer to other challenges, such as climate change?»
History is in the making
Though we tend to see history as just one political event after another, it’s technology and ideas, not politics, that change our lives the most. History should reflect that.
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