The Progress Network

🤩3 Things That Went Right This Week🤩 🇯🇲Homicides have fallen 40% year-on-year in Jamaica. 🇫🇷Student meals at universities in France are now only 1€. 🇺🇸Violent crime continues to plunge in American cities in early 2026. 👇Need more? Read on: theprogressnetwork.substack.com/p/the-great-gl…

This knee-jerk opposition to solar because it's "intermittent" is outdated. Yesterday evening in California, batteries provided 36% of the power for the grid as the sun went down. We still need other sources like geothermal & nuclear too, but solar should be part of the mix.

🤔How does that compare with the rest of the world? 😮It's close to the global average of 74%. ourworldindata.org/data-insights/…

🇮🇳🛜The Daily Dose via @OurWorldInData 🛜🇮🇳 In 2015, only 15% of India's population had internet access. That number shot up to 70% in 2025.

😮Cheap, generic Ozempic might just change the game for people with diabetes globally.

"This urge to find certainty is biologically wired within us. You can imagine one of our ancestors hearing a rustling in the bushes, and if they don't know the source of that noise, that uncertainty could be lethal," says @SimoneStolzoff. "The problem is, in today's day and age, so many of us are looking for certainty where it doesn't exist, whether it's through our politicians or our financial advisors or the self-help gurus on Instagram." Catch the full conversation with TPN founder @zacharykarabell on this week's episode of What Could Go Right? play.megaphone.fm/lsimz7xhtsktll…

⚱️Since May 18 is International Museum Day, we figured it was the perfect time to talk about one under discussed cultural benefit in particular: the great global museum boom! theprogressnetwork.substack.com/p/the-great-gl…

🤔What does their law do? 👀Maine is implementing a statewide tracking system that will make it possible to follow the whereabouts of sexual assault forensic examination kits online. 🚓The new tracking system requires the crime lab and law enforcement agencies to inventory every completed kit in the state, including kits held by police departments, sheriff’s offices and hospitals. pressherald.com/2026/05/01/mai…

🧪🇺🇸The Daily Dose via @PressHerald 🇺🇸🧪 Maine has become the 50th state to pass legislation towards clearing their rape kit backlogs.

"We have this natural tendency to catastrophize or think about all of the worst case scenarios," says @SimoneStolzoff, author of How to Not Know. "But what I try and argue...is that uncertainty is also the birthplace of possibility." Catch his conversation with TPN founder @zacharykarabell on this week's episode of What Could Go Right? play.megaphone.fm/lsimz7xhtsktll…

🇮🇳This year, India launched the largest free HPV vaccination campaign in history covering 11.5 million girls. 🥹For a country that has 25% of the world's cervical cancer deaths, this could change everything for this generation.

Great news for humans, terrible news for pancreatic cancer: A new clinical trial published in The New England Journal of Medicine found that daraxonrasib outperformed chemotherapy and enabled patients to live three to four times longer. nytimes.com/2026/05/12/hea…

😬What happens when our biological need for certainty clashes with our unpredictable world? 🎙️@SimoneStolzoff, author of How to Not Know, joins TPN founder, @zacharykarabell, to argue that uncertainty is the fundamental birthplace of scientific breakthroughs, original art, and human progress. play.megaphone.fm/lsimz7xhtsktll…

🧐Are they the only ones? 🧓Nope, 12% of people over 65 are also going without social media. 🤔How come? 🤢People are sick of the fighting. 📉According to the study, overall posting declined from 2020 to 2024 for most users and polarization on platforms increased, as did the number of angry posts. axios.com/2026/05/07/gen…

🙅‍♂️🤳The Daily Dose via @axios 🙅‍♂️🤳 A study published in the Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media found that 7% of 18 to 29 year-olds are using no social media at all.

🏆Gene therapy has been quietly pulling off miracles, and this week, it got its Oscars moment. 🧬TPN exec. director @heyemmavarv breaks down how a husband-and-wife scientific team's decades-long quest has restored sight to over 100 blind Americans, and how a brand-new drug called Otarmeni just became the first-ever FDA-approved gene therapy for genetic deafness.

🙅‍♂️After a flurry of bets placed before the Iran conflict—and some politicians betting on their own races—the Senate unanimously passed a resolution to ban all members and staffers from betting on prediction markets like Polymarket or Kalshi.

@zacharykarabell @GaryMarcus @WebSummit ☹️Can't make it to Vancouver? 😮No problem! 👀You can live stream the talk right here. youtube.com/live/FrhFEl8yK…

🤔Going to be in Vancouver tomorrow? 🧐Curious about whether or not scaling AI is a bad bet? 😎Catch TPN founder @zacharykarabell's chat with @GaryMarcus at @WebSummit at 10:20am. 🎟️Get your tickets here: vancouver.websummit.com/sessions/van26…

🦠Biologists are engineering bacteria that find oil, plastic and toxic chemicals delicious. nature.com/articles/d4158…

🤔Is there more good news? 👍Yes, Jamaica also recorded reduced figures for rapes and shootings in 2025. jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/2…

🇯🇲📉The Daily Dose via @JamaicaGleaner 🇯🇲📉 Jamaica's murder rate fell by 40% in 2025 compared with the year before.