Mind the Shift

In this episode we meet UNFPA doctor Bernadette ”Bernie” Ssebadduka, who dedicates her working hours to fighting harmful cultural practices in poor rural areas in northern Uganda, such as ”courtship rape” and female genital mutilation performed under the radar. But Bernie has also seen change sweeping across Uganda. There is hope, she says: ”We have seen the benefits of empowering women. The game...

”This is like a bushfire. If there is one spark, this thing will catch fire”, says epidemiologist Debby Guha-Sapir about the fact that authorities stopped measles vaccinations due to covid-19. Debby founded the world’s best and most reliable database on natural disasters, EM-DAT , at the university of Louvain, Belgium. Dry numbers can be more contentious than you think: ”We get a lot of hate mails...

”The most important weapons for terrorists isn’t Kalashnikovs or suicide bombs, it’s journalists. We journalists are part of the problem of trust meltdown in society. Now we have to be part of the solution”, says this Danish former editor in chief, who fled the bleeding headlines and decided to dedicate his time to making journalism constructive. In 2017 he founded Constructive Institute . He is c...

Why our charity is so ineffective. Why (just possibly) there is reason for optimism. And why we should plan for an extremely long-term future. Hear this Oxford psychology/philosophy researcher and Effective Altruism advocate answer mega-questions.

”If life is a game, then the barriers are the game. If you wanna play big you need big barriers, if not you want smaller barriers. The mechanism is the same.” This brit calls himself an expert on failures, but listen to his gems of wisdom.

”A lot of things have just not been discussed openly. We were met with an avalanche of harsh comments. They accused us of being irresponsible.” The lockdowns are more harmful than the coronavirus itself, says this professor of epidemiology .

No, democracy isn’t dying. Setbacks in qualified democracies are offset by gains in autocracies, explain the men behind the world’s largest and most reliable dataset on regime types. Check out their work here . 

My name is Anders Bolling, and I’m your host. Who am I, and why am I starting this podcast? In this intro I talk about my background, my viewpoint, some pivotal happenings in my life and my driving forces.