Shows
Works in Progress PodcastThe first cancer vaccineHepatitis B is a tiny virus that causes hundreds of thousands of deaths from liver disease and cancer each year. The vaccine against it became the first of many milestones: it was the first viral protein subunit vaccine, the first recombinant vaccine, and the first vaccine to prevent a type of cancer. In this episode, Jacob and Saloni follow the trail of strange jaundice outbreaks that scientists traced to a stealthy liver virus, how scientists turned one viral surface protein into a lifesaving shot for newborns, and how it was all built upon breakthroughs in immunology.
2025-12-222h 58
Hard DrugsThe first cancer vaccineHepatitis B is a tiny virus that causes hundreds of thousands of deaths from liver disease and cancer each year. The vaccine against it became the first of many milestones: it was the first viral protein subunit vaccine, the first recombinant vaccine, and the first vaccine to prevent a type of cancer. In this episode, Jacob and Saloni follow the trail of strange jaundice outbreaks that scientists traced to a stealthy liver virus, how scientists turned one viral surface protein into a lifesaving shot for newborns, and how it was all built upon breakthroughs in immunology.
2025-12-222h 58Hard DrugsThe history of vaccinesBefore vaccines became routine, they were risky experiments. In this episode, Jacob and Saloni travel back to the world of smallpox, cowpox, and cow-based “vaccine farms” to see how scientists stumbled toward the first vaccines against infectious diseases: smallpox, rabies, TB, polio, and more. Through the stories of milkmaids and aristocrats, secret lab notebooks, microscopes and cell culture, they explore how trial and error turned gruesome folk practices into the science of immunization, and how it all began with a single pustule.Hard Drugs is a new podcast from Works in Progress and Coefficient Giving about medical inno...
2025-11-262h 06
Works in Progress PodcastThe history of vaccinesBefore vaccines became routine, they were risky experiments. In this episode, Jacob and Saloni travel back to the world of smallpox, cowpox, and cow-based “vaccine farms” to see how scientists stumbled toward the first vaccines against infectious diseases: smallpox, rabies, TB, polio, and more. Through the stories of milkmaids and aristocrats, secret lab notebooks, microscopes and cell culture, they explore how trial and error turned gruesome folk practices into the science of immunization, and how it all began with a single pustule.Hard Drugs is a new podcast from Works in Progress and Coefficient Giving about medical inno...
2025-11-262h 06Hard DrugsWill AI solve medicine?Artificial intelligence is transforming how we discover and develop new medicines. But how far can it really take us? In this episode, Jacob and Saloni trace the path of drug development from discovery to testing, manufacturing, and delivery. They explore where AI could speed things up, and where it still hits the limits of biology, data, and economics. They ask what it would take, beyond algorithms, to actually cure and eradicate diseases.Hard Drugs is a new podcast from Works in Progress and Open Philanthropy about medical innovation presented by Saloni Dattani and Jacob Trefethen....
2025-10-294h 34
Works in Progress PodcastWill AI solve medicine?Artificial intelligence is transforming how we discover and develop new medicines. But how far can it really take us? In this episode, Jacob and Saloni trace the path of drug development from discovery to testing, manufacturing, and delivery. They explore where AI could speed things up, and where it still hits the limits of biology, data, and economics. They ask what it would take, beyond algorithms, to actually cure and eradicate diseases.Hard Drugs is a new podcast from Works in Progress and Open Philanthropy about medical innovation presented by Saloni Dattani and Jacob Trefethen....
2025-10-294h 34Hard DrugsThe art of protein design with AIWhat if you could design a protein never seen in nature? In this episode, Jacob and Saloni explore how researchers are using new tools like RFDiffusion, AlphaFold, and ProteinMPNN to ‘hallucinate’ entirely novel proteins: designing them from scratch to solve problems evolution hasn’t tackled. They talk about how these technologies could transform medicine, agriculture, and materials science. Along the way, they reflect on the surprising ways AI is changing the process of science itself.Hard Drugs is a new podcast from Works in Progress and Open Philanthropy about medical innovation presented by Saloni Dattani and Jacob Trefet...
2025-10-151h 00
Works in Progress PodcastThe art of protein design with AIWhat if you could design a protein never seen before? In this episode, Jacob and Saloni explore how researchers are using new tools like RFDiffusion, AlphaFold, and ProteinMPNN to ‘hallucinate’ entirely novel proteins: designing them from scratch to solve problems evolution hasn’t tackled. They talk about how these technologies could transform medicine, agriculture, and materials science. Along the way, they reflect on the surprising ways AI is changing the process of science itself.Hard Drugs is a new podcast from Works in Progress and Open Philanthropy about medical innovation presented by Saloni Dattani and Jacob Trefethen.S...
2025-10-151h 00Hard DrugsHacking proteins with AINature didn’t evolve all the proteins we need, but maybe artificial intelligence can help. Jacob and Saloni explore how tools like AlphaFold and ProteinMPNN are helping researchers re-engineer proteins, to make them safer, more stable, and more effective. They talk about how new technologies could help make a long-sought vaccine against Strep A, which causes scarlet fever and rheumatic heart disease, and how similar tools have already led to breakthroughs against COVID and RSV.Hard Drugs is a new podcast from Works in Progress and Open Philanthropy about medical innovation presented by Saloni Dattani and Jacob Tr...
2025-10-0154 min
Works in Progress PodcastHacking proteins with AINature didn’t evolve all the proteins we need, but maybe artificial intelligence can help. Jacob and Saloni explore how tools like AlphaFold and ProteinMPNN are helping researchers re-engineer proteins, to make them safer, more stable, and more effective. They talk about how new technologies could help make a long-sought vaccine against Strep A, which causes scarlet fever and rheumatic heart disease, and how similar tools have already led to breakthroughs against COVID and RSV.Hard Drugs is a new podcast from Works in Progress and Open Philanthropy about medical innovation presented by Saloni Dattani and Jacob Tr...
2025-10-0154 minHard Drugs100 years of insulin in 15 minutesA hundred years ago, insulin was scraped from pig pancreases. Today, it’s made by bacteria in giant tanks. In the second part of a mini series on proteins, drug development and AI, Saloni tells the story of how insulin went from a crude animal extract to the first genetically-engineered drug, kickstarting the biotech industry along the way.Hard Drugs is a new podcast from Works in Progress and Open Philanthropy about medical innovation presented by Saloni Dattani and Jacob Trefethen.Saloni’s substack newsletter: https://www.scientificdiscovery.dev/Jacob’s blog...
2025-09-1617 min
Works in Progress Podcast100 years of insulin in 15 minutesA hundred years ago, insulin was scraped from pig pancreases. Today, it’s made by bacteria in giant tanks. In the second part of a mini series on proteins, drug development and AI, Saloni tells the story of how insulin went from a crude animal extract to the first genetically-engineered drug, kickstarting the biotech industry along the way.Hard Drugs is a new podcast from Works in Progress and Open Philanthropy about medical innovation presented by Saloni Dattani and Jacob Trefethen.Saloni’s substack newsletter: https://www.scientificdiscovery.dev/Jacob’s blog...
2025-09-1617 minHard DrugsProteins: Weird blobs that do important thingsThis episode kicks off a mini-series on proteins, drug development and AI. Saloni and Jacob explore the world of proteins, including how proteins fold into complex shapes, why that complexity matters and how crowded and dynamic the inside of a cell really is; and they exchange surprising statistics about proteins.Hard Drugs is a new podcast from Works in Progress and Open Philanthropy about medical innovation presented by Saloni Dattani and Jacob Trefethen.You can watch or listen on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.Saloni’s substack newsletter: https://www.scientificdiscovery.dev/
2025-09-0319 min
Works in Progress PodcastProteins: Weird blobs that do important thingsThis episode kicks off a mini-series on proteins, drug development and AI. Saloni and Jacob explore the world of proteins, including how proteins fold into complex shapes, why that complexity matters and how crowded and dynamic the inside of a cell really is; and they exchange surprising statistics about proteins.Hard Drugs is a new podcast from Works in Progress and Open Philanthropy about medical innovation presented by Saloni Dattani and Jacob Trefethen.You can watch or listen on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.Saloni’s su...
2025-09-0319 min
EAG TalksThe data that shapes global health | Saloni Dattani | EAG London: 2025Watch on YouTubeSaloni Dattani makes the case that data collection isn’t just an academic concern; it’s crucial for policymaking, journalism, and industry, and, in some cases, a matter of life or death.Data collection has changed our understanding of diseases like cholera, tuberculosis and snakebite envenoming; and has been crucial in tracking progress over time and identifying emerging problems.In this talk, Saloni focuses on key global health datasets and how they've helped us grasp the scale, distribution, and changes in disease burden. It will also discuss some of the risks posed by recent fund...
2025-09-0227 min
Science FictionsEpisode 79: Cancer ratesAre cancer rates going up or down? It seems like depending on where you look, you’ll find different answers to the question. What’s going on here — have some writers just got it completely wrong? Is it something to do with different types of cancer? Are we being confused by some kind of weird statistical artefact? All of the above? In this episode of The Studies Show, we do our very best to find out.The Studies Show is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine, the ultimate place online to read about new and underr...
2025-07-2252 min
Science FictionsEpisode 78: Worm wars and mouth bacteriaSeconds out! Round one! Ding ding! And other boxing terms. We’ve found a topic on which Tom and Stuart actually disagree. Kind of. In this episode of The Studies Show, they use the examples of “the worm wars” (does deworming kids in developing countries help them stay in school?) and a new craze for “tooth bacteria” (can colonizing your mouth with a genetically-modified bacterium stop you getting cavities?) to argue about how we should make our minds up about uncertain—but potentially promising—medical treatments.The Studies Show is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine. On t...
2025-07-151h 15
Works in Progress PodcastLenacapavir: The miracle drug that could end AIDSLenacapavir is a new HIV drug that blocks infections with an efficacy rate of nearly 100%, and it could completely change the fight against HIV worldwide. Saloni and Jacob talk about the development and prospects for this new drug, as well as the history of HIV, the initial discovery of retroviruses, and how HIV was transformed from a death sentence to a manageable condition.Hard Drugs is a new podcast from Works in Progress and Open Philanthropy about medical innovation presented by Saloni Dattani and Jacob Trefethen.00:00 Intro03:52 How was HIV discovered? Where did it...
2025-06-114h 53Hard DrugsLenacapavir: The miracle drug that could end AIDSLenacapavir is a new HIV drug that blocks infections with an efficacy rate of nearly 100%, and it could completely change the fight against HIV worldwide. Saloni and Jacob talk about the development and prospects for this new drug, as well as the history of HIV, the initial discovery of retroviruses, and how HIV was transformed from a death sentence to a manageable condition.Hard Drugs is a new podcast from Works in Progress and Open Philanthropy about medical innovation presented by Saloni Dattani and Jacob Trefethen.Chapters:00:00 Intro 03:52 How was HIV discovered...
2025-06-114h 53Hard DrugsComing soon: Hard DrugsHard Drugs is a new podcast about medical innovation: how to speed it up, how to scale it up, and how to make sure lifesaving tools reach the people who need them the most.Presented and written by Saloni Dattani and Jacob Trefethen. Brought to you by Works in Progress and Open Philanthropy.
2025-06-0900 min
Works in Progress PodcastComing soon: The Works in Progress PodcastComing soon: the Works in Progress Podcast. Featuring underrated ideas to improve the world – for bigger, more beautiful cities; clean energy that's too cheap to meter; truly pathbreaking scientific research; everyday progress in things like food and drink; and more.Plus: Hard Drugs, a new series hosted by Saloni Dattani and Jacob Trefethen about medical progress and the quest to eradicate the world's worst diseases.Subscribe now.
2025-06-0701 min
Outside/InVenom and the cureVenom is full of dualities. According to the UN’s World Health Organization, snakebite envenoming causes somewhere between 81,000 and 138,000 deaths per year, and even that is likely an undercount. Yet research into venom has yielded treatments for diabetes, cancer, erectile dysfunction, and even the celebrity favorite diabetes slash diet drug, Ozempic. In this episode, we explore the world of venom, where fear and fascination go hand-in-hand, and the potential for healing comes with deadly stakes. This is part II of our “Things That Can Kill You” miniseries, which also explores poison and allergies.Featurin...
2025-04-0326 min
Science FictionsEpisode 60: Best and worst science of 2024In this final episode of 2024, Tom and Stuart talk about the most exciting scientific breakthroughs of the year… but temper it with some of the worst episodes of scientific fraud and misconduct, too. Then, just as a bonus, they address some of the biggest errors made in episodes of The Studies Show in 2024, too.Thank you so much for listening in 2024. If you aren’t one already, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the podcast and get access to all the episodes. In any case, we’ll see you for more The Studies Show in the Ne...
2024-12-241h 05
Good on PaperWhat Do We Really Know About the Maternal-Mortality Crisis?From 1999 and 2019, researchers found that the maternal-mortality rate in the U.S. more than doubled. Over the years, these findings filtered their way through academic journals and the news media to the general public.But was there something more to this story? How had the U.S. become such a deadly place for pregnant women?In this episode of Good on Paper, host Jerusalem Demsas talks to Saloni Dattani, a researcher at Our World in Data. Her work—built on the research of other skeptical scientists—found that the seem...
2024-08-0639 min
More or LessHow a tick box doubled the US maternal mortality rates.he US has been portrayed as in the grip of a maternal mortality crisis. In contrast to most other developed nations, the rate of maternal deaths in the US has been going up since the early 2000s. But why? With the help of Saloni Dattani, a researcher at Our World in Data, Tim Harford explores how a gradual change in the way the data was gathered lies at the heart of the problem. Presenter: Tim Harford
Producer: Debbie Richford
Production Co-ordinator: Brenda Brown
Series Producer: Tom Colls
Sound Mix: Emma Harth
Editor: Richard Vadon
2024-06-2909 min
Talking About the FutureSaloni Dattani on Life ExpectancyOur World in Data global health researcher Saloni Dattani talks about life expectancy and trends in global health. Get full access to Telling the Future at tellingthefuture.substack.com/subscribe
2024-03-2241 min
Hear This IdeaSaloni Dattani on Malaria Vaccines and Missing Data in Global HealthSaloni Dattani is a Researcher at Our World in Data, and a founder & editor at the online magazine Works in Progress. She holds a PhD in psychiatric genetics from King’s College London.
You can see more links and a full transcript at hearthisidea.com/episodes/dattani.
In this episode we talk about:
The history of malaria and attempts to eradicate it
The role of DDT and insecticide spraying campaigns — and why they were scaled down
Why we didn’t get a malaria vaccine sooner
What comes after vaccine discovery — rolling out the RTS,S vaccin...
2023-10-192h 52EAG TalksMissing Data In Global Health And Why It Matters | Saloni Dattani | EAGxCambridge 2023https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ikx53I77NI8
2023-08-1922 min
The External Medicine PodcastSaloni Dattani: Peer Review, Division of Labor in Science, and the Genetics of Psychiatric DisordersIn this conversation, Daniel Belkin and Mitch Belkin interview Saloni Dattani about the genetics of psychiatric disorders and how to improve science. They discuss the lack of division of labor in academia, the history of peer review, ways to improve peer review, human challenge trials, and much more.Who is Saloni Dattani?Saloni Dattani is a PhD student at King’s College London. She is the founding editor of the online magazine Works in Progress. She is also an editor at Stripe Press and a researcher at Our World in Data.
2023-01-291h 11
Ben Yeoh ChatsSaloni Dattani: making science better, important questions in science, open science, reforming peer review, vaccines and optimism.Saloni Dattani is a founding editor at Works in Progress, a researcher at Our World in Data and a commissioning editor at Stripe Press. She has recently been profiled by Vox as part of the Future Perfect 50. Saloni is an excellent thinker on progress and science with recent articles for Wired (on making science better) and Guardian (on challenge trials).
Saloni tells me what are the most important questions in science that we should be working on.
We discuss making science better and thinking around challenge trials, making science more open source, r...
2022-11-081h 06
Everything Hertz159: Peer review isn't working (with Saloni Dattani)Dan and James are joined by Saloni Dattani for a chat about the history of peer review, a reimagination of what peer review could look like, what happens when you actually pay peer reviewers, peer reviewer specialisation, post publication peer review, annual paper limits for authors, automation in peer review, and Big Cheese.
Links
Works in Progress magazine
One of the many news stories about the Jarsberg cheese study
The actual study
Saloni's peer review piece
The F1000 format
Our episode with Elisabeth Bik
PCI registered reports
Saloni on Twitter
Other links
Everything Hertz...
2022-08-1551 min
The Rhys ShowHow to Make Crucial Knowledge Accessible & Understandable for Us All With Saloni DattaniIn this episode, researcher, writer, editor and PhD student in psychiatric genetics Saloni Dattani joins us to talk about her view of the world in different movements she tracks and how she does the research process.
It is possible to make progress against the huge problems we are all facing in the world by sharing new and underrated ideas of amazing thinkers. Why don’t we? Because research and data isn't accessible. Saloni works through different fields making that knowledge accessible and understandable for us all.
We dive deep into science communication and how to make it better, what brings Sa...
2022-07-1155 min
Narratives61: Steven Pinker, Progress, and Mental Health with Saloni DattaniSaloni Dattani is a PhD student in psychiatric genetics at King's College London. She has also created Works in Progress, an excellent online magazine. In this episode, we talk about Steven Pinker, technological progress, the state of science, and the genetics of mental health. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit willjarvis.substack.com
2021-09-2731 minEverything Hertz126: The division of scientific labor (with Saloni Dattani)We have a wide-ranging chat with Saloni Dattani (Kings College London and University of Hong Kong) about the benefits of dividing scientific labor, the magazine she co-founded (Works in Progress) that shares novel ideas and stories of progress, and fighting online misinformation
Here are some links and other stuff we cover
Follow Saloni on Twitter: https://twitter.com/salonium
Why Saloni started the Works in Progress magazine
[Overleaf](overleaf.com), for writing papers in LaTeX
How science will benefit from the division of labour
Public writing vs. scientific writing
Why has behavioral science not been very...
2021-02-1552 min
Rationally Speaking PodcastRationally Speaking #239 - Saloni Dattani on "The debate over whether male and female brains are different"Several recent books have argued there's no difference between male and female brains. Saloni Dattani, a PhD in psychiatric genetics, discusses some of the problems with the argument, and what we really know so far about gender and the brain.
2019-09-0348 min