Weekend Reading, Watching and Listening Recommendations (August 28, 2020)
The Impact of Mosquitoes on Human Civilization, A History of the WHO, Bill Gates Talks about Vaccinations and Diet Coke, Why Finland Has the Best Education System in the World
Read: A new book estimates that mosquitoes have killed more people than any other single cause—52 billion of us, nearly half of all humans who have ever lived.
Read: James Meek on the history of the World Health Organisation. This is the best history, by far, you will read on the WHO-what it does, what it should be doing and what are the prospects for its future. [From the London Review of Books]
Read: We Can Protect the Economy From Pandemics. Why Didn't We? A virologist helped crack an impossible problem: how to insure against the economic fallout from devastating viral outbreaks. The plan was ingenious. Yet we're still in this mess. [From WIRED]
Listen: Bill Gates fantastic conversation with Dax Shepard. They talk about the critical role of vaccinations, whether tech entrepreneurs deserve to be questioned by the government and their mutual love of Diet Coke.
Listen: The Tyranny of Metrics: From education to healthcare, charities to policing, we are a target-driven society that places a heavy emphasis on measuring, arguably at times at the expense of individual professional expertise. [From the BBC]
Watch: The Future of Cities after COVID-19 [From the WSJ]