Sunday Pick: How Texas became America's biggest producer of wind energy | Speed & Scale
Hosts Ryan Pinchasarum and Anjali Grover tell the story of how Texas, long associated with oil and gas, became the largest producer of wind energy in the United States. Through an interview with former Texas Public Utility Commission chair Pat Wood, they trace how public input, bipartisan policymaking, and major transmission investments enabled large-scale wind deployment and cut power-sector emissions by over a quarter, despite growing political polarization around renewables.
Inside India's astonishing solar revolution | Kanika Chawla
Energy expert Kanika Chawla explains how India transformed an audacious 2014 commitment to install 100 gigawatts of solar power into reality, reaching the goal by February 2025 and unlocking $90 billion in investment and 300,000 new solar jobs. She argues that India's success was driven less by ideology and more by economic logic, backed by innovations in business models, market design, and planning. Drawing on examples from India, Ghana, sub-Saharan Africa, and Kenya, she outlines how planning, innovation, and localization can help developing countries lead an irreversible global energy transition.
647. China Is Run by Engineers. America Is Run by Lawyers.
Host Stephen Dubner speaks with analyst and author Dan Wong about his framework for understanding the U.S. and China as, respectively, a "lawyerly society" and an "engineering state." Wong explains how China's engineer-dominated leadership prioritizes rapid infrastructure building, technological capacity, and even social engineering, while the U.S. legal culture emphasizes procedure, litigation, and blocking harmful as well as beneficial projects. Drawing on his years living in China, his family's history, and his book "Breakneck," Wong discusses zero-COVID, the one-child policy, manufacturing and process knowledge, China's global ambitions, and what each country could learn from the other.