Session Notes

Reading guides, concept summaries, discussion questions, and review cards for each session.

Each note summarises the key concepts for the week, frames the readings, and includes discussion questions and review cards. Read alongside — not instead of — the assigned texts. Notes for upcoming sessions are added as the course progresses.

Session number	Session title	Date
Module 1 — What Is Progress?
1	Introduction: Why Progress? Crawford + Ordinary Abundance — why progress needs defending and why ordinary life is hard to see	Tue Sep 1
2	The Chimpanzee Test Rosling — why experts score worse than random chance on global facts; the Gap Instinct	Thu Sep 3
3	Progress Getting Better — And What That Means Rosling Ch 2 — the Negativity Instinct; Sen — development as freedom	Tue Sep 8
4	The Great Enrichment in One City Tentative BMI visit · UOE Ch 3 · capitalism, industrialization, and Baltimore	Thu Sep 10
Module 2 — Institutions & Innovation
5	Science as a Public Good Nelson + Bush + Crawford — why markets underprovide basic research and why innovation is not linear	Tue Sep 15
6	Innovation, Incentives, and Technology UOE Ch 4 + Bloom et al. — why steady progress can require ever-larger research effort	Thu Sep 17
7	Cities 1: Renaissance Florence Palmer + Florence mobility — recombination, place, and durable advantage	Tue Sep 22
8	Cities 2: Silicon Valley Saxenian + McAfee + Watney — why do innovators cluster, and why are some clusters more adaptive?	Thu Sep 24
9	Baltimore: Progress, Decline, and Reinvention Szanton + Hiss + NYT — forecast, reinvention, public safety, and uneven urban progress	Tue Sep 29
10	Liberty, Property Rights, and the Conditions for Progress Hayek + UOE Chs 1–2 — prices, property rights, power, bargaining, and institutions	Thu Oct 1
11	Escaping the Poverty Trap Ang + Grier + Wang optional — adaptive governance, state capacity, and China as an engineering state	Tue Oct 6
Module 3 — Who Benefits?
12–16	Inequality, Race, Baltimore, Labor Piketty/Chetty, Wilkerson, industrial labor and race, Smith + Dickens	Oct 8–22
Module 4 — Ambition & Agency
17–21	Great Inventors, Guest Speakers, Top-Down Innovation Carlyle + Koyama + outsiders; Teles; Reinhardt + buyers/prizes; Williams/Niehaus	Oct 27 – Nov 10
Module 5 — Limits & Risks
22–24	Environment, Slowdown, Catastrophic Risk Ritchie + acid rain; Thompson/Russell/Vinsel + R&D labs; AI and infrastructure risks	Nov 12–19
Module 6 — Looking Forward
25–28	Synthesis + Data Project Presentations Closing reflection: how has your thinking changed?	Dec 1–10