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Let's Know Things

Let's Know Things

By: Colin Wright
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A calm, non-shouty, non-polemical, weekly news analysis podcast for folks of all stripes and leanings who want to know more about what's happening in the world around them. Hosted by analytic journalist Colin Wright since 2016.

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Episodes
  • 2026 European Heat Wave

    2026 European Heat Wave
    Jun 30 2026
    This week we talk about air conditioners, pressure systems, and heat stress.We also discuss weather memes, climate change, and dirty grids.Recommended Book: Battle of the Linguist Mages by Scotto MooreTranscriptAn air conditioner, or AC, or maybe air con if you’re in the UK, is a device that moves heat from one location to another. In doing so, it usually dehumidifies the air, as well, so it can rapidly cool a room or entire building by shifting both heat and humidity from that room or building, elsewhere—usually outside.This is basically the same technology used in refrigerators, a process called vapor compression allowing the device to circulate a substance called refrigerant using a compressor, a condenser, an evaporator, and an expansion valve, which—and this is a very superficial explanation of what’s happening—but these components take advantage of forced circulation and a phase-change between gas and liquid to transfer heat from the room you want to cool, or the inside of the refrigerator, and move that heat outside your building, or to the back and/or bottom of the fridge.This is a far more active mode of air conditioning, of cooling and dehumidifying the air, than has been used throughout history. Most early methods relied on passive approaches, including but not limited to architectural elements, the use of plants and optimization of air flow, or creating basement areas for things that needed to stay cool.Researchers have dabbled with more active methods of conditioning air for centuries, though, and several 19th century inventions served as precursors for the first iteration of modern ACs, some of which were used to create ice, which was useful unto itself, but could also be used to cool a room, if far less effectively and efficiently than an actual, holistic AC unit.In 1894, industrial-grade ammonia compressors, powered by electricity, made this category of device suitable for urban environments; previously they just were far too bulky and difficult to power for city use. By 1896, the Hungarian engineer who came up with this new riff on the theme, István Röck, was manufacturing what he called dry air cooling apparatuses for hospitals, theaters, and other large spaces.Just five years later, in 1901, an American inventor named Willis H Carrier developed what’s widely considered to be the first modern electrical AC unit, selling the first one to a lithography company in New York, before patenting the term air conditioning in 1906. The first residential version of this device was installed in 1914, and in 1915 the Carrier Air Conditioning Company of America was formed—a business that still exists today.The impact of air conditioning, and this general technology category, as again, it’s also used in modern refrigeration units, cannot be overstated. This tech didn’t become widespread in the US, which is where it initially took off, in large part due to Carrier and other AC businesses’ presence in the States, until the mid-20th century, and before that, before the 1950s, the state of Florida was technically occupied, but only just barely because of its extreme heat and humidity and abundance of mosquitos. The population of Florida in 1950 was about 2.7 million, and today it’s about 23.5 million—that influx of people began after AC units became standard in buildings across the state, and the country. We’ve seen similar migrations as a result of too-hot places sudden becoming a lot more pleasant.Similarly, refrigeration enabled a boggling amount of change within the food and beverage industry, the chemicals and industrial materials industries, and the healthcare and life science industries, because before the advent of the cold chain—the system of refrigerated spaces, including boxes and trucks and planes and ships that allowed medicines and foods and other substances to stay cold from their origin to their end-consumer—it simply wasn’t possible to sell or create or work with many of these products and materials.The distribution of this technology is not universal or equal, however, and in some cases that inequality, that lack of access to this technology in some spaces, is the result of choice, not inaccessibility. And that’s what I’d like to talk about today: the spread, or lack thereof, of AC technologies and products, and how a recent heat wave in Europe may lead to more installations of this type of product across the continent.—Beginning in late-May of 2026, a series of severe heatwaves engulfed Europe, and especially Western Europe, breaking all sorts of temperature records and leading to a bunch of heat-related deaths.A recent meme gives a good sense of just how bad this heat wave has been.Back in 2014, as part of a campaign by the World Meteorological Organization, dozens of weather presenters from around the world were invited to record fictionalized weather reports from 2050, with the intention of giving people a sense of how global climate change ...
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    17 mins
  • Balcony Solar

    Balcony Solar
    Jun 23 2026
    This week we talk about plug-in power, renewables, and Germany.We also discuss inverters, solar arrays, and microgrids.Recommended Book: Consider This by Chuck PalahnuikTranscriptMost climate scientists and knowledgable folks in adjacent fields will tell you that, as a species, we’re way behind where we need to be if we’re going to avoid a whole lot of negative consequences caused by global climate change.We’ve blazed past a bunch of tipping points already, and while the worst-case scenarios we were worried about a decade ago are no longer likely because of the energy-generation and related changes we’ve made globally, since then, the damage caused up to this point is already doing some pretty bad things to our water cycle and other temperature-regulating systems, and that’s looking like it will get even worse over the next several decades—even if worse no longer means cataclysmic in the sense of ending all life on the planet.That said, even noting that progress has been a lot slower than most experts would prefer, progress is happening in regards to the deployment of renewable energy sources, and in the replacement and retirement of dirty, carbon- and methane-spewing sources, like coal, petroleum, and gas.As of 2026, the global share of total electricity generation, so all electricity produced by all sources for all purposes, is about 33.8% for renewables, marking the first time renewables have been used to produce more than a third of the total electricity produced, globally; that also means renewables have surpassed coal for electricity generation for the first time.While hydro and wind continue to contribute to the growth of renewables deployment and electricity generation, solar power is by far the biggest growth area for renewables right now, and solar, alone, covers 75% of total electricity demand growth in 2025—which means as countries around the world deploy more electricity generation assets to account for electricity demand growth, three-quarters of that demand is being met by solar. And this is notable because typically that kind of demand, the majority of which arises in huge, rapidly scaling countries like China and India, has up till recently been met by the dirtiest of energy production sources, coal.There’s also been a .02% reduction in fossil fuel generation, year-on-year, which is a very small number, but that level of production is massive, and there are a lot of subsidies and other mechanisms that keep fossil fuels flourishing around the world, so every little sliver of fossil fuel energy production reduction is still a pretty significant thing.Many of these renewables-related wins, in recent years, have been attributable to the large-scale installation of solar facilities, backed by massive, utility-scale battery backups, primarily in China.China is by far the largest producer of solar panels and related technologies—Chinese companies produce somewhere between 80-90% of all the key components and perform the same portion of all key manufacturing stages for the global supply chain, while also controlling the vast majority of resources necessary to manufacture solar panels. And it has been on a tear over the past decade or so, installing just a silly amount of solar infrastructure. Which is good, because China is also seeing a lot of growth in energy demand, so if they weren’t deploying that much solar, they would likely be deploying that much coal infrastructure, instead.That said, while huge solar arrays are important to renewables growth, there’s also been a recent boom in smaller-scale solar energy deployment in recent years, especially but not exclusively across Europe. And that’s what I’d like to talk about today: the emergence of so-called ‘balcony solar,’ and what it might mean for the further expansion of solar’s footprint around the world.—In 2025, Utah, which is a deeply Conservative, Republican state, became the first US state to pass a bill that makes it easier to legally install plug-in solar panel systems.As of mid-2026, about 30 states have followed suit, and even more are considering it, laws allowing for the installation of such solar technologies winding their way through legislative bodies on the back of the popularity and seeming no-downsides nature of this tech product category.Plug-in solar, also sometimes called balcony solar or garden solar, is currently most popular in Germany, which is the biggest market for this product right now, with about four million such systems installed as of 2025.To understand the popularity of this type of solar installation, it’s useful to understand that conventional solar installations have typically required a decent amount of electrical surgery to install. They’ve usually involved a large number of panels operating as an array, and that array has produced quite a lot of electricity that then has to be funneled as a direct current either back into the local grid using what amounts to ...
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    14 mins
  • Cholesterol Therapies

    Cholesterol Therapies
    Jun 16 2026
    This week we talk about LDL, HDL, and cardiovascular issues.We also discuss one-time therapies, statins, and pharmaceutical economics.Recommended Book: Blood by Dr. Jen GunterTranscriptCholesterol is the most common type of what’s called a sterol, which is a type of steroid, but also structurally technically an alcohol. But functionally, and classified by scientists, cholesterol is a lipid, which in this case is similar to a fat in all but how the body uses it. Cholesterol is the type of sterol most commonly found in animals—other types are found in plants and fungi—and its function, and this is where it varies from fats, which are used to store energy, is to basically help hold the cell membrane together, and it also serves as an intracellular messenger.Cholesterol is especially prevalent in the brain and spinal cord of animals, but it’s found throughout their bodily tissues, as well, and again, it’s vital for holding everything together and helping things communicate, in addition to being a precursor for vitamin D, steroid hormones, and bile.You want to have cholesterol, then, as without it you would be dead.Too much cholesterol in the blood, however, can also make you dead, especially when it’s bound to what’s called low-density lipoprotein, or LDL, as that contributes to cardiovascular disease like heart attacks and aneurysms, which can massively impact one’s overall wellness and quality of life, and at extremes lead to the whole system shutting down as a consequence of heart attack, stroke, and the like.A lot of things can contribute to the development of cardiovascular disease, including habits like smoking, genetic predisposition, and the enthusiastic consumption of alcohol and unhealthy foods. But high blood cholesterol, of the LDL variety, is one of the top contributors, as these low-density clusters of lipoprotein can clog the pathways that blood takes throughout our bodies. Other, denser types of lipoproteins, HDLs, can clear it, like a heavier, denser substance pushing through clogs of less-dense materials that are gumming up a pipe, but LDL is at times accumulated as a result of consuming delicious but unhealthy foods, which are hard to avoid, and for some people the only consistently available and affordable foods; and for other people LDL accumulates as a result of their genetic predispositions—two things that are devilishly difficult to change.What I’d like to talk about today is a new type of therapy that may be very good news for people who struggle with the accumulation of LDL, and why this is being seen as very good news more broadly, at the scale of entire nations, as well.—Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly is testing a new, experimental drug called VERVE-102 which is a one-time infusion that is currently administered over the course of about four hours, and once completed, it turns off a gene called PCSK9, which is responsible for making a protein that regulates cholesterol levels in humans.As I said, this drug is still being tested, so these are early results. But in a study of 35 people with high cholesterol levels, high levels of LDL or LDL-C, which is short for lipoprotein cholesterol, they found that this infusion, which again, is a one-time treatment, so get it once and then theoretically at least you never have to get anything done ever again, it reduced those LDL and LDL-C levels by as much as 62%, and that reduction was maintained a year and a half after the infusion; that’s how far out they’re retested so far, and the hope is that each retest will continue to show the same.On the strength of those very promising results, a Phase 2 study has been planned by the end of 2026, and the US Food and Drug Administration, the FDA, previously fast-tracked this existing study, because of the promise and potential this drug already demonstrated in early studies; all of which is considered to be very significant progress and possibility.To understand that significance, though, it’s useful to know some health stats. And I’m going to focus on the US here, as that’s where this drug is being developed, but many wealthy countries have similar stats, at least in terms of cardiovascular disease struggles.As of 2024, which is the last year we had good, cohesive data on this in the US, it was estimated that about 11-12% of the US adult population has high cholesterol levels. This typically doesn’t come with any symptoms, but it can contribute a higher risk for all those cardiovascular diseases, including heart attack and stroke. A further 86 million US adults have borderline or elevated cholesterol levels, which can easily tip higher, but also, even in that existing, elevated state, contribute to negative cardiovascular outcomes.There are treatments for high cholesterol, the most common of category of which are called statins, which reduce the production of LDL by inhibiting an enzyme that produces cholesterol in the body.Unfortunately, these drugs do come ...
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    14 mins
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