Humanosphere features a podcast on aid theory with Owen Barder of the Center for Global Development. “Much of aid and development today is done more like an engineer building a bridge — with a precise blueprint, clear end goal done according to quantifiable steps. Barder, who is a big fan of metrics and quantification, nevertheless thinks we need to approach the fight against poverty more like [a] biologist, letting the process of change unfold, adapting and learning along the way. It’s a discussion that also reveals why the semantics of aid and development are part of the problem,” journalist Ansel Herz writes (1/24).