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Poverty, Development, and the Idealist
Poverty, Development, and the Idealist
Jan 15, 2026 9:55 AM

In the latest EconTalk podcast, Nina Munk, journalist and author of The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty, talks about how she spent six years following Jeffrey Sachs and the evolution of the Millennium Villages Project — an attempt to jumpstart a set of African villages in hopes of discovering a new template for development.

Munk details the great optimism at the beginning of the project and the discouraging results after six years of high levels of aid. As Munk notes, Sach’s story is one of the great lessons in unintended consequences and plexity of the development process.

Click here to listen to the podcast.

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