Progress by Fifty Years

Progress

The future, unfiltered. Conversations at the hinge of history. thisisprogress.substack.com

Episodes

  1. MAR 17

    Why America Turned On Its Own Builders

    Keller Cliffton is the co-founder and CEO of Zipline, the world's largest commercial autonomous delivery system. Before Zipline, Keller was a scientist at Harvard. Today, Zipline serves 5,000 hospitals worldwide, saves 10,000 lives per year, and has completed over 2 million drone deliveries — everything from food to medical supplies across Japan, five African countries, and multiple cities in the United States. In January 2026, Zipline raised a $600M round at a $7.6B valuation. The mission: put every person on the planet within 15–30 minutes of any product they need, no matter where they live. ---- In today's episode, we discuss: • A future where our children are 100x wealthier and live 100x longer • Why our grandkids will find the way we live now barbaric • Why food, housing, and healthcare may soon be basically free • Why "income inequality" is the wrong metric (and what we should measure instead) • Why Zipline had to launch in Africa before America • What Bill Gates and a Rwandan high school student have in common • Why Zipline hires teenagers over PhDs • How two landmark laws meant to protect people ended up doing the opposite • Why Hollywood may be the biggest threat to progress • What a 1950s gym class video tells us about the future of masculinity • Why Keller thinks 66% of countries will reject tech utopia (and why he's surprisingly okay with that) ---- References: • Alfred Lin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/linalfred/ • Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/ • Bill Gates: https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamhgates/ • Dallas Buyers Club: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas_Buyers_Club • Delivering Happiness: https://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-Purpose/dp/0446576220 • Enron: https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/enron • Gates Foundation: https://www.gatesfoundation.org/ • HBO: https://www.hbomax.com/ • Link Exchange: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkExchange • Michel Foucault: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault • Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/ • NEPA: https://ceq.doe.gov/index.html • Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/ • Sarbanes-Oxley: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes%E2%80%93Oxley_Act • The Three-Body Problem: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/0765382032 • Walmart: https://www.walmart.com/ • Warren Buffett: https://x.com/WarrenBuffett • Zappos: https://www.zappos.com/ • Zipline: https://www.zipline.com/ ---- Where to find Keller: • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellerrc/ • Twitter/X: https://x.com/Keller ---- Where to find Scott: • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dscottphoenix/ • Twitter/X: https://x.com/fuelfive ---- Where to find Fifty Years: • Website: https://fiftyyears.com/ • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fifty-years/ • Twitter/X: https://x.com/fiftyyears • YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@fiftyyears ---- Timestamps: (00:00) Progress in the mind of Keller Cliffton (01:36) Why food, housing, and healthcare may soon be basically free (02:42) A future where our children are 100x wealthier and live 100x longer (04:22) Why being rich in 1970 was worse than today (05:31) What Bill Gates and a Rwandan high school student have in common (06:53) Why "income inequality" is the wrong metric (08:00) Why 66% of countries will reject tech utopia (09:40) Why Zipline launched in Africa before America (10:36) How two landmark laws meant to protect people ended up doing the opposite (14:15) How the FDA accidentally killed 1 million people (15:39) Why every law needs an expiration date (16:37) Warren Buffett's two-minute deficit fix (18:07) Why Hollywood may be the biggest threat to progress (19:49) How postmodernism became America's most destructive idea (21:32) How Keller went from sleeping in his car to building Zipline (24:24) What a 1950s gym class video tells us about the future of masculinity (25:51) The alarming collapse in men's sperm counts (28:41) Fixing America's "autoimmune condition" (31:04) How to get in touch This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thisisprogress.substack.com

    31 min
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The future, unfiltered. Conversations at the hinge of history. thisisprogress.substack.com

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