America250 – Part 3: The Future We're Building Now

Summary

Podcast Summary: The NewsWorthy: America250 – Part 3: The Future We're Building Now
Host: Erica Mandy
Guest: Peter Lyden (Tech Expert, Futurist, Former Wired Managing Editor)
Date: July 3, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this special episode marking America's 250th birthday, Erica Mandy and guest futurist Peter Lyden look ahead to the next 25, 50, and even 250 years. Lyden argues this is a time of unprecedented technological convergence, with artificial intelligence, clean energy, and bioengineering poised to transform every aspect of society, from work and health to government and democracy. The theme is one of realistic optimism—while challenges are real, the potential for progress is enormous.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Three Tipping Points of Our Era

• Artificial Intelligence (AI):

  • Lyden frames AI as “the biggest technological revolution we’ve ever seen” (01:46).
  • AI, along with clean energy and bioengineering, has crossed the “tipping point”—a stage where technology shifts from clunky and limited to rapidly improving, affordable, and ubiquitous.
  • “AI is absolutely past the tipping point. There’s no stopping it. You’re not going to put it in a box.” (02:48)

• Clean Energy:

  • Clean energy technologies (especially solar, wind, new-gen nuclear, and fusion) are rapidly becoming cheaper and more abundant.
  • "Solar panels are literally getting cheap. They’re cheaper than any other carbon energy source, and they’re going to keep getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper." (03:48)
  • Lyden argues this is the first time energy is a technology, not a commodity; as a result, he believes it can genuinely solve climate change. (04:54)

• Bioengineering:

  • Biology has become an “engineerable” domain, enabling the tweaking of plants, animals, and even humans for new materials and solutions.
  • "This is the first time ever humans can engineer living things... It's early days, but it has the potential to make life work better." (05:51)
  • Bioengineering will enable more nature-synced materials (like biodegradable plastics).

Notable Quote:
“What new technologies do is they take things that are scarce and expensive and they make them cheap and abundant... once they've tipped, there's no stopping it. And that's what's happening today.” – Peter Lyden (02:58)

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Learning from History, But Embracing the Unprecedented

• While history shows booms of innovation and reinvention follow periods of crisis (e.g., after WWII, after the Civil War), Lyden acknowledges AI is fundamentally different because it breaks the monopoly of the human brain on intelligence.
• He predicts disruptive but ultimately positive outcomes as AI takes over basic tasks, freeing humans for more creative and valuable work:
  • “The amplification of our human brain power... first a disruption... but it is going to allow us to do way more things, way more productive.” (07:46)

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Democratization, Regulation, and Societal Control

• Lyden strongly emphasizes that technologies—AI in particular—are not destined to enrich only elites.
• Every wave of technological advancement sparks a regulatory and democratizing backlash (e.g., breakup of Standard Oil, Progressive Era reforms). He expects politics and society to “renormalize things” and correct excesses. (08:58)
• The initial impact of AI will be greatest on knowledge workers, who will, in turn, drive regulatory pressure and adaptation.

Notable Quote:
“AI is a completely democratizing thing... Politics comes in at these junctures of new technologies. They renormalize things, they constrain kind of the excesses... I think the politics in the country in the next few years are going to be very important and impactful.” – Peter Lyden (08:58)

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The Future of Work, Robots, and Human Adaptation

• Robots:

  • Physical robots are progressing more slowly than virtual agents; skilled manual workers will be affected later than knowledge workers (10:12).
  • Both groups will soon have access to “assistants and teams” of robots or virtual agents to complement their work.

• Will AI Make Us Dumber?

  • Lyden draws an analogy to past panics over calculators rotting minds, saying humans are highly adaptive and will leverage these tools for growth—not decline:
  • "Humans are incredibly adaptive, incredibly innovative, incredibly creative. We are going to do our best with this and our best is going to be awesome." (11:11)

Notable Quote:
“We roll with the times. Humans are incredibly adaptive, incredibly innovative, incredibly creative. We are going to do our best with this and our best is going to be awesome.” – Peter Lyden (11:11)

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Societal and Political Transformation

• Each wave of general purpose technology transforms the economy, and then society and governance follows.
• Lyden provocatively suggests even “representative democracy” and “the nation state” may be reinvented to handle global challenges like climate change and pandemics.
• He envisions future democratic frameworks leveraging new technology for more responsive and scalable governance.

Memorable Segment:
“Representative democracy, that was good 250 years ago, but it might not be the way we wanna go in the next 250.” – Peter Lyden (16:11)

• Planetary-scale coordination/governance is likely by the end of this century, given globalized problems (17:20).

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What Will Daily Life Look Like?

• Lyden envisions less work, more life balance: “This is the first technology that’s going to actually come along that actually is going to allow us to drop to probably 20% [less work].”
• Dramatic improvements in health (potential eradication of all human diseases in 25–50 years), increased life expectancy, more leisure and family time.
• “Honestly, these are the kind of things that are not crazy talk. This is like actually stuff that you can start thinking, God, we could maybe start doing this.” (18:51)

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Looking to the Far Future (250 Years)

• As for 250 years ahead: humanity will almost certainly “be in space... It’ll absolutely be better... We are absolutely building on progress.” (20:00)

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The Essential Mindset

• Lyden urges listeners to embrace “100% optimism,” underscoring that only optimists create the future.
• “But it’s not blind optimism and it’s not goofy optimism. It’s essentially a belief that human beings are amazing things... we’re going to solve all our problems.” (20:51)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote/Highlight | |-----------|---------|------------------| | 01:46 | Peter Lyden | “It is a game changer. It is a world changer... three general purpose technologies hitting simultaneously.” | | 02:58 | Peter Lyden | “What new technologies do is they take things that are scarce and expensive and they make them cheap and abundant...” | | 04:54 | Peter Lyden | “Clean energy. This is the first time energy is a technology, not a commodity... It’s going to solve climate change.” | | 08:58 | Peter Lyden | “AI is a completely democratizing thing... politics in the country in the next few years are going to be very important...” | | 11:11 | Peter Lyden | "Humans are incredibly adaptive, incredibly innovative, incredibly creative. We are going to do our best with this and our best is going to be awesome." | | 16:11 | Peter Lyden | “Representative democracy, that was good 250 years ago, but it might not be the way we wanna go in the next 250." | | 18:51 | Peter Lyden | “Honestly, these are the kind of things that are not crazy talk. This is like actually stuff that you can start thinking, God, we could maybe start doing this.” | | 20:51 | Peter Lyden | “Optimism. 100% optimism, basically... It’s not blind optimism... we’re going to solve all our problems. We’re great at solving problems.” |

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Key Timestamps

• 01:32 – Lyden on why this American milestone is historic
• 01:46 – The magnitude of the current technological revolution
• 02:19 – What is a technological tipping point?
• 03:20 – The impact of AI and clean energy becoming “ubiquitous and cheap”
• 04:54 – Clean energy as a solution to climate change, and upcoming nuclear/fusion possibilities
• 05:51 – The coming age of bioengineering
• 07:46 – How AI differs from the past and what history can teach us
• 08:58 – Technological change and the role of democracy/regulation
• 10:12 – The coming impact of robots on the workforce
• 11:11 – Human adaptability in the face of rapid technology
• 15:11 – How economic transformation triggers societal and political change
• 16:30 – The future of democracy and the nation-state
• 18:51 – Projections for daily life in 25 years: work, health, family
• 20:00 – Humankind in 250 years: “Absolutely in space”
• 20:51 – The necessity and rationale for optimism

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Summary & Takeaways

• Lyden delivers a comprehensive, hopeful vision for the future shaped by AI, clean energy, and bioengineering—all tipped into mass adoption, all rapidly accelerating progress.
• The episode counters doom-and-gloom narratives, positioning America’s current turmoil as a phase of creative destruction leading toward rebirth, much as the country has seen at big turning points in its past.
• Fundamental shifts, not just in technology but in economic and political organization, are both “extraordinary and necessary.”
• Listeners are encouraged to adopt a mindset ‘of optimism—rooted in history, ambition, ingenuity, and faith in human adaptation and problem-solving.’

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For further reading: Peter Lyden’s upcoming book, The Great 2025-2050, and his Substack essay series.

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This summary captures the spirit, energy, and depth of Erica Mandy’s enlightening interview with Peter Lyden. For those looking to understand what might drive America’s—and humanity’s—next great leap forward, it’s a must-listen episode.

Transcript

[Peter Lyden]

Honestly, these are the kind of things that are not crazy talk. This is like actually stuff that you can start thinking, God, we could maybe start doing this.

[Podcast Host]

Today is Friday, July 3rd, and instead of our regular news roundup, today we're continuing our America 250 special series looking at the past, present and future of America as the country marks its 250th birthday this weekend. On Wednesday, we took you back to what life was like in 1776. Yesterday, we examined today's world and how history may remember us. Today we're looking ahead to the next 25 years and beyond. That's likely to be shaped in a lot of ways by new technologies. We already know artificial intelligence could change how we work, learn and create. But today's guest says that's just one of three major tipping points that could change civilization as we know it. Peter Lydon is a tech expert, futurist and a former managing editor of Wired magazine. He's spent decades following the front edge of technological change and his upcoming book is called the Great 2025-2050. Of course, no one can know exactly what the future holds and there are a lot of different views out there about the promises and risks of fast moving technologies. But today we're hearing this one futurist's case for why this could be a moment of extraordinary progress. Today he explains what could change about work, health, the economy, democracy and daily life and why he thinks there's more reason for optimism than a lot of people realize. Peter Lydon, thank you so much for joining us here on the newsworthy.

[Peter Lyden]

It's great to be here with you on the 250th birthday.

[Podcast Host]

So everyone is talking about AI. A lot of us can feel that it's bringing on major change. But from your perspective, just how significant is this moment for what comes next?

[Peter Lyden]

I think it's the biggest technological revolution we've ever seen. The arrival of intelligent machines is really a world historic moment. It is a game changer. It is a world changer. And I think it also coincides with a couple other technologies like clean energy technologies and bioengineering that is really making this a unique moment in human history in which we're watching three really general purpose technologies hitting simultaneously.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, you've called all three of those things AI, clean energy and bioengineering major tipping points. So first, what is a tipping point?

[Peter Lyden]

Those of us in tech really understand that any successful new technology goes through essentially the technology adoption curve. There's always some early innovators. There's always early adopters who pick up on that. The tipping point is when they shift from that early phase that it could spin out or phase out to the actual one that is essentially just exponential growth that really goes global and ultimately changes the fundamentals of the economy, society, and ultimately the world. Now, that's what happened with personal computers. It happened with the Internet, electricity and these various other game changers. But that is absolutely happening with all three of these. AI is absolutely past the tipping point. There's no stopping it. You're not going to put it in a box. And the same thing with clean energy, despite all the pushback from the Trump administration, everything else, and when I say tip, it's going to get better and better and better, and it's going to get cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. What new technologies do is they take things that are scarce and expensive and they make them cheap and abundant. It happens all the time. And once they've tipped, there's no stopping it. And that's what's happening today.

[Podcast Host]

And you've given the example of something everybody knows about, going from like a clunky cell phone to the iPhone, which was the tipping point.

[Peter Lyden]

The thing about tipping points, which are really interesting, is before the tip, they tip. Everyone's like, ah, it's not too good. Ah, it's clunky, it's not going to work. Ah, it's too expensive, I don't need it. And then after they tip, it's like, holy, this is the most amazing thing ever. And everybody needs them and everybody wants them. And essentially that goes into this exponential growth. And by the way, the price has come down. Today's iPhone would've cost you in the late 90s, it was about 55 million. And that's now in the hands of everybody. So that's taking something super expensive and super scarce to something ubiquitous. And that's what's happening. And it's happening now with AI and it's gonna happen with all kinds of stuff around. This same thing's happening with clean energy. By the way, if, you know, after a hundred years of the internal combustion engine and gas and oil and coal. Coal goes back 250 years. We're now with abundant clean energy. I mean, these solar panels are literally getting cheap. They're cheaper than any other carbon energy source, and they're going to keep getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. And that's the same thing with electric cars. Electric cars are already about half as cheap as an internal combustion engine. It's going to get cheaper and cheaper and Cheaper. And the electricity they run after is about half the price of gas. And that's where we are now. And we just have to face up to it. And that's part of what's happening, is the next 25 years in America are going to be unbelievably interesting. Time of transformation.

[Podcast Host]

You talked about clean energy. What does that look like in the future? Once we are 25 years from now, what do you expect clean energy to be doing? And you know, a lot of people are concerned about climate change and what that's going to do. So is that going to be impacting what results of climate change that we're seeing?

[Peter Lyden]

It's going to solve climate change. Clean energy. This is the first time energy is a technology, not a commodity. Up until now, every single energy source we've had, you had to dig it up. You have to tap into it. You had to transport it to wherever you're at. You had to keep shoveling into the furnace or filling up your gas tank. Now you create one technology. Solar, for example, or wind would work too. The thing about technologies is when you double the production of a technology like solar panels, it drops the cost of about 20%. This is a proven fact. It's been through manufacturing. And that's why the future is electric. There's also a couple other technologies coming. The next generation of nuclear energy, which doesn't have any climate change impact. And there's a thing called fusion energy, which is on the horizon coming in the probably 2000 and 30s here. Now it's creating energy the way the sun does it and the way the stars do it. If we can do that now, and we're close to figuring that out, then you got limitless energy from basically water.

[Podcast Host]

And what about bioengineering? What do you think people need to know about that?

[Peter Lyden]

This is the first time ever humans can engineer living things. We understand the mechanisms of biology now increasingly more and more and more to the point where now we can tweak plants, animals, ultimately ourselves, by getting in there and engineering the life to do things we want it to do. And some of the things we're going to have it do is materials. So, for example, plastic bottles, they last a thousand years in the oceans and we got tons of it. Everywhere you go, we'll be able to bioengineer materials that'll be much more in sync with nature. Now, again, these are early days on all three of these things. Certainly has the potential to make life work better. And that's why when you talk about where the cusp of America is now. All kinds of people right now are gloom and doom and America's going down the drain and everything's kind of horrible. We're completely missing what's going on here. America is going through a fundamental reinvention, a reinvention meeting where essentially you have to break down the old thing, the old bureaucracies, the old carbon energies. You have to get off these old systems to recreate the new ones. And that's what we're just starting now is building the new systems around these new technologies. And the systems we're going to build on them are going to be better systems that are going to be better for us going forward, too. America's been through this three other times before. Last time we saw it was essentially coming off The World War II built the modern middle class in the American domestic world, that whole world, the United nations, the World bank, all that stuff was invented within a handful of like three or four years. Coming off the Great War and essentially building the next 25 years, we saw an unbelievable economic boom and an unbelievable period of progress. We had a similar boom and essentially another period of progress coming off Civil War. If you go back to the beginning of the country, which was 80 years before that, we created the beginning of America.

[Podcast Host]

Some people, though, have argued that AI is so different from anything in the past that history can't really guide us as much as it has in the past. What's your response to that?

[Peter Lyden]

Well, there is some truth to that in that up until now, anything to do with intelligence had to have a human brain tied to it. But here's what's happening. We've never had a tool that could actually do a lot of the things that humans do. And so that is gonna be a dramatic shift in that many of the things that we had humans do, we can have a machine do it. Now, just like back in the day, 90% of humans had to hoe and plant and pick agricultural foods, right? I mean, there's 90% of the people had to do that. Now it's like 1% of people do it. But I'm saying the amplification of our human brain power essentially is going to actually lead to first a disruption, which is what people are worried about, which is simple tasks, like kids coming outta college, helping out around the office are just simple tasks. Those are gonna probably be taken more quickly by intelligent machines. It's disruptive to some kinds of work, particularly to start, but it is going to allow us to do way more things, way more productive.

[Podcast Host]

What impact do you think we the people, not just the people who own these tech companies. What impact do the people have or what choice do they have about how this pans out, do you think?

[Peter Lyden]

Well, first thing I want to really stress to people because people freak out. They think, oh, this AI is going to empower only a handful of elites. Totally wrong. AI is a completely democratizing thing. Now, this happens at every technology. So you take railroads, for example, the robber barons who own the railroads or own the big companies, fabulously rich back then too. They call it the Gilded Age. But then the people in the Progressive era of the early 20th century, we said, okay, we're going to bust up Standard Oil, we're going to impose an income tax, we're going to have all these regulatory agencies. Politics comes in at these junctures of new technologies. They re normalize things, they constrain kind of the excesses that get in the way and makes things wrong and stuff. And that's why I think the politics in the country in the next few years are going to be very important and it's going to be very impactful. It does mean we have to really kind of rise, vacation. I think we can do that. The other kicker with AI is AI is going to first affect knowledge workers. It's the journalists, it's the lawyers. And so when the world starts to affect them, they're going to put the pressure on to make stuff happen and change things and push around and make sure we do this right. And I think that's what's going to happen.

[Podcast Host]

What do you think the role of robots will be and how might it impact our relationship with other humans?

[Peter Lyden]

They're coming on a kind of a delay. Robots don't have the same dexterity as our fingers. There's a whole understanding of spatial environments. Robots are still trying to learn. It's happening fast, but it is not happening as fast as essentially the agents and things that are virtual. So there is a bit of delay factor there. People that are in the physical world, people who work with their hands, are actually not going to be hit as early as the knowledge workers. You work with their primarily with their brains. That said is absolutely robots are happening and going to happen. You're going to have people who work physically in physical jobs are going to have essentially assistants and teams of robots and all kinds of things that they're going to manage. And then you're going to see the same way that knowledge workers are going to have essentially teams of, you know, virtual agents that they're already going to start doing that's going to happen earlier. So those two things together are going to transform our world. Without them, we got trouble because we don't have enough humans. We are not going to have enough humans to support all these old people. And with the robots and the AI

[Podcast Host]

we do, are we going to stay smart if we're relying on AI for everything?

[Peter Lyden]

I grew up, I'm an older guy now. Kind of what they call a back end boomer. Oh, they're all freaked out about calculators. They go, oh my God, we'll never learn math. We'll never know nothing. We'll just, our brains will be mush and the whole thing. And so, Chris, that's ridiculous. I mean, everybody using calculator, don't even think about it. So I think there's all these iterations of like, we, we roll with the times. Humans are incredibly adaptive, incredibly innovative, incredibly creative. We are going to do our best with this and our best is going to be awesome. It's going to be better off for everybody. But, you know, there'll be challenges. Just like, hey, we didn't really figure out that social media could mess up our elections a little bit. Or teen kids. Maybe it was a little too young to give them a. You figure out how to deal with bullying on the Internet. But you know, you don't shut down the Internet and say, well, that was dumb. No, it's like we're way better off for that infrastructure and that technology and we'll be the same with AI. I mean, yeah, there'll be some probably things we're going to lose, but there's going to be many, many, many things we're going to gain. America has always been a tech positive country that is the source of our economic power and our essentially ultimately cultural power every time.

[Podcast Host]

Still ahead, Peter Lyden says the story does not end with how he expects the technology we're building now to eventually change not just our jobs, but also the way our economy, government and democracy work. He shares his bold predictions for what may come next in 25, 50 and even 250 years. That and more coming up. But first, a quick break for our sponsors. I was so impressed to see the enthusiasm and involvement of the community on whatnot. The excited comments and the speed at which items were selling honestly surprised me. But it was so fun. And I realized this is a community specifically coming on this app to shop and buy things. So it's a great place for sellers to find the right customers and really connect with their buyers as a person and not just a logo. Whatnot is the largest dedicated live shopping platform. Whether it's beauty, collectibles, electronics, luxury, fashion, even cookies, sellers are building real thriving businesses. And anyone can sell whether your business is big, small, or yet to exist. In fact, Whatnot says the number of sellers making over a million dollars a year has doubled. And that's because you're not just listing products, you're building real connections with buyers. You go live, you show off the products in real time, and you turn what you love into real income. It even stood out to me how there are specific live auctions where customers are bidding on items and buying up products so fast. So go check it out for yourself. Search whatnot wh a t n o t in the App Store and download so you can start selling right away. Again, search whatnot in the App Store to download and start selling right away. The newsworthy is also brought to you by honeylove. Do yourself a favor and stock your closet with Honeylove's essentials. Whether it's finding that just right bra for every day or getting shapewear that makes you feel great for any event, honeylove has it all. And it's all so supportive, comfortable and stylish. In fact, when I wear anything from honeylove, I can instantly tell so much thought went into every aspect of the piece I from the feel of the fabric to the function and all the extra features to the fashion and quality. Honeylove shapewear, for example, is designed to smooth and support without squeezing or restricting. And it stays in place. No more pulling it down or up anytime you walk around. Because comfort is not a luxury, it's a requirement. And support shouldn't mean sacrificing how you feel in your own skin. So treat yourself to the most advanced bras and shapewear on the market. Use our exclusive link to save 20% off [e-mail] newsworthy that's honeylove.com newsworthy. After you check out, they'll ask you where you heard about them. So please support our show and tell them we sent you. Experience the new standard in comfort and support with honeylove. Okay, now back to my conversation with Peter Leinen. You've said this actually isn't just a technology story. You've alluded to some of this already, but that major changes are coming in the economy, democracy and the governance. Give us a quick version at least. How could each of these areas change, starting with the economy?

[Peter Lyden]

So ultimately what happens is once you bring a game changing new general purpose technology, the Economy jumps on it and says, okay, gosh, what can we do with this? Oh my God, we can do all kinds of stuff. And then they start creating new industries and they start creating kind of new economic models often. And so that's the first step is the economy changes. Once the economy starts changing differently and money's flowing through everything like, well, if we can do it that way, we might as well change government too. We might as well change education. We might as well change healthcare. The changes can be so profound that it's essentially creating a world that, that people in previous centuries wouldn't even have recognized. I think it's possible that AI will essentially be leading to civilization scale change. Many of the things that we invented, now 250 years old, might have to be reinvented going forward. And one of them might be representative democracy, which is getting dysfunctional. Or one of them might be the nation state, which all these global problems like climate change and pandemics, we can't coordinate beyond our nation state. We might have to reinvent these things pretty fundamentally going forward. And the next 25 years, I think, is when we're gonna start it. But it's gonna be more our kids and our grandkids and stuff who will live in this next world. That's a different kind of civilization. And so at that level, maybe representative democracy, that was good 250 years ago, but it might not be the way we wanna go in the next 250s.

[Podcast Host]

What are potential replacements?

[Peter Lyden]

AI the founders we're here today, they look around, they say, oh my God, this is amazing. This computers are fantastic, this Internet thing is awesome. AI is like, unbelievable. They build a system of representative democracy that could what the majority feels that same principles that define that old system would infuse this new system. But we'd be using the technology and tools that we have now, and the knowledge for that matter too, that they didn't have then. Just like at the time they're there, like, looking, okay, what can we do? Well, we could get on horses and come together every few months and sit in a room and raise our hands. Better than having one king kind of tell you what to do. But essentially it's totally outmoded now. I mean, look at what's going on. It's like America hasn't moved for 20 years.

[Podcast Host]

And you said instead of the nation state, it would be more of like a world government. Yeah.

[Peter Lyden]

And it's not like a handful of. Everyone thinks, oh, there'll be a handful of cabal at the top of the world no, that's the old way of thinking about that. The United nations was essentially a bureaucracy of the mid 20th century, which at the time were great. They figured out how to get stuff done that we could never have done before. It's like we're going to figure out the next level of coordinating 10 billion people on this planet. And I think it'll be some kind of planetary governments will be a piece. There'll also be a lot of civil government and probably even still national level government to do certain things. But ultimately we need a thing that coordinates these nations. Right now, a nation state can do whatever the hell it wants to do. You can't get anyone to coordinate anything. Now, by the way, we're going to have a lot more pandemics, probably let alone climate change, which doesn't know any boundaries. It's like you got to have something that's going to coordinate at the scale of the planet. Now, it sounds nutty to us now because all we know is the way we know, but I'm saying that's almost certainly what's going to happen this century. It's moving to a better world and it's up to the scale of solving the challenges of our time. In other words, right now, if we didn't have AI and we didn't have clean energy and for that matter, bioengineering, we'd be screwed. But now that we have these three technologies, we actually have a through line through that's going to actually make this work for everybody.

[Podcast Host]

Have you thought about what everyday life in 25 years might actually look like? Let's zoom in. When I wake up, what does my life look like, do you think?

[Peter Lyden]

My entire life, the boomers with my generation and the generations after have complained about life out of balance, too much work, we're overworked, we don't have time for kids, we don't have time to work out. We don't have time to do anything. This is the first technology that's going to actually come along that actually is going to allow us to drop to probably 20%. We're going to be able to do just as much, if not way more, with less time working and allows to you to what, connect with your kids that everyone's been cleaning but go on vacations? That never gives enough time to do. We're going to live better off. Less time working, more balance in life, healthier. This is not crazy talk. We're thinking we can eliminate probably all human diseases in 25 years or at least 50 years. You could live longer it's like, hey, instead of dying at 80, you're dying at 110 or something, you know, and then you're still living healthy till a hundred or something. I mean, honestly, these are the kind of things that are not crazy talk. This is like, actually stuff that you can start thinking, God, we could maybe start doing this. And that's the kind of spirit of America, frankly, has always been that spirit.

[Podcast Host]

And I imagine we can't even try to predict what life will be like in 250 years.

[Peter Lyden]

Better. Way better. We'll be in space. We'll absolutely be in space. You can make a pretty good shot at what's possible to achieve in 25 years based on current technology, scientific knowledge, and basing an understanding about how human beings work. It's much harder to go beyond that much further. But you can do some broad outlines like humans will absolutely be able to be in space and stuff like that. It'll absolutely be better, you know, barring some, like, an asteroid hits the planet or something. Setting aside those wild cards, we are absolutely building on progress. And I would put to anyone who's listening to this, if you really think about it and really understood what the world was like 50 years ago, a hundred years ago, 200 years ago, 500 years ago, or whatever, a thousand years ago, there's no way you would want to go back to that.

[Podcast Host]

Leave us with one final thought about the mindset you hope more people bring to the future.

[Peter Lyden]

Optimism. 100% optimism, basically. Optimists won't create the future. Nobody who's pessimistic creates the future. They just don't. I mean, it's like, you gotta be optimistic about what's happening and what's possible. Things are getting better, and there's no reason why going out 50 years, we're not gonna be better still. And that's optimism. But it's not blind optimism and it's not goofy optimism. It's essentially a belief that human beings are amazing things. We're incredibly smart, incredibly knowledgeable, we're incredibly ambitious, we're incredibly innovative, and we're gonna figure stuff up. We're ingenious. It's like we're gonna solve all our problems. We're great at solving problems.

[Podcast Host]

Thank you so much to our guest, Peter Lyden. Look out for his newest book, the Great 2025-2050, set for release in 2027. But even before that, you can read more of his perspectives and predictions through his popular Substack series of monthly essays. We'll link to all of his work in today's episode. Notes over on thenewsworthy.com thank you so much for listening today to our episode about the future. This marks the end of our three part America 250 special series. We hope you enjoyed it and learned something new. If you did, we'd love for you to share your favorite episode from it with your friends and family or on social media as you celebrate the fourth of July this weekend. Our team is taking tomorrow off for the holiday, but we'll be back on Monday and the rest of next week with your regular daily news roundups. So remember, we typically provide all the day's News in just 15 minutes every Monday through Friday in our Fast Fair Fun style. You can join us again Monday to get the latest news. Until then, Happy 250th Independence Day. Have a great holiday weekend.