Author: The Progress Network with Zachary Karabell and Emma Varvaloucas

We recently attended Web Summit, a conference that brought together more than 30,000 people and over a thousand startups of all sizes. While we were there, we sat down to talk with a few people whose companies aim to make the future brighter.

Our first conversation is with Donnel Baird, the founder of BlocPower, an NYC-based company that "turns buildings into Teslas." BlockPower retrofits residential buildings to wean them off dirty energy and make them green. The second is with Bobby Healy, the founder of Manna, a drone delivery company in Ireland that is replacing gas-guzzling delivery trucks, boosting local business, and making lives much more convenient.

What Could Go Right? is produced by The Progress Network and The Podglomerate.

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We all want a more generous world, but how do we design the future we want? In our Season 1 finale, Yancey Strickler, co-founder of Kickstarter and founder of The Bento Society, talks with us about rethinking our self-interests and imagining and creating a better tomorrow.

What Could Go Right? is produced by The Progress Network and The Podglomerate.

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Does it feel impossible trying to maneuver through the minefield of free speech, inclusivity, and "wokeness"? Or are we experiencing a much-needed disruption to the status quo? Today we're joined by Suzanne Nossel, Chief Executive Officer of PEN America, the leading human rights and free expression organization, to talk about navigating and defending free speech and free expression while also cultivating a more inclusive public culture.

What Could Go Right? is produced by The Progress Network and The Podglomerate.

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How do global changes affect us on the local level, and vice versa? Today, writer and journalist James Fallows, and the founder of FutureMap, Parag Khanna, join us to discuss the interplay between the tectonic forces of geopolitics and the specific currents of the everyday. They contrast the narratives that are animating different regions of the world—especially in the United States and Asia around inequality, optimism, and defeatism—and forecast a future of migration and climate change adaptation.

What Could Go Right? is produced by The Progress Network and The Podglomerate.

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The list of urgent things to fix — climate change, inequality, poverty — is long. In a world where every problem seems top-priority, what does it actually look like when we get together to solve complex, thorny issues? Today, we're talking with John McArthur, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at the Brookings Institution, about how nations and governments push forward on "all the big stuff." He reminds us that we have made surprising progress on some things on the list, and that on others, the story is still being written.

What Could Go Right? is produced by The Progress Network and The Podglomerate.

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Life has gotten a lot better for a lot of people. But the story of upward movement, while true overall, is not felt equally across society. We see the consequences of that playing out in the United States, where tension over our immediate failures, not celebration over our big-picture successes, carries the day. In this episode, we speak with public intellectual John Wood Jr, a national leader at Braver Angels, an organization dedicated to depolarizing politics, about the power of inner transformation to fuel societal change and how a multiplicity of American identities and stories can be unproblematic if we develop a new national sensibility of goodwill.

What Could Go Right? is produced by The Progress Network and The Podglomerate.

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When you hear the word "economics," do you hit the snooze button? Yet, how we structure our economies, whom they serve, and even what we decide to measure has an enormous impact. A few changes could mean the difference between a world we've sucked dry and one where we all flourish. We talk through the unknown outcomes of a post-COVID economy and why we need to move beyond GDP with Diane Coyle, co-director of the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge, who conducts interdisciplinary research on key policy challenges of our times.

What Could Go Right? is produced by The Progress Network and The Podglomerate.

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If politics is the new religion, we're in desperate need of reform. Alison Goldsworthy, CEO of The Depolarization Project, and Jonathan Haidt, Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University Stern School, examine how we've landed in the middle of a polarization hurricane and how we can get out if it. In the long run, they tell us, things are likely to settle. But short-term, Gen Z in particular might be in for a rocky ride.

What Could Go Right? is produced by The Progress Network and The Podglomerate.

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Not too long ago, the Internet was seen as humanity's great hope. Today it feels more like our undoing. We see social media amplifying negative voices and harassment and producing political partisanship and interpersonal dysfunction, and it seems like no one knows to fix it—except maybe these two. Today we're joined by Danielle Keats Citron, a leading expert on information privacy, free speech, and civil rights, and Eli Pariser, co-founder of Upworthy and the author of "The Filter Bubble," who now leads the New_ Public project. Together they share their views on the Internet's current trajectory and how we might course correct.

What Could Go Right? is produced by The Progress Network and The Podglomerate.

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The way we work is in constant evolution. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, do we have a chance to redesign the workplace and workforce for the better? Or will we go back to the way things were before the world locked down? Zeynep Ton, president of the nonprofit Good Jobs Institute, and Joan C. Williams, director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law, join us to examine how we might improve the future of work.

What Could Go Right? is produced by The Progress Network and The Podglomerate.

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