Listen to the Episodes

Season One

Trailer

The Light Ahead is a podcast that uses speculative fiction to explore the question, “What would 2030 look like if the USA had an economy that truly worked and cared for everyone?” Through eight stories, co-created by next-economy leaders and Hollywood screenwriters, listeners are invited to expand their economic imaginations by dreaming into a tantalizing array of possible, more beloved, futures.

  • Makia (00:04):

    Welcome to The Light Ahead, a fiction podcast that investigates the question: what would 2030 look like if the US had an economy that truly worked and cared for everyone?

    Speaker 2 (00:19):

    (singing)

    Makia (00:22):

    The US has an imagination gap when it comes to the economy. We generally think that we have to choose one ism or another, like capitalism or socialism, but the reality is our options are as diverse as those who can dream them because we continually create the economy every single day with our actions and choices. The Light Ahead is designed to help us all practice expanding our economic imaginations, to take us out of the what is and help us dream what could be. A production of Avalon Story and Beloved Economies, each episode was co-created by a Hollywood screenwriter and a change maker at the cutting edge of transforming our economy.

    Makia (01:07):

    I'm Makia and I'll be your guide as we venture into the future timelines filled with possibility. During each episode, I invite you to dream with me, to dream about ultimate realities in the not too distant future where transformative ways of working and living become real. In each episode, you'll hear fantastical, imagined stories, including a future New Year's Eve party right on the cusp on new legislation.

    Speaker 3 (01:40):

    Good evening New York. It's an exciting New Year's Eve and of course our stop story going into 2030 is the Phoenix Act. What started as a movement among the America's wealthy to heal our country quickly gained nationwide support resulting in a billionaire tax that goes into effect at midnight.

    Makia (02:00):

    You'll experience the story of a woman with amnesia who wakes up and finds herself in a very different world than the one she last remembers.

    Speaker 4 (02:11):

    I'm joking darling (laughs), I don't take a tip. It's not 1990, we're standard employee owned like pretty much everything around here.

    Speaker 5 (02:20):

    Oh, I'm sorry, but you done lost me there.

    Speaker 4 (02:22):

    Wow, you (laughs) really never done barter business.

    Makia (02:27):

    And we'll listen in on a press conference about the opening of a Lakota school that is making national news, built at the foot of a sacred mountain once refereed to by some as Mount Rushmore, but now returned to the Lakota people.

    Speaker 6 (02:43):

    Those hills were sacred to our people a long time before somebody carved faces into them. There's images of Mount Rushmore before it was carved and our people called it The Grandfathers. The actual rocks themselves already symbolize that to our people.

    Makia (02:58):

    In every episode, we'll also travel behind the scenes to better understand the concepts in each story and the changes that are happening today to turn these alternative futures into a reality. So join me as we venture forward into The Light Ahead. Launching this fall everywhere you listen to podcasts because the only way into different futures is to begin to imagine them.

    Speaker 2 (03:27):

    (singing)

    Makia (03:31):

    The Light Ahead is a production of Beloved Economies and Avalon Story in partnership with Frequency Media.