2026 will be an awesome year, and not just because it’s America’s 250th birthday. Innovators will wake up every morning and make it awesome.

It’s the holidays, and you’re likely reading this on your phone between family gatherings, with a plate of leftovers nearby. So it’s time to have some fun!

From the original Rational Optimist

Time to break the rules

The Wright brothers first sputtered into the air in 1903.

For reasons lost to the cosmos, over my career I have become acquainted with a cadre of individuals who have made their lives’ work the quest for something that rhymes with immortality.

Imagine dropping a pea-sized capsule through a spherical chamber and hitting it with a colossal bolt of laser energy as it falls.

Today we’re sharing a piece from the original Rational Optimist himself, Matt Ridley.

Imagine a cube 14 inches on each side, about the size of a microwave. At 2,200 pounds, no man can lift it. And it’s worth $65 million.

In most modern cities, steel cranes rise above the skyline. Back home in Abu Dhabi, crews break ground on a new project every month. But in California, the home of Silicon Valley and America’s supposed bastion of innovation? Nothing.

I’m on the road with Matt Ridley and ROS co-founder Dan Steinhart, visiting six cities and meeting 30 world-class innovators in two weeks.

A handful of $500 drones recently caused $5 billion in damage to a fleet of Russian strategic bombers. This is the new reality of warfare, and America is not ready.

I’m on my way to LA kicking off a two-week sprint across America with my ROS co-founders Matt Ridley and Dan Steinhart.

China's DJI owns 90% of the US commercial drone market. A nationwide ban is about to make them illegal, threatening to collapse the industry overnight. Thoron founder Thayne Kollmorgen says: good.

One of the coolest things about living in Abu Dhabi is how fast everything arrives.

A new generation of founders is winning the new space race, and they're doing it by breaking one simple rule.

There’s a new world’s fastest car. It’s not a Ferrari, Lamborghini or Bugatti. It’s Chinese brand BYD.

America is facing a housing crisis driven by two core problems: a massive skilled labor shortage and 50 years of zero productivity growth in construction.

If friendly aliens landed on Earth in 2025, they’d be baffled.

America doesn't have a nuclear waste problem; it has a financial one. In this episode, Exodys Energy founder Carl Perez reveals why the 50-year-old fear of spent fuel is based on a lie, and why solving it will unleash the nuclear renaissance.