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.

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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)

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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/

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Where to find Keller:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellerrc/

• Twitter/X: https://x.com/Keller

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Where to find Scott:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dscottphoenix/

• Twitter/X: https://x.com/fuelfive

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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

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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

Episode ID: 1000755776550

GUID: substack:post:191207589

Release Date: 17/03/2026, 13:34:04