A better future is already emerging. You’re just not hearing about it.

Since 2021, I’ve been making social media videos about economics, politics, and the ecological crisis. My goal was always to take complex ideas and translate them into something anyone could understand and resonate with – to help people understand the broken systems shaping their lives, and point them toward the alternative systems already being built.

5 years later, over half a million people are following along. Millions more are engaging with my videos each month. But to be honest, I feel like I’ve started to run up against the limit of what one person can do alone – and I’m tired of operating within a social media culture that encourages creators to make it all about “me, me, me.”

So today, I’m very excited to launch the next chapter: Welcome to Better Future Media.

Better Future Media is a new media brand built for the stories, ideas, and movements building the better world that comes next. Our goal is to push back against the mainstream narrative that extractive systems — like imperialism, patriarchy, and neoliberal capitalism — are the “only thing possible,” and to highlight the people, projects, and ideas that are building toward something better.

If you’ve followed my work for a while, the editorial mission will feel familiar. BFM will sit at the intersection of economic justice, political power, and planetary health. But the part we’ll be leaning into more deeply – the part that I think is deeply important, yet gets the least attention – is the alternatives already being built.

Worker-owned cooperatives. Post-growth cities. Ecological restoration projects. New political movements. These stories rarely surface in traditional media. The focus of Better Future Media is to find these stories and amplify them in formats that reach millions of people. That means highlighting concrete examples of what a better future looks like in practice, and inspiring more people to start building those new systems in their own communities.

This Substack publication will be the main hub for Better Future Media, and you can expect to see more content published here, starting now. We’ve found so many stories to cover – which means you can expect more consistent and frequent pieces by me, along with more stories from guest writers and contributors.

On the Better Future Podcast I will continue to host long-form conversations with academics, organizers, politicians, and practitioners contributing to this work. We are starting to ramp up production there as well, and will reach a frequency of 2 episodes per month very soon.

We’ve also just launched Better Future Media on Instagram, where we’ll be sharing bite-sized, shareable versions of the in-depth stories we publish here on Substack.

And we’ve just set up “v1” of our digital home at our website, where we have a clearly articulated mission and vision; moving forward, we’ll be building out this site as a resource hub that highlights all our work:

Why now – and how can you help?

The world feels more precarious by the day – politically, economically, socially, environmentally. From more imperial wars to accelerating climate change to rising inequality, cascading injustices continue to unfold – and the systems driving them can sometimes feel impossible to change.

But the response to a moment like this isn’t just to document the damage; it’s to surface the counter-narratives and real-world alternatives that make a different future feel possible. Communities around the world are building these alternatives now, serving as living proof that the status quo is nothing more than a collection of ideas and stories that can be replaced with better ones.

That’s why now feels like the perfect time for this project.

If you want to support this work, please take a moment to consider a paid subscription. Your support will be essential in getting this new media project off the ground, and you can rest assured that your contribution will go directly toward making more articles, videos, and podcast conversations that challenge dominant narratives and shift culture toward the better future we know is possible. We’ll be rolling out paid subscriber-only content in the coming months, which means you’ll be on the ground-floor of helping us decide what that will be, and what stories to prioritize. And of course, we’ll do our best to make as much of our content free as we can.

In lieu of a paid subscription, we’d also be very grateful if you share this announcement with someone you think might resonate with Better Future Media and our mission – even a like or “re-stack” goes a long way!

Here’s to the better future ahead,

Michael