The Elysian is a writer’s collective imagining a better future

We create media projects imagining a better future

Through solutions-oriented and speculative journalism we are thinking through the most important ideas of our time. Here are some of our upcoming projects:

• WE SHOULD OWN THE ECONOMY // A multi-year project studying capital and how we can create more owners of it.

• CITY STATE // An online series and print pamphlet about autonomous government

• TERRAFORM // An online series and print pamphlet about terraforming our environment

• THE NEW REPUBLIC // Modern thinkers recreate Plato’s republic, imagining the ideal city-state for a podcast and print book

• THE DAILY HUMANIST // A one-year newsletter & philosophy book prompting modern readers to make the world a better place through human effort

We’re read by some of the world’s most influential builders

• 150,000+ monthly views // 20,000+ subscribers including:

  • Employees at OpenAI, Stripe, Y Combinator, Disney, Substack, Spotify, Audible, Wattpad

  • VC investors at Album VC, Kickstart Fund, Urbanist VC

  • Progress thinkers at Schmidt Futures, Progress Institute, Roots of Progress, Abundance Institute, Progress Ireland

  • Professors and students at Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, NYU

  • Editors at The Information, The New Atlantis, Every, Penguin Random House, Harper Collins, Hearst

We’re building a cooperative media ecosystem

Every project we publish is owned by the writers, podcasters, and filmmakers who write, podcast, and film them.

• Two writers could host a six-part techno-futurism podcast together and share the earnings

• Three filmmakers could launch an animated solarpunk film series and split the profits

• Five writers could collaborate on a magazine or book about Cooperatism, Terraforming, or City States and share the earnings

• 20 writers could host an annual worldbuilding event and split the earnings

Most projects have a creative director or team who earns the bulk of profits, but they could also have any number of collaborators and be organized according to any financial split.

We want to fund projects that better the future

Eventually, we hope to fund even larger projects up front—like protopian video games, sci-fi films, and architectural projects. If we sell hundreds of magazines, books, podcasts, videos, conferences, and events over the next 10 years, we could cumulatively sell hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in media projects. If the Collective earns a share of every sale, it could create a fund that invests in longer-term projects with the expectation that the Collective would earn a percent of the earnings when it’s done and continue to invest in other projects from there.

For more on this idea, read my essays: What if we fund artists the way we fund startups? or I’d rather have an investor than a publishing contract.

Join our community of pro-social thinkers

Free subscribers can access all of our cooperative media projects, but paid supporters join the Elysian League—an inner circle of pro-social builders and thinkers. As a paid supporter of The Elysian, you’ll access:

• 📚 Guest lectures, deep dives, notes from my research

• 🏛️ My behind-the-scenes research into building a media cooperative

• 💭 Comment on posts & participate in the discourse

You can also support our work as a Founding Member to receive my monthly investor newsletter with feedback and voting rights in my projects as well as my annual collector’s edition print volume.

About Elle Griffin

I am the founder and editor for The Elysian. In 2023, I was named a Roots of Progress fellow and in 2022, I was awarded one of 10 places in Substack’s coveted fellowship program. After I serialized my first novel in my newsletter, I gave a TEDx talk about my experience and the return of serial publishing.

My newsletter has been featured by The New York Times, BBC, Business Insider, Fast Company, The Information, Publisher’s Weekly, Means of Creation, and Morning Brew. I am also a freelance journalist with bylines at Esquire, Forbes, Every, and The Muse—a portfolio of my work can be found here.

I want to see our media ecosystem transformed from doomer sensationalism, partisan journalism, and dystopian thought, to solutions-oriented journalism, speculative brainstorming, and generative thought about how we can create something better. I’d love to see that media ecosystem owned and operated by independent writers and podcasters and filmmakers rather than media moguls with an agenda, an algorithm, and an ad-captured sensationalist bent.

I’m even optimistic enough to believe that by changing our media ecosystem, we could change our outlook on the world. And be inspired to create a better one.

I hope you’ll join us.