The Elysian is a collective media ecosystem 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:

• CITY STATE // A print magazine about autonomous government

  • Featuring Tomas Pueyo, Étienne Fortier-Dubois, Elle Griffin

• TERRAFORM // A print magazine about terraforming the earth

  • Featuring Tomas Pueyo, Étienne Fortier-Dubois, Elle Griffin

• FUTURE CAPITALISM // A print book detailing innovative business structures

  • Featuring Google, Mondragon, Unimed, Haier, and Starbucks

• THE NEW REPUBLIC // 10 modern thinkers recreate Plato’s republic, imagining the ideal city-state for a podcast, vinyl album, and print book

  • Featuring Parag Khanna, Jason Crawford, Rutger Bregman

• THE DAILY HUMANIST // A 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:

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

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

  • VC investors Album VC, Kickstart Fund, Urbanist VC

  • Intellectuals like Matthew Yglesias, Judd Legum, Brad DeLong, Bill Bishop, Michael Moore

  • 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.

Imagine an animation team decides to create a five-part solarpunk short film collection and sell it for $50, but they don’t have a large marketing reach with only 5,000 newsletter subscribers between them. As 5% to 10% of an email audience generally converts to paying customers, they might expect 250 to 500 sales and earn $12,500 to $25,000 through their efforts alone. But if they collaborate with, say 50 other writers/podcasters/video producers in their niche who have a combined reach of 50,000, they could boost the project to another 2,500 to 5,000 sales, earning the project an additional $125,000 to $250,000.

Now imagine the creative team also needs funding to make these films a reality. They might bring in another partner who contributes $100,000 in startup capital in exchange for their name in the credits, the ability to host and introduce the film at the film premiere, and 15% of the profits. The creative team could decide upfront to keep 50% of the profits for themselves (split between creators), give 25% to investors, and the other 25% to promoters. If the project earns $250,000, the creative team would earn $125,000 instead of the $25,000 they would have earned alone, with the other $125,000 split between contributors.

We aim 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 builders

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

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

• 📚 Guest lectures and interviews on building pro-social organizations

• 💭 Our private Slack channel for pro-social builders

You can also support our work at the Collector tier which funds editorial, graphic design, and printing costs. As a thank you for your support, you’ll receive the 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.