Jul 19, 2026 · 1 hr 1 min · 11 segments
**Welcome to episode #1045 of Thinking With Mitch Joel (formerly Six Pixels of Separation).** Chris Bradley has spent more than twenty-five years…
Mitch JoelHost
[upbeat music] What if the story we've been telling ourselves about the future is just simply too small? Spend enough time reading the headlines, this is me, and it's easy to believe we're running out of basically everything from energy and resources to opportunity, and even sadly enough, optimism.

But what if the opposite is actually true? What if the biggest risk isn't that we've reached the limits of growth, it's that we've actually stopped believing growth is possible? So that's the question at the heart of my conversation with Chris Bradley.

Chris is a senior strategist at McKinsey, a director of the McKinsey Global Institute, and co-author of a new book called A Century of Plenty.

It's drawing on decades of global research, and he makes a very provocative argument.

Another century of extraordinary human progress isn't only possible, it's achievable, but we have to be willing to build it.

So in this conversation, we move far beyond economics, and yes, we will explore AI, not as a technology story, but as a productivity story, and why the organizations that thrive won't simply adopt AI.

More than anything, this is a conversation about possibility because progress has never been inevitable.

It's always been a choice made by people willing to imagine a better future and then build it together.
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