Randa Abdel-Fattah

Which he told me he wanted to avoid discussing.

He said he'd always been most interested in the engineering.

Patry Friedman continued full force with seasteading for a few more years after Wayne left.

The closest he got to building a seastead was Ephemeral Isle, also known as Burning Man on the Water.

It's billed as a floating celebration of community learning art and seasteading.

In 2011, Patry stepped down from the Seasteading Institute, as did Peter Thiel.

Since then, there have been attempts to build a seastead island.

One project involved an agreement with French Polynesia, but public concern over, quote, tech colonialism led the local government to cut ties with the institute.

These days, most projects are focused on building single-unit, self-sufficient, eco-friendly floating homes.

Seastead projects are underway worldwide, including in Panama, South Korea, and even right here in the U.S., in Florida and Mississippi.

I view large seasteading as a complete failure.

And it helped bring a fringe libertarian dream of exit more into the mainstream.

Coming up... You don't need to start a seastead.

You can have America.

Part 3.

The Cities of Tomorrow.

Local time is 10.43 p.m.

In June 2025, Dan Gurma, a producer on NPR's Embedded podcast, took a trip to the Honduran island of Roatan.

But Dan wasn't there for that.

He drove to the northern side of the hills, to a place isolated from the rest of the island, a place called Prospera.