To predict our future, we must look to the extremes, argues Richard Davies, who follows Punjabi migrants through the Panamanian jungle and visits a daycare center for the elderly modeled after a casino. Bringing a storyteller's eye to places where the economy has been destroyed, distorted, and even turbocharged, Davies looks in on the world's first digital state, a Japanese prefecture with the longest life expectancy in the nation, a prison in rural Louisiana where inmates purchase drugs with prepaid cash cards; and the poorest major city on earth, where residents buy clean water in plastic bags.