In the futuristic sequence of the 1989 movie Back to the Future Part II, there’s a massive neon billboard that flashes this piece of breaking news: CUBS WIN WORLD SERIES!  Marty and Doc had traveled to 2015, and this result was seemingly as far-fetched as hover boards, self-tying laces, and flying cars.  The lame contraptions on wheels that were popular about a year ago notwithstanding, none of these technologies has yet made it to market.  But the seemingly unthinkable has in fact happened: the Cubs have won the World Series.

In spirit of all things highly improbable (but not unbelievable—a word sports announcers routinely misuse), I offer you 5 predictions, both serious and light-hearted, that now seem less preposterous by virtue of the Cubs’ win.  Congrats Cubs fans, the successful conclusion of your seemingly futile grail quest has opened up a whole new realm of possibilities.

  1. We will colonize Mars in my lifetime

Were I to live to 100 (which itself seems improbable given my penchant for motorcycles and sojourns in failed states), I could hope to see the year 2075.  Elon Musk’s Space X is already working on the spaceship in question and other companies and governments are sure to get in the race.  We may not have a fully self-sustaining colony in my lifetime, as that will take a bit longer to develop and establish.  But who’s to say we won’t have our first stakes in the ground doling out 40 acres and a mechanical mule to those intrepid souls willing to make the voyage?

A single-planet species, like ours, faces innumerable dangers of extinction from natural disasters (asteroids, meteor showers) and manmade disasters (nuclear war, environmental destruction through climate change); a multi-planetary species is much more evolutionarily viable.  Neil deGrasse Tyson is constantly echoing this refrain, and, being a rather smart dude, I tend to side with him.  This is the way we’re going because we have to if we want to survive as a species.  And humans have proved throughout the years that we will let nothing get in the way of our survival (much to the consternation of the animal and vegetable life on our planet).  I expect inter-planetary travel and colonization to be no different.

  1. Michael J. Fox, Zach Braff, and Ted Mosby (I mean Josh Radnor) will team up to create the greatest sitcom ever

The respective stars of my three all-time favorite shows will collaborate to make the cheesiest, daydreamiest, painfully self-awarest sitcom known to man.  Michael J. Fox, having been cured of Parkinson’s (because we do that in 10 years), is the patriarch of the clan with his two middle-aged sons, Zach Braff and Ted Mosby.  Zach is a doctor who runs his own hospital, having supplanted his former mentor, and provides hijinks alongside health tips (with frequent cameos from former Scrubs stars).  Ted runs his own architecture firm and hires the surviving casts of Good Times and What’s Happening to staff it.  Zach and Ted are married to Natalie Portman and Rachel Bilson respectively.  Just because.

This show airs new episodes every Thursday at 9PM (as all great shows do) on a free streaming service, since cable TV has ceased to become a viable model and collapsed, and re-runs are available on demand on your tablet, iPhone, or Google optical insert.

  1. Inter-continental travel will take minutes, not days

We continue to have a revolution in information, technology, and medicine.  Why not transport?  Many believe that it will be through a tube type of technology.  Engineers are already working on high-speed trains that travel through tubes that could go from LA to San Francisco in 30 minutes: it’s called the Hyperloop.  Elon Musk claims that we might eventually be able to travel from NY to LA in 45 minutes.  Or from LA to Beijing in two hours.  From The Jetsons to your nearby tube station, it might be improbable, but imagine the leap we’ve made in intercontinental travel over the last 50 years.  And technology is often not linear in its progress.

These advances would revolutionize commuting and travel opportunities and make life abroad seem a lot less distant than it once was.  The long-distance relationship would be a thing of the past.  Guess we can’t say we were in different area codes anymore.

  1. The United States will win the 2026 World Cup

You heard me, I said it.  Soccer will supplant football as one of the two most popular sports in America after parents ban their kids from playing pigskin and revenues plummet following a continuous stream of conclusive concussion studies.  With this uptick in participation, soccer will take many of the athletes that once went to football and even some that went to basketball.  Imagine a starting XI that featured Julio Jones at forward, Antonio Brown and Russell Westbrook in midfield, Lebron James at center back, and Kevin Durant in goal.  It could happen.

Add in the fact that we will likely be the hosts for this event and you have the beginnings of a Cinderella story.  We will have jettisoned Jurgen Klinsmann long ago, with our vast pool of emerging talent attracting a top-name coach. Christian Pulisic will be in his prime at 27, flanked by any number of other budding superstars.  The Men in Blazers sarcastically predicted that the red, white, and blue would win the World Cup in Rio, but it could happen in the Rose Bowl in 2026.  Place your futures bet on it now (and who’s to say that I don’t have Biff’s Sports Almanac in my back pocket).

  1. The United States will have a black president followed by a female president

Thankfully, we may have to wait less than a week for this one to come true.  Should disaster be averted, we are mere days away from electing our first female president.  Directly on the heels of having elected a black president.  In the original Back to the Future, Marty tells Goldie Wilson that he’s going to be mayor, which is preposterous to the white owner of the diner in 1955.  But if you had told me in 1985, when the movie came out, that we would have both a black and a woman president in the next 20 years, I would have said you were nuts.

We’ve come a long way baby.  We’ve also got a long way to go.  But the social progress that has been made in just two decades that have allowed for a black and (fingers crossed) woman president, openly gay marriages, and transgender toleration, among others, is nothing short of remarkable.

Here’s hoping we stay on the path of progress and are able to look back in another 20 years and marvel at how far we’ve come.  Great Scott!  It just might work.