The Brooklyn Newsie of Zest Lite is a massive, environmentally stunning nation, remarkable for its national health service, irreverence towards religion, and suspicion of poets. The compassionate, hard-working, democratic population of 1.389 billion Zest Liteans enjoy a sensible mix of personal and economic freedoms, while the political process is open and the people's right to vote held sacrosanct.

The relatively small government juggles the competing demands of Healthcare, Education, and Industry. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Santa Fe. The average income tax rate is 15.4%, but much higher for the wealthy.

The very strong Zest Litean economy, worth 74.7 trillion Pens a year, is fairly diversified and led by the Tourism industry, with major contributions from Furniture Restoration, Cheese Exports, and Information Technology. State-owned companies are reasonably common. Average income is 53,758 Pens, and evenly distributed, with the richest citizens earning only 2.7 times as much as the poorest.

Blind students are at a disadvantage now that test papers printed in braille have been discontinued, teenagers are told they're not thinking about sex enough, fake designer clothes are shredded and burnt while many in the world don't have a shirt on their back, and the nation's prisons are touted as the best weight loss programs money can't buy. Crime is relatively low. Zest Lite's national animal is the Frog, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Zest Lite is ranked 148,270^th in the world and 14^th in Endless Highway for Most Scientifically Advanced, scoring 74.83 on the Kurzweil Singularity Index.