Think Forward: Conversations with Futurists, Innovators and Big Thinkers

Paul Baier has spent the last few years in the rooms where large companies decide what to actually do about AI, and he has trained something like 15,000 people within those organizations. So when he says the technology is almost never the bottleneck, it lands differently than it would from someone selling a platform. He grew up in Ohio watching the Midwest get hollowed out by forces everyone could see coming, and nobody managed to ...

One hundred and fifty episodes in, this is the conversation Think Forward was built for. Radha Mistry leads foresight at Arup, and before that she built a corporate foresight practice from a standing start inside a global design software company that did not know it wanted one. It began with an audit she invented on the spot: a hundred interviews that revealed people all over the organization already sensing the future, separately,...

A lot of strategy collapses the moment a "guarantee" fails, and the easiest way to find those guarantees is to notice what you never question. We start with something as small as flipping a light switch, then zoom out with futurist Gabe Cervantes, Director of Scalable Foresight at the Institute for the Future, to ask what leaders should do when the assumptions behind business, society, and daily life stop holding up. The goal isn't...

The future does not fail because we lack ideas. It fails because we cannot commit to turning insight into action. We sit down with a Mathias, a futures practitioner who grew up on a small Danish island, found his way into the Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies, and later built Anticipate Futures to make strategic foresight more usable, more teachable, and more accessible to people who are trying to drive real change inside org...

Trends aren’t just a fashion problem. They’re a system for manufacturing novelty, and right now that system is running at TikTok speed. I sit down with Clarice Garcia, a futurist and designer who moved from architecture in Brazil to studying fashion in Milan, only to realize the real story isn’t clothing at all. The story is the logic behind “new,” and what that logic does to sustainability, culture, a...

Many of us are navigating a world defined by relentless change—and AI is transforming every part of it faster than we can keep up. But what if the key isn’t resisting these shifts, but mastering how to flow with them? 

Geoff (a storytelling tech veteran and AI integrator) reveals how to turn the chaos into opportunity by cultivating a mindset of fluidity and continual reinvention.

In this candid conve...

You can feel the ground shifting under AI right now, but the hardest question isn’t “When do we get AGI?” It’s this: if we can’t prove whether something is conscious, how would we ever know when a machine deserves rights and protection? That single uncertainty turns today’s AI excitement into a genuine ethical dilemma with real stakes for business, policy, and daily life.

We follow futuris...

We explore how an evolutionary mismatch between ancient biology and modern culture keeps our stress response switched on and quietly shapes health, behavior, and society. Tom shares how future thinking helped him rebuild his own life and why “eustasis” is a practical north star for resilience and meaning in a fast-changing world. 
• Tom’s journey from hospitality work to futurist thinking through a persona...

We explore why fear-based futures work narrows imagination and how an indigenous lens replaces control with respect for the unknown. Sherman shares how futures literacy, decolonizing foresight, and relationship-centered thinking change the way leaders prepare for crisis, technology, and the long term.

• Sherman’s journey from governance and risk work to full-time futures studies and strategic foresight 
• How F...

Welcome to this special crossover episode from our other show, Going Off World.

In this episode, the hunt for alien life isn’t a sci-fi dream. It’s a patient, high-stakes investigation unfolding across labs, observatories, and space missions—and Sarah Seager is charting the course. We sit down with the MIT exoplanet pioneer to unpack how a field once defined by four puzzling worlds grew into a catalog of thousands,...

Emmanuel Daniel unpacks how digital finance prioritized monetization over true inclusion, then traces a larger shift from markets to networks where information compounds value. We test CBDCs, stablecoins, tokenized deposits, and ask whether debt has become the economy shaping tech, geopolitics, and personal wealth.

• VC‑driven digital finance and unmet inclusion claims
• Personalization versus centralization in money and ...

What if the people best equipped to shape tomorrow aren’t engineers first—but emotional athletes? Our guest, Ahmed Best—actor, educator, Afrofuturist, and the pioneering performer behind Jar Jar Binks—shows how art can lead technology, not chase it. From South Bronx summers where hip‑hop was born to conversations with George Lucas at Lucasfilm, Ahmed traces a life lived at the edge of invention and explains ...

We talk with Peter von Stackelberg about humility in consulting, why timeframes matter, and how narrative foresight turns data into action. We trace his path from journalism to futures, explore exploratory forecasts, and unpack story worlds, transmedia, and cycles.

• building trust through listening and humility
• why clear timeframes beat vague “someday” futures
• exploratory forecasts with indicators and ...

Peter Hayward shares his journey from a problem-solving tax professional to becoming one of the most influential futures educators, training hundreds of futurists and co-creating the renowned FuturePod podcast series.

• Finding foresight in mid-career after experiencing existential questioning about purpose
• Joining Richard Slaughter's first Master of Foresight class before eventually succeeding him
• Understanding fo...

What if the key to understanding tomorrow lies not in boardroom predictions but in the rhythms of a DJ's turntable? Derek Woodgate, with his 30+ years as an experimental futurist, takes us on a fascinating journey through his unique approach to futures thinking that blends underground arts with rigorous analysis.

Derek reveals how his background in music management (working with bands like Swans and Sonic Youth) and his imme...

Welcome to this episode of Think Forward! In this episode, we sit down with Cécile Cremer, founder of Wandering the Future, joins us to challenge conventional wisdom about how we prepare for tomorrow's challenges. With refreshing candor, she explains why she's moving away from traditional trend reports toward a more collaborative approach to future-building. "I truly believe that the future should be co-created with people from all...

What happens when you hold an artifact from a future that doesn't exist yet? A newspaper headline from 2045, a product manual for technology not yet invented, or a social media post from an entirely different world? These aren't just creative exercises—they're powerful tools for making abstract futures tangible.

Julian Bleecker, one of the pioneering architects of design fiction, takes us on a fascinating journey throu...

The key to organizational survival lies in embedding foresight deeply into company DNA, creating structures that detect change, understand implications, and adapt accordingly before crises emerge. Futurist Steve Fisher shares practical frameworks for developing this capability, regardless of team size or organizational readiness.

• Four organizational models for implementing foresight: Lone Wolf, Dynamic Duo, Special Forces ...

Nicholas Badminton brings a refreshingly grounded yet visionary perspective to futures work, sharing his journey from growing up around a slaughterhouse to delivering over 450 keynotes worldwide as a renowned futurist. His approach focuses on breaking dominant narratives, finding overlooked implications, and helping organizations build futures fluency through practical, integrated methods that drive meaningful transformation.