In the world of foresight, we’re no strangers to complex challenges. But perhaps none feels as pervasive and daunting as the “Tragedy of the Commons.” This age-old narrative of scarcity and competition for limited resources shapes our decisions, our systems, and often, our very outlook on the future.

As activist and founder Adrianne Wright says, “the scarcity mindset is how we tell a fundamentally American tall tale about a nation built on notions of individualism; a male-dominated story filled with loners who suck it up and ride off into the sunset as others applaud our resilience. Shifting our stories from scarcity to abundance honors the fullness of our humanity.”

As foresight practitioners, we understand that the future is not a fixed destination, but a canvas for our collective imagination.

Join us for our next Wicked Opportunities Live! where futurists Frank Spencer and Yvette Montero Salvatico will guide us on a journey beyond scarcity, toward the liberating power of Imagination Literacy.

This livestream is an invitation to:

-Challenge the assumptions of scarcity that hold us back.
-Reimagine systems and structures through a lens of abundance and possibility.
-Connect with a community passionate about building a future where everyone thrives.

Welcome to 2025… it’s time for Wicked Opportunities® to take the stage!

As we begin our collective journey down the path of the new year, it’s imperative that we seek out new minds, new hearts, and new spirits – not only for ourselves, but for one another as well. However, this will mean that we will be defying gravity, soaring beyond the hold that a world in crisis has on our minds. With the collapse of one world at hand, we must embrace transformation of all that we know, and enter into alternative realities that change us all for the better.

Join Futurists Yvette Montero Salvatico and Frank Spencer as they introduce an exciting new initiative that will have us all flying high – Wicked Opportunities: Reimagining Systems for Transformational Realities. Over the span of 7 months, How to Thrive in Uncertain Times: 7 Lessons to Empower Hope will be presented as a once-a-month interactive livestream + an accompanying course that will dive deep into the research around our 7 Shifts in the Age of Opportunity, reframing one wicked problem each month as a Wicked Opportunity… and empowering you to do the same!

“The revolution will not be televised. The revolution will be live.” – Gil Scott-Heron

Real transformation doesn’t come from headlines or top-down decisions. It happens in the hearts, minds, and actions of people – of us.

Join Yvette Montero Salvatico and Frank W. Spencer IV for a dynamic Wicked Opportunities® Live! session as we explore:
🔹 How love, empathy, and activism fuel real change 
🔹 Why advocacy and empowerment are essential for the future 
🔹 The undeniable power of community to ignite societal transformation
 
✨ The future isn’t something we watch – it’s something we build together.

Sophie Strand – one of our favorite thinkers, writers, and “life-weavers” – shared in her article entitled “Myco Eco Mytho” that, “Stories don’t belong to human beings. But human beings belong to stories. Let’s enter back into the complex, tangled work of letting go of authorship and letting ourselves be told.” This call to rewild our role across time, space, and experience – past, present, and future – sets the stage for this captivating interview where Sophie covers ideas such as the importance of ecological storytelling (creating households over heroes); fantasy as much-needed “feral futures” over the “fake realism” and of our human-centric and diagnostic stories; the responsibility we have around “creative self-fulfillment when imaging possible futures; and engaging humanity as “lovers” rather than information gatherers.

Sophie Strand is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. But it would probably be more authentic to call her a troubadour animist with a propensity to spin yarns that inevitably turn into love stories. Give her a salamander and a stone and she’ll write you a love story. Sophie was raised by house cats, puff balls, possums, raccoons, and an opinionated, crippled goose. In every neighborhood she’s ever lived in she has been known as “the walker”. She believes strongly that all thinking happens interstitially – between beings, ideas, differences, mythical gradients. Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous projects and publications, including Spirituality & Health, Atmos, Braided Way, and Art PAPERS. She is the author of The Flowering Wand,The Madonna Secret, and the forthcoming memoir The Body Is a Doorway as well as the creator of the popular Substack “Make Me Good Soil.” You can follow her work on Instagram @cosmogyny.

In this episode of the Wicked Opportunities® Podcast, TFSX Principal Frank Spencer speaks with physician, aquanaut, dive medical technician, speaker, martial artist, skydiver, and VP of Immersive Medicine at Luxsonic Technologies, Dr. Shawna Pandya.

Dr. Shawna Pandya has a vision for shaping the future of medicine through transdisciplinary collaboration and innovation. 

Breaking free from conventional thinking, TFSX Principal Frank Spencer delves into futures through an "art-based" lens with ARTEFACTO Founders Andrea Busquets and Pablo Reyes Arellano. Explore their innovative approach, liberating us to envision new futures, "dream ourselves awake," and contribute to cultural evolution through civic participation. 

TFSX Co-Founder Frank Spencer discusses her new book, Combining, in-depth with Nora Bateson. Listen as Nora discusses poems, passages, and concepts from her book that reinforce our need to elevate our sacred connection to the cosmic whole to discover/engage with understand/undergo ancestral and generational transformation.

We know… it’s hard to be humble when you’re perfect in every way. (At least that’s what Mac Davis said back in 1980, and when was he ever wrong?). Nevertheless, we all need to realize that we hold only a small part of the larger human, planetary, and cosmic story, and such a realization will attune us to the deeper picture within various situations, as well as helping us to take our personal viewpoints, perspectives, and self-importance out of that picture. When this happens, we are better positioned to see what really desires to emerge for the betterment of the whole rather than designing a future that only serves the few. Or, as Spock so eloquently put it, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” We’re not suggesting that only a Vulcan can practice humility, but we do hope our podcast becomes galactically popular.

When you think about the future, does the idea of connection come to mind? It did for Kermit the Frog! (Well, at least in relation to rainbows, lovers, and dreamers). In reality, connection is a critical mindset when it comes to practicing rigorous foresight. Exploring alternative possibilities through the lens of ecosystems, interconnectedness, and the “larger whole” - past, present, and yet-to-come - is the only way to perceive the deeply emerging realities necessary for robust futures-readiness and futures-empowerment. Join connectors-extraordinaire Yvette Montero Salvatico and Frank Spencer as they dive into the IDG of Connectedness to surface pathways toward holistic well-being, global community, and positive outcomes. Or, as our favorite green muppet once said, “What’s so amazing that keeps us stargazing, and what do we think we might see?” I guess you’ll have to listen to find out. (Thanks Kermie!)

You are about to enter another dimension. A dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land of imagination. Next stop… the Relating dimension! (Thank you for letting us include a Twilight Zone reference - this is a foresight podcast, after all.) Our first stop in this new dimension within the Inner Development Goals: Appreciation, a skill, and trait that enables us to cultivate wonder, gratitude, and awe - important capabilities if we want to become deep imaginariums and generative wellsprings of alternative possibilities and transformational realities. Without the ability to appreciate the unfolding world around us and to recognize the joyous potentialities that reside in spaces that are yet to be, our futures thinking will fall prey to the systemic dominance of a seemingly inescapable “nowism” or a fatalistic vision of self-fulfilling apocalypticism. As the inspirationalist Wayne Dyer once said, “The Universe provides abundantly when you’re in a state of gratefulness.”