This episode of The New Abnormal podcast features Fredy Vargas Lama, PhD. He’s a renowned senior consultant and advisor in long-term strategy and foresight, focused on government transformation and foresight-informed policy design.

His career has taken him from economics and corporate risk into government, where he became Peru’s national director for foresight and long-term vision, before moving into academia, consultancy and international foresight networks.

A central theme that he covered in our conversation is the development of futures thinking in Latin America. Fredy argues that long-term planning was historically constrained by political perceptions. The greatest barriers today are institutional and cultural. Governments frequently lack structures encouraging officials to think beyond electoral terms; long-term initiatives are abandoned when administrations change, which makes sustained action particularly difficult.

Fredy also distinguishes anticipatory governance from conventional foresight. Rather than simply exploring possible futures, it links anticipation directly to decision-making, embeds future-oriented thinking continuously within institutions, and builds policymaking and public administration around a future-facing perspective. The objective is therefore institutional capability rather than simply better forecasting.

Our discussion also included the OECD and World Economic Forum, whose value Fredy sees in connecting int’l expertise, generating multidisciplinary perspectives and enabling those advising govts and major organisations to exchange ideas about emerging technological, geopolitical and societal change. He also highlights the need for a renewed social contract capable of supporting societies through profound change.

Philosophy has an important role here: he argues that futures thinking should reconnect with deeper questions about time, society and humanity rather than concentrating excessively on methods. Finally, our conversation concluded with a three-level challenge...

This episode of The New Abnormal podcast features Soha Rashed, founder of the Arab Futures Society and a research fellow at the Carboun Institute.

We spoke about the development of futures thinking across the Arab world and why the global foresight community needs to embrace a wider range of cultural perspectives.

Soha describes her journey into futures studies, from studying at the Turku School of Economics in Finland to working with UNDP's global horizon-scanning network. Meeting Arab futurists internationally led her to recognise that foresight activity across the region was far richer than she had initially assumed, but often fragmented and difficult to discover. This inspired the creation of the Arab Futures Society, which aims to connect practitioners, make Arabic futures literature and terminology more accessible, and build upon existing knowledge rather than repeatedly ‘starting from scratch’.

A central theme she described is the need to challenge the idea that futures thinking is principally a Western intellectual tradition. Soha discusses historical examples of long-term thinking within Islamic societies and makes an important distinction between Arab foresight and Islamic foresight. She is particularly interested in how Arab cultural perspectives, language, religion and concepts of time might influence distinctive ways of thinking about futures.

This feeds into a broader discussion about decolonising futures. For Soha, generating several scenarios through a single worldview does not fully deliver the plurality implied by ‘futures’. The discipline becomes richer when African, Arab, Latin American, Asian-Pacific and other perspectives contribute their own frameworks and assumptions…

This episode of The New Abnormal podcast features Clare Beaton-Wells, based in Melbourne, who is a Strategic Policy Advisor and Future Generations Fellowship Lead at Foundations for Tomorrow.

As a leader and specialist driving systems change, intergenerational collaboration, and policy innovation, she works across civil society, government & academia to drive impactful policy and projects that advance long-term thinking, sustainability and equity.

With deep experience across government relations, policy leadership & advocacy, and cross-sectoral partnerships, Clare brings a dynamic approach to addressing complex global challenges. An accomplished public speaker, Clare has shared insights on long-term governance, sustainable development and future generations policy at high-level events, including internationally at the UN Summit of the Future.

Clare is passionate about amplifying diverse voices, fostering intergenerational collaboration and driving long-term models of governance, and her work has been recognised with several awards.

So, we discuss all of the above and more, in a dynamic conversation which I hope you’ll enjoy!