Back to the F**kture

In the latest episode of Back to the F**kture!, Merlin Hanbury-Tenison – Cornish conservationist, army veteran and founder of The Thousand Year Trust, Britain’s rainforest charity – shares his journey from a blast in Helmand to recovery in a Cornish rainforest, and reveals the need for a deeper, more symbiotic relationship with nature.

In the latest episode of Back to the F**kture!, Leila Fataar, founder of Platform13 and author of Culture-Led Brands , explores how culture-led branding – rooted in real people and real contexts, not marketing gimmicks – can help brands remain relevant in uncertain times.

In the latest episode of Back to the F**kture!, Dr Knatokie Ford explores how Augmented Futures – a fusion of science, storytelling and futurism – can empower under-represented teens to shape their own success. In this conversation, we delve into our shared experience of imposter syndrome, the case for adding the A of ‘arts’ into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths), the year 2034 and th...

In the latest episode of Back to the F**kture! Jacynth Bassett, founder and CEO of global consultancy, community and campaign Ageism Is Never In Style, joins The Future Laboratory co-founder Martin Raymond to discuss reframing the anti-ageism narrative.

We’ve covered a lot about green cities and the rise of blue zone city districts on LS:N Global, but what if we have been too simplistic, judgemental and morally narrow in our approach and understanding that green is good and the concrete grey of the city is inevitably bad for our physical, spiritual and moral wellbeing? Professor Des Fitzgerald reminds me in our latest Back to the F**kture podcast...

In our latest Back to the F**kture podcast, Dr Susanne Etti talks carbon labelling and more collaborative and constructive ways to tackle the climate crisis through her role and work with sustainable travel group, Intrepid.   Dr Susanne Etti and I hit it off straight away. For one, she lives in Melbourne – my favourite maritime city and skinny white provider, no challengers – and for two, she pull...

According to the World Health Organization, good health isn’t ‘merely the absence of disease’, but ‘complete physical, mental and social wellbeing’. Dr Tasha Golden, my latest guest on Back to the F**kture, concurs. But – given the fact that she is a poet, songwriter, performer and storyteller, as well as a public health scientist – she takes this definition a step further.  For her, aiming for ‘c...

In our latest Back to the F**kture podcast, Beyond Luxury author and innovator Carlota Rodben discusses the future of luxury and emotion with The Future Laboratory’s co-founder, Martin Raymond.  There are two great quotes at the beginning of Carlota Robden’s latest book, 'Beyond Luxury: The Promise of Emotion', which very much sum up luxury’s future, ‘what got us here, won’t get us there,’ and Gab...

Successful leaders are empathetic ones, according to author, leadership coach and strategic thinker Mimi Nicklin. They are also great perspective takers who understand the context of our decisions, as well as the moods and emotions that motivate us to make them.  If that sounds simple – it isn’t. In fact, as Nicklin identifies in her book, Softening the Edge, while CEOs think everything about the...

As private membership clubs try to regain their privacy and mojo, on this week’s Back to the F**kture podcast The Future Laboratory’s co-founder Martin Raymond talks with hospitality entrepreneur Peter Cole about how they could go about doing it – and at scale. The problem with most private members’ clubs is that they’ve become too public. While luxury itself has returned to being gated, exclusive...

Life is f**ked – then you make it happen. And this epithet seems to embody the life of Australian author, broadcaster and entrepreneur, Sarah Wilson. Not that her life has been fu**ed –if anything, the opposite is very much the case - but that her journey through it is a constant reminder to us all that when the chips are down the only person who can save the game is you . With, of course, a littl...

It’s November 2019, and an associate of Scott Perugini Kelly suggests that he adds a World Health Organization pandemic preparedness paper to a brief he’s currently readying for the head of the department. But Kelly isn’t at all convinced, as he tells me on the latest Back to the Fu**ture podcast with Sally Washington. At the time, he muses, the subject seemed too fantastical, too far removed from...

  Design and experience strategy isn’t a top-down process for the privileged few, but a collaborative engagement along a narrative arc of surprise and transformation that changes audience and designer alike, according to The Experience Book authors Adam Scott and Dave Waddell, interviewed by The Future Laboratory’s co-founder Martin Raymond. The age of experience, as we learn in the latest LS:N Gl...

Reluctant futurists is the collective descriptor used by Henry Coutinho-Mason and Rohit Bhargava to describe their current career trajectory. Their preferred term is near futurists since their work is invariably about a quest to catalogue and understand the implications of the biggest innovations on our lives today and over the coming years.  The Future Laboratory’s co-founder and LS:N Global’s ed...

How can we use the power of everyday awe to prime innovation or create heightened levels of wellbeing? In his latest Back to The F**kture podcast episode with professor Dacher Keltner, The Future Laboratory’s co-founder, Martin Raymond, finds out.  They discuss what produces awe and the subjective qualities of it, from a leaf falling from a tree and children laughing in duets, to light shining in...

In the latest episode of the Back to the F**kture podcast, The Future Laboratory’s co-founder Martin Raymond chats with Rhona Ezuma, entrepreneurial founder of THIIIRD magazine, a multi-faceted platform that champions next-generation creatives from people of colour and Black, queer, trans and non-binary communities who are redefining our collective tomorrows through their work and lives.  Tune in...

Retail experience isn’t just about UX tech, but about understanding how we blend all touchpoints we have with the customer into a single, seamless conversation, as Quinine’s founder Ian Johnston explains to Martin Raymond in his latest Back to the F**kture podcast. Quinine Design’s Ian Johnston is a man with a mission – and it’s all about experience. Or should that read phygXperience, digUXperienc...

Author, feminist and founder of the sober-curious movement Ruby Warrington chats to Back to the F**kture’s Martin Raymond, co-founder of The Future Laboratory, about why women without children isn’t an alternative choice, but a  mainstream reality, as 50% of women under 30 in the UK alone go without.  Ruby Warrington pulls no punches when she writes and speaks. Her determination, like her prose, h...

In a world of fake news and hate-fuelled algorithms, entrepreneur Sue Fennessy discusses her new power-for-good platform, WeAre8, in the latest episode of Back To The F**kture with The Future Laboratory co-founder Martin Raymond.  While many of us blame the stupidity and biases of right-leaning social media users for spreading fake news, the founder of ‘no-hate’ app WeAre8, Sue Fennessy, has a dif...

As we seek purpose at a time of continued global uncertainty, Your Brain on Art authors Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross join Martin Raymond on his Back To The F**kture podcast to discuss the science behind art, and the true power it has to heal and transform.  Martin has know Ivy Ross for many years in her role as jeweller, artist and vice-president of design for hardware products at Google, while Sus...

Scent is set to change the nature of health, wellbeing and self-care, according to Firmenich’s chief consumer and innovation officer Matteo Magnani, who speaks to The Future Laboratory’s co-founder Martin Raymond in this episode of the Back To The F**kture podcast. Matteo Magnani and his team are exploring how we can potentially enrich our presence in the metaverse via scent, use fragrance in more...

In this episode of our Back to the F**kture podcast, The Future Laboratory co-founder Martin Raymond talks to the award-winning technologist and space architect Melodie Yashar about how her work on future Mars habitats is providing Earth-bound communities affordable, sustainable, low-carbon homes – and beautiful ones at that. Melodie Yashar, and her team at ICON, recently won Builder magazine Proj...

In this episode of our Back to the F**kture podcast, The Future Laboratory co-founder Martin Raymond speaks with Dr Catherine Nakalembe, Africa programme director at NASA Harvest, scientist, remote sensing expert, a machine learning specialist, and winner of our Futures 100 Innovators Awards. Catherine currently uses drones, satellite data and the latest AI technologies to map the impacts of every...

Our Back to the F**kture podcast series, hosted by The Future Laboratory's co-founder Martin Raymond, asks renowned thinkers to put foresight predictions under the hindsight spotlight. This month Adrien Hobt and Dev Mishra from the PCH Innovations studio return to discuss the power and spirituality of science and technology in tackling issues of the climate crisis, wellbeing and diversity and incl...

In the sixth episode of season two of our Back to the F**kture podcast, Martin Raymond speaks with futurist, retail strategist and designer, Ibrahim Ibrahim, to discuss the emotional membership consumers can have with brands, the future of blended retail spaces and connecting online and offline data to shape tomorrow’s businesses. Ibrahim Ibrahim is managing director of Portland Design, a multi-di...