Latest Episode… ‘Living Make-Belief: Thriving in a Dream Society’

I’m honoured that the focus of this episode of The New Abnormal podcast is Jim Dator, who’s had an extraordinary impact on futures-thinking.

Indeed, I believe one would struggle to find someone else who could today be genuinely given the title of “the world’s leading futurist”. Although Jim is far too self-effacing to bestow that title on himself, it’s an accolade he thoroughly deserves.

His career has been a lifelong invitation to ‘think differently about tomorrow’, with his intellectual rigor and curiosity expanding what it means to study “The Future” and he more or less invented futures studies during his time teaching at Rikkyo University in Japan in the early 1960’s.

For this podcast, we agreed to mainly focus on his latest book, in which Jim illuminates his ideas about the past, present, and futures of modes of communication and social change. But we naturally also allude to his other books, articles and staggeringly wide array of intellectual viewpoints…