The Wicked Opportunities Podcast

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The world is filled with Wicked Problems - incredibly complicated predicaments that don’t have simple solutions. However, the real problem isn’t our complex world, but rather our outdated mindsets. The way that we see the future directly impacts the actions that we take today, so a better world requires better visions. Join futurists Yvette Montero Salvatico and Frank Spencer each week as they use the Natural Foresight® Framework to reframe our Wicked Problems into the transformational ideas that they call Wicked Opportunities.

  1. MAR 1

    Long Live the Liminal

    Let’s talk about menopause. Not because this is a medical podcast, but because menopause is one of the most powerful, under-examined, and culturally misunderstood transitions we have. And it perfectly captures what this episode is really about: liminality, the space where you are no longer what you were, but not yet what you’re becoming... and where magical possibilities abound! In this Spill, Yvette and Frank step into the “L” of ALIVE and make a bold claim: our society isn’t afraid of change; it’s afraid of the in-between. We live in achievement mode. We reward certainty. We rehearse VUCA as if volatility and uncertainty are design flaws instead of natural conditions of growth . But nature tells a different story. In ecological systems, the richest biodiversity doesn’t exist in the stable prairie or the established forest. Instead life thrives in the ecotone, the transitional space where two environments meet and something entirely new can emerge. Organizations love to talk about transformation, but what they often want is a clean leap from A to B, with as little ambiguity or disruption as possible. The problem is that the so-called “bad lands” in between is precisely where development happens. It’s where identities loosen, power structures wobble, where relationships birth untamed promiscuity, and imagination stretches beyond inherited narratives. It’s where complexity matures and new potential states begin to take form. Liminality isn’t dysfunction. It isn’t weakness. And it isn’t something to medicate, optimize, or fast-forward through. It is the generative tension of becoming, the fertile instability that allows new ideas, new relationships, and new futures to take root. Intentional evolution requires a different relationship with change. Not change management as a technique, but a deeper intimacy with transition itself. The willingness to remain present when the old story has dissolved and the new one hasn’t yet stabilized. Less fear of the fog. More faith in the meadow. Long live the liminal.

    17 min

  2. FEB 22

    The Meadow, Not the Machine

    What does a slaughterhouse have to do with your org chart? In this episode of The Intentional Spill, Yvette and Frank trace one of modernity’s quiet organizational origin stories: Henry Ford borrowing the logic of the slaughterhouse to build the assembly line and, in the process, embedding segmentation, efficiency, and divide-and-conquer thinking into the DNA of our institutions . We’ve been living inside that metaphor ever since. But what if the future isn’t a factory? This Spill introduces the “A” in ALIVE: Abductive Thinking, a way of deeply sensing the whole rather than optimizing the parts. Drawing on Nora Bateson’s definition of “mutual learning contexts,” we move from assembly lines to meadows, from siloed data columns to living systems where meaning only exists in relationship. Because a meadow is not a log. A mind is not a spreadsheet. And foresight is not a predictive machine. Along the way, we question whether AI can ever “know” the embodied feeling of care, explore why foresight keeps trying to earn credibility from non-abductive systems, and share a story about a porch goose that might just restore your faith in human interdependence. Intentional evolution asks us to notice the metaphors guiding us. Are we rehearsing futures of separation? Or practicing futures of connection? Less assembly line. More meadow. The future is alive . . . and it’s learning with us.

    24 min

  3. FEB 1

    Robots, Really?

    In this episode of The Intentional Spill, Yvette and Frank tell the story behind a question that still lingers in foresight work: “Robots, really?” It was said years ago (half skeptical, half dismissive) after a scenario exercise meant to stretch imagination rather than confirm comfort. And it perfectly captures why foresight so often fails when it’s treated as prediction instead of preparation . Moving between personal stories, professional missteps, and the rise of today’s AI-saturated world, the conversation explores how scenarios are designed to surface bias, provoke emotional response, and expand our capacity to engage with change before it arrives fully formed. The point was never the robots themselves, but what they represented: dependence on systems we don’t fully understand, and futures we resist until they’re unavoidable. This Spill invites listeners to reconsider how they respond to unfamiliar futures. Dismissal feels efficient, but it’s often the moment we opt out of intentional evolution. Scenarios aren’t meant to be believed. They’re meant to be felt, wrestled with, and learned from - before reality catches up. When the future sounds strange, that’s usually the signal.

    21 min

  4. JAN 25

    The Top 10 Trend Extravaganza (and why we don't trust it)

    In this episode of The Intentional Spill, Yvette and Frank take on one of foresight’s most comfortable habits (and biggest risks): the “Top 10 Trends” list. Using pop culture, collective joy, and the phenomenon of cultural movements (yes, including Taylor Swift) as a starting point, the conversation explores why what’s trending on Google, LinkedIn, or mainstream media is often the least interesting signal of what’s actually trying to emerge . This Spill challenges traditional trend-scanning as a form of unconscious bias and, at its worst, a self-fulfilling prophecy that reinforces dominant narratives rather than disrupts them. Instead, the episode makes the case for transformational futuring: paying attention to the periphery, questioning inherited social constructs, and cultivating futures consciousness that can hold complexity, imagination, and collective potential states. Along the way, the hosts unpack why foresight isn’t about reporting headlines, it’s about changing the conditions from which futures arise. Less echo chamber. Less algorithm worship. More discernment, humility, and intentional evolution. Stop carrying water for the dominant narrative. Look sideways. The future isn’t in the Top 10.

    18 min

  5. JAN 18

    Making the Future Illegal

    In this episode of The Intentional Spill, Yvette and Frank confront a growing global pattern: the attempt to defang the future by controlling language. Sparked by an expanding list of government-banned words (from equity and race to climate and identity) the conversation explores what happens when imagination, meaning-making, and collective agency are treated as threats . This isn’t a U.S.-only issue, and it isn’t just about words. It’s about how dominant systems preserve themselves by narrowing what can be named, imagined, or made possible. Through humor, provocation, and foresight practice, the episode reframes censorship just as an attempt to convey strength, but as a signal of system fragility, and argues that when the future is declared “illegal,” it becomes even more necessary to practice foresight as resistance and activism. At its core, this Spill is a call to reclaim futures consciousness: the collective, relational capacity to imagine what wants to emerge and to build worlds worth living in, together. Read banned books. Use the words. Imagine anyway.

    15 min

  6. JAN 11

    Transformation Bombing

    In this episode of The Intentional Spill, Yvette and Frank take aim at how transformation has been hijacked and turned into a crisis response, a reorg strategy, or a last-ditch effort to save a sinking ship. Sparked by a recent Harvard Business Review call to “stop doing transformation,” the conversation asks a deeper question: What if transformation isn’t the problem, but how we’ve been co-opting it is? Drawing from natural systems, foresight practice, and lived experience, the episode reframes transformation as a living dynamic, not a traumatic intervention. Think acorns and oak trees, submergence and emergence, and capacity-building over change fatigue. You'll learn why real transformation can’t be forced, scheduled, or “bombed” into existence. This is a call to stop reacting and start cultivating. Less treadmill. Less panic. More intention. More life. Transform away. xoxo

    16 min

  7. JAN 5

    New Year - New You?

    Welcome to the 2026 season of the Wicked Opportunities podcast - launching The Intentional Spill, a weekly series of 15-minute, digestible, raw conversations (less prep, more truth). In the kickoff episode, Yvette Montero Salvatico and Frank Spencer (aka Dr. Juicy Owl) call out “marketed renewal” and the New Year, New You productivity trap, then make the case for Intentional Evolution: getting out of the happenstance dance and back into the driver’s seat of our lives, and our species. Expect everyday foresight as activism, a warning about the Evil E’s (extraction, exploitation, extrapolation, exponentiality), and a reframe of growth as emergence + submergence—because rest isn’t failure, it’s part of the cycle. Less machine. More garden. And please: don’t get deracinated from what wants to emerge. xoxo

    18 min

  8. 07/08/2025

    WO Live! - Battling VUCA

    The traditional approach to a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) environment has often involved attempts to eliminate uncertainty, simplify complexity, and overcome volatility and ambiguity. This relies on mindsets and systems built on ideas like strategic hindsight, efficiency, simplicity, certainty, and control. Recent events have highlighted that these existing systems are ineffective. Attempts to solve complex challenges with simple or temporary solutions often fail because they don’t address underlying structures, values, and narratives. The universe is, in its very nature, VUCA. Instead of battling it, we should consider embracing it. Embrace the Long Now. The Long Now is not about compressing time but stretching it. It’s an idea of integrating the best of the past and the most vibrant aspirations for the future to inform decisions in the present. It means seeing the “now” not just as immediacy, but as a longer span, recognizing that our actions today have long-term effects and build upon the past. It is about a mindset that includes the past, present, and future together as one comprehensive timeframe. Embracing the Long Now means leaning into the unknown, mystery, and emergence. It recognizes that complexity and uncertainty are not problems to be solved but inherent aspects of the universe. When embraced, this environment can lead to greater opportunities, generativity, resilience, and abundance. This shifts the focus from trying to control everything to being in a perpetual state of readiness for any future that unfolds.

    1h 2m
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Ratings & Reviews

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About

The world is filled with Wicked Problems - incredibly complicated predicaments that don’t have simple solutions. However, the real problem isn’t our complex world, but rather our outdated mindsets. The way that we see the future directly impacts the actions that we take today, so a better world requires better visions. Join futurists Yvette Montero Salvatico and Frank Spencer each week as they use the Natural Foresight® Framework to reframe our Wicked Problems into the transformational ideas that they call Wicked Opportunities.

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