How We Future: Stories of Hope, Hype, and Gratitude

What can a basketball court teach us about being a citizen?
In this episode of How We Future, Lisa is joined by two people who have had a huge influence on civic engagement in college athletics: Coach Eric Reveno and Joe Kennedy, co-founders of The Team.
Their work began exploring how student athletes could practice civic engagement in a way that empowers them and others to create the future they want to see.
For Eric, or Rev, that question came to life in 2020, when a conversation with his players led him to launch All Vote No Play, an effort to give student athletes time and space to vote. Joe soon joined the effort, bringing his background as Director of Sports and Athletics at the Obama Foundation. Over time, Joe, Rev, and Lisa created The Team, an organization focused on integrating nonpartisan civic and community engagement into college athletics.
In our conversation, we talk about:
Why being a great teammate can be a form of civic practice
Why athletes and coaches have a unique ability to act as trusted messengers and civic leaders on their campuses and in their communities.
Examples of accessible civic engagement, like a tailgate, pizza, and a competitive game of rock, paper, scissors.
When you don’t know exactly what to do next, sometimes the best thing you can do is just try something, and then go to the next play.
Listen to the full episode to hear how two coaches turned one simple idea into a growing movement and what sports can teach all of us about getting in the game.
Links from the episode:
The Team
All Vote No Play
The Team’s Engaged Athlete Fellowship
Home Court at the Obama Presidential Center
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Want to contact us? Email hello@howwefuture.com

What if being a good citizen has less to do with politics and more to do with how we show up for one another?
To kick off Season 5 of How We Future, Lisa is talking with civic leader, author, and Citizen University co-founder Eric Liu about his new book, Live Like a Citizen: 8 Ways to Change Your Mindset and Our Country.
The conversation explores why civic life needs joy, grief, love, imagination, and practice more than facts and policy solutions. Eric shares a practice called Power Walk, which helps people take stock of the civic decisions embedded in the places around them. He also explains how Civic Saturdays became a way for people to gather, reflect, and reconnect after the 2016 election.
In this episode, Eric and Lisa discuss:
The story of Rosa Chang and the transformation of an overlooked space beneath the Brooklyn Bridge
Why joining a club might be one of the simplest ways to fight isolation and reclaim civic agency
How civic imagination can be used for both pro-social and antisocial purposes
Why building a better future requires both imagination and commitment
Ultimately, this episode is an invitation to stop being spectators of the future and start practicing citizenship wherever we are.
A few ideas to take with you
Take a power walk. Walk around your neighborhood with fresh eyes. What do you notice? Why is it that way?
Join something. Find a club, community group, neighborhood organization, library program, or other place where you can show up repeatedly and build relationships.
Practice civic joy. Choose to animate the things that give us life even when things are hard.
Imagine and Act. Turn your picture of a better future into collective choices, habits, and commitments.
Links from the episode:
Learn more about Citizen University.
Buy Live Like a Citizen: Eight Ways to Change Your Mindset in Our Country.
Learn how to host a Civic Saturday
Watch Eric’s Ted Talks
Check out Citizen University’s resources
Follow How We Future:
Lisa Kay Solomon on LinkedIn
@lisakaysolomon on Instagram
@howwefuture on TikTok
howwefuture.substack.com
Want to contact us? Email hello@howwefuture.com

What does it take to have hope when the future feels increasingly brittle, anxious, nonlinear, and incomprehensible?
In this special bonus episode of How We Future, Lisa continues her conversation with futurist Bob Johansen and welcomes Jeremy Kirshbaum, co-authors of the forthcoming book Disciplines of Hope. Bob previously joined Lisa in Season 4 alongside Bishop Andy Doyle to explore the book’s ideas around faith, hope, and action. This time, Jeremy brings the lens of the intersection of generative AI, meaning-making, and hope.
Jeremy, Bob, and Lisa explore what we might gain and what we might lose when we optimize everything for speed and frictionlessness, and why some forms of useful struggle, reflection, and repetition are essential to building meaning.
In this conversation, you’ll learn:
What it means to live and lead in a BANI future
The value of useful friction in a world increasingly optimized for efficiency
What religious traditions can teach us about hope and collaboration
Why leaders increasingly need to help people find faith in a future worth building
The idea of generativity
Listen to the full episode to explore how we can develop our own disciplines of hope and use them to create futures that are more meaningful, connected, and generative.
Links from the episode:
Pre-Order Disciplines of Hope
How We Future featuring Bob Johansen and Bishop Andy Doyle
Navigating the Age of Chaos by Bob Johansen, Jamais Cascio, and Angela F. Williams
Institute for the Future
How We Future featuring Bob Sutton
How We Future featuring Roman Krznaric
The Friction Project by Bob Sutton and Huggy Rao
How We Future featuring Jennifer Dulski
Follow How We Future:
Lisa Kay Solomon on LinkedIn
@lisakaysolomon on Instagram
@howwefuture on TikTok
howwefuture.substack.com
Want to contact us? Email hello@howwefuture.com

What if you can become your best self by changing the situation around you?
In our season 4 finale of How We Future, Lisa Kay Solomon talks with psychologist, University of Pennsylvania professor, and author Angela Duckworth about her new book, Situated, and the powerful role our environments, relationships, and circumstances play in shaping what we think, feel, and do.
Angela’s previous book, Grit, explores how to leverage our inner qualities. Now, she’s examining the “outside game”: the mentors, peers, teams, spaces, and systems that can help us thrive.
Listen to the full episode to learn strategies for changing your environment, building supportive relationships, making behavior change easier, and using your agency to create better conditions for yourself and others.
Lisa and Angela talk about:
Angela’s three-box model for changing behavior
Why changing your environment can be smarter than relying on willpower
What Michael Phelps and Jerry Seinfeld teach us about situational agency
And as always, we’d love to hear from you: What’s one part of your situation you could change to make the future you want a little easier to reach?
Links from the episode:
Learn more about Angela on her website
Buy Angela’s new book, Situated
Man’s Search For Meaning by Victor Frankel
Follow How We Future:
Lisa Kay Solomon on LinkedIn
@lisakaysolomon on Instagram
@howwefuture on TikTok
howwefuture.substack.com
Want to contact us? Email hello@howwefuture.com

You don't have to fix what failed you. You can build what frees you.
In this episode of How We Future, Lisa Kay Solomon and Nilofer Merchant talk about Nilofer’s new book, Our Best Work, and why to question the invisible norms that are limiting the way we work and lead.
Nilofer argues that many of the ways we measure work today focus on what has already happened—revenue, productivity, efficiency—rather than the leading indicators that tell us whether we’re actually doing the work needed to create a better future.
In this conversation, Lisa and Nilofer explore:
Expanding our definition of intelligence to include intuition, context, synthesis, vulnerability, and the unique perspectives each person brings.
The difference between actually helping people grow or simply making ourselves feel helpful.
Building trust through integrity, where our actions consistently match our words.
Walking toward the unknown without needing to know the entire path ahead.
What are you spending your energy trying to fix that you could instead imagine and begin building differently?
Links from the episode:
Nilofer’s newest book, Our Best Work
Explore Nilofer’s work on her website
Nilofer’s “Sitting Is the Smoking of Our Generation” TED Talk
Follow How We Future:
Lisa Kay Solomon on LinkedIn
@lisakaysolomon on Instagram
@howwefuture on TikTok
howwefuture.substack.com
Want to contact us? Email hello@howwefuture.com