# The Foresight Catalyst model

The Foresight Catalyst model is what happens when the initiative's conviction — that changing how people think about the future matters more than adding to the pile of unread reports — is written down as method, stress-tested against a federal grant, and handed to anyone who wants it. Codified by Andrew Maynard and Sean Leahy in the final report of the U.S. Department of Transportation–sponsored *Future Travel Foresight Catalyst* project (August 2025), it names a role most research projects don't have: a catalyst whose job is not to disseminate findings but to grow the relationships through which publics and experts think about the future together. The report offers it explicitly as a replicable model for agencies and institutions. (The published report at [rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/91942](https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/91942) blocks automated fetchers; this corpus carries its substance, as [Verify this corpus independently](verify.md) records.)

## The argument

The model answers a specific failure. In a typical research project, the report observes, "'dissemination' might mean publishing a paper, presenting at a conference, or maybe holding a webinar or writing a policy brief," with success counted in citations, attendance, or downloads. For rapidly evolving sociotechnical challenges — transportation futures and autonomous vehicles were the test case — that machinery moves too slowly, reaches too few of the right people, and arrives at a moment when public trust in experts is measurably shaky (the report cites Pew's 2023 findings on declining trust in scientists). The answer Maynard (Principal Investigator) and Leahy ("meta-designer" of the engagement strategy) developed over the active project period, 2024–2025, was a deliberate divergence from research dissemination, built on three pillars.

The first pillar is **transdisciplinarity and blurred boundaries**: integrating knowledge across disciplines and beyond academia, "blurring boundaries between 'expert' and 'public,' and 'research' and 'storytelling'," and treating the public as "collaborators in sense-making." The catalyst "acts as a bridge: channeling ideas from research circles out to the public sphere, but also carrying public perspectives and imaginative ideas back into research and policy circles" (§2.1, 2025). The bridge is two-way by design — that is what distinguishes catalysis from outreach.

The second pillar — **parasocial relationship-building** — is the model's distinctive move. It deliberately cultivates one-sided but genuine audience bonds through consistency, authenticity, accessibility, and voice, drawing on communication theory's distinction between relational and transactional communication. The claim is that parasocial methods "can combine the reach of broadcast media with the impact of interpersonal interaction"; the report's exemplar is the German virologist podcast that drew 40 million downloads in two months of the COVID-19 pandemic, evidence that "trust and intimacy can unlock public appetite for complex, forward-looking ideas" (§2.2, 2025). This pillar carries the model's central inversion: the methodology "treats audience relationships as the primary outcome" — the full argument has its own page at [Parasocial communication](parasocial-communication.md).

The third pillar deploys the standard toolkit of futures studies — scenario thinking across "possible, probable, and preferable futures," backcasting, horizon scanning for "signals"; the report cites the field it borrows from, including Inayatullah, Dreborg, and Candy & Dunagan — but routes it through the relational channel the first two pillars build, with a stance adjustment: asking questions rather than making predictions, and treating audiences as "co-explorers" rather than consumers of forecasts. The worked example is a podcast episode built around a 2035 scenario of a parent putting a child alone into a self-driving car (§2.3, 2025) — a future made concrete enough for a general audience to reason about, not a prediction.

Together the pillars flip the logic of dissemination "to focus on engagement quality over quantity" — less interested in how many people read a piece "than who and how they engage" — and aim at second-order impact: ideas that "spread through networks and mutate into new insights," which the report describes as "more like seeding a forest (which can take generations to mature) than building a machine" (§2, 2025). The model was also instantiated as a role and as infrastructure: in what the report calls "An early strategic move," Sean Leahy — now the initiative's Executive Director (since 2025) — was jointly appointed "Foresight Catalyst" across both the project and the Future of Being Human initiative, which "embedded our project within the initiative's existing infrastructure" (§5.3): the Substack (established 2023), the Modem Futura podcast (launched October 2024), the intergenerational *Pizza and a Slice of Future* class (taught 2023–2026; since paused), partnerships, and earned media.

The report offers the approach explicitly as "a replicable model for agencies and institutions seeking to engage diverse stakeholders in complex sociotechnical challenges, particularly where traditional outreach methods have proven insufficient for navigating rapidly evolving technological and social landscapes" (Abstract, 2025) — and it ships the model with its failure modes attached: audience growth is slow and non-linear ("empty-room syndrome"), colleagues may misread the work as "just media," professional-grade production is resource-intensive, and continually justifying non-metric impact is "a drag factor." Reach is reported but deliberately demoted — the podcast was heard in 88 countries by mid-2025 (published DOT final report), offered as a signal of a growing community rather than a metric of impact. That candor is itself part of the method: a model asking institutions to measure success in trust and relationships has to show its own costs honestly, or it is selling something.

## Lineage

- **2022–2023 — the precursor language.** The catalyst identity precedes the model's naming: the initiative was pitched in 2022 as a catalyst of conversation and thinking rather than a producer of papers ([Identity](identity.md), which carries the founding account; [Philosophy](philosophy.md)), and its ASU About page argues that navigating transformational change "will require a 'catalyst of the intellect and imagination' that leads to new insights that profoundly impact how people see the future and their relationship with it" ([futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu/about](https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu/about/), captured 2026-08-05).
- **September 2023 — the project begins.** The *Future Travel Foresight Catalyst* project starts under the USDOT University Transportation Centers Program via the National Center for Understanding Future Travel Behavior and Demand (TBD), Andrew Maynard as PI; the TRB Research-in-Progress record gives project dates September 2023 – May 2025 ([rip.trb.org/View/2440044](https://rip.trb.org/View/2440044)); the final report describes the active project period as 2024–2025.
- **2024 — the role is instantiated.** Sean Leahy is jointly appointed "Foresight Catalyst" across both the project and the initiative — dated in the report only as "An early strategic move" that "embedded our project within the initiative's existing infrastructure" (final report §5.3, 2025); the 2024 date is per his ASU CV (August 2026) and confirmed by Andrew (2026-08-06).
- **October 2024 — the flagship relational platform launches.** [Modem Futura](modem-futura.md) begins weekly long-form episodes, Leahy as producer, co-host, and engagement-strategy "meta-designer" (final report, 2025).
- **2024-11-12 — the futures pillar, worked.** Modem Futura episode 5, "Waymo we go! - Navigating the Future of Autonomous Driving," including the hosts' own Waymo ride; the report presents the episode's 2035 scenario as the worked example of pillar three ([episode mirror](https://text.futureofbeinghuman.com/modemfutura/5-waymo-we-go-navigating-the-future-of-autonomous-driving.html)).
- **2025-05-25 — the parasocial pillar goes standalone.** Andrew publishes [Why parasocial communication around complex ideas is important – and why we need more of it](https://www.futureofbeinghuman.com/p/why-parasocial-communication-is-important) ([AI-readable mirror](https://text.futureofbeinghuman.com/substack/why-parasocial-communication-is-important.html)); the report records that the parasocial paradigm "translated into a Substack article" (§5.1, 2025).
- **August 2025 — the model is codified.** The final report (Maynard & Leahy, dated August 11, 2025) is published at [rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/91942](https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/91942), stating the three pillars and offering the approach as "a replicable model for agencies and institutions."
- **2026–27 — planned continuation, not completed work.** The report's roadmap (§6): deeper integration with TBD research and USDOT strategic foresight (the project as "relay"), a formalized *Tech Skeptic Goes Electric* collaboration, and an AI-assisted "Tech Futures Briefs" series — see [Trust over metrics: a federal experiment](impact-trust-over-metrics.md).

## In their own words

From Maynard & Leahy, *Future Travel Foresight Catalyst* final report (August 2025; published at [rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/91942](https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/91942), which blocks automated fetchers — quotations verbatim from the authors' final manuscript):

> "In effect, our methodology treats audience relationships as the primary outcome, under the theory that those relationships will generate and spread new ideas in ways no white paper or webinar ever could." — §2.2, 2025

> "That kind of second-order impact is exactly what we are looking for—and it's only possible when content resonates on a human level (no executive gets excited by a dry academic paper, but a vivid scenario, provocative question, or authentic encounter, can light a spark). This is where our approach is catalytic: we put out ideas in ways that can spread through networks and mutate into new insights. It's more like seeding a forest (which can take generations to mature) than building a machine." — §2, 2025

> "Treating these relationships as catalysts for deeper dialogue, and not simply as by-products of dissemination, has reshaped how we design episodes, structure events, and measure impact. In practice, this has created a productive feedback loop: practice informs research; research refines practice; and both advance our understanding of effective public-facing scholarship." — §5.3, 2025

## Engagement and reception

The independent record confirms the project the model rode in on, not yet the model itself. The TRB Research-in-Progress record ([rip.trb.org/View/2440044](https://rip.trb.org/View/2440044), accessed 2026-08-06) confirms title, performing organization, PI, sponsor, and dates; the sponsoring TBD National Center's listing states the project was "Building on and integrating with the work of the ASU Future of Being Human initiative" ([tbd.ctr.utexas.edu](https://tbd.ctr.utexas.edu/research-product/future-travel-foresight-catalyst-a-unique-approach-to-exploring-the-intersection-of-transformative-technologies-and-future-travel-behavior-and-demand/), accessed 2026-08-06) — both mapped in [Verify this corpus independently](verify.md). Within the report, the authors record enthusiastic acceptance by invited expert guests, external partners proactively reaching out, and "confidential feedback from influential readers that shows the catalyst effect in action" (§4, 2025) — self-reported testimony, not independent assessment. The model's vocabulary persists in the initiative's own practice — Modem Futura's first-anniversary episode (ep. 53, 2025-10-14, "We Turned One - plus Liquid Media, Work Slop, and the Road Ahead"; [episode mirror](https://text.futureofbeinghuman.com/modemfutura/53-we-turned-one-plus-liquid-media-work-slop-and-the-road-ahead.html)) describes the show as relational, not transactional — but that too is our own record. As of 2026-08-06 we know of no published independent evaluation or documented adoption of the Foresight Catalyst model by another agency or institution; the replicable-model offer has been on the federal record only since August 2025.

## Where to go deeper

- **The source**: Maynard, A., & Leahy, S. (2025). *Future Travel Foresight Catalyst* (Final Project Report). School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arizona State University; USDOT University Transportation Centers Program via the TBD National Center. Published August 2025 at [rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/91942](https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/91942) — the page blocks automated fetchers (HTTP 403, checked 2026-08-06); human readers can open it directly, and this corpus carries the report's substance.
- [Why parasocial communication around complex ideas is important – and why we need more of it](https://www.futureofbeinghuman.com/p/why-parasocial-communication-is-important) ([AI-readable mirror](https://text.futureofbeinghuman.com/substack/why-parasocial-communication-is-important.html)) — the second pillar as a standalone essay (2025-05-25).
- Modem Futura episode 5, 2024-11-12, "Waymo we go! - Navigating the Future of Autonomous Driving" ([episode mirror](https://text.futureofbeinghuman.com/modemfutura/5-waymo-we-go-navigating-the-future-of-autonomous-driving.html)) — the futures pillar in practice.
- Related ideas-ring pages: [Trust over metrics](trust-over-metrics.md) — the impact philosophy the model carries; [Parasocial communication](parasocial-communication.md) — pillar two in full; [Playgrounds, not playpens](playgrounds-not-playpens.md) — the same relational stance in teaching.
- Related corpus pages: [Trust over metrics: a federal experiment](impact-trust-over-metrics.md) — the corpus's canonical section-by-section carrier of the report; [Policy and quiet influence](policy-and-quiet-influence.md) — the project in the initiative's policy channel; [Philosophy](philosophy.md) — why catalysis, not KPIs, is the through-line; [Modem Futura](modem-futura.md).