“In the book I spend a bunch of time basically teaching skills and teaching frameworks of thinking. Not to indoctrinate, it's not a framework like an ideology where you need to believe exactly these things. This is a lot more about how does one use their minds effectively to solve problems that have been solved before. Of course, I work on things that have to do with investment and climate and the future of the economy and automation. The main things I'm trying to teach in the book are skills around creativity, critical thinking, community compassion and frameworks around how to go and use that on problems that should be relatively portable to a bunch of problems that are meaningful to you. The way that education needs to change is that people need to actively be working on things that truly matter to them so that over time they end up being able to go make that difference.”
Tom Chi is a physicist, designer, inventor, and investor whose work has shaped everything from Google Glass and rapid prototyping at Google X to some of the most ambitious climate technologies being built today. He’s now the founding partner of At One Ventures, where he invests in deep-tech companies focused on a bold goal: a world where humanity is a net positive to nature.
Tom’s new book, Climate Capital: Investing in the Tools for a Regenerative Future, reframes economics itself—not as a fixed law, but as a design discipline that can be reimagined to align with the physical realities of our planet. Drawing on science, systems thinking, and lessons from nature, the book offers a grounded, practical framework for moving beyond both climate doom and empty optimism—and toward real, regenerative solutions. Today’s conversation is about what Tom calls the 4Cs: Capital, Compassion, Climate, and Community—but also about agency, responsibility, and what becomes possible when we stop treating the future as something that happens to us and start designing it deliberately.
(0:00) Overcoming Powerlessness through Creativity, Critical Thinking, Community Compassion
Why broad hopelessness about the future is a purposeful tactic to maintain the status quo.
(7:16) How average temperature metrics fail to communicate the true danger of extreme climate volatility.
(11:54) Economics as Design
(17:11) Multi-disciplinary Learning Centered on Real-World Impact
(26:12) Local Resilience
(31:15) Tax & Capital Misallocation
(36:52) Build Integrity
(45:32) AI and Robotics in Agriculture
(51:08) The First Honeybee Vaccine
(56:11) The Entropy Curve of Pollution
(1:15:31) Human-Centric AI
Flipping the priority of automation to serve the collective good rather than enriching a select few
(1:20:59) Thinking in Pictures
How learning to communicate and problem-solve without language fueled a career in deep tech invention
Episode Website
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