Tech, Innovation & Society - The Creative Process: Technology, AI, Software, Future, Economy, Science, Engineering & Robotics Interviews

“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
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

Step into the deep time of the forest floor, where a single fallen leaf contains the history of the world, and invisible fungal networks hum with ancient conversations. Biologist and acclaimed author David George Haskell reveals a staggering truth: we are completely dependent on the botanical world, and our belief in strict human individuality is a biological illusion.
Haskell has spent much of his life training himself to see the universal within the infinitesimally small. He's famously sat for a year in a single square meter of Tennessee's forest, a mandala experience that revealed the deep history of the world through a single fallen leaf. He's a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his books The Forest Unseen and Sounds Wild and Broken, and he received the John Burroughs Medal for The Songs of Trees.
His work often focuses on what he calls the unwaged labor of the natural world, the complex biological communities that sustain our planet without a monetary ledger. And his latest book is How Flowers Made Our World. In it, he argues that we are essentially grass apes dependent on the ancient innovations of flowering plants for two-thirds of our daily calories.
(0:00) How Flowers Made Our World
(1:33) Networked Connection is the Foundation of Life
(2:00) Contemplating the Small
(4:07) Consciousness, Intelligence & Memory in the More-Than-Human-World
(4:18) We Are Grass Apes
(5:41) Memories of His Childhood in Paris & Wild Orchids
(6:34) The Networked Intelligence of Forests
(7:45) The Earth in Full Song
(8:46) The Practice of Listening
(10:11) Escaping the Screen: Real Connections in the Classroom
(11:35) The True Cost of AI
(12:11) Transforming Ourselves
(14:23) Silence Without Expectation
(15:32) A Sensory Legacy for the Future
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

"To be in the process of making things, to be in the process of talking to people about what things mean. The creative process is actually, I think, the most meaningful part of life, but it's very hard to measure. When we get shoved towards a world that demands easy measurables, it's very hard to optimize away from the creative process and optimize towards things that are more static."
On this episode of The Creative Process, philosopher C. Thi Nguyen joins us to discuss his new book, The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game. He unpacks the profound concept of "value capture"—the moment we stop caring about the rich, subtle experiences of life and start obsessing over simplified, external metrics like grades, likes, and screen time.
Beyond the trap of quantification, C. Thi Nguyen explores the liberating power of games and art. We discuss how true play requires us to step lightly between different rule sets, the difference between art and craft, and how reclaiming our creative process might just be the ultimate meaning of life.
(0:00) THE TRAP OF VALUE CAPTURE How external metrics and scoring systems hijack our personal values and creativity
(7:09) THE LOGIC OF QUANTIFICATION Why simple numbers travel well but strip away vital human context, from screen time to grades
(11:58) THE MAGIC CIRCLE OF PLAY Understanding the difference between a gamified life and the true, disattached beauty of struggle
(14:57) ART, CRAFT, AND METRICS Why taking the hard way leads to genuine creative expression, and how to spot value-laden systems
(19:34) THE POLITICS OF MEASUREMENT Questioning the assumption that complex human traits, like IQ or consciousness, can be quantified on a single scale
(21:31) THE SPIRIT OF PLAY Using constraints to boost collaborative storytelling and learning to step lightly between different rule worlds
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

We live in a world obsessed with tracking. From our sleep scores to our social media engagement, invisible systems constantly quantify our worth. But when we replace our deepest values with these thin, easily measurable numbers, we lose a part of our humanity. It is time to step outside the magic circle of optimization and reclaim the unstructured joy of being alive.
C. Thi Nguyen is a philosopher whose work gets to the heart of the invisible structures that define modern life. He first established himself as a food writer, exploring the sensory world, before turning his intellectual gaze toward the philosophy of games and agency. He’s the author of Games: Agency As Art. His new book is The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game. He argues that when we simplify our values for the sake of a leaderboard, something inside the human spirit begins to die. In it, he explores a concept called "value capture"—the moment we stop caring about the experience and start obsessing over the metric. He joins me now to discuss how we can lead a playful, spontaneous life without getting lost in the scoring systems of the 21st century.
(0:00) THE MEANING OF LIFE IS THE CREATIVE PROCESS Why the most valuable parts of life are impossible to measure
(6:46) VALUE CAPTURE DEFINED How external metrics and institutional scoring systems take over our personal values
(11:38) THE METRICS WE LIVE BY The invisible toll of screen time, credit scores, and daily optimization
(19:44) THE LOGIC OF QUANTIFICATION Why simple numbers travel well but strip away vital human context
(24:13) THE MAGIC CIRCLE OF PLAY Understanding the difference between a gamified life and the true beauty of struggle
(31:56) ART AS A GAME How taking the hard way and avoiding efficiency leads to genuine creative expression
(38:48) THE POLITICS OF TECHNOLOGY Why tools and systems like factories and databases are never truly value-neutral
(44:23) AI AND HUMAN CREATIVITY Navigating the tension between automated efficiency and expressive human art
(50:44) THE POLITICS OF IQ Questioning the assumption that complex human traits can be measured on a single scale
(1:01:12) NARRATIVE SCAFFOLDING How structured constraints in role-playing games can actually boost collaborative storytelling
(1:10:00) THE SPIRIT OF PLAY Stepping lightly between different rule worlds and reclaiming our agency
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
@creativeprocesspodcast

"The thing that puzzled him was why people don't agree to be fully expressed while they're alive. Why does it only happen in their last moment? Why wouldn't you live being fully expressed?"
My guest today is AL Kennedy. She is one of Britain’s most acclaimed and versatile literary voices, a writer who can inhabit the internal life of a soldier in a POW camp, as she did in her Costa Book Award-winning novel Day, as easily as she can navigate the "professional lying" of a modern civil servant.
Her latest novel, Alive in the Merciful Country, takes place during the 2020 lockdown. It tells the story of a primary school teacher who receives a confession from an undercover police officer who infiltrated her life decades earlier. It’s a provocative investigation into state power, the "Spy Cops" scandal and the search for mercy in an age of surveillance. It’s a book about the breakdown of trust. We talk about her life, her activism, and why she believes fiction is the only way to tell the truth when the facts are forbidden and how she balances the truth of her novels with the relief of stand-up comedy.
(0:00) Finding Your Voice
On the Alfred Wolfsohn voice method and the power of being fully expressed
(2:30) Reading from Alive in the Merciful Country
Kennedy shares a passage from her latest novel, exploring hope and resilience in dark times.
(4:43) The Myth of Shrinking Attention Spans
Challenging the narrative that modern audiences cannot focus, and the importance of engaging storytelling.
(6:22) Education and the Foundation of Democracy
The dangers of dismantling education and how critical thinking protects us from fascism.
(10:26) The Spy Cop Scandal and State Surveillance
Unpacking the reality of undercover police infiltrating peaceful protests and intimate lives.
(13:59) Lockdown: A Global Pause and the Inrush of Empathy
The fleeting moment of unified humanity during the pandemic and how it was ultimately betrayed.
(17:34) Writing Without Theft: The Ethics of Character Creation
Kennedy explains her imaginative process and why she refuses to steal details from real people's lives.
(28:16) AI, Digital Slop, and the Loss of Trust
Reflections on artificial intelligence as an unstable plagiarism machine and its impact on truth.
(30:03) Nature, Spirituality, and the Merciful Country
Finding healing in the natural world and navigating the future with love and awareness.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast