Sunday Pick: Tech Solutions (#3): How one of China's biggest tech companies is tackling carbon removal (with Xu Hao)
Host Sherelle Dorsey talks with Dr. Xu Hao, Vice President of Sustainable Social Value at Tencent, about how the company is investing in and accelerating carbon removal and decarbonization technologies, particularly in hard-to-abate sectors like steel, cement, and chemicals. They examine the cost and scaling challenges these technologies face, the role of digital tools such as AI, data, and virtual power plants in improving efficiency and cutting emissions, and Tencent's own path toward carbon neutrality and net zero. The conversation also covers Tencent's use of video games for climate education and the need to pursue multiple climate solutions in the face of uncertainty about which technologies will ultimately dominate.
TED Talks Daily Book Club: Human Nature: Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet | Kate Marvel
Host Elise Hu interviews climate scientist Kate Marvel about her book "Human Nature, Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet," which explores climate change through nine emotions rather than just data or policy. Marvel discusses why scientists should acknowledge their feelings, how climate communication needs storytelling as well as charts, and how humans still have agency to shape a wide range of possible futures. They cover topics including grief for changing places, the limits of individual action, practical climate solutions, technological interventions, and how hope can be understood as something we do rather than something we simply have.
How climate shocks could break the economy | Edmond Rhys Jones
Host Elise Hu introduces a TED talk by climate pathfinder Edmund Rhys-Jones, who explores the economic implications of climate change. Rhys-Jones argues that while climate science is detailed and alarming, traditional economic models understate real-world disruption because they ignore how climate shocks propagate through financial infrastructure. He calls for new, complexity-based simulations and financial innovations to better manage growing climate-related turbulence and safeguard a significant share of global GDP.
These AI devices protect nature in real time | Juan M. Lavista Ferres
Host Elise Hugh introduces a TED talk by Juan M. Lavista Ferres about how a new AI-enabled device network called Sparrow can transform conservation work. Lavista Ferres explains how conservationists currently rely on slow, labor-intensive data collection and shows how Sparrow uses solar power, edge computing, and satellite connectivity to process images and sounds in real time. He describes how this system can automatically identify individual animals, analyze acoustic biodiversity, detect wildfires early, and drastically shorten the time between data collection and action, potentially making the difference between species survival and extinction.
Sunday Pick: Tech Solutions (#1): The affordable tech that will revolutionize farming (with Samir Ibrahim and Josephine Waweru)
This episode of TED Tech, part of a special mini-series recorded at the TED Countdown Climate Summit in Nairobi, explores how affordable solar-powered water pumps are transforming smallholder farming. Host Cheryl Dorsey speaks with Sun Culture CEO Samir Ibrahim about building a farmer-centered business that has driven down the cost of solar irrigation through both engineering and business model innovation, while navigating investors and climate-related priorities. Coffee farmer Josephine Waweru then shares how installing a solar pump on her Kenyan farm solved her water challenges, enabled her to expand her crops and income, and inspired her to encourage other farmers and young people to see farming as a viable, growth-oriented business.
What To Do With All This Nuclear Waste?
Josh and Chuck discuss what nuclear waste actually is, how it is produced in nuclear reactors, and the different forms it takes. They explain current storage methods like spent fuel pools and dry casks, national and international strategies for long-term disposal including Finland's deep geological repository, and the stalled Yucca Mountain project in the U.S. They also explore emerging ideas such as recycling spent fuel, transmutation, vitrification into glass or ceramics, and touch on policy, security risks, and connections to artificial intelligence-driven demand for nuclear energy.
How AI can solve its own energy crisis | Varun Sivaram
Host Elise Hu introduces a talk by grid futurist Varun Sivaram about the looming clash between rapidly growing AI data center demand and an aging electricity grid. Sivaram explains how making AI data centers flexible in when and where they consume power can relieve grid stress, unlock existing unused capacity, and accelerate the integration of cheap renewable energy. He describes Emerald AI's "Emerald Conductor" software, real-world demonstrations, and industry collaborations aimed at turning AI from a grid threat into a key ally for a cleaner, more reliable energy system.
We're doing AI all wrong. Here's how to get it right | Sasha Luccioni
AI sustainability expert Sasha Luccioni argues that current AI development is being driven by a "bigger is better" mentality that concentrates power in a few large tech companies while causing significant environmental and social harms. She contrasts massive, energy-hungry large language models and data centers with smaller, task-specific and open AI systems that can run on modest hardware and support climate solutions. Luccioni calls for transparent energy metrics, supportive regulation, and user choices that prioritize sustainable, equitable AI that serves all of humanity and the planet.
How to pull the emergency brake on global warming | Mohamed A. Sultan
Host Elise Hu introduces a TED Talk by sustainability strategist Mohamed A. Sultan about the urgency and opportunity of cutting methane emissions, especially across the African continent. Sultan explains how methane from landfills, fossil fuels, and agriculture significantly drives global warming, and highlights concrete African examples in waste management, energy, and rice cultivation that reduce methane while improving public health, jobs, and food security. He argues that better governance, finance, and development models can simultaneously build resilience, advance economic development, and lower methane emissions worldwide.
The new era of AI-powered protein design | César RamÃrez-Sarmiento
Host Elise Hu introduces TED Fellow and protein engineer César RamÃrez-Sarmiento, whose lab in Santiago, Chile uses artificial intelligence to design novel proteins for environmental and therapeutic applications. In his talk and follow-up conversation with TED Fellows Program Director Lily James-Olds, César explains what proteins are, how AI has radically improved protein design success rates, and how enzymes could help address challenges like plastic pollution, mining impacts, and climate change. They also discuss the dual-use risks of AI in biodesign, emerging global regulation and leadership (including Chile and other countries), and how César's artistic background shapes his creative approach to science and public communication.
TIP761: Tesla Stock Deep Dive w/ Clay Finck
Host Clay Finck delivers a solo deep dive on Tesla, examining its evolution from a misunderstood EV startup into a trillion‑dollar company and a potential AI, robotics, and energy powerhouse. He covers disruptive innovation, Elon Musk's leadership and controversial compensation plan, Tesla's automotive and energy businesses, emerging bets like Optimus and robo‑taxis, intensifying global competition (especially from BYD), and both the bullish optionality and key bear risks around execution, governance, and valuation.
The best thing that could happen to the energy industry | Matt Tilleard
Host Elise Hu introduces a talk by renewable entrepreneur Matt Tilleard, who argues that the current clean energy shift is fundamentally different from past energy transitions because it is driven by technology instead of fuel. He explains how renewable technologies are less existential, more recyclable, more substitutable, and based on abundant materials, making control of resources and cartels far less powerful than in the fossil-fuel era. Using examples from his work in Africa and a case study in Madagascar, he outlines why the future of energy is likely to be more distributed, shared, and shaped by innovation and manufacturing rather than by those who control fuel deposits.
Sunday Pick: How Texas became America's biggest producer of wind energy | Speed & Scale
Hosts Ryan Pinchasarum and Anjali Grover tell the story of how Texas, long associated with oil and gas, became the largest producer of wind energy in the United States. Through an interview with former Texas Public Utility Commission chair Pat Wood, they trace how public input, bipartisan policymaking, and major transmission investments enabled large-scale wind deployment and cut power-sector emissions by over a quarter, despite growing political polarization around renewables.
TECH003: Elon Musk's Tesla Robotaxi, Optimus, and more w/ Cern Basher (Tech Podcast)
Host Preston Pysh interviews investor and technologist Cern Basher about Elon Musk's ecosystem of companies, focusing on Tesla's pivot away from the Dojo training supercomputer toward custom inference chips, and how this underpins autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots. They explore the economics and deflationary impact of Tesla RoboTaxis and autonomous trucking, the massive potential of the Optimus robot to transform labor and corporate balance sheets, the role of Tesla Energy in enabling abundant power, and how these automation trends connect to Bitcoin as a long-term treasury asset in an AI-driven world.
Inside India's astonishing solar revolution | Kanika Chawla
Energy expert Kanika Chawla explains how India transformed an audacious 2014 commitment to install 100 gigawatts of solar power into reality, reaching the goal by February 2025 and unlocking $90 billion in investment and 300,000 new solar jobs. She argues that India's success was driven less by ideology and more by economic logic, backed by innovations in business models, market design, and planning. Drawing on examples from India, Ghana, sub-Saharan Africa, and Kenya, she outlines how planning, innovation, and localization can help developing countries lead an irreversible global energy transition.
The emerging science of finding critical metals | Mfikeyi Makayi
Host Elise Hu introduces a TED Talk by mining innovator Mfakeyi Makai about how the world's transition to electrification and a circular economy requires a massive increase in critical metals like copper, lithium, cobalt, and nickel. Makai explains that while ore deposits are abundant, the mining industry has underinvested in exploration and still relies on outdated methods, so her team at Kobold is using AI and machine learning to model subsurface geology, quantify uncertainty, and design more efficient, safer, and environmentally sustainable mines. She illustrates how their approach guides where to explore, when to stop drilling, and how to plan operations, highlighting the Mingamba project in Zambia as a prototype for the mine of the future.
How we took on an oil giant - and won | Melinda Janki
Climate justice litigator Melinda Janke explains how she uses existing environmental and liability laws in Guyana to challenge ExxonMobil's massive offshore oil projects. She details several landmark legal victories that restricted permit durations, forced inclusion of global "scope three" emissions in impact assessments, and imposed unlimited liability backed by a parent company guarantee. The talk emphasizes that law is a powerful tool ordinary people can use to hold fossil fuel companies accountable and that the oil industry is more vulnerable than it appears.