Optionality Collapse: We're Investing in a Future That Won't Exist with Indy Johar

Traditional financial management tells us that, if we invest right, we'll be able to retire and sink into a future of comfort and stability – and even pass on your wealth to your children and grandchildren. But this vision is built on an anomalous period of stability in which climate, energy resources, and labor markets were all predictable. As ecological breakdown, resource conflict, and AI-driven labor disruption begin to feed into one another, that predictability is slipping away. How can we better position hundreds of trillions of dollars in claims on the future to withstand uncertainty in the increasingly volatile world ahead?

In this episode, Nate welcomes back Indy Johar, co-founder of Dark Matter Labs, for an exploration of how coupled systemic risks are reshaping capital, institutions, and what it means to invest for the future. Indy explains why most financial forecasting – built on linear, siloed models – misses the compounding, coupled crises we will have to face, and argues that "civilizational optionality" is diminishing, threatening the value of our claims on the future (money). Indy presents Expanding Civilizational Optionality (xCO), the initiative he is building at Dark Matter Labs, as a way to protect these claims, while also increasing the ability of societies to adapt, mitigate, and respond to crises from various directions. xCO combines a capital platform that lets money protect the futures it depends on, an option foundry that helps the people exposed to those risks build the demand and capability to act on them, and a learning and organizing infrastructure. Indy and Nate also discuss their deeper philosophies about humanity, emphasizing doubt and humility as critical mentalities for anyone attempting to navigate a future that will look very different from the past.

How much money is currently being saved for a future that isn't even available to buy? How might a "civilizational Sharpe ratio" – one that weighs returns against systemic volatility – change the way wealth is allocated, and broaden how we measure the capital returns? And if moments of crisis are when cultural narratives shift, what can each of us do now to cultivate the ideas, relationships, and courage needed to meet them?

(Conversation recorded on September 23rd, 2026)

About Indy Johar:

Indy Johar is the co-founder of Dark Matter Labs, where he is currently building Expanding Civilizational Optionality (xCO). He is a professor at RMIT University, and the Exe