The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens

Nate Hagens

The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens

Nate Hagens

The Great Simplification is a podcast that explores the systems science underpinning the human predicament. Through conversations with experts and leaders hosted by Dr. Nate Hagens, we explore topics spanning ecology, economics, energy, geopolitics, human behavior, and monetary/financial systems. Our goal is to provide a simple educational resource for the complex energetic, physical, and social constraints ahead, and to inspire people to play a role in our collective future. Ultimately, we aim to normalize these conversations and, in doing so, change the initial conditions of future events.

1 DAYS AGO

Protect the Irreversible: What Matters Most in an Uncertain Future? | How to Think About the Future Pt 6, Frankly 151

This week's video is the sixth part in Nate's ongoing series, How to Think About the Future. Today, Nate turns from describing possible futures to exploring how we can make decisions when certainty is impossible. He introduces a framework for planning unde...

3 DAYS AGO

It's Not Just Hormuz: The Chokepoints Changing Global Shipping Forever with Sal Mercogliano

Roughly a fifth of the world's oil and more than a tenth of all global trade has been navigating a literal minefield, a wary insurance industry, and whipsawing geopolitics since late February of this year. But looking beyond the Strait of Hormuz closure it...

Jul 10

Foundations Before Outcomes: The Future Beneath Your Feet | How to Think About the Future Pt 5, Frankly 150

Today, in Part 5 of the "How to Think About the Future" series, Nate scales his exploration of civilizational futures down to the future of a single human life and analyzes how the same patterns that shape economies, power, geopolitics, and Earth systems t...

Jul 08

Can Money Serve Life? How to Fund Communities Doing the Real Work with Matthew Monahan

Every year, hundreds of billions of dollars flow through global philanthropy, yet only a small fraction reaches environmental, climate, and nature-related causes. Meanwhile, in small towns and rural communities around the world, a hidden throughline of reg...

Jul 02

A Legacy Worth Celebrating? Reflecting on 250 Years of the American Experiment | Frankly 149

As America marks its 250th birthday, Nate takes a moment to step outside of the celebrations to seek out a wider boundary perspective on this week's holiday. He poses the question of whether the United States has truly matured as a nation over two and a ha...

Jun 26

Mordor to the Long Repair: How Might Daily Life Feel in the Next Decades? | How to Think About the Future Part 4, Frankly 148

This week, Nate continues his "How to Think About the Future" series, where he invites listeners to imagine what it's like to live in different versions of the reality that lies ahead. In today's edition, Nate builds upon the frameworks outlined in part th...

Jun 24

We Weren't Expecting This: What Does a Super El Niño Mean For the Climate? with Tad Patzek

This year's projected Super El Niño forming in the Pacific could become one of the strongest climate oscillations in over a century. As regions prepare for the effects, and continue to adapt to extreme heat waves, intensifying storms, accelerating ice loss...

Jun 19

How to Play 5D Chess: It's Not What You Think | Frankly 147

In this week's Frankly, Nate explores a pattern of thinking that permeates so many of our conversations: we often decide what we think before we've fully heard what's being said. Using the metaphor of a chessboard, he invites listeners to examine how we pr...

Jun 17

No More Dystopian Stories: How to See a Future Worth Living In with Rob Hopkins

Self-fulfilling prophecies; manifestations; the Oedipus Effect: Humanity has long had an intuition that the stories we tell ourselves the most are often the stories we make come true. Science has found more and more evidence to back this up, through both h...

Jun 16

The Ultimate Alternative: Are You Okay With Nuclear Warfare? | Frankly 146

This week's Frankly is another in Nate's recurring series Uncomfortable Questions for Unsettled Times, in which he poses questions about our shared future. Today, he uses headlines regarding a potential ceasefire deal between the U.S. and Iran to confront ...

Jun 12

The U.S. Can't Back Down: The Strait of Hormuz Closure Is Messier Than You Think with Michael Every

This episode was recorded Tuesday, June 9th, before the current 'deal' was floated. Given world events, we decided to post this episode immediately as a special release, and deal or not, this conversation is an excellent overview of the issues and stakes o...

Jun 10

Why 'Community' Fails: Everyone Wants a Village, Nobody Wants to Be a Villager with Nora Bateson, Jonathan Goldsmith & Lucas Jackson | RR 26

Many of us lack meaningful community in our lives, either from a complete absence of relationships or simply the sense of disconnection from those around us. In response, a growing number of people attempt to cultivate community based on shared values and ...

Jun 05

AI Ready

How to Think About the Future (Part 3): Uphill Futures in a Downhill World | Frankly 145

This week's Frankly is part three of the series How to Think About the Future. Today, Nate builds a framework for understanding the pathways that connect today's choices to tomorrow's realities. Drawing from biology, ecology, history, and systems thinking,...

Jun 03

The Missing Half of Climate Change: Why Our Planet is at 50% Capacity and How to Get it Back with Brett KenCairn

The Dust Bowl of the 1930s is one of the worst ecological disasters in American history. Across the great plains, roughly 2.5 million people left the region over the decade, amid severe crop failures, livestock losses and widespread hunger. Caused by droug...

Jun 01

Casting Call for a Future Frankly

Link to submit: https://senja.io/p/the-great-simplification/r/share-your-technology This week, Nate is putting out a call to listeners of this platform to share stories from the work they're doing on the ground, within their own communities and connection...

May 29

A Word I Can't Seem to Understand: Non-Duality and Our Living World | Frankly 144

In this week's Frankly, Nate discusses his long-running attempt to understand non-duality, and why this concept has remained just out of his grasp despite years of conversations with teachers, thinkers, and podcast guests. He begins with a personal reflect...

May 27

Darkness Deficit Disorder: How Constant Stimulation Has Shaped our Consumption with Andrew Holecek

Most responses to civilizational crises focus outward – policy levers, energy systems, geopolitical actors, and material flows – with little focus on how the humans inside these systems might change and grow in parallel. At the same time, the minds that bu...

May 22

A Guide to Staying Human (Part 3): Why Mindfulness Matters When the World Is Breaking Down

In this week's Frankly, Nate offers the third episode in his series on staying human, this time focused on presence. Nate shares a personal reflection on presence, and its importance in a reality where we are constantly living in anticipation of the future...

May 20

Learning in a Way that Actually Matters: Why Standardized Testing Contributed to the Metacrisis – and How to Fix It with Theo Dawson & Zak Stein | RR 25

Over the past century, standardized testing evolved from a wartime sorting tool into the defining feature of how we measure children's worth and potential, fundamentally altering the mental health and learning outcomes of an entire generation. Now, as glob...

May 15

A Guide to Staying Human (Part 2): Navigating Dread and Carrying the Weight of Tomorrow | Frankly 142

In this week's Frankly, Nate offers the second episode in his series on staying human, this time focused on dread. Opening with a personal reflection on his own relationship to dread, Nate describes how the chronic anticipation of collapse affects the huma...