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.
428 episodes transcribedFour months after the Iran war first rattled global energy markets, the global system has proven surprisingly adaptable, even as prices continue to ri...
The El Niño now building in the tropical Pacific is unlike anything in the historical record, and it's arriving on top of decades of warming. Together...
On the heels of Climate Week, Nate poses a thought experiment: What would a world leader's speech sound like if the difficult truths underpinning glob...
The United States, a global superpower for the last several decades, is now locked into a battle for control over the region with the bulk of the worl...
This week, Nate zooms out from recent headlines about climbing diesel prices, a thinning U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and inflationary bond marke...
For years, the climate movement ran on the promise that, if we all rally hard enough, we could have it all: continue with our current system and save...
This week's Frankly begins with a deceptively simple question Nate was asked in conversation: what would change his mind about The Great Simplificatio...
The world's leading AI companies tell us that superintelligence has a strong chance of leading to human extinction, while also promising that they wil...
This week's Frankly builds on Nate's recent conversation with systems theorist Greg Elliott, who came on the platform to discuss why our institutions...
In this episode, Nate welcomes author and philosopher, Charles Eisenstein, for a long-requested conversation on the mythologies underneath civilizatio...
This week's Frankly is an episode from summer of 2023, which is being re-released to provide context for one of the most important questions we face t...
Modern companies, markets, and institutions routinely behave in ways that would be diagnosed as pathological in a person: emotional detachment, strate...
This week, Nate turns a late-night emergency vet visit for one of his dogs into a broader reflection on the extraordinary relationship between dogs an...
Current geopolitical events continue to expose just how complex and fragile our global economic system is. As such, The Great Simplification team is r...
How can humans – at least those with access to the internet – ingest the same facts and data, yet arrive at radically different worldviews? That's the...
Most of us were taught to treat emotions like distress, numbness, and burnout as private failings to manage and move past, rather than normal response...
What can one person actually do about the metacrisis? In this week's Frankly, Nate explicitly outlines just a few of the countless actions we can take...
For decades, modern civilization has treated efficiency as an unquestioned good: the leaner, faster, and more optimized anything is – from supply chai...
This week, Nate takes on a tension he has been navigating for years, at the heart of communicating about the metacrisis: the hazards that arise from s...
For three decades, most of Wall Street has treated energy and commodities as a rounding error, or as a small slice of the portfolio rather than the ph...
