The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens - Iran, U.S., and the Rest: The Unavoidable Pig in the Python | Frankly 133

Episode Date: March 27, 2026

In this episode, Nate offers a personal reflection on the unfolding geopolitical tensions surrounding the Strait of Hormuz, beginning with an examination of how disruptions to fossil fuel flows propagate through the global economy, but with a time lag. He points out how many of the world's countries rely heavily on imported fossil fuels, as well as the potential impact on California's already high gas prices. Nate also contrasts the relative insulation of those in the United States with the far greater exposure of those living in Asia, Europe, and Africa, outlining how second- and third-order effects are already emerging in the form of conservation measures, rationing, and shifting daily behaviors. Alongside this structural analysis, Nate turns to the lived experiences of people navigating changing conditions in real time. He shares stories from listeners on this platform, highlighting how proximity and awareness shape the ways in which individuals and communities respond to the more-than-human predicament. Nate concludes by outlining the biophysical phase shift that is quickly emerging, in which financial systems, material realities, and human expectations begin to diverge and require new forms of adaptation at all scales. How might the impacts of current conflicts ripple into your own community, and on what timeline? Where might we shift our behaviors, mindsets, priorities, or attention to better respond as systemic changes continue to unfold? Have you considered time as one of our fastest-depleting resources? (Recorded March 25th, 2025)   Show Notes and More   Watch this video episode on YouTube   Want to learn the broad overview of The Great Simplification in 30 minutes? Watch our Animated Movie.   ---   Support The Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future   Join our Substack newsletter   Join our Hylo channel and connect with other listeners  

Hello to you all. I'm an analyst and a teacher and recently a podcaster, but I'm also a brother, a son, a partner, a friend, a human. And that means not only do you get my thinking brain on this platform, but at times like today, also what I feel. in my body. Things in Iran and the Middle East, every little aspect of that I could talk for 20 minutes about the second, third and endth order effects of what's ahead. And I may do that in coming weeks because I still think a lot of people are unaware of the repercussions of all this.

But today, what can I say? say to you all now, that would be helpful to our situation. Helpful to your families and friends, wherever you are. Again, only 40% of our viewers are in the USA. Helpful to the web of life. Helpful to the future, I don't know. Because we are, as I've said before, in a predicament, not a problem. A problem has solutions. And a predicament, merely has pathways that are better, even if only slightly better than other pathways. And I think the default pathway right now is pretty dark. And even if there is a ceasefire in coming days, which I dearly hope, the pig in the

Python that is the impact of the missing atoms and jewels in the global supply chain is coming. ahead of us. And it affects way more than Israel and the USA who initiated this situation. The USA may be mostly energy independent, though the oil situation is incredibly muddy, and we actually still are an overall net oil importer, especially California, which is an energy island, and unless things change rapidly, is going to be facing $10 gas this summer because they don't have incoming pipelines and a lot of their refined products come from South Korea, Asia. But the global picture is starkly different for this situation than the United States. Three quarters of the world population lives in countries that are net imports of fossil fuels.

There are over 50 countries that import over half of their energy as fossil fuels. And a fifth of global GDP comes from countries where fossil fuel imports provide over two-thirds of their energy. Countries like Germany and Japan and Italy, I think Japan gets almost three quarters of its oil through the Strait of Hormuz. As I've said before, we are at a species-level transition. and if we somehow step up, it could be a species level right of passage. And the more than human predicament is also more than a USA predicament. Just take some time to look at already the impacts this is having. The Philippines just declared national emergency to conserve fuel, Bangladesh,

and I believe Thailand shut all public and private universities. to reduce electricity and fuel consumption. Other countries in Asia, like Thailand, are ordering government and civil servants to take the stairs instead of elevators to conserve electricity. South Korea is advising their population to take shorter showers and to charge their phones during the day to conserve electricity. And many African countries have begun rationing fuel. So the second order effects of this war are now already being felt three weeks on, and I can only imagine the third and fourth and endth order effects are going to change our world, not for a few weeks, but likely forever, because we're not going back to January 26.

What can I say to you, the community here that has been following the energy, political, financial species level system story that we've been exploring together on this channel for a long time. Other than the future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed. And it's now here for many more people and will soon be here for many more. I have a lot of international friends. I talked to a listener from Lebanon on Monday whose farm of ancient olive trees was bombed and destroyed by Israel. And she fortunately has a Mahamudra meditation practice.

That's where I met her to ground with. And she told me she is urgently advising as many of her peers in the world to adopt such a practice immediately and urgently. Because it's the only way that she sees to be able to ground and center with these types of events unfolding. She lives in Beirut. I talked to a viewer last night from Bali in Indonesia who lives overlooking the rice fields and is so grateful for the community he lives in with Indonesian locals and old men sitting on their porches and no one following the news, but they work on simple things and telling stories and sharing wisdom with younger people and similar stories that I've heard in the last week or two.

And these stories are in sharp contrast to some of my American friends or gaming the next market moves or watching the college basketball tournament brackets. And though many do think the war is terrible and a bad idea, for many living in the U.S., it's still a little bit like a distant video game and not something. yet that acutely touches their lives. My Wall Street friends still have a few of those, still naively believe that the financial markets dictate, steer our reality. I think that is historically and in the very short run, something like 90% true. George Soros called this the reflexivity property of the market. markets, but as the atoms and jewels and handshakes in the world recede and reassemble, that correlation

between finance and reality doesn't just shrink. It probably reverses and is a negative correlation. The biophysical phase shift I've referred to it in the past. And the USA and the Petrodollars sit atop this global biophysical pyramid. This war is going to touch all of our lives. We are not only energy blind. We are many of us consumption blind. We don't emotionally feel that the average American consumes over 150 times the physical goods and service as the average human did two centuries ago.

We take it for granted. We've taken peace for granted. We've taken the international respect of our nation for granted. We've taken the six continent just in time supply chain for granted. We've taken the ecological function of the Holocene for granted. We have many of us taken it all for granted. So I didn't have time to do a well-corigraph thought out, frankly, and I don't know what to say to you on the eve of,

what may be a new escalation in this war, or on the eve of meaningful steps towards peace. There's certainly nothing I could say to you that would be both honest and also make you feel better other than maybe that you are not alone. We are not alone. And there are many humans in many countries around the world that are waking up to our systemic situation and want to contribute to better futures than this. the default. And that's the work. And it's Herculian and Sisyphean and other Greek or non-Greek labels. I don't know which. But this channel exists as a sandbox to explore and understand

our situations and pathways forward. And there is a lot of work to do. And in the same way that I was happy, happy in quotes, that the Epstein files were released, or at least part of them, it wakes us up to what's actually happening and this war and the effects downstream from it are waking more people up to what is happening. And it changes the potential of a different, it's going to sound woo consciousness, coupled with a biophysical awareness. and it may be changing the initial conditions of the future. Well, it definitely is, but it may be changing them in positive ways that we don't yet understand.

I dearly hope that there is a de-escalation coming because not only will that reduce suffering and hardship around the world, but because we need more time to prepare for the physical, mental, and I dare say spiritual, changes that are going to be needed. Last week, I presented a draft framework for a response and I've already updated it quite a bit and we'll be sharing more about that in the near future. I think time is now perhaps our most valuable asset. So take some time this weekend to think about your own time and how you're using it and how you would like to be using it.

We are all alive at this simultaneously wondrous and perilous time on planet Earth. And I deeply value this community on the Great Simplification more soon. Hope you're all well.