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.
379 episodes transcribedIn this week's Frankly, Nate looks at how aggregate human behavior changes as groups scale from small tribes to large and complex societies. He uses t...
With grocery prices skyrocketing and supply chain disruptions becoming more frequent, the average person has more and more incentive to get involved i...
This week's Frankly marks a new recurring segment on this platform where Nate poses questions about our shared future: Uncomfortable Questions in Unst...
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is often seen as the problematic byproduct of modern lifestyles that threatens our planet's stability – at least within conversat...
This week's Frankly is another edition of Nate's Wide Boundary News series, where he invites listeners to view the constant churn of headlines through...
This week's Frankly unpacks humans' current identification with the label "consumer." Consumption is something much deeper and more nuanced than shopp...
Collapse has long been discussed in the public imagination as something that happens suddenly, immediately turning the world upside down. But history...
Last week there was so much news Nate recorded two Franklies – this is the second of those, which shares his reflections on a recent seminal essay pos...
This week's Frankly inaugurates a new category for videos on The Great Simplification platform, Wide Boundary News, in which Nate invites listeners to...
For many people reading this, the crises we discuss on this podcast – from ecological instability to financial collapse – often feel like a distant pr...
In this week's episode, Nate reflects on his experience with knee surgery and being a "creature in the machine" (the Superorganism). He touches on the...
Humans have shaped the world more than any other species in existence, largely due to our ability to coordinate and work together as a unit – in other...
In this week's Frankly, Nate explores the relationship between technology and wealth when viewed through a global biophysical lens. He uses the visual...
For decades, the West has outsourced its own material production to other countries, in favor of lower costs and short-term returns over more expensiv...
In this week's Frankly, Nate shares reflections on what we take for granted in life at multiple scales: from personal health to meaningful work to rel...
Dopamine: the most famous neurotransmitter that regulates pleasure, motivation, and (perhaps most importantly) addiction. When examining why our soci...
In this week's Frankly, Nate takes thermodynamics out of the physics classroom, utilizing its principles to explain the invisible forces behind growth...
In this week's episode, Nate reflects on four years(!) of the podcast by answering listener-submitted questions, which cover a broad range of topics r...
In this week's episode, Nate unpacks the pervasive behavioral pull of sunk cost as a force shaping our material reality, identities, and collective ex...
While current conversations about global heating tend to center around a few well-established pieces of science, we don't often hear about the scienti...
