The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens

7 Rungs of a Runaway System: How Civilization Descended Into Crisis

In this week's Frankly Nate unfurls a metaphorical "ladder" that traces the systems-oriented forces shaping the economic Superorganism. He outlines seven rungs that trick

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 wealt

Humanity's Icarus Moment: The Wings, the Sea, and the Sun of AI | Frankly 161

This week Nate examines artificial intelligence through the metaphor of Icarus, asking what risks arise when a civilization injects trillions of cognitive workers into a

A World-Changing Event: We're Not Going Back to January 2026 with Art Berman

Almost eight months after the Iran war first rattled global energy markets, the global system has proven surprisingly adaptable, even as prices continue to rise and produ

Climate Uncertainty: The Coolest Year for the Rest of Our Lives? with Zeke Hausfather

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, they could push gl

A State of the World Address: The Climate Speech We'll Probably Never Hear | Frankly 160

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 global heating – which a

The Escalation Trap: Is America's Strategy in Iran Backfiring?

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 world's remaining fossil

The Real Work: Four Things We Can't Afford to Get Wrong | Frankly 159

This week, Nate zooms out from recent headlines about climbing diesel prices, a thinning U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and inflationary bond markets to ask the deeper

Radical Simplicity: The Opportunities of a World in Collapse with Sarah Wilson

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 the planet. Yet the

The Human Predicament: What Would Change My Mind? | Frankly 158

This week's Frankly begins with a deceptively simple question Nate was asked in conversation: what would change his mind about The Great Simplification thesis? Nate uses

Banning Superintelligence: Are We Building Humanity's Replacement? with Roman Yampolskiy

The world's leading AI companies tell us that superintelligence has a strong chance of leading to human extinction, while also promising that they will be able to control

Turning the Dials Back on Psychopathy: Decent People, Indecent System | Frankly 157

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 themselves have beco

The Collapse of Our Mythology: Can Humanity Choose What's Next? with Charles Eisenstein

In this episode, Nate welcomes author and philosopher, Charles Eisenstein, for a long-requested conversation on the mythologies underneath civilization. For over two deca

Just Stop Oil!?: The Economic Foundation We Ignore | Frankly Archives 39 (2023)

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 today: what is the ro

The Psychopathic Selection Hypothesis: The Rules of the Game Keep Us Trapped with Greg Elliott | TGS 231

Modern companies, markets, and institutions routinely behave in ways that would be diagnosed as pathological in a person: emotional detachment, strategic deception, grand

An Antidote to Despair: What Dogs Reveal About the Metacrisis | Frankly 156

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 and humans. While dogs

Material World: The Key Resources Underpinning Modern Economies with Ed Conway | Archive TGS 127

Current geopolitical events continue to expose just how complex and fragile our global economic system is. As such, The Great Simplification team is re-releasing this epi

The Villains We Choose and the Work They Give Us | Frankly 155

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 question Nate explo

Your Anxiety Is Normal: A New Psychology for a World in Crisis with Richard Schwartz & Steffi Bednarek

Most of us were taught to treat emotions like distress, numbness, and burnout as private failings to manage and move past, rather than normal responses to living within a

Unordinary Interventions: How to Plant Seeds for a Better Future | Frankly 154

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 to actually change