The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens

Nate Hagens
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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. قبل يوم واحد

    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, grandiosity, and the treatment of people, animals, and ecosystems as means to an end. Yet, most of the individuals who make up these organizations don't naturally hold these traits and behaviors themselves. So, why does exploitation keep winning at scale, even when most people are decent, cooperative, and want the same basic things?   In this episode, Nate is joined by Greg Elliott, a systems theorist and author of the Psychopathic Selection Hypothesis (PSH), to unpack why our institutions themselves have become so psychopathic, and how that affects the behavior of the average human. Drawing on evolutionary game theory, anthropology, and the neuroscience of psychopathy, Greg argues that cooperation is evolutionarily stable in small tribal systems, but that modern systems where anonymity and abstraction make exploitative, instrumental strategies more profitable. He walks through how this dynamic produces what he calls "entrapment games," in which pro-social people become behaviorally locked into relationships, jobs, and systems where leaving costs more than staying.  All of this builds toward the core of Greg's theory: winning, instrumental strategies get crystallized into the operating logic of institutions themselves and reproduced by anyone who plays the game, whether or not they are personally psychopathic. While Greg doesn't see any easy answers, he does offer a set of possible leverage points: shortening feedback loops, increasing transparency and accountability, and rebuilding smaller, reciprocal communities. If domination isn't an aberration but a predictable output of the game board we've built, what does that mean for how we try to fix it? Is it possible for an entire civilization to behave psychopathically even when the vast majority of the individual people inside it are empathetic and pro-social? And if the ultimate goal is to steer toward a more pro-social system, is there a way to 'win the game' and re-write the rules without also resorting to psychopathic strategies and behaviors? (Conversation recorded on August 13th, 2026)   About Greg Elliott: Greg is a Siemens solutions Consultant specializing in data science and AI, as well as the Co-Founder of Orbyfy. His research and writing of his book, Psychopathic Selection Hypothesis: From Natural Selection to Symbolic Selection, Scale, Abstraction, and Institutional Collapse, led him to found The Institute for Symbolic Selection, an interdisciplinary research program investigating how human-created symbolic systems shape behavior, institutions, and the long-term evolution of civilization.    New to game theory? Here's a short primer:  Game theory is the study of how people make decisions when the outcome depends on what everyone else decides too, often with the potential for mutual gain or mutual harm. Its most famous illustration is the Prisoner's Dilemma: two people, each individually better off betraying the other, who both end up worse off when they do.   For a deeper understanding, check out these links: - Game Theory video explainer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ecJ_fDpWTg  - Game Theory article explainer: https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/GameTheory.html  - Prisoner's Dilemma video explainer: https://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-to-outsmart-the-prisoner-s-dilemma-lucas-husted    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

  2. قبل ٦ أيام

    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 have been human companions for thousands of years, the modern version of "man's best friend" is a remarkably recent product of abundant energy, specialized breeding, industrial food systems, and increasingly sophisticated veterinary care. With the global dog population nearing one billion, Nate addresses the uncomfortable question of what might happen to these beloved animals as the metacrisis continues to unfold. Ultimately, sitting in an emergency clinic and confronting the possibility of losing his pet led Nate to larger reflections on grief, care, and the strange emotional power animals can have over us. In a world increasingly shaped by AI, surveillance, economic instability, and existential risk, he realized that the unconditional love of a puppy perhaps represents the exact opposite - something profoundly simple and real. For Nate, that may make dogs one of humanity's greatest "inventions" and one of the greatest antidotes to the grief of our modern world. How has the modern dog become a reflection of the energy abundance and complexity of human civilization? Why can something as simple as spending time with a dog feel like an antidote to the complexities of modern life? And what happens to dogs, and our relationships with them, if the economic abundance that supports modern pet ownership begins to disappear? (Recorded August 17th, 2026)   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

  3. ١٩ أغسطس

    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 episode with Ed Conway, which covers the deceptively critical materials that continue to underpin everything from the phone in your hand to the house that you live in.  In contrast to 'The Great Simplification', some might call the events of the last few hundred years a 'Great Complexification' in terms of relationships, governance, supply chains, and many other human activities. This conversation with economics journalist Ed Conway focuses on the six essential resources that underpin our modern economies –  sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium - and dives into the (often unseen) environmental and human costs of extracting them, as well as the surprisingly fragile global supply chains they fuel. In order to understand what possibilities – and dangers – may await us in the future, we need to understand the realities and constraints of the present, as well as the failure points of the past.  What does it take to mine, refine, and transform the materials that are foundational to the world around us – which many of us now take for granted? How can we ensure the stability of global supply chains, and could we predict potential disruptions and chokepoints before they arise? If we understood the intricate web of complexity, energy, and resources that go into everything we consume, would it change our expectations for how much we need in order to live a good and fulfilling life? (Conversation originally released June 12th, 2024 | Recorded on May 7th, 2024)   About Ed Conway: Ed Conway is the economics and data editor at Sky News, covering major UK and international economics, business and political stories. He has broken a series of exclusive reports on the banking and financial crisis. He is also economics columnist for The Times, and has been one of the longest-running economics editors in UK journalism, having started covering the sector in 2003. Prior to joining Sky, he was economics editor of The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph, where he was also a weekly op-ed columnist, and economics correspondent at the Daily Mail.  Ed is the author of the book on Bretton Woods, The Summit: The Biggest Battle Of The Second World War – Fought Behind Closed Doors and an economics guidebook, 50 Economics Ideas You Really Need to Know. His 2024 book Material World, was nominated as one of the Financial Times Book of the Year. Ed is a governor of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research, and has lectured on the international monetary system at the London School of Economics, the US Treasury and many other forums.   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

  4. ١٤ أغسطس

    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 explores in this week's Frankly, which unpacks eight different lenses through which people understand the current more-than-human predicament. Each of these perspectives identifies a different source of the problem and offers a different path toward action, but what looks like an obvious solution from one perspective can look irrelevant, or even dangerous, from another. At the center of this episode, Nate explains why these perspectives often have such a grip on us and on the narrative of our lives. To give up one of these lenses is not just to revise an opinion, but to loosen your grip on the story that made the world somewhat coherent in the first place. That kind of loss is disorienting, even when you can see the limits of the story that you're holding. Nate emphasizes that the task at hand is not to discard any of these views in favor of one single "correct" view, but to hold them in relation to one another and recognize their truths while also acknowledging the deeper constraints of ecological overshoot and thermodynamics that sit beneath it all. What judgments could be avoided when you recognize that the person you disagree with is looking at the same reality through a fundamentally different lens? Why exactly is it so hard to lose the narrative we hold as central to our worldview? And can we find solutions that remain useful, even when people disagree about the diagnosis? (Recorded August 10th, 2026)   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

  5. ١٢ أغسطس

    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 world full of crises. The unintended result is a distrust in our own bodies and mind, further leading to more confusion about what is 'normal.' One framework offers a potential path to living in harmony with all of the mind's distinct parts, breaking the defensive and counterproductive loops we tend to get stuck in. What sort of systemic ripples might become possible if we stop trying to smother uncomfortable parts of ourselves, and begin embracing them as critical pieces of our own mental ecologies? In this episode, Nate is joined by Dr. Richard C. Schwartz, the therapist who developed Internal Family Systems (IFS), and Steffi Bednarek, a climate psychologist applying that same model to organizations, governments, and culture at large. Dick walks through the origins of IFS, which describes the mind as naturally made up of "parts" – protectors and exiles – with their own histories, fears, and roles, which are all held by an underlying "Self." Steffi extends the model outward to show how institutions and even entire countries can be read as systems of exiles and protectors, and shares how she uses IFS with governments, financial institutions, and wealth holders to defuse shame and effectively guide toward pro-social behavioral change. Together, they explore why healing our relationship to our own most despised parts may be inseparable from healing our relationship to the rest of the living world. How can looking inward to our own thought processes and patterns help us better understand and relate to others, especially those whose behavior we find hardest to accept? As we continue through challenging times, how can we balance critical physical and policy work with the internal work of healing our relationship to the mental parts we shy away from? And would our decisions and actions change if more and more humans began to lead from curiosity and compassion, instead of fear, and could that be enough to shift the larger system? (Conversation recorded on August 5th, 2026)   About Richard C. Schwartz: Richard C. Schwartz, PhD, is the creator of Internal Family Systems, a highly effective, therapeutic model with a growing evidence base, that de-pathologizes the multi-part personality. Richard is also the Founder of the IFS Institute that primarily offers training for professionals. He is currently a Teaching Associate in Psychiatry, at Cambridge Health Alliance, a Harvard Medical School teaching affiliate. Richard has authored or co-authored more than ten books on Internal Family Systems and related topics, including No Bad Parts and Internal Family Systems Therapy. He lives near Chicago with his wife Jeanne, Vice President of the IFS Institute, close to his three daughters and six grandchildren.   About Steffi Bednarek: Steffi Bednarek is a gestalt psychotherapist, trauma therapist, and climate psychologist. Her work explores the interface between climate change and mental health. With twenty-five years of experience in depth psychology, complexity thinking, climate psychology, and grief tending, Bednarek has worked for national governments and global institutions to prepare leaders and organizations for the psychological dimension of climate change in decision-making processes. Her work has been featured in the Huffington Post, BBC, David Milliband's "Reasons to be cheerful" podcast and numerous international publications. She is the co-founder of "Explorations into Climate Psychology" journal and an associate member of the American Psychological Association's climate change group.   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

  6. ٧ أغسطس

    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 what's coming, rather than just prepare for it. He touches on why the metacrisis is better understood as a predicament to be continually shaped, rather than as a problem with a single solution – calling for a shift in mindset in order to navigate the uncertainty ahead. In complex systems such as ours, even seemingly modest differences in initial conditions can lead to wildly different outcomes down the road, meaning that what each of us chooses to do today shifts what becomes possible in the decades ahead. With that framing, Nate offers a list of small, specific, and slightly unordinary interventions that serve to challenge the forces driving the metacrisis. He explores methods like reducing dependence on constant stimulation, cultivating humanity and humility, and finding our own version of what is "enough." Along the way, he also shares how he sees resilience growing through shared effort, meaningful relationships, and a renewed sense of responsibility for the more-than-human world. None of these things will solve our predicament on their own. But if millions choose to start living differently in the immediate present, the forces shaping our future might just start to shift. How can redefining success, consumption, and community make us less vulnerable to today's systemic challenges? Why does "practicing loss" help change the way we respond to disruptions? And what if the most meaningful response to the world's biggest challenges isn't a sweeping political movement or a technological breakthrough, but a collection of ordinary actions practiced consistently over time? (Recorded August 2nd, 2026)   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

  7. ٥ أغسطس

    The Optimization Trap: Why Too Much Efficiency Makes Us Fragile with Olivier Hamant

    For decades, modern civilization has treated efficiency as an unquestioned good: the leaner, faster, and more optimized anything is – from supply chains to your morning routine – the better. But emerging systems science argues that this obsession with performance is actually making humanity more brittle. What if the over-optimization baked into our economies, our agriculture, our institutions, and even our own bodies is at the root of our shared predicament, and how can nature's intelligence show us a different way? In this episode, Nate is joined by biologist and biophysicist Olivier Hamant to explore why living systems prioritize robustness over performance, and what that means for a civilization built almost entirely in the opposite direction. Olivier distinguishes performance (efficacy plus efficiency) from robustness (the capacity to remain stable and viable despite fluctuation), and he points out that nature rarely selects for the most efficient organism; it selects for the most adaptable one. Together, Nate and Olivier also trace how cheap, abundant energy allowed human societies to substitute the "safety net" of resource abundance for the safety net that living systems actually rely on: diversity, redundancy, and cooperation. As the twenty-first century moves from an era of stable averages into an era of volatility and standard deviation, Olivier argues that the path forward likely isn't degrowth or continued growth, but a third way: economies and institutions designed to be robust and adaptable to risk, rather than avoid it.  What wisdom have we forgotten for the sake of maximizing material output and efficiency? How has our search for optimization affected our quality of life, and what do we risk by continuing down this same path? Most importantly, could balancing our focus on performance and robustness be the key to reframing our relationship with the entire Earth, bringing more stability, rest, and meaning to our lives?  (Conversation recorded on July 28th, 2026)   About Olivier Hamant: Olivier Hamant is a French biologist and biophysicist whose work combines plant science and civilizational thought. He serves as Director of Research at the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment, teaches at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, and directs the Institut Michel Serres – an interdisciplinary institute focused on ecological transition.  Hamant's work is centralized around the idea that modern civilization has confused "performance" with "fitness" by prizing efficiency/optimization/specialization/maximum output. This is in direct contrast to most living systems, which rarely optimize for these characteristics – instead, living systems survive because they are robust, or able to maintain their identity despite unpredictable disturbances.    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

  8. ٣١ يوليو

    When Truth Becomes Hazardous: Navigating Information Through the Metacrisis | Frankly 153

    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 sharing true information with a global audience. Building on his earlier episode, "The Limits to Podcasting," where he first described a "triple information hazard," Nate now outlines twelve distinct risks that emerge when honest insights about the more-than-human predicament are broadcast at scale. Drawing on philosopher Nick Bostrom's concept of an "information hazard," he explains why certain ideas become dangerous precisely because they are true, and why the era of AI raises the stakes, as everything said publicly is now ingested as training data and metabolized by the very superorganism he describes.   Some of these hazards land on the speaker, some benefit the powerful, and some fall on the audience itself. Nate reflects on the dangers of despair and false reassurance, the "half map" problem of naming risks without corresponding strategies, and the private burden of weighing what can and cannot be said. Yet he is clear that these hazards argue for care rather than silence: attention to timing, context, scale, and the trust of the people listening. He closes by suggesting that truths that become hazardous when shouted into a global microphone can become benign, even healing, when shared around a kitchen table, and that growing trust and community at human scale may be the deepest response to all twelve.   When does sharing the truth create new risks rather than reducing existing ones? How do we balance openness with the responsibility to protect people, strategies, and emerging possibilities? And what does honest communication look like in an era when every word can be amplified, weaponized, or metabolized by machines?   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

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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.

المعلومات

  • صناع العمل
    Nate Hagens
  • سنوات النشاط
    ٢٠٢٢ - ٢٠٢٦
  • الحلقات
    ٤١٩
  • التقييم
    ملائم
  • حقوق النشر
    © Nate Hagens, 2025
  • موقع البرنامج على الويب
    The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens

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