The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens

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 related to The Great Simplification. He invites subscribers to investigate how they navigate a complex and ever-changing world, while avoiding overly prescriptive solutions that brush aside personal agency and the inherent uncertainty that exists in our world. Whether it's outlining his own evolving theory of change or emphasizing the importance of self-care and psychological grounding, Nate speaks to the epistemological resilience that we will increasingly need to cultivate in the face of a changing world. He shares deeper questions that have emerged through decades of research and conversations, his own hopes and concerns for the future, and even an updated vision for this podcast going into the new year – all to help synthesize his experience creating this media space as a nexus for the vast, interdisciplinary, and essential knowledge that demystifies the human predicament. Why do small points of disagreement so often overshadow what we have in common? How do we stay grounded and connected to community as disagreement and fear grow louder? And, what does meaningful change look like when traditional levers like policy, technology, and growth seem insufficient?   About Nate Hagens: Dr. Nate Hagens is the Executive Director of The Institute for the Study of Energy & Our Future (ISEOF), an organization focused on educating and preparing society for the coming cultural transition. Formerly in the finance industry at Lehman Brothers and Salomon Brothers, in 2003 Nate shifted his focus to the interrelationships between energy, ecology, economics & human behavior and their subsequent implications for human futures.  He has co-authored the books Reality Blind - Integrating the Systems Science Underpinning Our Collective Futures - Vol 1 and The Bottlenecks of the 21st Century and has appeared on PBS, BBC, ABC and NPR, and lectures around the world. Nate holds a Master's Degree in Finance with Honors from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in Natural Resources from the University of Vermont. He lives on a small farm in Wisconsin with his pack of rescue dogs, as well as horses, chickens, and ducks. (Recorded on December 10, 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  

In this week's episode, Nate unpacks the pervasive behavioral pull of sunk cost as a force shaping our material reality, identities, and collective expectations about the future. Past investments – in careers, possessions, and cultural narratives – lock us into patterns of defending what might no longer actually serve us. This tendency becomes more and more relevant as the world shifts in ways that demand adaptability rather than stagnancy. Deep loyalty to former choices, even as we absorb new information about our lived environments, can limit our ability to make wiser, more future-oriented decisions. By widening the sunk cost lens beyond solely economic terms, Nate reveals how previous, culturally-inherited attachments influence everything from suburban infrastructure to household decision-making. Loosening the grip of sunk cost on our society may require careful pruning of our current lifestyles so that we may regain agency to build up the skills required to flourish in an uncertain future. Which parts of your own life feel tethered more to past effort than present and future value? How might the built environment around you shape what feels necessary in your life? And, what new "status stories" could be told to help your community transition towards a more resilient future?   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

While current conversations about global heating tend to center around a few well-established pieces of science, we don't often hear about the scientists and leaders working at the frontier of what is still unknown about Earth's systems. This includes unpredictable tipping points and cascading effects of our rapidly changing climate, as well as the unconventional adaptation strategies that might help us maintain a stable planet. What is the newest climate science being researched right now, and what areas are we still needing to explore as we fight for a livable future?  In this episode, Nate is joined by climate philanthropist Kelly Erhart to discuss the urgent state of climate science and emerging response strategies beyond traditional mitigation and adaptation. Kelly explains the climate research that reveals increasingly alarming risks, including natural feedback loops such as glacier collapse, declining albedo (the reflectivity of Earth), and methane release from melting permafrost. They also discuss frontier emergency climate interventions such as oceanic carbon sequestration, atmospheric methane removal, and glacier stabilization strategies, among others – while emphasizing that none of these replace the need for the drastic reduction of emissions. What are the biggest climate questions that are currently being researched? How can an interdisciplinary approach help us better understand the climate mitigation and adaptation options available to us? And finally, how do we, especially the youngest among us, maintain hope and motivation to continue working towards better outcomes for humanity and the planet?  (Conversation recorded on September 26th, 2025)    About Kelly Erhart: Kelly Erhart is the Director of Partnerships at Outlier Projects (a climate philanthropy). Her work at Outlier Projects focuses on funding teams that are accelerating research on efforts to improve forecasting of catastrophic risks, and research on tools that could help stabilize climate systems at the necessary speed and scale. Previously, she was a repeat climate non-profit founder and entrepreneur; including co-founding Vesta, a pioneering ocean-based carbon dioxide removal approach. Erhart's multidisciplinary background spans climate technology  development and commercialization, nonprofit leadership, entrepreneurship, and philanthropy. Erhart was also named one of Forbes 30 under 30 for Energy and Green Tech in 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

In this week's Frankly, Nate explores how the prices we encounter in our daily lives are influenced by not only how much money is in the system, but also by resource depletion, technology, affordability by 'the masses,' and trust within a complex global system. Prices are deeply intertwined with the biophysical reality that underpins our society, and are affected by major forces that often operate unseen to the average consumer. Other forces – like leverage, complexity, and currency reform – also have longer term repercussions within our monetary system. These have the ability to create both inflationary and deflationary effects on price, amplifying notions of prosperity and fragility within our current social contract. Ecological instability, often treated as peripheral to financial/price analysis, has emerged as another driver of prices, even as extreme weather, biodiversity loss, and breached planetary boundaries will increasingly feed directly into the cost structures of our modern civilization. Where are the gaps within our existing conceptions of money and prices? What might follow the past few centuries of increasing societal and economic complexity? And how do prices – and societies – change when monetary claims and physical reality begin pulling in opposite directions? (Recorded December 1st, 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  

Technological development has always been a double-edged sword for humanity: the printing press increased the spread of misinformation, cars disrupted the fabric of our cities, and social media has made us increasingly polarized and lonely. But it has not been since the invention of the nuclear bomb that technology has presented such a severe existential risk to humanity – until now, with the possibility of Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) on the horizon. Were ASI to come to fruition, it would be so powerful that it would outcompete human beings in everything – from scientific discovery to strategic warfare. What might happen to our species if we reach this point of singularity, and how can we steer away from the worst outcomes?  In this episode, Nate is joined by Nate Soares, an AI safety researcher and co-author of the book If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All. Together, they discuss many aspects of AI and ASI, including the dangerous unpredictability of continued ASI development, the "alignment problem," and the newest safety studies uncovering increasingly deceptive AI behavior. Soares also explores the need for global cooperation and oversight in AI development and the importance of public awareness and political action in addressing these existential risks.  How does ASI present an entirely different level of risk than the conventional artificial intelligence models that the public has already become accustomed to? Why do the leaders of the AI industry persist in their pursuits, despite acknowledging the extinction-level risks presented by continued ASI development? And will we be able to join together to create global guardrails against this shared threat, taking one small step toward a better future for humanity?  (Conversation recorded on November 11th, 2025)    About Nate Soares: Nate Soares is the President of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), and plays a central role in setting MIRI's vision and strategy. Soares has been working in the field for over a decade, and is the author of a large body of technical and semi-technical writing on AI alignment, including foundational work on value learning, decision theory, and power-seeking incentives in smarter-than-human AIs. Prior to MIRI, Soares worked as an engineer at Google and Microsoft, as a research associate at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and as a contractor for the US Department of Defense.   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