On this Special episode Nate speaks once again with risk expert Chuck Watson for a critical assessment of the unfolding situation around Israel which adds to the rapidly escalating dangers of our current geopolitical landscape. As tensions rise, the potential risks that geopolitical confrontation in the Middle East poses could spill over into energy, economic systems, and our social fabric - Chuck lends his deep expertise and decades of experience to shed light on these complex dynamics. How do ...
Oct 20, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Ep 94•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode, Nate is joined by energy industry professional Joris van der Schot to explain the basics of oil refineries, their limitations, and other cultural narratives about energy. Oil is the lifeblood of our economies, yet most of us know so little about how it actually becomes all the different final products that we use. Just how massive is the scale of our energy consumption? How flexible and resilient are oil refineries to shifting oil demand? Can we keep an open mind to realistic an...
Oct 18, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Ep 93•Transcript available on Metacast On this Reality Roundtable, philosopher and writer Dougald Hine, social scientist and farmer Chris Smaje, and ecologist and farmer Pella Thiel join Nate to discuss the future of food and community. Our disconnected relationship to agriculture and our neighbors have been shaped by a modern industrial society fueled by surplus hydrocarbon energy. What will these relationships look like in a lower energy future, where we need to once again work with each other and the land, rather than in isolation...
Oct 15, 2023•1 hr 28 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this Frankly, Nate shares his perspective on the recent events in the Middle East and how they could lead to a shortening of the timeline to The Great Simplification. For those fortunate to live outside the direct impacts of these conflicts, many feel pressure to stay informed about this turbulent, global landscape. Is it possible to also remain grounded in the present realities of our daily lives? How do individual responses to this past week’s geopolitical events vary depending on the livel...
Oct 13, 2023•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode, Art Berman returns to give a broad update on the state of global oil - from BRICS+ and shale oil to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and oil investment. As Art says, ‘oil is the economy’ and understanding the complex dynamics of the oil market provides insight into the entire economic system. How do geological luck and foreign policy create the global stage for oil markets? What is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, have we been misusing it, and does it matter in comparison to larg...
Oct 11, 2023•2 hr 32 min•Ep 92•Transcript available on Metacast In this Frankly, Nate refers to a favorite timeless book series, The Lord of the Rings, to describe ‘the nine rings for mortal men’ - behavioral tendencies that are common among humans based on our evolutionary nature but become counterproductive within modern culture. These traits drive the growth of the Superorganism through ‘one ring to rule them all’, the amassing of power and the synergy of agricultural surplus, fossil energy, money, and Artificial Intelligence. Can this out of control powe...
Oct 06, 2023•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode, financial analyst Luke Gromen joins Nate to discuss how the availability of cheap energy has underpinned our current financial architecture and expectations - and what peak cheap oil implies for the future. A central part of this story is the rise of the US dollar as a global reserve currency tightly linked with the ability to purchase oil - subsequently leading to the US becoming a major exporter of debt. How have countries with economies based on natural resources and manufact...
Oct 04, 2023•2 hr 31 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode, Nate is joined by Professor Nick Haddad, a conservation scientist with a focus on butterflies and other insects. Nick unpacks what decades of research have indicated about the declining state of insect populations, which act as the foundation of critical ecosystem functions. The overlooked degradation of butterflies, beetles, bees, ants, ladybugs, and countless other species have huge ripple effects across our local and global ecological functions - from a loss of bird populatio...
Sep 27, 2023•1 hr 26 min•Ep 90•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode, Nate is joined by Sian Sutherland, a leader in the movement towards reducing the overconsumption of plastic and its waste. The modern era is dependent on fossil fuels for many reasons - one of the most covertly ubiquitous ones being plastic. Everyday we are surrounded by it - encasing our food, woven in the threads of our clothes, and even permeating into the water that we drink. How do we begin to break off this addiction to the convenience and utility of plastics? How does thi...
Sep 20, 2023•1 hr 16 min•Ep 89•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode, neuroscientist and author Robert Sapolsky joins Nate to discuss the structure of the human brain and its implication on behavior and our ability to change. Dr. Sapolsky also unpacks how the innate quality of a biological organism shaped by evolution and the surrounding environment - meaning all animals, including humans - leads him to believe that there is no such thing as free will, at least how we think about it today. How do our past and present hormone levels, hunger, stress...
Sep 13, 2023•2 hr 58 min•Ep 88•Transcript available on Metacast On this Reality Roundtable, marine biologist Daniel Pauly, ocean physicist Antonio Turiel, and paleobiologist Peter Ward join Nate to discuss the numerous oft-overlooked threats to the Earth’s great oceans. From overfishing and plastic pollution to climate change and acidification, the human system is assaulting one of the most important regulators for our climate and the largest habitat for life - anywhere. What early indicators of climate impacts are these great bodies of water showing us as w...
Sep 10, 2023•2 hr 30 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this Frankly, Nate describes the Carbon Pulse - a one time massive consumption of fossil hydrocarbons at a pace millions of times faster than they were created. He outlines the many shapes that this pulse could take, as well as some shapes it will never take. Compared to previous carbon pulses that led to mass and minor extinctions, how does the modern pulse compare? What can what we know about ecology and human behavior tell us about the most likely paths into descent? Can thinking about the...
Sep 08, 2023•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode, Nate is joined by Graham Palmer, a scholar and engineer in the field of energy. While this show frequently covers the importance of energy itself, this discussion focuses on how the ability to store and access energy has critically shaped societies. From agriculture, to wood, to coal, to oil, each transition has marked a new way for humans to interact with the world around them. What would it mean for economic growth if we no longer have access to these storable energies? What d...
Sep 06, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Ep 87•Transcript available on Metacast In this week’s Frankly, Nate reacts to recent analysis by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) critical of 2022 subsidies to fossil fuel. These subsidies - by IMF math totalling $7+ trillion - are not what they seem, resulting in widespread confusion on what is really going on. By peeling back the layers of the onion on these oft-misunderstood benefits - Nate outlines what comprises these fossil fuel subsidies, who receives them, the purpose they serve, and who benefits from them (spoiler alert...
Sep 01, 2023•13 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode, ‘Superorganisms’ converge as Nate is joined by economist and anthropologist Lisi Krall to discuss the evolutionary origins of our current systemic predicament. Starting with the Agricultural Revolution, the evolutionary conditions of surplus and ultrasociality have combined to shape the way humans interact with their environment, ultimately leading to our current out of control global economy. Is this global system an inevitable emergent phenomenon of the human condition? Does s...
Aug 30, 2023•1 hr 21 min•Ep 86•Transcript available on Metacast In this week’s Frankly, Nate considers 7 different continuums of perspectives people use when taking part in a “systems” discourse, such as The Great Simplification podcast is attempting. In such complex and often controversial discussions, each of us has a point of view that stems from our own personal experiences, knowledge and identity - yet how we channel that point of view into the larger discourse matters. How does understanding our own perspectives potentially help us side-step mental roa...
Aug 25, 2023•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode, literary scholar and psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist joins Nate to discuss the way modern culture teaches and encourages us to use - and not use - the two lobes of our brains. While most functions require the use of both sides of our brains, each side is specially attuned to see and interact with the world in certain ways: the left side acts as a narrow problem solving executor, while the right side is a broadly open contextualizer. What happens when we humans - in aggregate - bec...
Aug 23, 2023•2 hr 54 min•Ep 85•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode, Nate is joined by well-known French educator Jean-Marc Jancovici to discuss the critical importance of energy to modern economies. Together, Nate and Jean-Marc break down the fundamentals of our complex, growth dependent global economic system. How much of the stereotypical Western lifestyle is centered around access to cheap, surplus fossil energy? What would it mean for societies to lose this stable, cheap and abundant supply - and how would the people who have become used to ...
Aug 16, 2023•1 hr 27 min•Ep 84•Transcript available on Metacast On this Reality Roundtable, Nate is joined by Jon Erickson, Josh Farley, Steve Keen, and Kate Raworth - all of whom are leading thinkers and educators in the field of heterodox economics. In this lively discussion, each guest begins by sharing one fundamental aspect of what conventional economics gets wrong and how it could be improved in our education system. What basic assumptions about humans have led to a misunderstanding of the average person’s decision-making? What areas has economics turn...
Aug 13, 2023•2 hr 42 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Part 4 of this Frankly mini-series, Nate concludes the deep dive into the nexus between “just stopping oil” and “just pumping oil” with 10 guideposts which might help us to navigate through the intersection of the Four Horsemen of the 2020s and the shrinking Web of Life….together known as The Great Simplification. From decomplexifying at various scales to a change of consciousness arising from more humans focused on "Inner Tech", there are many ways we as individuals and as a part of the grea...
Aug 11, 2023•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode, Nate is joined by Doomberg - the anonymous energy/finance analyst team (visually presenting as a talking chicken icon) who uses an energy lens to analyze global trends in the economy, with so far some remarkable accuracy. In this wide ranging discussion, Doomberg and Nate cover the interactions between geopolitics, debt, climate policy, and - of course - energy. How have the narratives created around different types of energy - from renewables to nuclear - affected current polic...
Aug 09, 2023•2 hr 42 min•Ep 83•Transcript available on Metacast In Part 3 of this Frankly Series, Nate (just after watching the movie Oppenheimer!) breaks down the logic of how we COULD arrive at a post-growth future. Our global situation is complex and not static - IF we somehow are able to shrink the global economic output (which would imply significantly less oil use) we first have to navigate ‘the 4 Horsemen of the 2020s’. Nate outlines 10 possible avenues for how this could happen, not as a prescription but as a description of various possible scenarios...
Aug 04, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode, Nate is joined by climate scientist Kevin Anderson to discuss the possible paths of averting severe climate outcomes and how this is interconnected with equity. As nations plan their climate goals and coordinate with each other, it’s clear that extreme actions would be needed from everyone to meet the goal of keeping the global average temperature increase below 2ºC - if this is even possible. At the same time, there are wide disparities in the greenhouse gas emissions between t...
Aug 02, 2023•1 hr 28 min•Ep 82•Transcript available on Metacast In Part 2 of this Frankly Series, Nate breaks down why energy - and specifically oil - is currently the central foundation of our entire modern economic system. There are ecological and energetic laws that apply to all life, including humans and our economies. By accessing a huge surplus of dense carbon energy in the form of fossil sunlight, we’ve effectively turbo-boosted our economies, populations, and material wealth - but what happens if this fossil abundance were to go away? What are the sy...
Jul 28, 2023•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode, Nate is joined by climate and policy scientist Roger Pielke Jr. to discuss the progression of climate research and modeling. The climate activist community is based around projections of what a future might look like given the actions of society - an important tool in the push for urgent climate action. Yet, just like with any other model, the assumptions and parameters can greatly shape the outcomes. How has climate science been shaped by previous models and public perception? ...
Jul 26, 2023•1 hr 18 min•Ep 81•Transcript available on Metacast In this week’s Frankly, Nate expands upon something he finds himself saying more frequently these days; ”what scares me the most is…”. From the likelihood of nuclear war to how our human in/action harms innocent animals, Nate opens up about his personal list of deepest fears. Contrasting his childhood fear of [harmless] spiders against his current fear of humans’ propensity towards [what is now existential] apathy as we face the metacrisis, Nate reminds us how much more complex our lives are in ...
Jul 21, 2023•13 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode, Nate is joined by recent Stanford graduate and biophysical researcher Taimur Ahmad to discuss energy inequality within and across nations. Taimur offers a unique perspective as someone who has spent years studying the issues of the polycrisis, while also having experience growing up in Pakistan and living in the United States. How does the culture of a nation and its access to energy interrelate to create huge differences in the daily lives of the people who live there? How do t...
Jul 19, 2023•1 hr 13 min•Ep 80•Transcript available on Metacast In this must watch Frankly, Nate illustrates how a reduction in the demand for gasoline will not - as commonly believed - result in a 1:1 reduction in the demand for oil. This is contrary to a widespread perception, which much growth in the Electric Vehicle industry has been based on, about the correlation between a decline in gasoline usage resulting in an overall decline in oil production and CO2 emissions. While a significant portion of oil refining results in gasoline, we need to be aware of...
Jul 14, 2023•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode, Nate is joined by “free range biologist” Anne Biklé and “broad-minded geologist” David Montgomery - a married duo who have been educating about the link between soil and human health for nearly a decade. As we continue to strip the land and soil of its life supporting capacity, our food has become less nutritious, even as we’ve received more calories. Has the age of ‘The Green Revolution’ - accredited with preventing millions from famine - led us to a new epidemic of starvation ...
Jul 12, 2023•2 hr 36 min•Ep 79•Transcript available on Metacast On this segment of Reality Roundtable, Nate is joined by William Rees, Nora Bateson, and Rex Weyler to discuss the purpose of ecology and what it might look like to have a civilization centered around it. Despite our tendency to think of ourselves as separate from the biosphere, humans are a part of it, just like any other animal. What sets us apart now is our outsized impact on the world around us, as we and our societies take up more space and resources, degrading the ecosystems that support o...
Jul 09, 2023•2 hr 33 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
