Frankly

In this week’s Frankly, in a continuation of his ‘This Week's Learnings’ series, Nate  updates viewers on things he learned in the past week, and the implications for our sociocultural trajectory. This edition focuses on recent financial and political headlines – global gold holdings, shifting geopolitical energy deals, and new U.S. Department of Energy reports – and explains their relevance to our biophysical reality and broader geopolitical landscape. Through this exercise, Nate invites podcast viewers to use a systems lens to integrate the wide array of news we are bombarded with into the large evolving story of The Human Predicament.

In this week’s Frankly, in a continuation of his ‘This Week's Learnings’ series, Nate  updates viewers on things he learned in the past week, and the implications for our sociocultural trajectory. This edition focuses on recent financial and political headlines – global gold holdings, shifting geopolitical energy deals, and new U.S. Department of Energy reports – and explains their relevance to our biophysical reality and broader geopolitical landscape. Through this exercise, Nate invites podcast viewers to use a systems lens to integrate the wide array of news we are bombarded with into the large evolving story of The Human Predicament.

In this week’s Frankly, Nate weighs the value of a pound of gold with other things that we derive worth from in our lives – from dollars and bitcoin to...less pecuniary markers. Although gold is simply a metal, it has long been a symbol of wealth in human cultures. Through highlighting other important, sometimes intangible forms of wealth, Nate encourages the viewer to not only examine what they place the most worth on in their own lives, but also to consider why things have worth to us as humans living in a complex, modern system.

In this week’s Frankly, Nate unpacks some key blindspots of “the walrus movement”—a placeholder label that's a gentle nod to those championing bold social and ecological ideals. While mostly well-intentioned, this "movement" can miss the stark limits of our planet’s unfolding biophysical reality.

In this week’s Frankly, Nate shares an excerpt from his daily life that mirrors a larger observation on the human predicament. A grocery shopping trip turns into a reflection on value vs cost, and how consumption in our society is driven by the perception of value that’s presented to us.

In this week’s Frankly, Nate reflects on a moment of unexpected insight during a morning bike ride, which catalyzed a larger meditation on the modern human predicament. This episode explores the neuroscience of dopamine, and offers a reflection on the ways it plays into distraction, technology, and how we interact with the hyperstimulating world around us.

In this week’s Frankly, Nate shares a handful of things he’s learned in the past few days that have implications for the Great Simplification. Nate covers a wide range of topics in this edition, from the connections between corn sweat and wet bulb temperatures to a timeline of coral reef bleaching events.

In today’s Frankly, Nate imagines that he’s looking back from an unspecified point in the future (even from beyond his lifetime), and ponders the core things he would want during his time on Earth. Breaking from what our culture steers us to seek out, Nate examines what a bedrock of human experiences might include — the things in our lives that keep us grounded and experiencing life to the fullest extent.

In today’s Frankly, Nate reads and responds to questions from viewers of the channel, offering reflections on a wide range of topics from current events, balancing fear and action surrounding often existential topics, green technology, and more. By directly addressing these questions, Nate aims to further unpack some of the nuances in the complex and expansive concept of The Great Simplification.

Economics departments around the world teach a narrow boundary story of the way our world works. A narrative of infinite growth driven by consumption and money, which has dominated our culture and unknowingly shaped the way we live. But does this story really reflect our biophysical reality – or the full scope of humanity’s role within it?

Living in a period increasingly fraught by various crises and risks, it is more necessary than ever to be able to metabolize anxiety into something useful.

In a world grappling with converging crises, we often look outward – for new tech, new markets, new distractions.