Frankly

In this week’s Frankly, Nate steps away from analysis and reflects on a call that reframed his thinking. He shares a recent conversation with a close friend living in Lebanon, who amid ongoing daily violence and loss has been hosting displaced families and leading meditation practices in her community.

This week’s Frankly is part two of the series How to Think About the Future. Today, Nate expands on the case for holding a distribution of possible futures rather than a single preferred one, and walks through a structured scenario-building exercise.

In this week's Frankly, Nate opens a new series called How to Think About the Future. He begins with some comments he’s heard repeatedly on this platform: why cover nuclear, plastics, renewables, or climate when something else is the real issue?

Today’s Frankly is the final installment in a three-part series on the role oil plays in modern civilization, prompted by the recent flow disruptions and geopolitical conflict surrounding the Strait of Hormuz.

This week’s Frankly is the second in a three-part series on the role oil plays in modern civilization, prompted by the recent flow disruptions and geopolitical conflict surrounding the Strait of Hormuz.

This week’s Frankly is the first in a three-part series on the role oil plays in modern civilization, prompted by the recent flow disruptions and geopolitical conflict surrounding the Strait of Hormuz.

This week's Frankly is another in a recurring series, Uncomfortable Questions in Unsettled Times, where Nate poses questions about our shared future. Today he focuses on the unfolding crisis in the Persian Gulf, unpacking hidden implications that aren’t covered by the headlines.

In this episode, Nate offers a personal reflection on the unfolding geopolitical tensions surrounding the Strait of Hormuz, beginning with an examination of how disruptions to fossil fuel flows propagate through the global economy, but with a time lag.

This week’s Frankly marks a turning point in the work of The Great Simplification. Having spent twenty years articulating the more-than-human predicament, Nate shifts from diagnosis to direction as current events – including conflict in the Strait of Hormuz – accelerate the timeline. Today Nate shares a first-pass framework for action and response that’s organized around what to do now, which could be applied to various places and at multiple scales.

This week's Frankly is prompted by the Iran situation and what happens when geopolitics stops feeling distant and starts arriving as supply chain disruptions, rising prices, fear, and renewed stories about enemies and allies.

In this installment, Nate addresses the U.S. and Israeli military offensive against Iran and traces the reverberating effects that extend far beyond the conflict itself, starting with what the closure of the Strait of Hormuz means for a civilization that routes a massive share of its physical economy through a single maritime corridor.

In this week's Frankly, Nate begins a new series called "Staying Human," which focuses on what he sees as a precondition for everything else: recovering a sense of personal agency.