The Neuroscience of Good Journalism: How Constructive Journalism Uses Information to Empower with Maren Urner
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Release Date: 04/23/2025
The Silent Collapse: What the Disappearance of Insects Means for Humanity and the Earth with Oliver Milman
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Insects, bugs, creepy-crawlies – these small animals are often considered a nuisance (or worse) by humanity, bringing up an ongoing desire to kill or mitigate these “pests” that plague our backyards, homes, and gardens. But we’re beginning to see that, despite our cultural misconceptions, insects are actually at the foundation of our biosphere, food supply, and nearly every life process on Earth. This makes recent reports of rapidly declining insect populations all the more troubling – but can we recognize the vital importance of insects and reverse the harm we’ve done before...
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The Ghost of Dopamine Past | Frankly 103
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
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. What is the “ghost of dopamine past,” and how does it shape not only our individual lives, but our collective economic and ecological behavior? Why does the urge to scroll on our phones override the deep calm of watching...
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Nothing Can Stop This Train: Our Financial Predicament From a Systems Perspective with Lyn Alden
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Money, debt, and finance shape the lives of everyone globally, including through the policies and actions of national central banks – yet even those who are well-versed in these subjects often miss the full scope of these intricate relationships. For the average person, headlines about mounting government debt and surging interest rates often feel like a confusing and concerning trend. What can we learn from historical cycles, global energy dynamics, and the differing fiscal strategies of nations about the trajectory of the world economy? In today’s episode, Nate is joined once more by Lyn...
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Towards Individual Wisdom & Restraint
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
In this Earth Day presentation, recorded earlier this year, Nate offers nine broad paths for individuals to cultivate resilience in an increasingly uncertain and unstable period of human history. From the intellectual & ecological to the spiritual & psychological, these ideas might be considered waypoints for navigating the human predicament, and - in aggregate - help build 'scout teams' of humans working on the upcoming cultural transition away from infinite material expansion. How do we slow down and reject the “hustle culture” that prioritizes gains in efficiency, wealth and...
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The Packaging Revolution: Industry’s Responsibility & the Innovations That Could Mitigate the Waste Crisis with Wes Carter
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Packaging is an unavoidable feature of modern life. It’s so embedded in our products and systems that even the most environmentally-minded consumers struggle to avoid it entirely. Yet packaging accounts for nearly half of all plastic waste, contributing to widespread ecological harm and growing threats to human health – highlighting the urgent need for an overhaul of packaging materials and industry practices. So how are some industry leaders reimagining materials, systems, and supply chains in ways that align with the realities of our finite planet? In today’s episode, Nate is joined by...
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What I Learned This Week: Corn Sweat, Coral Bleaching, and the Climate Credit Crunch | Frankly 102
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
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. Our culture is marked by information overload, which has been expanded intensely by technology. This makes it difficult to absorb the data, narratives, and headlines we are presented—let alone sort through them and examine what is relevant for the Great Simplification scenario....
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The Myths Shaping Our Economies: The Disconnect between Economic Theory and Reality with Josh Farley
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Economic theory has come to wield outsized influence over our societal goals, decisions, and policies – often relying on models that claim to optimize how human systems function. Yet the outcomes of our modern economic structures tell a different story: accelerating ecological collapse, widening inequality, declining public health, and increasing social disconnection. What if the foundational principles of mainstream economics are actually built on false assumptions that obscure the realities of our world? In this conversation, Nate is joined by ecological economist Josh Farley to...
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What I Want to Want for the Future | Frankly 101
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
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. While naming some of the things he values in his own life, from experiencing full spectrum love to having a purpose, Nate encourages the viewer to reflect on what they might “want to...
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Moving from Apathy to Action: How Facing Grief Can Help Us Navigate a World in Crisis | Reality Roundtable #17
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
When facing the realities of our world, the urge to drown in grief or shut down into apathy is becoming more and more common. As we are flooded with information and global predicaments outside of our control, overwhelm can set in, affecting our energy, efficacy, and even our ability to care. But what if facing our grief is actually the pathway to increasing our capacity to stay connected to and work on the things that matter most to us? What tools, practices, or rituals could we use to help us begin to metabolize our grief? In this episode, Nate is joined by John Seed and Skye Cielita Flor to...
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Ask Nate Anything 2025 | Frankly 100
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
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. The goal of TGS is to build out a comprehensive outlook that connects the dots of energy, human-made systems, and Earth's functioning ecosystems. By making clear the biophysical reality of our...
info_outlineThe psychological effects of media consumption and keeping up with the 24-hour news cycle are vast. It can sometimes feel impossible to stay educated on current events without also feeling hopeless, disempowered, or even enraged. Worse, the incentives and structures of modern media outlets seem more and more geared towards capturing our attention at any cost… including our mental health, trust in one another, and even open societies themselves. Given this, is there a way to get back to a form of media and journalism that helps us feel empowered, and if so, how do we do it?
Today, Nate is joined by neuroscientist and best-selling author, Maren Urner, to discuss the critical role of journalism in democracy, the importance of rebuilding trust in media, and how neuroscience can inform our understanding of media consumption. Maren makes the case for constructive journalism – a more balanced and solutions-oriented approach to reporting – as a powerful antidote to the relentlessly negative tone of traditional media. She also highlights the urgent need for systemic change in the way journalism operates if we want to foster a more informed and empowered public.
How do our deeply ingrained cognitive biases shape the way news is produced and consumed? Could journalism evolve to become a force for collective action and positive change, rather than just another profit-driven industry competing for our clicks? And in a world where our attention has become one of the most valuable – and contested – resources, how can we take greater ownership over the media we choose to engage with?
(Conversation recorded on March 31st, 2025)
About Maren Urner:
Maren Urner is a neuroscientist and, since September 2024, Professor for Sustainable Transformation at Münster University of Applied Sciences and Head of the new Master's program in Sustainable Transformation Design. In 2016, she co-founded "Perspective Daily," the first ad-free online magazine for constructive journalism. She led the editorial team as editor-in-chief and served as managing director until March 2019. After her time at Perspective Daily, she taught as a professor of media psychology at the Media University of Applied Sciences in Cologne until August 2024.
Maren has been a columnist for the Frankfurter Rundschau since September 2020. Her three books, End the Daily Doomsday, Out of the Eternal Crisis, and Radically Emotional: How Feelings Make Politics are SPIEGEL bestsellers. She is the winner of the 2023 BAUM Environmental and Sustainability Award in the science category.
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