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
Release Date: 07/09/2025
Dark Triad Personality Traits: How Psychopathy, Narcissism, and Machiavellianism Impact Our Cultures & Social Systems | RR 19
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Psychopathy is often portrayed as a rare and distant phenomenon – something confined to movie villains or prison cells. Yet when psychopathy is combined with narcissism and Machiavellianism to form what psychologists call the Dark Triad, its impact becomes far more immediate. Individuals with these traits can wield disproportionate influence over our culture, institutions, and daily lives. What goes on inside their minds, and how do they shape the world around us? In this episode, Nate is joined by Dr. Reid Meloy and Dr. Nancy McWilliams to explore the inner workings of the Dark Triad...
info_outline
What I Learned This Week: Gold Holdings, Political Divides, and the DOE Climate Report | Frankly 107
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
In this week’s Frankly, in a continuation of his ‘What I Learned This Week’ 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...
info_outline
Why We Need Forests: Their Vital Role in Climate Dynamics, Rain, and The Biotic Pump with Anastassia Makarieva
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
It’s widely known that Earth’s forests provide home to countless numbers of species, act as a vast sink for carbon, and provide much of the food, materials, and clean water on which our societies rely. But emerging science shows us that forests may play another critical role: making rain. This theory, called the biotic pump theory, hypothesizes that instead of being passive recipients of rain, forests may actively create the conditions for precipitation over land – a premise that turns modern meteorology on its head. In this episode, Nate is joined by physicist Anastassia...
info_outline
10 Things Worth More Than a Pound of Gold | Frankly 106
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
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. What contributes to the real wealth of your life – and...
info_outline
How Water Shapes Our Planet: The Undervalued Resource that Supports Everything We Do | Reality Roundtable 18
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Water has always been a fundamental force shaping our planet – both in sustaining life across ecosystems and in guiding the organization and survival of human societies. Yet, many of us are unaware of how intertwined our lives are with the water cycle, much less of the ways we deplete and degrade the water resources that we and other living creatures rely upon for our very existence. What might change if we had a deeper understanding of global and regional hydrological cycles? On this Reality Roundtable, Nate is joined by Heather Cooley, Zach Weiss, and Mike Joy to discuss the...
info_outline
Where Will Humanity Move When the World Gets Too Hot? Mass Climate Migration & The Rise of Uninhabitable Regions with Sunil Amrith
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
In the next 25 years, the International Organization for Migration estimates that one billion people will be displaced from their homes due to climate-related events. From island nations underwater to inland areas too hot and extreme to sustain life, the individuals and communities in these areas will need somewhere new to live. Where will these people go, and how will this mass migration add further pressure to the stability of nations and the world? In this episode, Nate is joined by environmental and migration historian, Sunil Amrith, to explore the complex history of human movement...
info_outline
Key Blindspots of the “Walrus” Movement | Frankly 105
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
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. What happens when lofty goals sidestep ecological and energetic realities? How might we incorporate these oversights to drive clear, purposeful action towards a (more) sustainable future? And how do we ground ourselves in biophysical truths while envisioning a system that better serves the...
info_outline
How Do You Become Who You Want to Be?: The Science Behind Identity, Purpose, and Motivation with Taylor Guthrie
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Our personal concept of identity shapes every decision we make – ranging from life-altering choices to our smallest daily preferences. Identity influences our values, the relationships we build, and how we respond to an increasingly unpredictable world, whether in constructive or destructive ways. But how are these identities formed, and how might we take a more deliberate role in cultivating a healthy sense of self – and therefore a healthier way of relating to the world? In this episode, Nate is joined by social neuroscientist Taylor Guthrie to delve into the neuroscience of identity,...
info_outline
Ducks and Blueberries: A Reflection on Price, Cost and Value
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
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. What is the difference in value that our minds create between a $5 container of blueberries, and a $1 container? What is the difference between price, cost and value? What things in our lives do we treat as disposable when they are cheap, but treat as treasure when they are pricey? What would it look...
info_outline
The Forgotten Skills of Dying and Grieving Well: How Engaging with Loss Can Help Us Live More Fully with Stephen Jenkinson
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
In Western culture, topics surrounding death and dying are often considered taboo and are generally avoided in everyday conversations. But this reluctance to fully acknowledge and integrate death as a natural part of the human experience has rendered us less able to cope with the end of life and less prepared to show up for ourselves and the people around us as we inevitably navigate loss. But what if a more skillful engagement with death and grief could actually offer us a more mindful approach to living? In this conversation, Nate is joined by Stephen Jenkinson, a cultural activist and...
info_outlineWhen 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 explore the power of rituals and community for processing grief and transforming it into a deeper connection with ourselves, each other, and the natural world. They discuss the primary influences of their work, including ‘The Work That Reconnects,’ a framework developed by Joanna Macy and others, as well as the philosophy of Deep Ecology, founded by Arne Naess. Most importantly, John and Skye share their experience with deepening their own emotional capacity and embodiment of ecological values, and how they’ve helped others do the same.
How has an absence of ritual and the avoidance of grief in our culture distorted our relationship to loss – and therefore our ability to protect what we love? What practices do other cultures use to nurture ecological identity and kinship with the more-than-human world? And finally, why might grief, when honored and integrated, be a vital part of building more resilient and ecologically-grounded systems for the future?
(Conversation recorded on May 21st, 2025)
About John Seed:
John Seed is an activist, facilitator, musician, and co-author of the seminal book “Thinking Like a Mountain” with Arne Naess, Joanna Macy and Pat Fleming. John Seed is the founder of the Rainforest Information Centre and has dedicated his life to the protection of rainforests and their biodiversity since 1979. Over the past few decades, John has also become a pivotal figure in the Deep Ecology movement.
About Skye Cielita Flor:
Skye’s early years were spent working in wildlife rehabilitation and as a Wilderness Guide in the South African bush. She then underwent a traditional 3 year apprenticeship in Taoist Healing practices before moving to the Peruvian Amazon where she entered into a full-time 5 year traditional curanderismo apprenticeship with her Shipibo teachers of the Mahua - Lopez lineage.
On return from the jungle, she has been passionate about finding meaningful ways to deepen into and integrate the life altering paradigmatic shifts she experienced with the plants. This is primarily done through her work as a facilitator of Experiential Deep Ecology, as a Grief Ritualist, as a co-facilitator of The Mythic Body year-long course by Josh Schrei, and as a facilitator of immersive group experiences into practices focusing on reclamation of living earth perception, mythic imagination, and ritual rhythms.
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 Discord channel and connect with other listeners