Dark Triad Personality Traits: How Psychopathy, Narcissism, and Machiavellianism Impact Our Cultures & Social Systems | RR 19
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Release Date: 09/17/2025
Behavioral Thermodynamics Part 1: Beyond the 4th Law?
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
In this week’s Frankly, Nate takes thermodynamics out of the physics classroom, utilizing its principles to explain the invisible forces behind growth, competition, and complexity in our world. Competing life systems build organization out of chaos in order to maximize power usage today, even if it potentially undermines survival tomorrow. Within our energetic reality of finite and destabilizing fossil fuels, this tendency towards instant power accelerates us towards planetary overshoot. Nate poses a question in response to this tendency: What happens when a species becomes conscious of the...
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End of Year Reflections: Four Years of The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
In this week’s episode, Nate reflects on four years(!) of the podcast by answering listener-submitted questions, which cover a broad range of topics related to The Great Simplification. He invites subscribers to investigate how they navigate a complex and ever-changing world, while avoiding overly prescriptive solutions that brush aside personal agency and the inherent uncertainty that exists in our world. Whether it’s outlining his own evolving theory of change or emphasizing the importance of self-care and psychological grounding, Nate speaks to the epistemological resilience that we...
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Sunk Cost and the Superorganism | Frankly 116
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
In this week’s episode, Nate unpacks the pervasive behavioral pull of sunk cost as a force shaping our material reality, identities, and collective expectations about the future. Past investments – in careers, possessions, and cultural narratives – lock us into patterns of defending what might no longer actually serve us. This tendency becomes more and more relevant as the world shifts in ways that demand adaptability rather than stagnancy. Deep loyalty to former choices, even as we absorb new information about our lived environments, can limit our ability to make wiser, more...
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Fighting for a Livable Future: Exploring Frontier Climate Interventions with Kelly Erhart
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
While current conversations about global heating tend to center around a few well-established pieces of science, we don’t often hear about the scientists and leaders working at the frontier of what is still unknown about Earth’s systems. This includes unpredictable tipping points and cascading effects of our rapidly changing climate, as well as the unconventional adaptation strategies that might help us maintain a stable planet. What is the newest climate science being researched right now, and what areas are we still needing to explore as we fight for a livable future? In this...
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Inflation, Deflation, & Simplification: The 8 Things That Influence Prices | Frankly 115
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
In this week’s Frankly, Nate explores how the prices we encounter in our daily lives are influenced by not only how much money is in the system, but also by resource depletion, technology, affordability by 'the masses,' and trust within a complex global system. Prices are deeply intertwined with the biophysical reality that underpins our society, and are affected by major forces that often operate unseen to the average consumer. Other forces – like leverage, complexity, and currency reform – also have longer term repercussions within our monetary system. These have the ability to create...
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If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: How Artificial Superintelligence Might Wipe Out Our Entire Species with Nate Soares
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Technological development has always been a double-edged sword for humanity: the printing press increased the spread of misinformation, cars disrupted the fabric of our cities, and social media has made us increasingly polarized and lonely. But it has not been since the invention of the nuclear bomb that technology has presented such a severe existential risk to humanity – until now, with the possibility of Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) on the horizon. Were ASI to come to fruition, it would be so powerful that it would outcompete human beings in everything – from scientific discovery...
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Reimagining Ourselves at the End of Our World: Kinship, Interconnection, and Spirituality in the Metacrisis with Samantha Sweetwater
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Over the past decade, the world has become increasingly chaotic and uncertain – and so, too, has our cultural vision for the future. While the events we face now may feel unprecedented, they are rooted in much deeper patterns, which humanity has been playing out for millennia. If we take the time to understand past trends, we can also employ practices and philosophies that might counteract them – such as focusing on kinship, intimacy, and resilience – to help pave the way for a better future. How might we nurture the foundations of a different kind of society, even while the end of...
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Directional Advice for the (More Than) Human Predicament | Frankly 114
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Over the past decade, the world has become increasingly chaotic and uncertain – and so, too, has our cultural vision for the future. While the events we face now may feel unprecedented, they are rooted in much deeper patterns, which humanity has been playing out for millennia. If we take the time to understand past trends, we can also employ practices and philosophies that might counteract them – such as focusing on kinship, intimacy, and resilience – to help pave the way for a better future. How might we nurture the foundations of a different kind of society, even while the end of...
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Two Ways of Knowing: How Merging Science & Indigenous Wisdom Fuels New Discoveries with Rosa Vásquez Espinoza
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
For centuries, modern science has relied on the scientific method to better understand the world around us. While helpful in many contexts, the scientific method is also objective, controlled, and reductionist – often breaking down complex systems into smaller parts for analysis and isolating subjects to test hypotheses. In contrast, indigenous wisdom is deeply contextual, rooted in lived experience, and emphasizes a reciprocal, integrated relationship with the rest of the natural world, viewing all parts of the system as interconnected. What becomes possible when we combine the strengths of...
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11 Discoveries That Changed My Worldview | Frankly 113
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
In this episode, Nate weaves personal reflections into an exploration of the human predicament, unpacking a series of chronological insights that have reshaped his worldview. What began years ago as an investigation into oil has morphed into a deep lifelong journey into the complex web of energy, psychology, evolution, and systems that drive today's society. By sharing stories and realizations from his own life, whether it’s the debunking of Wall Street energy illusions or unpacking how sexual selection is often as important a behavioral driver as natural selection, Nate invites listeners to...
info_outlinePsychopathy 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 personality traits and their manifestation in modern culture. Together, they trace the evolutionary roots of these traits, examine the predatory ways Dark Triad individuals engage with others, and consider the profound implications for leadership, power, and governance. Ultimately, they emphasize the importance of truth and community when navigating the complexities of human behavior.
Why are Dark Triad individuals more likely to occupy positions of power? How do current cultural norms and expectations actually incentivize Dark Triad tendencies, including in governance? Most importantly, how can reorienting towards collective communication and cooperation help create guardrails against these ‘darker angels’ of humanity?
(Conversation recorded on July 22nd, 2025)
About Nancy McWilliams:
Dr. Nancy McWilliams, Ph.D., ABPP, is a distinguished psychoanalyst, author, and educator internationally recognized for her contributions to the field of personality theory and psychodynamic diagnosis. She is Professor Emerita at the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers. Her published work addresses the clinical and cultural relevance of language in diagnosing complex personality patterns, including narcissistic and psychopathic structures, and she has written on the psychology of altruism, moral development, and the enduring role of psychoanalytic thinking in understanding human nature.
About Reid Meloy:
Dr. J. Reid Meloy, Ph.D., ABPP, is a board-certified forensic psychologist, former clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, and a widely cited authority on psychopathy, personality disorders, and targeted violence. Dr. Meloy has served as a consultant, researcher, and trainer for numerous law enforcement, intelligence, and corporate security agencies around the world. He is the author or editor of more than 200 peer-reviewed publications and several seminal books, including The Psychopathic Mind, International Handbook of Threat Assessment, and Violent Attachments.
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