Arms Race or the Human Race? Governance in the Age of AI, Nuclear Threats, and Geopolitical Brinkmanship | RR 21
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Release Date: 01/21/2026
The Consumption Pyramid
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
This week’s Frankly unpacks humans’ current identification with the label “consumer.” Consumption is something much deeper and more nuanced than shopping or spending. Nate highlights the ways that it shows up across our whole lives – from basic needs and stability to status and mental escape. He outlines a “consumption pyramid” framework that acts as a map for the different layers of consumption present in daily life, emphasizing that they vary in dependency, reliability, and necessity. This episode also explores why this understanding is especially relevant in a world that will...
info_outline
How to Read the Signs of Collapse: Economic Stagnation, Resource Scarcity, and Europe’s Industrial Decline with Balázs Matics
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Collapse has long been discussed in the public imagination as something that happens suddenly, immediately turning the world upside down. But history shows that collapse is more often characterized by the slow unraveling of a civilization. Usually, this is due to some combination of resource scarcity, economic stagnation, and compounding disruptions to productive capacity – yet it’s barely perceptible in the day-to-day lives of the people within it. What are the signs that we could be living through such a moment right now, and if we are, how does history tell us to prepare for what’s to...
info_outline
A Country of Geniuses: Anthropic CEO’s Warnings, Plus Wide-Boundary Considerations on AI
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Last week there was so much news Nate recorded two Franklies – this is the second of those, which shares his reflections on a recent seminal essay posted by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, likening Artificial Intelligence as a "rite of passage" for the human species rather than just a narrow technological breakthrough. Amodei posits the possibility that we are now in what Carl Sagan once called a phase of “technological adolescence,” wherein humans’ technologies and tools become powerful enough to reshape or destabilize civilization faster than our collective wisdom can keep up. As a...
info_outline
Wide Boundary News: Japan, Silver, Venezuela, and More – the Biophysical Phase Shift Cometh
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
This week’s Frankly inaugurates a new category for videos on The Great Simplification platform, Wide Boundary News, in which Nate invites listeners to view the constant churn of headlines through a wider-boundary lens. As we are increasingly inundated with vast quantities of news (and nervous system dysregulation!), it becomes important to be able to tease out a thread on how they interconnect. The stories we tell ourselves about progress, growth, and stability no longer perfectly line up with the biophysical reality beneath them – in Nate’s words, ‘A biophysical phase shift cometh.’...
info_outline
The New Generation of Environmental Leadership: Stubborn Optimism, Tending Your Inner Fire, and Why Hope Is Not Enough with Xiye Bastida
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
For many people reading this, the crises we discuss on this podcast – from ecological instability to financial collapse – often feel like a distant problem in the future. But for the youth of today, managing the impact of these situations will define most of their lives, and many have already dedicated their careers to mitigating the worst outcomes. What do the leading young voices envision for the future, and what are they doing today to make that a reality? In this episode, Nate is joined by indigenous environmental justice activist and Planetary Guardian, Xiye Bastida, to discuss...
info_outline
The Creature in the Machine | Frankly 120
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
In this week’s episode, Nate reflects on his experience with knee surgery and being a “creature in the machine” (the Superorganism). He touches on the often-forgotten nature of our physical existence in a world dominated by cognitive labor and abstractions, exploring the tension between gratitude for the gains of modern medicine and knowledge of the hidden energetic cost of these technologies. Alongside these personal reflections, Nate unpacks his thoughts on some current political events and considers timely questions of power, legitimacy, and social fragmentation in a post-peak...
info_outline
Arms Race or the Human Race? Governance in the Age of AI, Nuclear Threats, and Geopolitical Brinkmanship | RR 21
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Humans have shaped the world more than any other species in existence, largely due to our ability to coordinate and work together as a unit – in other words, to govern ourselves. This means that, while human societies are at the center of the many crises we face today, we are also the key to navigating through them safely. But this is only possible if we’re able to hold the foundations of our governance together: communication, agency, and remembering our shared humanity. What is the current state of our ability to do this, and what policy mechanisms and agreements are needed to navigate...
info_outline
Technology and Wealth: The Straw, the Siphon, and the Sieve | Frankly 119
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
In this week’s Frankly, Nate explores the relationship between technology and wealth when viewed through a global biophysical lens. He uses the visualization of a straw, siphon, and sieve to describe how technology enables the acceleration of physical resource extraction and the concentration and filtering of resulting ‘wealth’ towards the human species. Running contrary to the commonly-held idea that technology automatically creates monetary wealth (and therefore prosperity), this episode asks listeners to view real wealth as the underlying stocks and flows that make life on Earth...
info_outline
Why the West Can’t Defend Itself: How Material Scarcity Is Reshaping Global Power with Craig Tindale
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
For decades, the West has outsourced its own material production to other countries, in favor of lower costs and short-term returns over more expensive, long-duration investments like mining and manufacturing. But while this has seemed like a success on the surface, it has left us with a society based on consumption, unable to produce what we need on our own. What are the deeper costs of this long-term offshoring – including for our geopolitical, climate, and technological ambitions? In this conversation, Nate is joined by materials expert and investor Craig Tindale, who explores the...
info_outline
The Things We Take for Granted | Frankly 118
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
In this week’s Frankly, Nate shares reflections on what we take for granted in life at multiple scales: from personal health to meaningful work to relative ecological stability. The things that keep our everyday lives functioning often go unnoticed until they’re needed or suddenly absent, suggesting that real wealth might come in the form of reliability rather than material gain. Nate also considers what has happened to our attention in an age of constantly-available stimulation, reflecting on how moving towards a quieter and slower lifestyle (whether by choice or by external...
info_outlineHumans have shaped the world more than any other species in existence, largely due to our ability to coordinate and work together as a unit – in other words, to govern ourselves. This means that, while human societies are at the center of the many crises we face today, we are also the key to navigating through them safely. But this is only possible if we’re able to hold the foundations of our governance together: communication, agency, and remembering our shared humanity. What is the current state of our ability to do this, and what policy mechanisms and agreements are needed to navigate the turbulent decades to come?
In this Reality Roundtable, Nate is joined by geopolitical risk experts Mark Medish and Chuck Watson to discuss the increasing strain being placed on human governance as a result of escalating conflicts between nations and state leaders. Together, they delve into the intricate foundations of our modern governing structures and why it is critical that we reinforce existing international treaties and agreements in order to avoid the worst outcomes for all of humanity. Mark and Chuck also discuss the history of nuclear arms control – including the upcoming expiration of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) – and how artificial intelligence threatens to disturb the tenuous peace built in the 20th century. Ultimately, they emphasize the need to renew public awareness and education on the importance of governance and the need for our leadership to engage in diplomatic negotiations in an increasingly complex world.
Despite the media’s focus on laws, regulations, and technology, why do people and our shared humanity still lay at the center of good governance and decision making? Where are our current leaders failing us, and does the average citizen still hold agency to influence the trajectory of global events? Lastly, what do we risk by abandoning trust in our fellow citizens and nations, and what opportunities are still available to rebuild our confidence in each other?
(Conversation recorded on January 8th, 2026)
About Mark Medish:
Mark Medish has over 30 years of professional experience in policy, law, finance, and strategic communications. Medish served at The White House as a Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director on the National Security Council, as well as at the U.S. Treasury as Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Affairs. He also worked in senior positions at the State Department (USAID) and the United Nations (UNDP). Medish is Vice Chair of Project Associates Ltd., a London headquartered strategic consultancy with offices in Europe, the Middle East, East Africa, and the U.S. He is also a founding partner of the Mosaiq Law Group in Washington, D.C., and a co-founder of Keep Our Republic, a non-profit civic education organization promoting democratic governance and rule of law.
His previous business leadership posts include: president of The Messina Group, a boutique strategic communications firm based in Washington, D.C.; president of the international division of Guggenheim Partners, an asset management company headquartered in Chicago; and equity partner at Akin Gump, an international law firm where he led the sovereign advisory practice. He worked as a vice president for studies and senior scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He was a visiting research fellow at The Japan Institute of International Affairs in Tokyo. He is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also a board member of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University and the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna.
About Chuck Watson:
Chuck Watson has had a long career in international development projects as well as military and intelligence work, with a specialty in natural and human-made disaster modeling. He worked for the US Air Force, was an attaché to US Ambassadors to the Middle East Robert McFarland and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Chuck has worked as an advisor to governments for over four decades with a particular emphasis on big data, open source intelligence, with an emphasis on the Soviet Union and Russia. Chuck is also the founder and Director of Research and Development of Enki Holdings, LLC, which designs computer models for phenomena ranging from tropical cyclones (hurricanes) and other weather phenomena, earthquakes, and tsunamis, as well as anthropogenic hazards such as industrial accidents, terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction.
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 Hylo channel and connect with other listeners