Arthur Berman: "Oil: It Was The Best of Fuels, It Was The Worst of Fuels"

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 manuf...

14 Jan 1h 41min

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 o...

9 Jan 22min

Dopamine: the most famous neurotransmitter that regulates pleasure, motivation, and (perhaps most importantly) addiction. When examining  why our society is hooked on consuming more and more of everyt...

7 Jan 1h 36min

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. Compet...

19 Dec 202530min

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 sub...

17 Dec 202527min

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...

12 Dec 202523min

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...

10 Dec 20251h 6min

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, affordabili...

5 Dec 202526min