The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens

With grocery prices skyrocketing and supply chain disruptions becoming more frequent, the average person has more and more incentive to get involved in growing their own food – but how does one even get started? For most people, the time, money, knowledge, and land remain out of reach in order to learn even the basics of agriculture. What kind of options are available for individuals who want to reclaim their food sovereignty – and subsequently become more connected with the Earth and like-minded people? 
In this episode, Nate is joined by biologist and farmer Jason Bradford, to discuss his 'Farming Club,' which offers hands-on learning for ecologically based agriculture, where members also get to take home food and build a relationship with the land. Jason explains why industrial agriculture, optimized for financial returns and machine efficiency while ignoring ecological costs, makes it almost impossible to become a successful small-scale farmer in today's economy. The Farming Club's model provides a way for people to maintain their jobs while building the knowledge, skills, and community connections needed for a lower-throughput future. 
How could reinvigorating farming culture provide an avenue to real skills and purpose to the next generation, especially for young men? How could the farming club model be replicated across the country, sparking small rural movements everywhere? And how could thousands of ideas and initiatives like these act as safety nets for individuals and communities as we transition to a more simplified society?
(Conversation recorded on December 4th, 2025)  
 
About Jason Bradford:
Jason co-manages a Community Supported Agriculture program with the Organic Growers Club at Oregon State University, where he practices land stewardship methods and cultivates community rooted in ecologically-based agricultural practices. Prior to his switch to agriculture, he was a research biologist studying evolution, ecology, and global change.
Additionally, Jason has been affiliated with the Post Carbon Institute since 2004, first as a Fellow and then as Board President. He is currently a co-host of the Crazy Town podcast, as well as a writer for Resilience.org. Additionally, in 2019, he authored The Future is Rural: Food System Adaptations to the Great Simplification.
 
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This week's Frankly marks a new recurring segment on this platform where Nate poses questions about our shared future: Uncomfortable Questions in Unstable Times. In this edition, he explores what would change if societies shifted their primary goal from growth to stability. Nate also unpacks how a lack of purpose in modern life might shape politics, culture, and personal choices.
He then scales up to look at power and behavior through a wider lens, examining how incentives in systems can shape the behavior of a nation. Nate cites the example of Artificial Intelligence to demonstrate how the large-scale introduction of tools can alter how we experience reality, morality, and physical bottlenecks. Overall, this series is based on the premise that better questions may matter more than discrete answers as we move toward a more uncertain future.
What would change in your life if the country you reside in chose stability over growth? How do notions of "fairness" shift in a world where some people are closer to the "brink" than others? Finally, where is the line between staying true to your values and giving up power in a society built around growth and accumulation?
(Recorded February 10th, 2026)
 
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Carbon dioxide (CO2) is often seen as the problematic byproduct of modern lifestyles that threatens our planet's stability – at least within conversations among environmentalists. But this perspective overlooks the fundamental role of CO2 in everything on Earth, from the food we eat to the houses we live in to our bodies themselves. Despite this reality, the carbon cycle as we know it has been interrupted in ways never before seen in Earth's history. How could understanding the deep history of CO2, as well as humanity's relationship with this controversial and vital molecule, help us prepare for the planetary changes ahead? 
In this episode, Nate is joined by science journalist Peter Brannen, who reframes CO2 from an industrial pollutant to a miraculous substance whose critical role within the carbon cycle makes Earth habitable. Peter traces our planet's history through the lens of CO2, including mass extinctions, Snowball Earth events, and the surprisingly stable Holocene period that has cradled human civilization. Peter also addresses humanity's current impact on the carbon cycle, the complexity and resilience of Earth's ecosystems, and the challenges we face as we push climate systems we don't fully understand into unknown territory.
How is the carbon cycle unexpectedly connected to the origins of oxygen, dozens of major and minor mass extinctions, and even the beginning of civilizations? How do humanity's current CO2 emissions compare to those of Earth's past? And could understanding the deep time of geology inspire both cosmic wonder and precautionary action, subsequently pushing us towards better decisions for the future?
(Conversation recorded on September 23rd, 2025)

 
About Peter Brannen:
Peter Brannen is an award-winning science journalist and contributing writer at The Atlantic, with particular interests in geology, ocean science, deep time, and the carbon cycle. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wired, Aeon, The Boston Globe, Slate and The Guardian among other publications. His book, The Story of CO2 is the Story of Everything, was published earlier this year by Ecco, who also published his previous book, The Ends of the World, about the five major mass extinctions in Earth's history.
Peter was a 2023 visiting scholar at the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, and is an affiliate at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado-Boulder. He was formerly a 2018 Scripps Fellow at CU-Boulder, a 2015 journalist-in-residence at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center at Duke University, and a 2011 Ocean Science Journalism Fellow at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, MA. His essays have been featured in the Best American Science and Nature Writing series and in The Climate Book by Greta Thunberg.
 
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This week's Frankly is another edition of Nate's Wide Boundary News series, where he invites listeners to view the constant churn of headlines through a wider-boundary lens. Today's edition features reflections on a new peak in crude oil production, the growth of non-dispatchable electricity, and a report recently released by the World Economic Forum assessing global risks. Nate ties each topic to the larger story of the Great Simplification, updating listeners on what pathways might be available to pursue the long-term stability of humanity in the biosphere. 
What factors have contributed to the new peak in oil production? How does dispatchability play into the current electricity landscape? And when global experts outline the future risks facing our world, who do we call on for action today? 
(Recorded February 4th, 2026)
 
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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 be increasingly volatile, expensive, and uncertain. In the energetically-intensive reality we have lived in for the past few decades, it has been easy to drift to the top of the consumption pyramid without even really choosing to. This has made us increasingly dependent on systems that reliably provide us comfort and convenience. Rather than taking some sort of moral high ground on consumption, Nate aims to invite listeners to pay closer attention to their own patterns of consumption. He analyzes habits that could support stability, and how listeners might intentionally simplify before external circumstances force the issue – mirroring the taking stock he's doing in his own life.
Where in your life do you feel most dependent on things always being fast, easy, and available? What kinds of consumption actually make you feel better afterward, not just distracted in the moment? Finally, if you stopped thinking of yourself primarily as a consumer, which other roles – maker, neighbor, caretaker, citizen – do you think would come most clearly into focus?
(Recorded February 1, 2026)
 
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