Nate Hagens

Nate Hagens

Nate Hagens is the Director of The Institute for the Study of Energy & Our Future (ISEOF) an organization focused on educating and preparing society for the coming cultural transition. Allied with leading ecologists, energy experts, politicians and systems thinkers ISEOF assembles road-maps and off-ramps for how human societies can adapt to lower throughput lifestyles.

Nate holds a Masters Degree in Finance with Honors from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in Natural Resources from the University of Vermont. He teaches an Honors course, Reality 101, at the University of Minnesota.

How to Think About the Future – Part 2: Four variables shaping the coming decades

Nate Hagens expands on the case for holding a distribution of possible futures rather than a single preferred one, and walks through a structured scenario-building exercise.

May 4, 2026

How to Think About the Future – Part 1: Changing the future starts with how you think

In the first instalment of a new series on thinking about the future, Nate Hagens argues that most debates about what lies ahead are shaped by a single competing narrative. He introduces “scenario thinking” as a way to hold multiple possible futures at once, and explores why this is psychologically and culturally difficult in practice.

April 28, 2026

Ultra-processed information

Ultra-processed information: AI and the coming deluge of noise

Nate Hagens explores the growing sense that many people feel disoriented and overwhelmed in a world increasingly saturated with digital content.

April 23, 2026

human and primate

Human Exceptionalism: How rethinking our place in the web of life could change our global crises

In this episode, Nate speaks with primatologist and author Dr. Christine Webb about human exceptionalism – the deeply embedded belief that humans are separate from and superior to the rest of nature. Webb argues this worldview is not a universal human trait but rather a product of a few dominant cultures, and that it lies at the root of many of our most pressing global challenges.

April 21, 2026

What to do as the world falls apart: A framework for action

From the archive | Having spent twenty years articulating the more-than-human predicament, Nate Hagens shares a timely first-pass framework for action and response organized around what to do now, which could be applied in various contexts and at multiple scales.

April 17, 2026

python around the globe

Iran, U.S., and the Rest: The Unavoidable Pig in the Python

In this episode, Nate offers a personal reflection on the unfolding geopolitical tensions surrounding the Strait of Hormuz, beginning with an examination of how disruptions to fossil fuel flows propagate through the global economy, but with a time lag.

March 30, 2026

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