Nate Hagens

Nate invites listeners to view the constant churn of headlines through a wider-boundary lens. He begins with the misleading framing of recent oil production statistics by the United States, which blurs distinctions between crude oil and broader petroleum products.

Nate Hagens steps away from analysis and reflects on a call that reframed his thinking. He shares a recent conversation with a close friend living in Lebanon, who, amid ongoing daily violence and loss, has been hosting displaced families and leading meditation practices in her community.

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.

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.

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

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.