Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Today, Nate is joined by Balázs Matics, the author of the popular Substack blog The Honest Sorcerer, to explore the systemic reasons behind civilization’s potential collapse, the importance of energy security, and the growing effects of geopolitical instability.
If the United States were to abandon that trajectory and take the concrete actions that are needed to achieve equitable ecological renewal, what elements of life in the present-day Global North would we necessarily, and gladly, leave behind?
Data-driven models of self-organization and critical collective phenomena in the natural world and within traditional Indigenous sociocultural structures, along with adaptive context-based frameworks, can help guide the transboundary development of a decentralized and circular socio-bioeconomy for the Amazon.
Every time you plant a seed, you are declaring independence. Every time you repair a toaster, you are voting against disposable culture. Every time you generate a kilowatt-hour on your roof, you are disarming a dictator.
Thinking and preparing for a collapse (itself a byproduct of a system of waste, exploitation and domination) will require that people organize on a grassroots level, in order to open up spaces within which they can collectively forge a temporality that will allow for serious reflection, deliberation and long-term planning.
The most impressive thing we’ve ever designed—or even the collection of all such things—is absolute child’s play next to Life in evolved, ecological relationship. Humility serves us well.
Two recent books, Wild Service, a collection of essays edited by Nick Hayes with Jon Moses and Uncommon Ground by Patrick Galbraith, share a common theme: they both seek to address the “disconnectedness” of the mass of the public from nature and the countryside. Yet the two books could hardly be more different.
“Anthropause” is an amazing word and the latest book about it is an eye-opener. Stan Cox’s Anthropause: The Beauty of Degrowth (2026, Seven Stories Press), does what far too few degrowth books do – it first focuses readers’ attention to the positive experiences we could enjoy in a society less dedicated to producing unnecessary stuff. It then details the destructiveness of overproduction.
There is a new energy among our younger citizens to seek a more meaningful life in the country. Now is the time to take advantage of their new-found passion to live and work in a rural community.
There are near endless reasons to downsize to elevate our own value for what it means to be human. There are untold benefits to be gained when consumers become citizens. Paradigm shift starts at home and so do the benefits.
Resilience under prolonged crisis is not built through heroic acts or perfect systems. It grows from networks, from biological processes allowed to heal, from appropriate technologies, from communities that remain open rather than retreat inward.
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.
