Best of TGS: What Would You Do With a Magic Wand?
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Nate Hagens
4.8 • 552 Ratings
🗓️ 22 December 2024
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This year on The Great Simplification, we heard from 54 guests, 18 Reality Roundtable panelists, and Nate shared his thoughts across 31 Frankly episodes. But even after releasing 300+ hours of conversations and reflections since this show began, we are only just beginning to connect all the moving parts that make up The Human Predicament.
As 2025 approaches, we invite you to reflect on this compilation of answers to a question that Nate asks every guest: "If you could wave a magic wand – and there was no personal recourse to your decision, what is one thing you would do to improve human and planetary futures?"
While some of these answers would truly take magic to achieve, and others involve actions that we have the power to enact on the individual level and within the communities around us right now, we hope you feel motivated and inspired by the magical thinking of these experts to wave a wand wherever you find yourself in the unfolding story of The Great Simplification.
Thank you so much for your continuing support, and for caring so deeply about the topics of this show.
So, what would you do with a magic wand?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Greetings and happy holidays and winter solstice. We have had another incredible year on this podcast |
| 0:08.0 | filled with fantastic humans as guests who've provided deep insights to our world on the human |
| 0:15.4 | predicament and the road ahead. As you all know, every episode, I ask my guest this question, if you could wave a magic wand and there was no personal recourse to your decision, what is one thing that you would do to improve human and planetary futures? |
| 0:32.4 | So as 2024 comes to an end, I thought it would be nice to compile and share a highlight reel of some of our guests' answers to this question. |
| 0:42.8 | I hope you find this meaningful and inspiring, and I invite you to share what you would do if you had a magic wand in the comments. |
| 0:52.2 | A bit of housekeeping as Christmas and New Year's this year fall on Wednesdays, |
| 0:58.4 | there will be no episodes out on those weeks also to give my wonderful staff a break. |
| 1:05.8 | So our next full episode will be with John Vervecki on the meaning crisis on January 8th, one of my best |
| 1:14.4 | conversations of the year. And there's many other wonderful ones on deck after that. Lastly, |
| 1:21.6 | I want to thank all of you, the community of the Great Simplification, this podcast, this channel. |
| 1:27.4 | I hope you've learned as much from this journey, our guests as I have. |
| 1:32.8 | If you would like to support ongoing work in this space, in this channel for the coming year, |
| 1:38.7 | please head to the Great Simplification.com to make a tax deductible donation. |
| 1:46.4 | The link to donate can also be found in the show description for this episode. Thank you. Happy holidays onwards and see you next |
| 1:54.7 | year. I would ordain with my magic wand that there should be no money in politics, that there should be no |
| 2:04.1 | corruption whatsoever. Today in the United States, we have institutionalized corruption. |
| 2:11.5 | No politician can arrive at any top to be a senator or president or whatever without being corrupt. They're all corrupt, |
| 2:20.0 | not because of personal flaws, but it's built into the system. And to get rid of this |
| 2:25.5 | institutional corruption, get money out of politics, that would be my wish. |
| 2:30.9 | The world we live in right now has an extinction rate that's probably a thousand times |
| 2:36.0 | higher than it's ever been, or at least the average, or maybe even in order to magnitude more. |
| 2:40.9 | And sometimes I think the role of a conservation biologist is similar to being a doctor. |
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