The Silent Collapse: What the Disappearance of Insects Means for Humanity and the Earth with Oliver Milman
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Nate Hagens
4.8 • 550 Ratings
🗓️ 6 August 2025
⏱️ 80 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Insects, bugs, creepy-crawlies – these small animals are often considered a nuisance (or worse) by humanity, bringing up an ongoing desire to kill or mitigate these "pests" that plague our backyards, homes, and gardens. But we're beginning to see that, despite our cultural misconceptions, insects are actually at the foundation of our biosphere, food supply, and nearly every life process on Earth. This makes recent reports of rapidly declining insect populations all the more troubling – but can we recognize the vital importance of insects and reverse the harm we've done before it's too late?
On this episode, Nate is joined by environmental journalist, Oliver Milman, to discuss the alarming decline in insect populations in the past few decades and the far-reaching consequences this has for ecosystem stability, human well-being, and the overall health of the biosphere. From pollination and nutrient cycles to being the base of food webs for countless other animals, the loss of insects has cascading effects beyond what we could imagine. Oliver outlines the human activity that is driving the worst of these trends, including how accelerating global heating is amplifying these ecological pressures.
How would a major collapse of insect populations immediately disrupt our everyday lives — and are we already starting to see those impacts? How do various sectors of human activity, from industrial agriculture to urban development, influence insect health? And ultimately, would supporting thriving insect populations require us to fundamentally rethink our relationship with the creatures with which we share the biosphere?
(Conversation recorded on June 25th, 2025)
About Oliver Milman:
Oliver Milman is a British journalist and the environment correspondent at The Guardian. His first book, The Insect Crisis, is a devastating account of how a silent collapse in worldwide insect populations is threatening everything from the birds in our skies to the food on our plates. It was published by Atlantic in 2022 and shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Conservation Writing.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | one in four bumblebee species in North America are now vulnerable to extinction. |
| 0:04.6 | The Monobusly migration to California is about 1% of what it was in the 1980s. |
| 0:09.9 | You speak to entomologists and they're a ref, they kind of go on these scientific field trips |
| 0:14.3 | and they come back with nothing, they see nothing, and it's kind of devastating to them. |
| 0:18.1 | So we're losing a lot of beauty as well as utility in the world, |
| 0:21.5 | I would say. |
| 0:25.0 | You're listening to the great simplification. I'm Nate Hagen's. On this show, we describe how |
| 0:30.8 | energy, the economy, the environment and human behavior all fit together and what it might mean |
| 0:37.0 | for our future. By sharing insights |
| 0:39.4 | from global thinkers, we hope to inform and inspire more humans to play emergent roles |
| 0:45.2 | in the coming great simplification. Joining me today is journalist Oliver Millman to give an update on the state of global insect populations and what their declining numbers mean for humanity and the stability of the biosphere. |
| 1:04.8 | Oliver is an environmental correspondent at The Guardian and recently wrote his first book, The Insect Crisis, which tells |
| 1:12.4 | the story of the silent collapse of worldwide insect populations and how this is threatening |
| 1:18.3 | everything from the birds in our skies to the food on our plates. In this episode, he outlines |
| 1:24.1 | the dire consequences for all of life over the coming decades, including humans, |
| 1:29.3 | if insect biomass continues to decline at its current rate of 1 to 2% per year. |
| 1:36.3 | Action at the macro level is the only way we will truly be able to change this trend, |
| 1:41.3 | but he and I discuss some of the ways that individuals and |
| 1:44.9 | communities can support insect populations in local ecosystems as well. Longtime listeners will |
| 1:51.9 | know that this topic is extremely important to me and not widely discussed in environmental |
| 1:57.7 | media. Yet even as someone who has long cared for the natural world, |
| 2:02.1 | the more I learn about the role of biodiversity and biocomplexity in stabilizing Earth's natural |
... |
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