
Behavioral Thermodynamics Part 1: Beyond the 4th Law?
Published: December 19, 2025
Duration: 30:47
In this week's Frankly, Nate takes thermodynamics out of the physics classroom, utilizing its principles to explain the invisible forces behind growth, competition, and complexity in our world. Competing life systems build organization out of chaos in order to maximize power usage today, even if it potentially undermines survival tomorrow. Within our energetic reality of finite and destabilizing fossil fuels, this tendency towards instant power accelerates us towards planetary overshoot.
Nate poses a question in response to this tendency: What happens when a species becomes conscious of the self-fulfilling drive to maximize energy flow? He suggests a "...