A Guide to Staying Human (Part 2): Navigating Dread and Carrying the Weight of Tomorrow | Frankly 142
5/15/202632 min
In this week's Frankly, Nate offers the second episode in his series on staying human, this time focused on dread. Opening with a personal reflection on his own relationship to dread, Nate describes how the chronic anticipation of collapse affects the human nervous system long before any single crisis fully arrives. He walks through how the neuroscience behind the body's threat response was wired for more immediate risk, rather than the slow-moving and abstract risks of the more-than-human predicament.
The latter part of the episode turns toward response. Nate outlines five practical pathways for metabolizing dread, drawing on insights from a wide variety of thinkers across neuroscience, trauma research, and contemplative traditions. These pathways include tools like mental reframing, somatic practice, reclaiming agency, community and co-regulation, and what Nate calls "befriending the darkness." He closes the episode with five concrete steps individuals can take when dread arises in daily life in order to move from dread into presence amidst widespread transformation.
Where in your body do you actually feel the weight of what you know about the future? What is one action within your reach today that is small but real? And who in your life can sit with what you carry, without trying to fix it?
(Recorded May 14th, 2026)
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsNate Hagens· Host0:00
Good morning, friends. Uh, Art Berman led off this week's podcast by referring to the US-Israel war with Iran as the biggest blunder in human history, and this might be true. I am quite worried about, uh, the future, and these past couple months, this worry is, um, a bit on turbocharge. And in reflecting on this, I honed in on what e-exactly it is that I'm feeling, and what I'm feeling is dread. And irrespective of how the situation in Iran resolves, I am already paying for it. Not in money, um, or lack of convenience, or higher grocery costs, or unavailable parts in the global supply chain. Not yet. I am paying for it in my lack of daily attention to things, in my poor sleep, and this kind of low-grade but continual tightness in the middle of my chest whenever the thought spirals happen on the implications of this unfolding event interrupt my day, which is often. I'm guessing that many of you feel similar,