Nate Hagens

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This show is hosted by me, Nate Hagans, edited by No Troublemakers Media, and produced by Misty Stinnett and Lizzie Sirianni.

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Something happened to me a few weeks ago that precipitated this frankly.

I sat down with a cup of coffee at around 530 in the morning.

I get up early so I can feed the animals and get a bike ride in before it gets too hot.

Um, the light was coming over the field behind the house and it was that gray pink that lasts just a few minutes before it turns into an ordinary day.

I had my coffee in my hand and I was facing the window and at some point, like five minutes later,

I came back to myself and realized that I had not really seen any of it.

I had been somewhere else.

I had been specifically in late 2026.

I'd been imagining a scenario about diesel rationing due to refinery constraints.

My coffee was gone and the beautiful morning dawn light was gone.

And the Baltimore Oreo that comes this time of year to eat the oranges I put out had come and gone.

And I'd been 10 feet away and somewhere else entirely.

So today I want to talk about presence, about actually being here in the now.

as a specific problem for those of us who have spent years building an intellectual synthesis about where this civilization is going.

Because the work that has made me useful, I think, in some small way has also made me peculiarly absent from my own life.