In vitro fertilization (IVF) is often seen as a triumph of reproductive freedom, but its origins are deeply entangled with patriarchy, pronatalism, and eugenics. Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos, IVF survivor and author of Silent Sorority and Finally Heard , discusses how under-regulation and cultural obsession with biological motherhood allows the multi-billion dollar fertility industry to obscure the truth about its low success rates and the trauma it causes. Highlights include: What the IVF process e...
Jun 23, 2025•1 hr 12 min
The meat industry and its defenders promise ethical consumption and sustainable farming, but animal agriculture fuels ecological destruction, entrenches human supremacy, and masks cruelty with comforting myths. John Sanbonmatsu, philosopher and author of The Omnivore’s Deception , shatters the myths of “humane meat” and the 'naturalness' of eating meat, and explains why abolishing the animal economy is essential to living an ethical human life. Highlights include: Why growing up as the child of ...
Jun 10, 2025•1 hr 20 min
The nuclear industry and its boosters promise clean, abundant energy, but nuclear power delivers expensive electricity while posing catastrophic radiation risks and a constant threat of nuclear war. M. V. Ramana, physicist and author of Nuclear is Not the Solution , explains why respecting the limits of the biosphere means reducing our energy use and rejecting elites’ push for endless growth. Highlights include: Why nuclear energy is inherently risky due to its complex, tightly coupled systems t...
May 27, 2025•1 hr 43 min
The world is colliding with the ecological limits of growth - and mainstream economics is still looking the other way. Peter Victor, ecological economist and author of Escape from Overshoot , joins us. Highlights include: How 'the pre-analytic vision' of ecological economics, unlike mainstream economics, recognizes that all economic activity is embedded in the biosphere of Earth; Why population growth has been the main driver of ecological overshoot in recent decades; Why markets routinely fail ...
May 13, 2025•1 hr 5 min
Academy Award-winning vegan filmmaker and former National Geographic photographer Louie Psihoyos joins us to share how he is using the power of storytelling to spark transformation for animal rights, human health, and environmental conservation. Highlights include: How The Cove, his Oscar-wining documentary and the first documentary to sweep all the film guilds, inspired activism that helped reduce dolphin and porpoise slaughter in Japan by over 90%; How his team’s audacious projection events of...
Apr 29, 2025•58 min
Modernity is dying within and around us, and we need to face that death with courage and compassion. Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti, author of Hospicing Modernity , joins us. Highlights include: How her mixed Indigenous and German heritage in Brazil exposed her to a complex mix of love and violence, deepening her understanding of how socialization and education can perpetuate harmful relationships; Why the ‘house of modernity’, which is built on a foundation of humanity’s separation from the rest...
Apr 15, 2025•51 min
The rhetoric of “hopium” is failing as ecological overshoot deepens. “Hopium”, a colloquial term that is a blend of the words “hope” and “opium” (as though it were a drug), represents a faith in technological and market-based solutions to address our multiple reinforcing crises, despite evidence to the contrary. We're living in the long defeat and we must own and confront it with courage. Award-winning essayist, Pamela Swanigan, joins us. Highlights include: How children's literature is full of ...
Apr 01, 2025•1 hr 4 min
There is no energy transition - only ongoing and symbiotic energy addition. Historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, author of More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of Energy , joins us. Highlights include: How the symbiotic relationships between wood, coal, and oil have led to increased use of all of them; Why decoupling economic growth from energy and materials use is a delusional myth; How the energy transition narrative evolved and why it's an "intellectual scandal" used to delay climate ...
Mar 18, 2025•1 hr 6 min
Patriarchy and misogyny fuel global conflicts that further increase the oppression of women and girls. But the resistance of women and girls remains steadfast. Sally Armstrong, award-winning war correspondent, author, and human rights activist, joins us to share their stories. Highlights include: How Sally broke the story about mass rape in the Balkan War in the 1990s that was ignored by male-dominated mainstream media; How patriarchy became established and why women’s role in human history has ...
Mar 03, 2025•55 min
Our patriarchal culture animalizes women and sexualizes animals, and without compulsory pregnancy among human and nonhuman females, both patriarchy and animal agriculture would fail. Carol Adams, author of The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegan Critical Theory , joins us. Highlights include: How Carol got started on her personal journey to veganism; Why patriarchal cultures associate masculinity with meat-eating and how women and animals become ‘absent referents’; Why feminism and veganis...
Feb 18, 2025•1 hr 3 min
We have it in us to create a more beautiful, regenerative future that allows both humans and nonhumans to flourish. Dr. Sarah Bexell, professor of social work and co-founder of the Center for a Regenerative Future at the University of Denver, joins us. Highlights of our conversation include: Why captive breeding programs for endangered species are both cruel and ineffective; How the mental health of both conservation professionals and animal rights activists is deeply impacted by the ongoing suf...
Feb 04, 2025•1 hr 5 min
Ecological overshoot is the second largest risk to humanity. Not reacting to it is the biggest. Mathis Wackernagel, co-creator of the ecological footprint and co-founder of the Global Footprint Network, joins us. Highlights of the conversations include: How ecological footprint is calculated as a measure of how much of nature’s regenerative capacity humanity is using; Why the estimate that we’re using the natural regenerative capacity of 1.7 Earths is an underestimate of humanity’s actual ecolog...
Jan 21, 2025•1 hr 8 min
ANNOUNCEMENT Hello everyone, here we are in 2025 and we have some important news to share. Last year was a really challenging year – we grappled with new climate records, we saw worsening global conflict, and we saw an upsurge in regressive pronatalism. And the year ahead looks like it will include much of the same—which means that all of us will have to remain steadfast, and become even bolder in our work to fight back and advocate for life-affirming alternatives. PODCAST NAME CHANGE As part of...
Jan 16, 2025•2 min
Friendship is not a “nice-to-have” but a core, potentially transformative human connection. Rhaina Cohen, author of The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life With Friendship at the Center , joins us. Highlights of our conversation include: The “friendship recession” and how modern culture undervalues friendships compared to romantic or family ties; Historical and cross-cultural insights into how friendship has been understood and prioritized in different societies; Stories from Cohen’s book...
Dec 23, 2024•1 hr 4 min
Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment. For International Animal Rights Day, we are joined by Ingrid Newkirk, co-founder and President of PETA, the world’s largest animal rights organization. Highlights of our conversation include: The formative experiences that inspired Ingrid to co-found PETA and dedicate her life to animal liberation; PETA’s groundbreaking campaigns that include both bold, confrontational activism as well as behind-the-scenes deliberation a...
Dec 10, 2024•47 min
Population dynamics are deeply connected to environmental sustainability and social justice. That's the message of Pam Wasserman and Hannah Evans from Population Connection - the oldest grassroots population organization in the U.S. Highlights include: The origins of Population Connection and its evolution from ZPG (Zero Population Growth) to a broader mission addressing the intersections of population, environment, and social justice; How their K-12 education program trains thousands of teacher...
Nov 26, 2024•56 min
Healthy and thriving animal communities depend on healthy and thriving human communities. That’s the message from this week’s guest, Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, Uganda’s first wildlife veterinarian and founder of Conservation Through Public Health. Highlights include: How a scabies outbreak among gorillas reshaped her approach to conservation, linking human health to the health of the gorillas; The role of family planning and community health education in reducing human population pressure, huma...
Nov 12, 2024•52 min
Obsession with growth is enriching elites and killing the planet. Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights and author of The Poverty of Growth , joins us. Highlights include: Why poverty is about more than low income and how unequal economic growth creates greater social exclusion and status anxiety for the majority of people that growth leaves behind; How global trade practices benefit corporations over workers, especially in low-income countries, driving i...
Oct 29, 2024•47 min
Eating animals isn’t just a personal choice. It’s shaped by an invisible belief system, carnism, that conditions people to see eating animals as normal, natural, and necessary. Melanie Joy, social psychologist and author of Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows , joins us. Highlights include: How the three 'N's’ - normal, natural, necessary - are used to justify systems like carnism and pronatalism, and how dismantling these myths creates space for more compassionate choices; How cognitive d...
Oct 15, 2024•51 min
Animals feel deeply, and recognizing their emotions could transform how we treat them. Marc Bekoff, animal behavior expert and author of The Emotional Lives of Animals , joins us. Highlights include: How cognitive ethology helps us understand the minds and emotions of animals, and why this understanding is essential for improving their wellbeing; What is wrong with the traditional animal welfare approach and why Dr. Bekoff advocates for a science of animal well-being that values each individual ...
Oct 01, 2024•47 min
Note : Despite the slightly compromised sound quality, Chris offers absolutely essential insights. Population growth and extreme weather events converge to create growing challenges in vulnerable regions. Chris Funk, climatologist and director of the Climate Hazards Center, joins us. Highlights include: How rapid population growth in already hot and humid regions of Africa increases the number of people exposed to extreme heat, drought, and flood; What Funk’s research reveals about how El Niño a...
Sep 17, 2024•1 hr
The dominant economic system delivers neither ecological nor social justice. Joshua Farley, an expert in ecological economics, argues for reclaiming our humanity from the destructive grip of mainstream economics. Highlights include: How mainstream economic ideologies disregard planetary boundaries and contribute to ecological damage through unchecked economic growth; A critique of the ‘ Homo economicus ’ model in mainstream economics, which inaccurately depicts humans as purely rational, self-in...
Sep 03, 2024•1 hr 10 min
We need to respect what water wants. Erica Gies, journalist and author of Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge , joins us. Highlights include: Erica’s personal decision not to have biological children as both a personal choice and a contribution to reducing human pressure on the planet; The concept of 'slow water' and allowing for water’s natural cycles on the land contrasted with modern, infrastructure-heavy approaches that focus on controlling water; The broader implicat...
Aug 20, 2024•1 hr 10 min
Hello, this is Nandita Bajaj, co-host of The Overpopulation Podcast and Executive Director of Population Balance. I am excited to share that we’ve launched a second podcast, Beyond Pronatalism: Finding Fulfillment, With or Without Kids . Please subscribe and share it widely. Episodes drop every two weeks and you can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Don’t miss the chance to hear stories that could very well resonate with your own experiences—or open your mi...
Aug 15, 2024•5 min
Economic growth is failing the planet, and it’s time for a change. James Hopeward, environmental civil engineering professor, joins us. Highlights include: Why decoupling economic growth from energy and material use relies on temporary efficiency gains and ultimately fails in a growth-based system, rendering the concepts of absolute and relative decoupling meaningless; How the IPCC treats economic and population growth as exogenous to its modelling scenarios, and has therefore both overestimated...
Aug 06, 2024•1 hr 2 min
Our legal system is failing animals by treating them as either property or persons. Maneesha Deckha, Professor and Lansdowne Chair in Law at the University of Victoria and author of Animals as Legal Beings: Contesting Anthropocentric Legal Orders , joins us. Highlights include: Highlights include: Maneesha’s personal journey into exploring the links between animal legal studies and critical animal studies, health law, reproductive ethics, feminist analysis of law, and postcolonial and critical r...
Jul 23, 2024•59 min
Education is critical to solving our biggest challenges - but it needs a new approach. Zoe Weil, co-founder and president of the Institute for Humane Education and author of The Solutionary Way , joins us. Highlights include: Zoe’s personal journey of co-founding the Institute for Humane Education in 1996, and the many programs and resources offered through the Institute; The description of a “solutionary” as someone who transforms unjust, unsustainable, and inhumane systems for the most good an...
Jul 10, 2024•1 hr 2 min
“Development” is destroying the planet and erasing cultural wisdom. Ashish Kothari, environmentalist and author, joins us. Highlights include: How the Western model of development in India, combined with colonialism and globalization, led to incalculable social injustice and ecological destruction; How the elite class within countries reinforces neoliberal and neo-colonial models, exacerbating existing inequalities such as gender and caste; The concept of radical ecological democracy, as express...
Jun 25, 2024•1 hr 4 min
The global economy is failing socially and ecologically. Clive Spash, an ecological economist and pioneer of social ecological economics, joins us. Highlights include: A critique of mainstream economics for failing to consider not only ecological and biophysical realities, but also pro-social human behavior and relationships, as well as power hierarchies; How economists who have completed multiple degrees in economics are found to be particularly closed-minded and resistant to alternative perspe...
Jun 11, 2024•1 hr 18 min
We need to shift from systems of domination - rooted in control, hierarchy, and violence - to systems of partnership grounded in mutual respect, equity, and care for all life. Riane Eisler, a social systems scientist, futurist, cultural historian and author of The Chalice and the Blade and The Real Wealth of Nations , joins us. Highlights include: Riane’s childhood experiences of being a Holocaust survivor and living as a refugee in Cuba, which informed her study of contrasting societal models o...
May 28, 2024•56 min
