The suffering of animals trapped within human systems of exploitation and oppression is hidden in plain sight. Jo-Anne McArthur, animal photojournalist and founder of We Animals Media, joins us. Highlights include: How, motivated by the power of photography to catalyze social change and to raise awareness about animal exploitation, Jo-Anne created a new genre of photojournalism, namely Animal Photo Journalism (APJ); APJ’s mission to capture, memorialize, and expose the experiences of animals who...
May 14, 2024•1 hr 1 min
The dystopian visions of ecologically blind tech billionaires are shaping our future in alarming ways. Émile P. Torres, philosopher and historian, joins us. Highlights include: how transhumanism is built on the idea of creating God-like AI to reengineer humanity to achieve immortality, sustain capitalist growth, and colonize space; how the effective altruism’s utilitarian approach to philanthropy is not only blind to systemic change, social inequalities, and moral integrity, but it also perpetua...
Apr 30, 2024•1 hr 7 min
How many humans can the planet support without capsizing? Alan Weisman, journalist and author of Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth? , joins us. Highlights include: How growth-biased cultures, religions, nationalities, tribes, and political systems are collectively undermining our ability to live within planetary limits; How both the intended and unintended consequences of the Green Revolution helped push us beyond Earth’s carrying capacity, while devastating natural ecosytems;...
Apr 16, 2024•1 hr 7 min
Childfree adults make up a significant portion of the population, yet they remain largely invisible in policymaking and demographic surveys. Zachary Neal and Jennifer Watling Neal, psychologists and childfree researchers, join us. Highlights include: A discussion of how childfree adults make up a significant portion of the population, yet they remain largely invisible in policymaking and demographic surveys; Zak and Jenna's attempt to create a consistent definition of “childfree” by including sp...
Apr 02, 2024•1 hr 4 min
Modern life is filled with confusing and often terrifying problems, leaving many of us struggling with how to make morally decent choices. Travis N. Rieder, bioethicist and moral philosopher and author of Catastrophe Ethics , joins us. Highlights include: Why modern life can be both morally exhausting and puzzling and individual action can often seem insignificant within the context of the massive and complex systems that surround our daily lives; How we can overcome this sense of 'moral dumbfou...
Mar 18, 2024•1 hr 1 min
Pronatalism shapes how we think about parenthood and reproduction, often in ways we don’t even notice. Laura Carroll, an expert on pronatalism, the childfree choice, and author of The Baby Matrix , joins us. Highlights include: Highlighted stories of women from Laura's latest book, A Special Sisterhood: 100 Fascinating Women From History Who Never had Children; A discussion of the various pronatalist assumptions that people have to navigate while deciding whether or not to have children, and the...
Mar 04, 2024•1 hr 2 min
Techno-industrial extractivism is driving environmental destruction, and the media is complicit in upholding the growth model that sustains it. Christopher Ketcham, author of This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption Are Ruining the American West , joins us. Highlights include: How techno-industrial extractivism plagues modern societies and the media is complicity in failing to challenge the growth model on which it is based; How environmental destruction in the U.S. West has been aided...
Feb 20, 2024•52 min
Patriarchy has shaped societies across the globe, but how did it take root? Angela Saini, science journalist and author of The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule , joins us. Highlights include: How gendered roles, pronatalism, and militarism – key features of patriarchies – are very recent phenomena within the long span of human history, emerging with the rise of early states and empires and their pressures on women to have many children for the state for the sake of greater economic and military ...
Feb 06, 2024•1 hr 3 min
When and why did population become a dirty word? Diana Coole, political theorist and feminist scholar, joins us. Highlights include: Why population shaming is the main barrier to open conversations about overpopulation - an major contributor to mounting social and ecological catastrophes, including climate change, biodiversity destruction, resource scarcity, and conflict; How population shaming pushed overpopulation from a central environmental issue in the 1970s to a near-taboo topic today; How...
Jan 23, 2024•1 hr 5 min
Environmental and social breakdown from intersecting crises is accelerating, but how can we navigate it? Asher Miller and Rob Dietz of the Post Carbon Institute join us to discuss their latest report, Welcome to the Great Unraveling . Highlights include: Why human supremacy and ecological overshoot are the root causes of the unfolding 'great unraveling'; How global suffering could increase with the threat of rising polarization, techno-solutionism, and conflict; Why embracing complexity, uncerta...
Jan 09, 2024•1 hr
Oppression, exploitation, and domination harm both humans and nonhumans, but how can we dismantle these systems? Hope Ferdowsian, president of Phoenix Zones Initiative and a public health physician, joins us. Highlights include: Why the exploitation of animals in food production and research is linked to broader global violence and conflict; How powerful corporate interests fuel issues like hunger, climate change, extinction, and pandemics through institutionalized animal exploitation; What ethi...
Dec 22, 2023•1 hr 1 min
How has blind faith in human exceptionalism, neoliberal economics, and technological optimism led us into a state of ecological overshoot? Bill Rees, population ecologist and co-creator of the ecological footprint analysis, joins us. Highlights include: How human exceptionalism, techno-optimism, and neoliberal economics have blinded us to ecological limits and fueled ecological overshoot; How cheap and abundant energy enabled the transformation of nature into human artifacts and the exploitation...
Dec 05, 2023•1 hr 31 min
Modern-day slavery persists as a global tragedy, violating fundamental human rights and causing widespread ecological destruction. Kevin Bales, Professor of Contemporary Slavery and Research Director of the Rights Lab at the University of Nottingham, UK and an expert on modern day slavery, joins us. Highlights include: How population growth, pronatalism, religion, economic systems, and war have sustained slavery in the past and present; Why modern slavery is often difficult to identify due to cu...
Nov 13, 2023•1 hr 5 min
How has Japan’s slightly declining population given rise to a toxic mix of patriarchy, biomedical capitalism, and nationalism? Isabel Fassbender, a Japan-based feminist scholar and author of Active Pursuit of Pregnancy: Neoliberalism, Postfeminism and the Politics of Reproduction in Contemporary Japan , joins us. Highlights include: How Japan’s panicked response to a slight population decline reflects a troubling blend of patriarchy, nationalism, and biomedical capitalism; Why a country with an ...
Oct 24, 2023•1 hr 3 min
Human activity is driving climate change, biodiversity loss, resource scarcity, and pandemics, creating compounding crises that demand urgent attention. Camilo Mora, professor and researcher, joins us. Highlights include: Why moving past population denial is critical for addressing our multiple ecological challenges; How population pressures have impacted life in his native Columbia - including the loss of biodiversity, worsening of poverty, and the erasure of traditional cultural wisdom. Why sm...
Sep 28, 2023•1 hr
What are the ethical implications of bringing new life into existence, both for the child and the planet? Trevor Hedberg, environmental and procreative ethicist and author of The Environmental Impact of Overpopulation: The Ethics of Procreation , joins us. Highlights include: How pronatalism influences procreative decision-making; Why the right to found a family must be balanced with the rights of others to not be harmed; Why Trevor rejects both antinatalism and misanthropy; Why population reduc...
Sep 12, 2023•1 hr 8 min
What happens when we renounce our ego and allow nature to become our teacher? Subrabha Seshan, rainforest conservationist and educator, joins us. Highlights include: What the Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary in Kerala, India is doing to serve as an ecological “ark” amid the flood of human expansion; How Subrapha's work combines traditional knowledge and scientific practices to protect endangered plants of the Western Ghats biome; Why understanding plant interdependence is essential for restoring for...
Aug 23, 2023•1 hr 2 min
Male involvement in family planning is key to changing population dynamics and promoting gender equity in Uganda. Andrew Kyamagero, a Ugandan journalist and family-planning advocate, joins us. Highlights include: How patriarchal norms drive high fertility, child marriage, and low female education and workforce participation in Uganda; Why Western imperialism, both historical and ongoing, continues to challenge Uganda’s sovereignty; Why engaging boys and men in confronting patriarchy and pronatal...
Aug 01, 2023•1 hr 4 min
Reproductive autonomy and empowering choice are key to both human rights and planetary health. Robert Engelman, researcher, writer, former newspaper reporter and author of More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want , joins us. Highlights include: How women have been controlling their fertility for thousands of years through various forms of contraception; What 10,000 years of history reveal about the link between the erosion of women’s reproductive rights, population growth, and environmental...
Jul 11, 2023•1 hr 5 min
What happens when we stop treating people and the planet like they're here to serve the economy and start treating the economy like it's here to serve us? Amanda Janoo, Economics and Policy Lead at the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, joins us. Through clear examples and policy strategies, Janoo illustrates the cultural and metaphysical transformation that can occur within communities when social and ecological wellbeing become our primary goals, and the economy becomes the means to help us achieve t...
Jun 22, 2023•1 hr 14 min
Free-market fundamentalism undermines democracy and exploits marginalized communities to benefit a small minority of elites. Naomi Oreskes, Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University and co-author of The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Marke t, joins us. Using her latest book that she co-authored with Erik M. Conway, The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loath Gover...
Jun 01, 2023•1 hr 7 min
Humans are overpowering Earth’s natural systems and oppressing one another. Richard Heinberg, author of Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival and one of the world’s foremost experts on energy and sustainability, joins us. Using his latest book, Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival as the basis of our conversation, we unpack how humans have come to overpower Earth's natural systems and oppress one another and how we might address this. Richard challenges the techno-utopian absu...
May 16, 2023•1 hr
If autonomy is a basic human right, why do many women have little or no choice when it comes to motherhood? Amrita Nandy, a feminist scholar and author of Motherhood and Choice: Uncommon Mothers, Childfree Women , joins us. India has just surpassed China as the most populous country in the world. What role has patriarchal pronatalism played in spurring this growth? What roles do patriarchy, religion, and the free market play in institutionalizing marriage and motherhood, and what influence does ...
Apr 28, 2023•1 hr 8 min
A declining birth rate is a positive trend that can lead to greater prosperity. Vegard Skirbekk, population economist and author of the book, Decline and Prosper! Changing Global Birth Rates and the Advantages of Fewer Children , joins us. To counteract the increasingly alarmist fears of population decline, we have a sobering conversation with population economist, Vegard Skirbekk. He takes us through decades of demographic research to lay to rest apocalyptic forecasts and insecurities around ex...
Apr 03, 2023•1 hr
Human supremacy keeps us from appreciating the incredible beauty and complexity of other creatures and their cultures. Carl Safina, ecologist and author of Becoming Wild , joins us. We discuss how human supremacy keeps us from appreciating the incredible beauty and complexity of other creatures, and has led to the diminishment of most wild beings and places. Carl's work fuses scientific understanding, emotional connection, and a moral call to action. He sees that the durability of human dignity ...
Feb 28, 2023•1 hr 1 min
Medical institutions help fuel pronatalism. Kristyn Brandi, a proud abortion provider and board chair with Physicians for Reproductive Health, debunks the “biological clock” and discusses what the overturning of Roe v Wade means in terms of safe abortion care for already marginalized communities. In this episode Dr. Kristyn Brandi, an Obstetrician-Gynecologist, shares how the medical institution in one of many that fuels pronatalism. We also discuss what the overturning of Roe v Wade means in te...
Feb 04, 2023•1 hr 1 min
We were scheduled to speak with Helen Kopnina and Haydn Washington on December 16th when this episode was recorded. We are very sad to report that Haydn died on December 10th after a battle with cancer. We are grateful to be joined by his friend and colleague, Helen, and we dedicate this episode to the memory of Haydn Washington. Highlights of this episode include: Helen’s tribute to Haydn and his uncompromising commitment to sustainability and justice; The definition of ecocentrism and Helen’s ...
Jan 12, 2023•56 min
The dominant worldview that we are machines driven by selfishness and competition needs to be dismantled and replaced with a life-affirming worldview of deep interconnectedness that weaves together modern science and traditional wisdom. Jeremy Lent, author of The Web of Meaning and The Patterning Instinct , joins us. Jeremy's work integrates science and traditional wisdom to lay out a solid foundation for a life-affirming worldview of deep interconnectedness. By dismantling the dominant narrativ...
Dec 27, 2022•1 hr 1 min
Women who choose not to be mothers are frequently warned that they will regret their decision later in life, yet we rarely discuss the possibility that mothers who have children might regret it. Sociologist Orna Donath, author of Regretting Motherhood , joins us. In this episode with Israeli sociologist Dr. Orna Donath, we unpack her work on this highly stigmatized topic of motherhood regret. Orna helps us understand the distinctions between ambivalence and regret, as well as non-natalism and an...
Nov 11, 2022•58 min
Current growth-based economic models devalue and destroy nature. Partha Dasgupta, economist and author of The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review , joins us. Partha Dasgupta describes how the current growth-based economic models came to be, and why their nature-destructive policies have turned our planet into a house of cards. We unpack Dasgupta's most recent publication The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review from 2021, a 600-page study that was commissioned by the UK Gove...
Oct 24, 2022•1 hr 4 min
