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The Overpopulation Podcast
The Overpopulation Podcast features enlightening conversations between executive director Nandita Bajaj, researcher Alan Ware, and expert guests to discuss the often misunderstood impacts of our expanding human footprint on human rights, animal protection, and ecological preservation, as well as individual and collective solutions. Ranking in the top 1.5% of all podcasts globally, we draw over 15,000 listeners from across 80 countries.
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Navigating the Great Unraveling with Resilience
In this episode, we chat with Asher Miller and Rob Dietz of the Post Carbon Institute about their latest report "Welcome to the Great Unraveling", which explores ways to navigate the environmental and social breakdown resulting from multiple intersecting crises.
Phoenix Rising: Pathways toward Animal and Human Liberation
Dr. Hope Ferdowsian, president of Phoenix Zones Initiative and a public health physician, discusses how she and her colleagues are working to dismantle the roots of oppression, exploitation, and domination harming humans and non-humans, and how we can cultivate the strength and resilience needed to facilitate that “phoenix effect” transformation for ourselves and for those in need.
Confronting Overshoot: Changing the Story of Human Exceptionalism
We chat with population ecologist, originator of “ecological footprint”, and one of the world’s best big-picture ecological thinkers, Dr. Bill Rees. Bill explains how our blind faith in human exceptionalism, technological optimism, and neoliberal economics fooled us into disregarding ecological limits and brought us into a state of extreme overshoot. How can we confront this reality, in which we are degrading the biophysical basis of existence, to prepare for a post-industrial world?
Population Growth, Modern Slavery, and Ecocide
Dr. Kevin Bales, world-renowned expert on contemporary global slavery, shines a light on the human rights violations and ecocidal impacts of modern day slavery, and the role that population growth, patriarchal pronatalism, religion, political regimes, global and local economies, and conflict play in perpetuating it.
Wellbeing Economy: An Economy in Service of Life
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 unpacks the fundamentals behind the Wellbeing Economy.
How Free-Market Fundamentalism Fuels Population Denialism & Undermines Democracy
Naomi Oreskes, a world-renowned earth scientist, historian and public speaker explains how free-market fundamentalism has had a long history of undermining democracy and exploiting marginalized communities to benefit a small minority of elites.
Patriarchy, Motherhood, and the Search for Meaning
Dr. Amrita Nandy, India-based feminist scholar addresses the questions: If autonomy is a basic human right, why do many women have little or no choice when it comes to motherhood? Do women know they have a choice? And how might we reimagine the widest sense of family-making and spiritual kinship that includes our love for all humans and more-than-humans?
An OB-GYN Unpacks the “Biological Clock,” Abortion, & Medical Pronatalism
OB-GYN Dr. Kristyn Brandi unpacks the “biological clock”, medical pronatalism, & the state of abortion care in post-Roe America. We also discuss the history of reproductive control & why understanding Critical Race Theory (CRT), Reproductive Justice (RJ), & pronatalism, is essential to justice & sustainability.
The Social and Ecological Costs of Population Denialism | In memory of Haydn Washington
Dr. Helen Kopnina pays tribute to late Dr. Hadyn Washington and his uncompromising commitment to sustainability and justice. She also discusses her personal introduction to an eco-centric worldview through nature’s healing power, as well as the social and ecological costs of population denialism.
Accounting for Nature: The Economics of Biodiversity
Sir Partha Dasgupta takes us on a journey on 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 his most recent publication UK government-commissioned publication, The Economics of Biodiversity.
Embracing Limits With Ecospheric Grace
Author Robert Jensen discusses his latest book An Inconvenient Apocalypse that he co-authored with The Land Institute’s co-founder Wes Jackson, about the need to grapple with difficult questions and to consciously embrace limits, as a pathway to a more graceful and meaningful co-existence with Nature.
Soap Operas For Social Justice
Bill Ryerson, founder of one of the most effective sustainable population organizations in the world—Population Media Center, discusses the educational entertainment that his organization has used to promote important social and cultural changes that have helped 500 million people in over 50 countries.
A Profound Vision For An Ecological Civilization
Dr. Eileen Crist—a deep, profound, and compassionate systems thinker—shines a light on the worldview of human supremacy that foregrounds our relationship of dominion towards non-human animals and all of nature, and offers a vision for cultivating a more indigenous-inspired identity as Earthlings.
Cops, Cabbages, and Thailand’s Mr. Condom
Affectionately known in Thailand as “Mr. Condom,” multiple award-winning health advocate Mechai Viravaidya discusses how, by using creativity and humor, he championed the most successful family-planning, AIDS prevention, and poverty reduction programs ever known.
The Unique Challenges of Being Black and Childfree
Dr. Kimya Nuru Dennis discusses her research on the Black childfree diaspora in countries around the world. We also touch upon the role that patriarchy and male domination plays in the relative powerlessness of women to take control over their reproduction, especially in BIPOC and LGBTQIA communities.
Rome is Burning. The Time is Now
On a mission to bend the curve on population and consumption, Dr. Phoebe Barnard discusses the need to move beyond dichotomous thinking and to rally together leaders from across faith, science, and activism to urgently protect our incredible spaceship Earth-with humility, love, and deep collaboration.
The Not-So-Selfish Choice To Be Childfree
Therese Shechter discusses her new paradigm shifting documentary film My So-Called Selfish Life about one of our greatest social taboos: choosing not to become a mother. She exposes the oppressive and powerful cultural narratives that seek to maintain control over women's minds, bodies, and lives.
Sex Education (As Good As The Show!)
Sarah Baillie and Kelley Dennings from The Center for Biological Diversity share their exciting initiatives and advocacy work on destigmatizing sex, contraception, and reproductive decisions. They also share their awareness campaigns relating to population and consumption pressures on biodiversity.
Earth Overshoot Day: Overdrafting the World's Ecosystems
“We are using up the biophysical basis of our own existence; the only way out of overshoot is less production and less consumption, so it means a much smaller economy and far fewer people.” That’s the bottom line of this Earth Overshoot Day conversation with William Rees, the father of ecological footprint analysis.
Perspectives from Population Institute's New President
Great strides have been made in advancing women’s reproductive autonomy, but there is still much to accomplish. Kathleen Mogelgaard discusses the Institute’s work, including reducing the unmet need for family planning and an active effort to permanently repeal the global gag rule.