Planet: Critical

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  P:C ARCHIVES: Fadhel Kaboub on Decolonise To Decarbonise 17.09.2026 57мин

  FROM THE ARCHIVES: Fadhel Kaboub is a former Associate Professor of Economics at Denison University where he researched political economy, decarbonisation, colonialism, and the financial and agricultural policies necessary to facilitate a global—and just—green transition. Since recording, Fadhel has been appointed Under-Secretary-General for Financing for Development at the international intergovernmental organisation, Organisation of Educational Cooperation. This episode is thrilling. Fadhel explains the traps of inflation, debt, globalisation, and the financial and agricultural policies weaponised by the global north to exploit the global south. He walks us through the three structural traps which keep wealth pouring out of the global south into the global north, amounting to modern colonialism. And he explains why we can afford a just transition, revealing the exciting mechanisms of Modern Monetary Theory by exploring the solutions global south countries can implement to ensure their sustainable development. 🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical
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  The Dynamic Energy Budget Theory | Starrlight Augustine 03.09.2026 42мин

  Starrlight Augustine is the director at the Institute of Ecotechnics, a research initiative developing technologies that exist in harmony with nature. She heads up their agroecology division, which is based at Synergia Ranch in New Mexico where she applies a little known but radical theory of biology: Dynamic Energy Budget Theory. DEB theory is a way of understanding how energy flows through organisms and through their living environment, and how the living environment flows through organisms themselves, providing a big picture overview of the metabolic organisation of life itself. Starrlight explains the theory in depth, including what makes it distinguishes itself to other theories of biology, before describing how she applies it practically on the farm to improve their yields and reduce their impacts.  🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical
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  P:C ARCHIVES: Nandita Bajaj on How Pronatalism Feeds The Economy 27.08.2026 1ч 26мин

  FROM THE ARCHIVES: We’re in planetary overshoot. So why are governments coercing women into having children? Nandita Bajaj is the Executive Director of Population Balance, an organisation offering education and solutions to address the intersectional impacts of human overpopulation and over consumption on the planet, people and animals. Nandita also co-hosts The Overpopulation Podcast, and teaches at the Institute for Humane Education at Antioch University, where she researches prenatal ism and human supremacy and their impacts on reproductive ecological and intergenerational justice. This episode is about the dangers of pronatalism. Nandita reveals how the coercive pronatalist policies around the world coupled with cultural mechanisms are causing a devastating impact on the planet. She also explains how existing power structures benefit from a growing population, illustrating how our economic obsession with growth demands exponential population growth. Nandita also explores the elevation of rights—human, species and natural—as a cornerstone climate policy to tackle population and create a sustainable world for everyone, and everything. 🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical
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  Low Tech Lives | Philippe Bihouix 20.08.2026 51мин

  The world is full of good ideas and solutions to the crisis. But good ideas cannot trump the laws of physics, and solutions will only be such if they are deployed in a manifestly different way than our current high-energy, high-material, high-consumption regime demands.  Philippe Bihouix is an engineer and the author of The Age of Low Tech (UK version, US version), which examines why technological innovation is just not going to be enough to get our way out of our resource bottlenecks, the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis, and rising inequality. On the episode, he lays out his thesis, explaining from an engineering perspective the constraints of renewable energy, the fallacy of a circular economy, the reality of how our metals are used and recycled, and the importance of the longevity of demand side technology. Instead, Philippe calls for "techno-discernment", a collective approach for choosing what we're using our finite resources for—and what we're choosing to leave in the ground for future generations. 🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical
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  P:C ARCHIVES: Sally Goerner on Citizens vs Oligarchies 13.08.2026 1ч 3мин

  FROM THE ARCHIVES: What happens when a small percentage of the population amass resources and power? Oligarchy. And polymath Sally Goerner says oligarchy is the final stage of most human civilizations—and a symptom of dysfunctional human systems. She joins me to explain why the future is integral and collaborative, why empowering people with vision and hope is key to creating systemic changes, why citizenship is the foundation of any human system, and how to measure the health of those systems. This is a far-reaching and impressive conversation covering neurobiology, history, sociology, political theory and systems thinking. I found Sally and her research utterly fascinating and hope you all get as much out of it as I did. 🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical
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  Journalism in Crisis | Mark Lee Hunter 06.08.2026 56мин

  Mark Lee Hunter is an investigative journalist, a founding member of the Global Investigative Journalism Network and the principle author of Story-Based Inquiry: A Manual for Investigative Journalists. I asked Mark to join me to explain a little-known story of how a group of left-wing media outlets became instrumental in the gutting of USAID. This consortium of left-wing publications released an investigation accusing one of the world's most influential investigative journalism outlets, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), of being in bed with the US government—an accusation that originated in Russia after Putin's offshore finances were exposed by the OCCRP. Their report made its way into the hands of the MAGA crowd, who then used it as justification to gut government funding for investigative journalism around the world—and act which is has enormous repercussions for us all.  This conversations details exactly what happened, and Mark's published rebuttal of their investigation which shows how the journalists extrapolated conclusions from publicly available data. We then have a fascinating discussion about the importance of morality and strategy in journalism, with Mark warning that a fringe trend of finding facts to fit one's own bias is rapidly becoming more and more common in journalism today. 🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical
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  P:C ARCHIVES: Reverend Billy on How To Stop The Sixth Extinction 30.07.2026 1ч 20мин

  FROM THE ARCHIVES: Reverend Billy is the world-famous secular preacher singing out against climate change, corporate greed and consumerism. Billy has been pounding the streets of New York for decades, preaching against Disney, against mindless consumption, and against the corporations putting our planet in danger. Together with his choir, The Church of Stop Shopping, Reverend Billy uses song and arrest as a form of protest, trespassing into banks, labs and private land to sing about the dangers of the sixth extinction event—and what we can do to stop it. Billy joins me to discuss his journey to secular preaching and the faith in humanity that drives the particular and beautiful protests of The Church of Stop Shopping. This is preaching like you’ve never heard it before. 🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical
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  Being Alive | Melanie Challenger 23.07.2026 53мин

  What does it mean to be alive? Where does intelligence originate?  What do we share with other living creatures? Where does the individual begin, and how do each of us fit into the living world? These are the questions I pose researcher and writer, Melanie Challenger, author of Alive: The Hidden Intelligence of the Living World (UK version, US version). In this brilliant episode, we explore the definition of aliveness and intelligence, with Melanie revealing the ancient histories which have dominated our cultural understanding of intelligence. She offers a new definition, one grounded in our sensory bodies—a physical intelligence that comes from being here, being present, and being finite. We also discuss the supposed binary between individualism and collectivism, with Melanie challenging both the neoliberal hegemony and the environmental mantra of unlimited entanglement, offering a nuanced perspective which reconciles these two oppositional positions into something profoundly meaningful.  🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical
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  P:C ARCHIVES: James Dyke on Net Zero Won't Save Us 16.07.2026 1ч 14мин

  FROM THE ARCHIVES: This week I’m joined by James Dyke, a senior lecturer in Global Systems at the University of Exeter. James reveals why net-zero targets for carbon emissions do nothing but provide an excuse to continue business as usual, posing an existential threat to humanity. He goes into great detail about the interplay of politics, economies, culture and the industrialisation connecting us all, explaining that while there is no one quick fix to the climate crisis, decarbonisation is possible—if we get rid of fossil fuels. 🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical
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  The Land-Based Living Collective | James Bullen 09.07.2026 42мин

  We need to live differently. Part of that means learning how to live together differently, both with each other, and with the wider environment around us.   James Bullen is the founder of the Land-Based Living Collective, a UK initiative aiming to create accessible, land-based communities that provide economic opportunities for the residents, nurture the land back to health, foster a sense of community and tackle some of our biggest modern problems such as food insecurity, energy insecurity and financial precarity. James has spent much of his adult life living in alternative land-based collectives like this, and is honest about the challenges of such a life—and also the great wonders it offers. His vision is grounded in meeting material needs, interweaving existing solutions to create an ecosystem of resilience that can both support its residents and facilitate them supporting one another. 🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical  
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  P:C ARCHIVES: Simon Michaux on The Climate Crisis and The Climate Crash 02.07.2026 1ч 8мин

  FROM THE ARCHIVES: So much of the hope we put in solutions for climate change falls away under a microscope. Did you know wind turbines aren’t recyclable, for example? Guess where they’re buried. Are enough people thinking about what happens when globalisation fails and post-industrial states like Europe and the US are left to mine their own materials? How can we mitigate climate change, truly, without plunging billions into poverty? Simon Michaux is working to find solutions to all these questions. As an associate professor in the circular economy solution unit at the Geological Survey of Finland, Simon models the mining and energy industries to figure out what we can do sustainably—and what is nothing more than greenwashing. He drops more than a few bombshells throughout this episode concerning energy use and politics, but also reveals a new energy paradigm he’s working on that could provide genuine zero emission energy. 🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical
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  How To Mobilise | Inea Lehner 25.06.2026 41мин

  Climate Vanguard is a youth-led organisation providing political education to the public and activists across the Majority World. I'm joined by Inea Lehner, one of their core team members, to discuss their outreach, strategies and principles in supporting the climate movement, and Leftist movements more broadly. Wonderfully, this conversation explores how Inea's own life has been changed through political education, particularly through her adoption of a materialist lens. She explains how Marxism helped her make sense of the world, and what it has to offer the youth of today in their quest to dismantle the inequities of capitalism and create a new vision for a better future. This vision is centred on political decentralisation, social infrastructure and, of course, the regeneration of Earth's body—which is all possible, she says, if we learn to build power from the ground up. 🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical
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  P:C ARCHIVES: Steve Keen on The Economics of Climate Change 18.06.2026 1ч

  FROM THE ARCHIVES: Professor Steve Keen was one of the few economists to realise that a serious economic crisis was imminent in 2005. He publicly warned the world, and helped his native Australia navigate the 2008 crash without the major repercussions that crippled markets everywhere else. He is now working on a new model of economics for a post-crash world. He joined me today to discuss why and how capitalism needs to be constrained, the economics of climate change and what mainstream economists and academics are getting wrong—to the detriment of us all. 🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical
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  The Real Story of "Invasive Species" | Clare Follmann 11.06.2026 54мин

  Non-native species management has very little to do with ecology and everything to do with economics. That's what activist and writer, Clare Follmann, uncovered in her book Scapegoat: What the Invasive Species Story Gets Wrong (UK version, US version). She joins me to explain how "invasive" species have been blamed for creating the conditions of environmental degradation — conditions that have actually been caused by capitalism, extraction and colonialism. In this fascinating episode, she reveals the linguistic tricks at play which colour the doctrine of invasive species management, and the insidious links between these protocols and racism and xenophobia. She gives illuminating examples of how extractive industries have blamed species for the problems caused by their pillaging of Earth, and emphasises that the very idea of non-native species forgets the diverse history of the planet which has seen species spread out all across the globe for millions of years.  🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical
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  Treating The Epidemic of Violence | Gary Slutkin 04.06.2026 53мин

  Can violence be cured? According to physician and epidemiologist, Gary Slutkin, it can. Gary worked for decades treating some of the most virulent disease outbreaks around the world. Then he took that model and applied it to his hometown of Chicago to treat what he believed was an outbreak of violence. His results were shocking: by implementing similar strategies to disease containment and treatment, violent crime could be dramatically reduced. He joins me to discuss exactly that, explaining the research revealed in his book, The End of Violence (UK version, US version), which argues that violence is a pathogen, a contagion, which we can eradicate through tried and tested methods. Gary walks us through the exact methods he and his team at Cure Violence Global has used around the world to inhibit violence, and we discuss the particularities of sexual violence, state violence, and the absolute necessity of understanding that the epidemic is truly a crisis of male violence.  🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical
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  Building An Eco-Civilisation | Jeremy Lent 28.05.2026 1ч

  In an age of bad news, it is so important to remember that everything we need to remake the world is already with us. From how we produce food to how we organise our political systems, the solutions we need have long been developed and tested. What we need now is political will and community vision—and to hold onto the fact that everything is still worth fighting for. Acclaimed author and integrator Jeremy Lent has spent the past years researching a vital book which explores how we can reform and revolutionise our most critical sectors, from finance to agriculture, in order to build a true ecocivilisation. Ecocivilization: Making a World that Works for All (US version, UK version) is a hopeful testament to both our past and our future, illustrated with real-world examples throughout the ages which show time and time again just what we are capable of when we put our minds and hearts together. On this episode, Jeremy walks us through his research, emphasising that such reforms would transform our relationships with each other and the wider world. This is a beautiful conversation which explores how we create the conditions for live to thrive—today, tomorrow, and for the rest of time. 🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical
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  Remaking The World | David Farrier 21.05.2026 50мин

  What is the role of art in any crisis? To understand what is and to imagine what could be; to transcend and birth and promise. This is the message of today's guest, David Farrier.  David is a professor in literature and the environment at Edinburgh University, and the author of Nature's Genius: Evolutions Lessons for a Changing Planet (UK version, US version). He joins me to discuss poetry, literature, relationality, language and intelligence. In this wide-ranging and meditative conversation, we discuss how space and time are made between species, how the entire world is evolving with and through the crisis, and what we can learn from Nature herself to meet this moment exactly where we are. From the Enlightenment to whale song, this conversation explores just how critical art is in a moment of breakdown to be a vehicle for transformation, for transmutation, and, perhaps most importantly, daring—mirroring Nature's very own life force. 🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical
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  The Myth of Individual Responsibility | Michael Maniates 14.05.2026 45мин

   What can we actually do if we want to achieve real change? We have been sold a comforting lie that our purchasing power is the best way to change the world. But rather than offer anything substantial, this lie promotes a myth of individual responsibility that actually inhibits the drastic structural change we desperately need.  Michael Maniates is an environmental social scientist working on issues of environmental governance, sustainable consumption, and sociotechnical change, and the author of The Living Green Myth: the Promise and Limits of Lifestyle Environmentalism (UK version, US version). He joins me to discuss how we were sold that big green myth, how it relates to the global neoliberal overhaul of the role of markets in the 80s, how it frustrates structural change, and what we can do instead. He also reveals the social science on how people react when their attempts to change the world through this very process are repeatedly frustrated—and how this impedes future action.
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  The Eco-Crisis is a Feminist Crisis | Natasha Walter 07.05.2026 51мин

  The women's movement sprang into being in a different world. How must it adapt to meet the challenges we face today?Natasha Walter is a journalist, the founder of the Women for Refugee Women Charity, and the author of multiple books, including her most recent, Feminism for a World on Fire (UK version and US version out today). In it, Natasha investigates the successes and weaknesses of the women's movement, taking a scalpel to the most recent decades of feminist thought and action and revealing how they have been shaped by neoliberalism. She joins me to discuss just that, explaining how our hyper individualist economy has created a feminist culture which is more invested in the individuals success than in structural change and collective liberation. From there, we discuss care as an organising principle, and why this feminist school of thought must be seeded in climate camps, from degrowth theory to mobilisation. We also explore the effects of a neoliberal feminism on young women around the world, many of whom are now turning their backs on the women's movement to instead pledge allegiance to "tradwives" and other typically patriarchal forms of social organisation. We ask: What is feminism failing to provide these young women? And what about the women's movement needs to change to confront and overcome the political, economic and ecological crises which threaten our very future? 🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical: www.planetcritical.com
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  Deep Ecology | John Seed 30.04.2026 42мин

  We don't need more ecological ideas, we need ecological selves. That's the message of this week's guest, John Seed, a longtime environmental activist who has been instrumental to the Deep Ecology movement. John joins me to explain exactly what Deep Ecology can offer us—a sense of place, time and connection in a world coming apart. He walks us through the philosophy and multiple exercises, revealing how our coming together with the world around us can also help us come together as people—to grieve, to love, to be. This a beautiful, resonant and poetic episode, with John's wisdom and humility blooming forth to offer a vision which neither despairs nor denies, but is instead devoted to truths that surpass humans alone and encircle all of us, each of us, in this great web of life, to be held and to hold, even for just a moment.  🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical: www.planetcritical.com