Planet: Critical

Who's going to grow your food when our complex supply chains fail? Chris Smaje, academic turned small-hold farmer, is an advocate for hyper-local agrarianism—because that's going to be our future whether we like it or not. Chris returns to Planet: Critical to discuss his third book, Finding Lights in a Dark Age, which details the history of land expropriation, the inefficiency of modern, industrial farming, and the benefits to body, mind and spirit when we all muck in together and get our hands dirty. We cover all this and more, getting into the critiques and fears people hold around small-scale farming, with Chris explaining the racist and colonial ideologies that still underpin our attitudes towards farming in the Western world. And as he reiterates over and over again, making the choice today to get involved in your own community sufficiency is one of the best ways we can prepare for the inevitable fall-out of hyper-exploitation, hyper-consumption and hyper inequality.   Support Planet: Critical

Before European invaders sought to control every inch of Earth's territory, human beings organised themselves in radically different ways throughout the world. Entire cultures and knowledges were put to the sword, alongside millions of human bodies. This deliberate attack on the cultures and ideologies with which communities understood their histories, bodies, roles and people was part of what made colonialism such a successful and enduring project. And it lives on today, in our very minds, when we uncritically accept the racial and gender categories which stem from that colonial conquest, argues Feminist philosopher, Jules Falquet. We discuss the reality—or not—of gender differences, the history of racial categorisation, and the production of children through the lens of capitalist logic, with Jules insisting that none of these particular ways of thinking or being are "natural" but rather learned processes which prevent us from escaping the shackles of our colonial history. We do not always agree on the finer details, but certainly the resounding message in this episode is that our perception of absolute differences between people and our more-than-human kin are a critical component in the volume of senseless violence we live through today.   Support Planet: Critical

Just five years ago, two scientists in white coats threw red paint on the Royal Society HQ to protest against the damage being done to Earth. Their action sparked the Scientist Rebellion movement all around the world, where those who know the worst of what is to come took to the streets because to merely study it in their labs was not enough to prevent disaster. Then came the sudden rise of authoritarianism that proved peaceful demands will not be met, and the realisation we our tactics must evolve with the new political climate.    Natural Scientist Fernando Racimo documented the movement and his own involvement in his book, Science in Resistance: The Scientist Rebellion for Climate Justice. He joins me today to discuss what works, what doesn't, and how deep the rot of complicity goes in universities. We discuss the efficacy of disruptive action and the importance of generative action, with Fernando calling for academics to focus on localised, community-based work, insisting we must embody the changes we wish to see in everything we do—because nobody is going to build a new world for us.    Support Planet: Critical.

The best intentions of mice and men... aft never leave the conference centre, according to this week's guest, Dave Snowden. Founder of The Cynefin Company, Dave is a management consultant and complexity scientist who has worked for governments and institutions around the world to help them better understand what populations need, and how to deliver it to them. He joins me today to explain why solutions fail, why populism is on the rise, and why the middle class' penchant for what he calls "talking therapy" will never deliver real change—because it ignores the stories on the street. This is a conversation which explores geo-engineering, putting oil companies to good use, The Troubles and even Obama's first term, with Dave insisting that it is impossible to change people's minds—we can only facilitate different interactions with the world.   Support Planet: Critical by subscribing at PlanetCritical.com

Nations are rushing to secure resources within their own borders.  Globalisation is over.  Colonialism and mining have always gone hand in hand. But now that the Global South has more political muscle as a bloc, and now that resources are running low, wealthy countries which have historically secured and polluted elsewhere are opening up extractive frontiers within their own territories. This is a tectonic shift in international politics, creating new fault lines, exacerbating inequalities, and causing conflict. Thea Riofrancos is an associate professor of political science at Providence College, and the author of Extraction: the Frontiers of Green capitalism. Thea joins me to explain the history of extractivism and its relationship to colonialism, the extractive frontiers that are now being opened up in the global north, the conflict these create within populations, and  the economic interventions that are currently transforming how resources are being extracted. She also details the wave of resistance that is surging to meet these colonial forces as people around the world arm themselves with knowledge and skills to prevent their homelands being torn up and fed to corporate industries. 

Geopolitics is shifting with the supply of critical raw materials. Necessary for the so-called “green transition” these materials have created another resource rush, triggering a mining boom all over the world, which is leaving conflict, environmental devastation and political instability in its wake. In this episode, researcher and climate analyst Nina Djukanović explains her recently published research into the  competitiveness, security, and socio environmental issues of critical raw materials around the world. Her paper, Material Dependencies, was produced for Czech think tank, the  Association for International Affairs, and she explains we simply do not have enough materials to transition to a green economy within an extractivist and growth model. She explains all this and more, revealing how the green transition is being dangerously interwoven with militarism and digitisation, leaving a political vacuum that the far Right is exploiting, particularly in the EU and USA. Nina's paper: https://www.amo.cz/en/climate-team/material-dependencies-competitivness-security-and-socio-environmental-issues-of-critical-raw-materials-2/   Support the show at PlanetCritical.com

Hi everyone, I’ve designed the new Planet: Critical website and I want your feedback. If there’s any sections, groupings, design changes that you’d like to see—or flaws you notice—I’ll spend the next week incorporating what I can. So please go and play around on the new site here and then comment on this article Substack to let me know what you think. The new site allows for a lot more flexibility. I’ve created newspaper-like sections dividing the posts into topics. Currently, the sections are: Energy Crisis, Economic Crisis, Ecological Crisis, Political Crisis, Human Crisis, Inconvenient Truths, Good Ideas. I’ve also created a page for people new to the topics covered on the site, linking the three most important episodes in each section. I hope this will be a helpful onboarding for new readers/listeners as the archive now, after almost five years, is pretty daunting. I want to know what you think! Sadly, I’ve got no clue how to code (I’d love to add in sign up graphics between each section on the homepage, or some info cards, just to break it up) but I’ll do what I can with your suggestions! Here’s the temporary URL again. Let me know what you think by commenting below! P:C will be back to regular scheduling before the end of the month. Thank you for your patience! Rachel Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

Doctors are tasked with an impossible job: Keep our bodies healthy while Earth’s collapses. Our healthcare systems are already under-funded and over-stretched, and that’s before we throw in the drastic changes in disease and mortality that warming temperatures are unleashing around the world. That all this falls on the shoulders of healthcare workers is another symptom of the madness of modernity. Each and every policy is responsible for our healthcare, not just the industry itself. Sharon Friel is a Professor of Health Equity at Australia National University, researching how planetary health and human health intersect. She joins me to explain the state of health in the coming decades, which institutional policies are already preventing effective treatment, and how our atomistic relationship to cause and effect with regards to climate change is reflected in the biomedical paradigm itself. We discuss how medical curricula around the world can and must change, the necessary integration of different epistemologies, and Sharon reveals what is sending the medical insurance industry into a panic—revealing just high Earth’s fever is climbing. Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

Is China the next world leader? Ken Hammond is a professor of history at New Mexico State University, where he specializes in the history of China in the early modern period. Author of China's Revolution and the Quest for a Socialist Future, Ken joins me to explain the stark differences in how China is deploying its newfound wealth and political power within its own borders and throughout the Global South. We also discuss the persecution of the Uyghurs, with Ken and I taking very different positions about how nation states should manage diversity within their borders. We end up debating whether or not a sustainable, socialist future can ever be achieved through centralised forces—and what the possible fallout could be. Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis. Join subscribers from 186 countries to support independent journalism. Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

Imagine if we rolled up our sleeves instead of pointed our fingers? Jessica Hernandez is an indigenous climate scientist and author of Growing Papaya Trees. Her work reveals that the roots of our planetary crisis lies in the violence of colonialism and neo-colonialism. In this gentle and humorous conversation, Jessica explains what it means to be a displaced indigenous person, why the Lands need people to be well, and the worldviews impeding us as a global collective to take the necessary action to protect Earth and each other. We discuss the recent creation of a global indigenous identity, how renewable energy is encroaching on indigenous rights, our shared suspicion of the “just transition”, the common failures found amongst all humans, and how Western individualism has promoted a culture of blame when what we need, more than ever, is to take accountability for our world today. Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis. Join subscribers from 186 countries to support independent journalism. Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

The climate crisis is causing an invisible health crisis. The number one cause of neurodegenerative disease is the environment. And our environment is changing—releasing bacteria, neurotoxins and pathogens into our warming world which can change the very matter in our brains. Clayton Aldern is a neuroscientist and environmental reporter at Grist. In his 2024 book, The Weight of Nature: How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains, Clayton revealed how the climate crisis intersects with our psychological, mental and brain health, warning that this health crisis, if left untreated, could upturn our lives. In this astounding episode, he walks through the different ways climate intersects with brain health, revealing the increased risk of a number of different diseases, what triggers them, and the absolute failure of policy-makers to address it. We discuss stress, violence, aggression, and using our bodies as an empathetic tool to understand the pain of others, with Clayton painting an optimistic picture about the power of story-telling to change the world. Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis. Join subscribers from 186 countries to support independent journalism. Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” — Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2 The two hemispheres of our brain collaborate to produce a coherent understanding of the world—at least, that’s what they’re supposed to do. In his groundbreaking book, The Master and His Emissary, neuro-philosopher and psychiatrist, Iain McGilchrist, proposed that our culture has been captured by the left hemisphere, whose dogmatic, technical and irrational way of processing information leads it to manifestly dangerous conclusions about the way the world works. Importantly, the left hemisphere never changes its mind. In one of the widest-ranging conversations on Planet: Critical to date, Iain explains how we came to lose sight of the bigger picture by forsaking the intuition, creativity and intelligence of the right hemisphere. We discuss how our relationship to language makes and unmakes the world, the search for meaning, human agency, relationality, morality, art and the divine, with Iain clearly spelling out a path to human fulfilment—which may very well be the only thing which can save Earth from the worst of us. Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis. Join subscribers from 186 countries to support independent journalism. Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

Gordon Katic is the founder of the award-winning podcast production company, Cited Media. This week, they’re launching Green Dreams, the new season of their flagship podcast which tells stories of radical environmental thinkers and their dreams for our green future, asking: Should we make those dreams reality, or are they actually nightmares? Gordon contacted me to arrange a mutual podcast shout-out, and instead I invited him on the show to discuss both the season and their innovative research method which prioritises and plural and collaborative approach. Gordon braids in much of what he’s learned into this conversation, in which we tackle some of the historical and current fallacies of the environmental movement. He shines light on the cult of the Western environmental intellectual whilst holding in high esteem the possibility for a bright future—his own realistic and determined green dream. Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis. Join subscribers from 186 countries to support independent journalism. Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

Collapse has historically benefited the 99%. That’s the amazing conclusion of Luke Kemp, author of Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse.  Luke is a research associate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, and has spent the past five years studying the collapse of civilisations throughout history. He joins me to explain his research, detailing the difference between complex, collective civilisations and what he calls “Goliaths”, massive centralising forces by which a small group of individuals extract wealth from the rest through domination and the threat of violence. Today, he says, we live in a global Goliath. In this astounding conversation, Luke takes us from the Ancient times to the modern day, revealing the root causes of collapse and paralleling them what we’re living through today. He explains the egalitarian nature of our species, and shines new light on what a future could look like free from today’s global Goliath. He reminds us all that we tend to view collapse through the eyes of the 1%, those who have the most to lose, and gives startling accounts of how populations bounced back after their domineering rulers fell. For a conversation about the collapse of the modern world, this conversation is as hopeful as it is brutal. Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis. Join subscribers from 186 countries to support independent journalism. Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

How can we become good ancestors? Permaculturist and educator, Kara Huntermoon, says the hobbies we pick up now can be skills we pass on to our children, even if we never have to use them ourselves. In this wide-ranging and empathetic conversation on relationality, intergenerational solidarity, and hard work, Kara explores how community sufficiency practiced properly creates the common ground in which we can plant the future. This conversation weaves the importance of our relationships with the increasing political alienation experienced by many on the left, with Kara examining how to find allies in those our political binaries would deem enemies. Braiding feminism with back-breaking work, Kara invites us all to remember that there are always different worlds possible, but it's only if you get your hands dirty and do the work that they will grow from the soil. Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis. Join subscribers from 186 countries to support independent journalism. Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

How we create knowledge is as important as the knowledge itself. This is the message of this week’s guest, Aboriginal scholar and author, Tyson Yunkaporta. In his explanation of the importance of learning through living, and living with learning, Tyson points to the how the discourse around decolonisation has granted expertise based on identity rather than experience. He highlights how indigenous thinking is fundamentally consensus building, mirroring the Western scientific method, and warns that neoliberal thinking has infected what should have been a radical transformation, creating individuals who consider themselves fully contained “little corporations”. In this unflinching and compassionate conversation, Tyson weaves the culture wars, knowledge production, indigenous science, landscapes and the body to reveal the mismatches between how we think and how we live, which have opened wounds in the collective body which act as voids into which our potential solidarity falls. This is a dialogue on truth, kinship and action, in which Tyson gives one of the most honest accounts of where the best of intention has gone wrong in recent years, delivering a call to refuse these narratives of separation between ourselves, our kinfolk and the great Earth upon which we all depend. Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis. Join subscribers from 186 countries to support independent journalism. Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

Is the world even collapsing? Joseph Tainter is a Professor at Utah State University and the author of The Collapse of Complex Societies. He explains on this episode that collapse happens when a civilisation experiences a diminishing return on complexity, the fact that it takes more capital, more energy, more resources to maintain society until eventually that maintenance is no longer useful. We discuss his research and apply it to today’s world, linking in energy, technology, even geopolitical order, with Joseph—surprisingly, despite all the evidence that points to this moment in history as truly exceptional given Earth’s systems breakdown—stating that there is nothing special about the world we live in and its precarious future. Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis. Join subscribers from 186 countries to support independent journalism. Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

We’ve been protesting for decades. Is it time to escalate? Rowan Tilly is an elder of the British peace and environment movements. She has risked jail multiple times to raise awareness of the atrocities carried out against human beings and the planet. All of her direct action is non-violent, and she is deeply committed to an activism which provokes the public to confront the state’s violence. I am extremely grateful to Rowan for her activism and commitment over the years. I am especially grateful that she was open to recording this episode in which I challenge the current belief that non-violence is the only way to achieve our goals. In this stark and compassionate episode, we discuss the traditional tenets of non-violence, their efficacy and their results. We hold different positions of what the future of activism should entail, and go deep into the weeds of morality, violence itself, and different cases of resistance from all around the world. This episode went out to paid subscribers only yesterday because I ticked the wrong box. Apologies, everyone! Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

All of our industries are going to have to shrink. But how do we shrink the good ones? Martin Hensher is a health economist and  a Professor of Health Systems Sustainability at the University of Tasmania. He’s spent years researching how to create a degrowth model for the health industry—and why it will be better for people as well as our planet. Martin argues that the way we currently run our healthcare is another symptom of overconsumption, explaining when healthcare benefits and healthcare expenditure actually decouple. This is a fascinating episode in which Martin interweaves the health of the planet’s body with our own, providing a vision for a sustainable, global healthcare industry which doesn’t depend on economic growth, inequality, or over-extraction. He explains we can save lives and prevent disease—but to stay within our planetary boundaries, we’re going to have to transform how we do that. Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis. Join subscribers from 186 countries to support independent journalism. Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

Women’s bodies have always been the cornerstone of reproduction. So has Earth’s. It’s why the enclosure and appropriation of both is fundamental to the accumulation of the capitalist class. On this extraordinary episode, I interview Marxist-feminist scholar, Silvia Federici, author of Caliban and the Witch, a phenomenal book which articulates how capitalism did not naturally evolve from feudalism, but necessitated the violent displacement of women’s power in their communities and control over their own reproduction. We discuss this in the context of women’s rights being violated all around the world today as we enter a period of resource scarcity, and why it is therefore imperative that the Western feminist movement recover this analysis to create an effective resistance movement. Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis. Join subscribers from 186 countries to support independent journalism. Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe