The Overpopulation Podcast

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Joshua Farley, an expert in ecological economics, about the urgent need to realign our economic systems with ecological and social justice imperatives by 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-interested, competitive, and insatiable, and misrepresents our fundamentally cooperative nature; Why markets, while suitable for catering to individual tastes and preferences, are wholly inadequate in addressing ecological constraints and achieving secure sufficiency for everyone; How overpopulation disproportionately benefits the wealthy, driving down wages and inflating the costs of land, food, housing, and other basic necessities. See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:  https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/joshua-farley ABOUT US The Overpopulation Podcast features enlightening conversations between Population Balance executive director Nandita Bajaj, researcher Alan Ware, and expert guests that draw the connections between pronatalism, human supremacy, social inequalities, and ecological overshoot. Population Balance's mission to inspire narrative, behavioral, and system change that shrinks our human impact and elevates the rights and wellbeing of people, animals, and the planet. Learn more here: https://www.populationbalance.org/  Copyright 2024 Population Balance

In this episode, we chat with Erica Gies, award-winning journalist and author of Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge. We explore the complex relationships between water, nature, and human societies, emphasizing the need to embrace 'slow water'—respecting the natural rhythms of water’s cycles for the benefit of both human and nonhuman life. 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 implications of population growth on water and the need to address this issue within environmental and degrowth movements; The hidden complexity of natural systems in water ecology and the need to both appreciate our ignorance of these natural systems’ complexity while also working to understand them better in order to live more in harmony with the natural world; The significance of traditional knowledge and ecological wisdom in living more in harmony with natural water cycles.  See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:  https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/erica-gies ABOUT US The Overpopulation Podcast features enlightening conversations between Population Balance executive director Nandita Bajaj, researcher Alan Ware, and expert guests that draw the connections between pronatalism, human supremacy, social inequalities, and ecological overshoot. Population Balance's mission to inspire narrative, behavioral, and system change that shrinks our human impact and elevates the rights and wellbeing of people, animals, and the planet. Learn more here: https://www.populationbalance.org/  Copyright 2024 Population Balance

Hello, this is Nandita Bajaj, cohost 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 mind to new ways of thinking about family, community, and personal fulfillment. And, if you’d like to be on the show, check out the show notes on how you can get in touch with me. Show Notes and Transcript https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/beyond-pronatalism Beyond Pronatalism | Finding fulfillment, with or without kids To have or not have kids is one of the biggest decisions we make in our lives, and yet how many of us know that we even have a choice about how we define and create our families? Beyond Pronatalism host Nandita Bajaj interviews women and men from diverse backgrounds who are courageously and creatively navigating pronatalism - the powerful pressures to have children - whether from family, friends, or the culture at large. Through intimate conversations, they discuss how they are forging unconventional pathways to fulfillment, including redefining what family means to them - whether that means being childfree or childless, having biological children, adopting or fostering children or animals, or creating close-knit communities of friends and loved ones.  https://www.populationbalance.org/beyond-pronatalism-podcast   ABOUT US Beyond Pronatalism is brought to you by Population Balance, the only non profit organization advancing ecological and reproductive justice by confronting pronatalism. This podcast is produced and hosted by Nandita Bajaj, with the support of the production team - Josh Wild, Elisabeth Strunk, Alan Ware and Kirsten Stade. Population Balance's mission to inspire narrative, behavioral, and system change that shrinks our human impact and elevates the rights and wellbeing of people, animals, and the planet. Learn more here: https://www.populationbalance.org/ Copyright 2024 Population Balance  

  In this episode, we chat with Dr. James Hopeward, an environmental civil engineering professor at the University of South Australia. We explore the limitations of conventional economic growth models and their environmental impacts, emphasizing the need for more holistic and ecologically grounded engineering practices and cultural beliefs. 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 fossil fuel supplies and underestimated catastrophic social and ecological outcomes resulting from overshoot; Why understanding exponential growth was a crucial lesson for James and is now a key part of his engineering curriculum; Why future infrastructure projects must prioritize climate resiliency; Why the significance of population issues within environmental and degrowth movements must be urgently elevated to minimize further overshoot-related harm and suffering. See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:  https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/james-hopeward ABOUT US The Overpopulation Podcast features enlightening conversations between Population Balance executive director Nandita Bajaj, researcher Alan Ware, and expert guests that draw the connections between pronatalism, human supremacy, social inequalities, and ecological overshoot. Population Balance's mission to inspire narrative, behavioral, and system change that shrinks our human impact and elevates the rights and wellbeing of people, animals, and the planet. Learn more here: https://www.populationbalance.org/  Copyright 2024 Population Balance

In this episode, we chat with Maneesha Deckha, Professor and Lansdowne Chair in Law at the University of Victoria, about her research in critical animal law. We discuss her 2021 book, Animals as Legal Beings: Contesting Anthropocentric Legal Orders in which she argues for a new legal category of “beingness” for animals that transcends the inadequate legal categories of “persons” or “property.” We also dive into her 2023 article Animalization and Dehumanization Concerns: Another Psychological Barrier to Animal Law Reform, in which she highlights why a critique of human exceptionalism is essential to advancing the goals of anti-racism and decolonization. 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 race theory; Deckha’s evaluation of the 2022 decision by the New York Court of Appeals with respect to the ongoing captivity of Happy, an elephant at the Bronx Zoo, in which she outlines why the dissociation of humans from animals is counterproductive to eliminating racism and other intra-human prejudices and inequities; How the legal classification of animals as “property” creates problems, such as commodification and objectification; meanwhile, using the “personhood” category for animals exacerbates the concept of human exceptionalism. Deckha argues for a new category of “beingness’ for nonhuman animals which recognizes their embodiment, relationality, and vulnerability; A new six-part series documentary series targeted towards secondary school students, A Deeper Kindness: Animal Law and Youth Activism, which surveys the current field of animal law and policy through the eyes of four youth active in animal advocacy. See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:  https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/maneesha-deckha ABOUT US The Overpopulation Podcast features enlightening conversations between Population Balance executive director Nandita Bajaj, researcher Alan Ware, and expert guests that draw the connections between pronatalism, human supremacy, social inequalities, and ecological overshoot. Population Balance's mission to inspire narrative, behavioral, and system change that shrinks our human impact and elevates the rights and wellbeing of people, animals, and the planet. Learn more here: https://www.populationbalance.org/  Copyright 2024 Population Balance

In this episode, we chat with Zoe Weil, co-founder and president of the Institute for Humane Education, about her pioneering work in the area of comprehensive humane education, an approach to teaching that draws the intimate links between human rights, animal protection, and environmental sustainability. We take a dive into Zoe's latest book The Solutionary Way, which explores how to use a solutionary lens to bridge divides and address the seemingly intractable challenges we face. 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 and least harm, and how one can cultivate a solutionary mindset; How to use a humane education lens to understand the connections between overpopulation, lack of reproductive autonomy, animal exploitation, and ecological degradation; Zoe’s reflections on societal double standards around reproductive choices - how not having children is stigmatized while having children is the unquestioned default; The purpose and joy of living in alignment with our values while simultaneously working in community towards system change. See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:  https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/zoe-weil ABOUT US The Overpopulation Podcast features enlightening conversations between Population Balance executive director Nandita Bajaj, researcher Alan Ware, and expert guests. We cover a broad variety of topics that explore the impacts of our expanding human footprint on human rights, animal protection, and environmental restoration, as well as individual and collective solutions. Learn more here: https://www.populationbalance.org/  Copyright 2024 Population Balance

In this episode, we explore with environmentalist and author Ashish Kothari how entrenched “development” ideologies have led to an immense loss of traditional knowledge and cultural systems and caused immeasurable ecological destruction in India and globally. Ashish highlights radical alternatives being led by communities in India and around the world who are resisting the dominant capitalist, statist, and patriarchal model of “development” and offering transformative solutions from the ground up that are based in social justice and ecological wisdom. 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 expressed through the Flower of Transformation, the Global Tapestry of Alternatives, Vikalp Sangam (Alternatives Confluence), all of which highlight and connect local community-led radical alternatives of social transformation, ecological restoration, and revival and sustenance of multiple knowledge and cultural systems; Pathways to authentically engage in the practice of decolonizing knowledge systems and cultural practices to allow for the emergence of social and ecological diversity. See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:  https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/ashish-kothari ABOUT US The Overpopulation Podcast features enlightening conversations between Population Balance executive director Nandita Bajaj, researcher Alan Ware, and expert guests. We cover a broad variety of topics that explore the impacts of our expanding human footprint on human rights, animal protection, and environmental restoration, as well as individual and collective solutions. Learn more here: https://www.populationbalance.org/  Copyright 2024 Population Balance

In this episode we speak with Dr. Clive Spash, an ecological economist who is fundamentally challenging conventional economic paradigms through his development of social ecological economics. His work addresses the intersections of human behavior, environmental values, and economic systems - advocating for a radical transformation towards a more socially and ecologically just world.  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 perspectives; How major environmental NGOs, including The Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, and World Wildlife Fund, have been taken over by corporate and neoliberal ideologies; How prominent advocates of degrowth and alternative economic models, such as Jason Hickel, Tim Jackson, Kate Raworth, and Timothée Parrique, are unwittingly supporting the many growth agendas of mainstream economics while also peddling population denialism and human supremacy; Why Social Ecological Economics provides a scientific and ethical basis for degrowth economics that considers the rights of nature and of people. See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:  https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/clive-spash ABOUT US The Overpopulation Podcast features enlightening conversations between Population Balance executive director Nandita Bajaj, researcher Alan Ware, and expert guests that draw the connections between pronatalism, human supremacy, social inequalities, and ecological overshoot. Population Balance's mission is to inspire narrative, behavioral, and system change that shrinks our human impact and elevates the rights and wellbeing of people, animals, and the planet. Learn more here: https://www.populationbalance.org/  Subscribe to our newsletter here: https://www.populationbalance.org/subscribe Copyright 2024 Population Balance    

In this episode we speak with Riane Eisler, a social systems scientist, futurist, cultural historian, attorney, consultant, speaker, and author of many books, including The Chalice and the Blade and The Real Wealth of Nations, about how to construct a more equitable, sustainable and less violent world based on partnership rather than domination. 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 of dominator versus partnership; How domination systems enforce violence through rigid rankings, while partnership systems reduce abuse through democratic structures; How gender inequality, pronatalism, and population growth are integral to domination systems, and why engaging in population denial perpetuates hierarchies of domination within the family and within politics; How partnership model values, such as caregiving and non-violence, were prevalent in pre-historic times and are more conducive to individual human happiness and flourishing; Why examining past societies' egalitarian models can help us redefine power structures and gender in order to reconstruct models that are relevant in today’s societies. See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:  https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/riane-eisler ABOUT US The Overpopulation Podcast features enlightening conversations between Population Balance executive director Nandita Bajaj, researcher Alan Ware, and expert guests that draw the connections between pronatalism, human supremacy, social inequalities, and ecological overshoot. Population Balance's mission is to inspire narrative, behavioral, and system change that shrinks our human impact and elevates the rights and wellbeing of people, animals, and the planet. Learn more here: https://www.populationbalance.org/  Subscribe to our newsletter here: https://www.populationbalance.org/subscribe Copyright 2024 Population Balance

In this episode we speak with Jo-Anne McArthur, acclaimed animal photojournalist and founder and president of We Animals Media, an organization whose photographers document the lives of unseen and ignored animals caught within human systems of exploitation and oppression. HIghlights of this episode 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 are caught within the complex human-dominated systems and whom we fail to see - animals within the industrial food systems, animals used for entertainment, such as in circuses, zoos, aquaria, theme parks, and rodeos, and animals used in research; Jo-Anne’s travels to over 60 countries that catalogue our complex relationship with animals, captured in her three books, We Animals, Captive, and Hidden: Animals in the Anthropocene, and her feature role in the acclaimed Canadian documentary, The Ghosts in Our Machines; inspiring stories of animal advocacy and highlights of the work of women on the front lines, captured in the Unbound project by We Animals Media; how Jo-Anne manages the emotional impact of documenting animal suffering while staying committed to animal liberation; and finally, on behalf of our planet which is groaning under the pressure of human dominion, Jo-Anne’s reflection on her personal journey of choosing not to have children, emphasizing the importance of considering alternative and richer ways to express love and fulfillment. See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:  https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/joanne-mcarthur   ABOUT US The Overpopulation Podcast features enlightening conversations between Population Balance executive director Nandita Bajaj, researcher Alan Ware, and expert guests. We cover a broad variety of topics that explore the impacts of our expanding human footprint on human rights, animal protection, and environmental restoration, as well as individual and collective solutions. Learn more here: https://www.populationbalance.org/  Copyright 2024 Population Balance

In this episode, we chat with philosopher and historian Dr. Émile P. Torres about the dystopian fantasies of ecologically-blind tech billionaires – transhumanists, longtermists, and effective altruists – of defying nature, transcending humanity, and colonizing the universe. Highlights of our conversation 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 perpetuates neoliberal ideology that further contributes to inequality and exploitation, e.g. Sam Bankman-Fried’s ‘Earn to Give’ fraud; the intersection of capitalism, longtermism, and the proliferation of global catastrophic risks in the age of AI, and the ethical implications of unchecked technological progress and environmental destruction; the stark differences between the indigenous long-term-thinking approach and the impoverished and hubristic longtermism philosophy put forward by William MacAskill and Nick Bostrom, which prioritizes the existence of trillions of future disembodied people living in computer simulations over the suffering of current day people and nonhumans; their dangerous rhetoric around ‘depopulation panic’ based on the underestimation of environmental destruction and anthropocentrism, and how some people like Malcolm and Simone Collins are repopulating humanity with their own seemingly superior genetic material.   See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/emile-torres   ABOUT US The Overpopulation Podcast features enlightening conversations between Population Balance executive director Nandita Bajaj, researcher Alan Ware, and expert guests. We cover a broad variety of topics that explore the impacts of our expanding human footprint on human rights, animal protection, and environmental restoration, as well as individual and collective solutions. Learn more here: https://www.populationbalance.org/  Copyright 2024 Population Balance

In this episode with award-winning author and journalist Alan Weisman, we discuss his 2013 book Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth? capturing his journey to over 20 countries over five continents to ask what experts agreed were probably the most important questions on Earth, and also the hardest. ‘How many humans can the planet hold without capsizing?’ This wide-ranging and immensely stimulating interview captures how growth-biased cultures, religions, nationalities, tribes, and political systems are collectively undermining our ability to live within planetary limits, and also offers inspiring examples of people finding ways of better balancing our needs with those of the planet's and humanity's future - examples which could provide ways of imagining how we might better get through this bottleneck century. We discuss the intended and unintended consequences of the Green Revolution which pushed us grossly beyond Earth’s carrying capacity, while causing irreparable harm to natural ecosystems. Weisman unpacks the ethnic, religious, and political complexities and history of the Israel-Palestine conflict and how pronatalism and ecological overshoot factor into it. We also chat about some of the most successful family planning programs across the world, such as in Iran, Thailand, and Costa Rica, as well as outliers with the worst programs, including in China and India. The controversial role of the Catholic Church in pushing for large families not just across the West, but also in Africa, as well as in shunning the population conversation in environmental conferences, is also highlighted. See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/alan-weisman   ABOUT US The Overpopulation Podcast features enlightening conversations between Population Balance executive director Nandita Bajaj, researcher Alan Ware, and expert guests. We cover a broad variety of topics that explore the impacts of our expanding human footprint on human rights, animal protection, and environmental restoration, as well as individual and collective solutions. Learn more here: https://www.populationbalance.org/ 

In this episode with Dr. Zachary Neal and Dr. Jennifer Watling Neal, we explore their research about the prevalence and characteristics of childfree adults in the US and globally. Despite the fact that people without children make up a significant portion of the population, both nationally in the US (20-25%) and globally, this group remains largely underrepresented in policymaking and demographic surveys. Driven by the desire for more inclusive representation of this group and for more objective demographic reporting, Zak and Jenna’s research tackles the inconsistency across various surveys - both in data collection and data reporting. What sets apart their research from other demographic research is their attempt to create a consistent definition of “childfree” by including specific questions about people’s desire for children rather than their biological capability for having children. Their findings show that among people without children, being voluntarily childfree is significantly more prevalent than being involuntarily childless, which challenges the often alarmist and pronatalist media and demographic narratives. The underrepresentation of the needs and desires of people without children in real estate planning, which privileges the needs of people with children, is also reflected in their lower levels of satisfaction with their neighborhoods. We also discuss how the combination of market forces and alarmist ‘population crash’ arguments are increasingly influencing demographic research, making it less reliable, and why reproductive choice should never be driven by state or economic forces. Lastly, we chat about how the childfree community can leverage social network theory – by using bonding and bridging ties between childfree and parent individuals – to build stronger child-free social networks and shift societal norms towards greater acceptance of child-free choices. See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/zachary-neal-jennifer-watling-neal   ABOUT US The Overpopulation Podcast features enlightening conversations between Population Balance executive director Nandita Bajaj, researcher Alan Ware, and expert guests. We cover a broad variety of topics that explore the impacts of our expanding human footprint on human rights, animal protection, and environmental restoration, as well as individual and collective solutions. Learn more here: https://www.populationbalance.org/ 

In this episode with bioethicist and moral philosopher Dr. Travis N. Rieder, we discuss his latest book Catastrophe Ethics, in which he explores how individuals can make morally decent choices in a world of confusing and often terrifying problems. We explore the morally exhausting and puzzling nature of modern life in which individual actions can often seem insignificant in the face of massive and complex systems. Rieder offers suggestions on how to overcome this sense of ‘moral dumbfounding’ so that we can better align our actions with our values towards ethical living. Among the small and large individual actions that we discuss, Rieder places a special focus on the ethics of procreation — what he calls monumental ethics — and the degree of moral deliberation that is needed to arrive at the decision to have a biological child. We also discuss the dangers of utilitarian ethics, with a specific focus on Effective Altruism. See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/travis-rieder-2   ABOUT US The Overpopulation Podcast features enlightening conversations between Population Balance executive director Nandita Bajaj, researcher Alan Ware, and expert guests. We cover a broad variety of topics that explore the impacts of our expanding human footprint on human rights, animal protection, and environmental restoration, as well as individual and collective solutions. Learn more here: https://www.populationbalance.org/ 

To celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8th, we interviewed Laura Carroll, internationally recognized expert on pronatalism and the childfree choice, who starts by sharing highlights from her latest book A Special Sisterhood: 100 Fascinating Women From History Who Never had Children. We also unpack her book The Baby Matrix: Why Freeing Our Minds From Outmoded Thinking About Parenthood & Reproduction Will Create a Better World, in which she busts the many pervasively pronatalist assumptions that people have to navigate while deciding whether or not to have children, and the effects of those decisions on people and planet. While laying out each of the assumptions, Laura offers alternative perspectives that elevate reproductive autonomy — such that parenthood and non-parenthood are equally acceptable options, and reproductive responsibility — a consideration of the wellbeing of potential child(ren) and the planet. She also shares important strategies on how to respond to pronatalist pressures from family and friends in as loving a way as possible, while staying grounded in our own knowledge and truth. See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/laura-carroll-2   ABOUT US The Overpopulation Podcast features enlightening conversations between Population Balance executive director Nandita Bajaj, researcher Alan Ware, and expert guests. We cover a broad variety of topics that explore the impacts of our expanding human footprint on human rights, animal protection, and environmental restoration, as well as individual and collective solutions. Learn more here: https://www.populationbalance.org/