The Break Down

Jan 23 2025 20 ep. 48 mins 50
The Break Down Podcast artwork

The Break Down is dedicated to examining how capitalism has both shaped, and is being reshaped by, accelerating climate and ecological crisis. Launched in May 2024, we publish long-form interviews, original essays and resources that break down complex questions about how we got here, what the future might look like, and how we can build the power to change it. The Break Down is a not-for-profit project, hosted in partnership with Common Wealth.

  Society & Culture
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Episode 18: Legacies of Empire w/ Kojo Koram

Jan 23 2025 50 mins  
In much of the media, the importance of the legacies of empire and colonialism are often dismissed, with the public conversation dominated by the "culture war" elements, from debates about statues to institutions like the National Trust becoming "woke". The implication within much of this discourse is that empire and colonialism are features of the past, and sho

Episode 17: Capitalism Without Growth? w/ Hans Stegeman

Jan 16 2025 43 mins  
Around the world, politics is incredibly polarised, but if there’s one thing politicians of all major parties can agree on, it’s growth — that their political rivals failed to deliver growth, that we need more of it, and that getting it will solve all of our problems, from inequality and poverty to crumbling public services and stalling investment. But not everyone agrees. Fo

Episode 16: Year in Review: A Macrodose x Break Down Crossover

Dec 18 2024 43 mins  
A lot has happened in the six months since we launched this project. It feels like every week of 2024 has packed a decade’s worth of news. In just the past few weeks, we've seen crises hit the French and German governments, the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, a day of martial law in South Korea, and, of course, Trump’s reelection to the White House. Amidst all of it, climate

Episode 15: After Overshoot w/ Andreas Malm

Dec 05 2024 43 mins  
In 2024, we’re set to break a major climate threshold for the first time: this will be the first calendar year in which global average temperatures breach the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold enshrined in the Paris Agreement. Importantly, while one year at this temperature doesn’t mean all is lost, it does fire a profound warning shot over our faltering progress on mitigating and a

Episode 14: Climate Change as Class War w/ Matt Huber

Nov 14 2024 60 mins  
In the wake of the US election, hot takes and autopsies of the Democrats’ fairly spectacular loss are a dime a dozen. Amid the swirl of diagnoses there has also been real fear about what a Trump presidency means for the climate — an issue that felt almost entirely absent from either campaign, despite its significant role in Biden’s policy platform. How should we understand w

Episode 13: US Election Special w/ Kate Aronoff and Waleed Shahid

Oct 31 2024 47 mins  
Amid the threat of “Project 2025”, ongoing genocide in Gaza, and a nation-wide battle over reproductive rights, to name a few major issues, the climate crisis has been considerably sidelined in the US election taking place on November 5th. But even if it’s not grabbing headlines, what the United States does — or does not do — on climate has profound implications for the e

Episode 12: Cycles of Extraction: Ecuador, oil and the IMF w/ Andrés Arauz

Oct 24 2024 34 mins  
In a 2023 referendum, the people of Ecuador voted 59 per cent to 41 per cent to stop exploiting oil in the Yasuní region, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, with more tree species in one single hectare than in all of the landmass of Canada and the US combined. It was a massive break with the global status quo, in a year when fossil fuel use around the world reached record

Episode 11: Reaping What We Sow w/ Sonali McDermid

Oct 17 2024 49 mins  
We have become incredibly good at producing food. In doing so we have transformed our planet. Yet when we go to the supermarket or eat at a restaurant, the supply chains, labour and environmental impacts that went into our food are all but invisible. Those impacts are huge. Today, humans and livestock make up 96 per cent of all mammals. Agriculture consumes about 70 per cent of gl

Episode 10: Utopia and Crisis w/ Kim Stanley Robinson

Sep 26 2024 54 mins  
In a 2004 essay for the New Left Review, theorist and literary critic Fredric Jameson wrote: “Utopias are non-fictional, even though they are also non-existent. Utopias in fact come to us as barely audible messages from a future that may never come into being.” Today's episode of The Break Down explores the idea and the power of utopian fiction with guest Kim Stanley Robins

Episode 9: Public Energy No. 1 w/ Chris Hayes and Melanie Brusseler

Sep 12 2024 55 mins  
Followers of The Break Down may remember our very first episode, in which Adrienne spoke to the brilliant Brett Christophers about the many and varied reasons why — despite all the hype about how cheap renewables have become — the transition to renewable energy cannot be left to the market and the profit motive. What that interview didn't leave us with, however, was an answ