The Overpopulation Podcast

Apr 30 2024 214
The Overpopulation Podcast artwork

The Overpopulation Podcast is produced by Population Balance and features enlightening conversations between Population Balance executive director Nandita Bajaj, researcher Alan Ware, and expert guests to discuss this often misunderstood subject. We cover a broad variety of topics that explore the impacts of our expanding human footprint on human rights, animal protection, and environmental sustainability, as well as individual and collective solutions.

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Émile P. Torres | Highway to Hell: The Dystopian Fantasies of Tech Billionaires

Apr 30 2024 66 mins  
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

Alan Weisman | Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth?

Apr 16 2024 66 mins  
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 wi

Jennifer Watling Neal and Zachary Neal | Getting the Numbers Right: The Childfree Choice More Prevalent than Reported

Apr 02 2024 63 mins  
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

Travis Rieder | Catastrophe Ethics: How to Choose Well in a World of Tough Choices

Mar 18 2024 61 mins  
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 fac

Laura Carroll | Breaking Out of the Baby Matrix: Busting Common Pronatalist Myths

Mar 04 2024 61 mins  
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 Abo

Christopher Ketcham | The Megamachine and Green Growth Delusions

Feb 20 2024 52 mins  
In this interview with freelance writer Christopher Ketcham, we unpack the techno-industrial extractivism that plagues modern societies and the media’s complicity in failing to challenge the growth model on which it is based. We discuss Chris’ book This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption Are Ruining the American West in which he outlines the environmental destruction

Angela Saini | The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule

Feb 06 2024 63 mins  
In this interview with award-winning science journalist Angela Saini, based on her bold and radical book The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule, we explore the roots and complex history of how patriarchy first became embedded in societies and spread across the globe from prehistory into the present. Angela discusses how gendered roles, pronatalism, and militarism – key features of

Diana Coole | The Toxification of Population Discourse: How Population Became a Dirty Word

Jan 23 2024 65 mins  
When and why did population become a dirty word? And why are so many people shamed for advocating for population reduction? Despite innumerable scientific studies showing the impact of human overpopulation and overconsumption on mounting social and ecological catastrophes, including climate change, biodiversity destruction, ocean acidification, resource scarcity, and conflict, most

Asher Miller & Rob Dietz | Navigating the Great Unraveling with Resilience

Jan 09 2024 60 mins  
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. Recognizing human supremacy and overshoot as the drivers of the polycrisis, we discuss the threat of increased polarizati

Hope Ferdowsian | Phoenix Rising: Pathways toward Animal and Human Liberation

Dec 22 2023 60 mins  
Dr. Hope Ferdowsian, president of Phoenix Zones Initiatives (PZI) 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. She highlights the physical and psychological suffering and harm that animals face in food production and in research labs, and how this sys