Planet: Critical

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....

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 Glo...

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...

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 Chang...

“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 h...

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...

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 researc...

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...

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...

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 d...

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...

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 hea...

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...

Ask anyone anywhere what’s the leading cause of global heating and they’ll tell you: fossil fuels. But what if we’re all wrong? Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop is a scientist for the World Preservation Foundation and worked as a Principal Scientist with Queensland Government Natural Resources, using satellite data to monitor three decades of vegetation cover and broadscale deforestation. In February 202...

How do we survive? Max Wilbert is a long-time activist who spent the past few years defending Thacker Pass, and recently joined CELDF to as part of their new strategy to build out community resilience. I first interviewed Max on why techno-optimism won’t save the day. As with many compatriots around the world, the answer he’s landed on as to what will is local action. In this winding and weaving c...

What makes humans special? Nothing. But a small band of us in the Western hemisphere have inculcated ourselves over thousands of years to believe in our supremacy over the natural world. Christine Webb , primatologist at Harvard University, argues this unique arrogance is at the root of our ecological crisis in her forthcoming book, The Arrogant Ape . This is a fascinating conversation, with Chris...

There’s more information than ever — but we can’t agree on what it means. We think of language as a tool of communication. But it’s so much more than that. Language builds worlds and shapes realities; language is how we make sense of what we experience, and that sense-making is always done in partnership with each other. Language is the mechanism by which we develop shared understandings of realit...

Don’t Talk About Politics! That’s the title of neuroscientist and political theorist Sarah Stein Lubrano’s first book . A phenomenal and heavily researched foray into why debate is a useless form of political communication, why citizens of the Western world are particularly prone to disbelieving their neighbour’s lived experience, and the strategies which do work when on the campaign trail, Don’t...

The status quo won’t survive. Neither will we if we’re not willing to change. In this phenomenal conversation with powerhouse Celine Semaan , an artist, author and cofounder of Slow Factory , we explore why change is understandably terrifying—and why it’s now or never that we do it. In this wide-ranging and nuanced discussion we explore the big picture, colonialism, why systems are slow-moving, an...

Does nature have a plan? It’s a lovely thought. But we’re going to have to be more accountable than that. In this achingly beautiful conversation with writer Willow Defebaugh, co-founder and Editor of Atmos Magazine , we discuss how it is we can approach healing together. We explore the designs found in nature and how, with humility, we can learn to be inspired by those designs, reimagining human...

 What is an extinction event? How have human beings considered extinction in the past? How is the contemporary understanding of human extinction different to the ancient world? And why is it that tech billionaires are so obsessed with it to the extent that they're making the decisions that are more likely to hasten its arrival? Philosopher of extinction, Émile Torres, has dedicated their life to a...

The Achuar people first came into contact with the outside world sixty years ago. Since then, they have mostly been left in peace, able to take what they want from the modern world and leave the rest. That’s changing now. Their territory is under threat by careerist politicians within their own community, by other indigenous nations whose populations have exponentially increased thanks to contact...

We need a new story. We also need to do the hard work of re-engineering our societies, re-imagining our relationships, and remembering our bodies. Vanessa Machado de Oliveira , author of Hospicing Modernity , start our conversation right there, teasing apart the comforting notion that the hard work is just a language problem. Yes, we need a new story. And what else? And where do stories come from?...

Militarisation, isolationism, extractivism. It looks like we learned nothing from the 21st century, as the powers that be are approaching looming civilisational collapse by cranking up the gears on the very machine which caused it. We’re re-entering a period of dog-eat-dog in a resource scarce world, which could result in the return of serfdom. That’s the warning from Antonio Turiel ,  physicist a...

I recently interviewed Paul Hawken for Mongabay and want to share the moving conversation with you here. Celebrated author, thinker and entrepreneur Paul Hawken joins Mongabay’s podcast to discuss his new book, Carbon: The Book of Life . He argues that the jargon and fear-based terms broadly used by the climate movement alienate the broader public and fail to communicate the nuance and complexity...