Planet: Critical

Free speech is under attack. Banning books, cutting library funding, attacking Wikipedia. The authoritarian regime of the tech-bro backed hard right doesn’t want to protect your free speech. It plans on eliminating freedom altogether. When it comes to dismantling democracy, it’s far easier if your populace is divided and uneducated with limited access to diverse opinion. Enclosing our information...

We can’t make this make sense. The world’s most famous face of renewable solutions spent a record-breaking amount to get Big Oil’s candidate into the White House. The ruling communist party of China is backed by Chinese billionaires. Political pundits are whipping up war fever without reason. The international rule book is merely scattered pages in the wind. And, in the midst of it, the Left is st...

The s**t’s hit the fan. We can’t turn the fan off, argues best-selling author Sarah Wilson . But we can learn how to clean up the mess. Sarah, author, podcaster and creator of the This is Precious newsletter , has been on a similar journey to me. Four years of interview experts, research and writing on a topic the mainstream refuse to engage with: collapse. She joins me to discuss exactly that. Wh...

Businesses could run differently — with the right leaders. Brad Vanstone, cofounder of plant-based cheese company Willicroft, is an example. He founded the company out of a desire to protect the planet and innovate the food industry. Along the way, he pioneered campaigns, helped transition animal agriculture farms to plant-based farming, and even paid to have an activist on his payroll. Willicroft...

Civilisation always wants more energy. The idea that our global society will merely switch from one energy source to another is fantasy masquerading as policy. Every time human beings discover a new energy source our overall consumption of raw materials increases. Whether that’s wood powering newly discovered coal mines in the 19th Century, or fossil fuels manufacturing renewable technology, the h...

It wasn’t always like this. Just decades ago, working people had power to leverage governments, ensuring our politicians weren’t just capitulating to markets — they were also working to keep people happy who had the power to shut the economy down. Then our unions disappeared. Since then, the markets and states have worked in tandem to secure power and wealth, stripping everyday people from their c...

Our borders are changing. Russia wants Ukraine, China wants Taiwan, Israel wants Palestine, and Trump wants Greenland. We are in the beginning of an age of territorial expansion, as nations seek to shore up more resources, wealth and power by acquiring land. I’m joined by Michael Albertus, a Professor in Political Science at the University of Chicago, to discuss the history of land as an asset, an...

Big Oil has a Big Brother — animal agriculture. A handful of multinational companies are driving environmental degradation and cruelty around the world to feed their pockets rather than the hungry’s bellies. Welcome to the world of animal agriculture, an industry which gets away with practices which would be considered illegal in any other sector. Vox reporter Kenny Torrella lays out how this dest...

What is one thing we could all do tomorrow? Switch to a planet-based diet. Sailesh Rao, Executive Director of Climate Healers , joins me to explain how emissions from animal agriculture are not being counted properly in the IPCC report, claiming that animal agriculture is, when analysed properly, responsible for 87% of climate change. Sailesh offers his hypothesis as to why animal agriculture isn’...

Ed Zitron is one of Silicon Valley’s fiercest critics. Since A.I’s arrival, Ed has virulently exposed its singular lack of intelligence, its huge energy demands, and the dangerous way its hoovering up attention and capital on nothing more than the vague promises of a couple of zealots. He joins me to reveals the myths that abound in the Valley, and the reality that everyone has run out of ideas. H...

Where does your body end? The human body is filled with ecosystems of creatures keeping us alive. It exists within larger ecosystems keeping us alive. Yet considering ourselves as separate and apart, as whole and contained, dismisses the reality of our interconnection. What keeps us alive is everything, from the smallest things to the large web of life. Our very existence is an entanglement of pos...

A hotter world is a more violent world. Peter Schwartzstein is an environmental journalist and researcher, and author of The Heat and the Fury which investigates the relationship between violence and climate change. He joins me to explain how a changing climate is creating pockets of violence in poor and rural communities around the world. Local and national governance failures are driving violenc...

Samaneh Moafi is the Assistant Director of Research at Forensic Architecture , a research agency operating across human rights, journalism, architecture, art, academia and the law. Their interdisciplinary investigations have been crucial in providing evidence in cases of state violence where ordinary and typical investigative journalism has failed. Samaneh joins me today to discuss their most rece...

Ecological collapse doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Our global economy will also collapse by up to 50% before the end of this century if we continue as we are. That’s the latest diagnosis by an interdisciplinary team who are sounding the alarm that current national climate policies are not enough to mitigate the damage to ecology and economy. The Institute of the Faculty of Actuaries and the Universit...

How do we take Big Oil to the criminal courts? There's been a major wave of climate litigation over the past 12 months, mostly in civil courts. But groups around the world are figuring out how to make polluting the planet a criminal offence. They're targeting the fossil fuel industries to attempt what governments, so far, are failing to do: Hold Big Oil to account, and stop them dead in their trac...

Happy New Year! Following the success of last year’s special episode , we're ringing in 2025 with another one from me in which I answer your questions about the podcast and the new project we've just launched, Planet: Coordinate . Here are the questions I chose this year. * Why is the world in crisis ? Is there a time to cease dissent and protest, to move toward strategy and dreaming of places to...

What is a system? This is the type of question which can only be meandered through, which is exactly what Nathalie Nahai and I do on this week's episode. Nathalie is a polymath: musician, artist, psychologist, AI expert and the host of ' In Conversation ', her own podcast which she interviewed me on at the beginning of this year. We had a stunning conversation, one which we continue today, discuss...

What is the United States for? Journalist Matt Kennard would argue the most powerful nation in the world exists to undermine democracy, deny national sovereignty, and funnel wealth to the financial elite. His book, The Racket , exposed the true nature of the American Empire, a nature the mainstream on both the Left and Right refuse to acknowledge. Matt’s first appearance on Planet: Critical saw hi...

In the beginning was the word—and that word justified it all. In this stunning conversation with Sunil Amrith , historian and author of Burning Earth , we explore the systemic nature of violence. We discuss how it permeates the human project at every level, and how language is deployed to obfuscate, distract and even deny that which we bear witness to. Sunil walks us to different points in history...

Do things have to get worse before they get better? Yes , says Dana Fisher, Director of the Center for Environment, Community & Equity and author of Saving Ourselves . Dana’s research suggests that witnessing the inevitable mass repression of fellow citizens through state violence or incarceration will mobilise the public to take action against climate-denying leaders. This conversation on resista...

Climate researcher and activist Pasha Bell was jailed for 22 months for protesting against the British government’s climate inaction. They join a growing group of concerned citizens disproportionately punished by the British state for exercising their democratic right to protest. The draconian measures introduced by the last Conservative government—which the current Labour government is making no...

Is the law fit for purpose? This is one question Nikki Reisch , Director of the Climate and Energy Program at the Center for International Environmental Law, and I discuss on today’s episode. Nikki joins me to explain the wave of climate litigation taking place around the world, making climate a human rights issue for the first time in history. We discuss this in the context of nation states curre...

How does trauma show up? Kosha Joubert is the CEO of the pocket project and NGO dedicated to exploring and healing collective trauma. She joined me to discuss the impacts that collective trauma has on our bodies, on our systems and how it can even explain the way we are seemingly barreling towards even further destruction rather than turning towards healing. Pocket project is launching a Climate C...

WTF – What Trump F***s.* Beside his extensive sexual assault of women, Trump’s political agenda involves violently assaulting the planet, climate legislation, industry regulations, state-led climate agendas and international negotiations. And that was just the first time round. His second term will likely be far worse, with his team having had four years to plan. Details from Project 2025 —publish...

Can renewables really save the day? Auke Hoekstra , Director of the NEON Research Program, says they can. The renewables researcher firmly states that we can power this society on renewables energy, dramatically reducing the harms caused by our current energy system and providing equitable access to energy. However, he does not think this means the renewable roll-out is inevitable thanks to politi...