Planet: Critical

Laurie Laybourn is a policy researcher and author. He leads Cohort 2040 , which explores how to deepen rapid action toward a more sustainable and equitable world even as the effects of the environmental crisis get far worse. Laurie is a visiting fellow at Chatham House and at the Global Systems Institute, University of Exeter, as well as an associate fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Resea...

Charlie Gardner is a conservationist, activist and writer. An outspoken member of Scientist Rebellion , Charlie left academia last year to focus on raising the climate alarm through civil disobedience and science communication. Charlie joins me to discuss why scientists feel forced to choose activism. After decades of ignored data, warnings and suggestions, these same scientists who have been figh...

Kate Raworth is a renegade economist focused on making economics fit for 21st century realities. Senior Associate at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute , she is the creator of the Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries, and co-founder of Doughnut Economics Action Lab . Kate joins me to discuss Doughnut Economics, her radical theory of a regenerative and distributive economics...

John Vervaeke is a cognitive scientist at the University of Toronto and world renowned thinker, bridging science and spirituality in order to understand the experience of meaningfulness: how to cultivate it and why it’s crucial for human beings. John joins me to discuss “the meaning crisis”—the global phenomenon of modern humans having access to so much, and yet so little profundity. Referencing n...

Matt Leighninger is the Head of Democracy Innovation at the National Conference on Citizenship. A pioneer in democracy innovation, Matt’s spent the past 20 years working on improving our political processes, from researching voting reforms to bringing technology into a typically analogue space; he engineered the Text, Talk, Act campaign under Obama’s presidency to encourage active citizenship in t...

John Harvey, The Cowboy Economist , is a Professor of Economics at Texas Christian University, Forbes columnist , and author of Contending Perspectives in Economics: A Guide to Contemporary Schools of Thought . He joins me to discuss the history of capitalism—how we went from Friedman and Hayek’s ideas of the free market to a deregulated monstrosity driving inequality and the climate crisis—how th...

Jon Alexander is the co-founder of the New Citizens Project and author of Citizens: Why The Key To Fixing Everything Is All Of Us . A former award-winner in the advertising world, Jon advises companies and communities on the power of narrative, helping them reclaim and restructure the stories they tell to in order to empower the shift from consumer to citizen. Jon joined me to discuss this very pr...

Phoebe Barnard is a biologist, global change scientist, and policy analyst with decades of experience confronting some of the most pressing problems of our time, bridging the gap between academia and government. She’s also CEO of the Stable Planet Alliance , a coalition of scientific, legal, social, health, media, policy, leadership, faith, culture, and grassroots organizations tackling the overpo...

Robbie Watt is a Lecturer in Politics at the University of Manchester, researching climate change politics, carbon markets, global governance, and critical theory. His article, The Fantasy of Carbon Offsetting , was runner-up for Environmental Politics journal's best article award 2021. Robbie joins me to discuss the moral economy of offsetting schemes, the politics of climate change, and how...

Trevor Hilder is an IT expert and cybernetics specialist who worked under Stafford Beer to develop the Viable System Model . Trevor joins me to explain how systems malfunction, why organisations crumble under complexity, and how to build resilient systems by infusing them with values. He explains the Viable System Model, walking us through the key components based on cybernetics and management the...

George Mobus is Professor Emeritus at University of Washington, Tacoma. His broad academic background saw him conduct research on artificial intelligence, cybernetics and systems science. George joins me to discuss how systems science is failing to grasp the polycrisis—that the field has been split into silos, leaving most systems scientists without the tools to model the complexity of the emergen...

Max Wilbert is an activist, wilderness guide and writer, co-authoring Bright Green Lies: How The Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It. Max reveals how mainstream environmentalism is merely a proponent for green growth and business as usual. He says this comfortable form of environmentalism, which sees people trade in their cars for electric vehicles and go meatless only...

Chris Smaje is a social scientist, farmer, and author of A Small Farm Future: Making the Case for a Society Built Around Local Economies, Self-Provisioning, Agricultural Diversity, and a Shared Earth. Chris joins me for a fascinating discussion about the political importance of land, its historical context, the current inefficiencies of farming, and the liberation people can find in reclaiming lan...

Susan Krumdieck is a mechanical engineer, Professor of Engineering at Heriot Watt University, Chair of the university’s Energy Transition, and author of Transition Engineering: Building a Sustainable Future. Susan joins me to discuss how a sustainable future is possible by starting with engineering principles. Rather than focusing on politics and economics, which can only react in the short-term,...

Caroline Lucas is the UK Green Party’s first Member of Parliament, elected to represent Brighton and Hove in the 2010 General Election. Caroline has won every subsequent election, increasing her majority each time, and has twice led the Green Party in the UK. Caroline joins me to discuss the dangerous climate ignorance of the two candidates in the running to become Britain’s next Prime Minister, w...

John Gowdy is Professor of Economics and Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. He is the recipient of the Herman Daly Award for contributions to ecological economics, and author of Ultrasocial: The Evolution of Human Nature and the Quest for a Sustainable Future. John joins me to explain how humans, like ants and termites, are “ultrasoci...

Mike Joy is a freshwater ecologist and Senior Researcher at IGPS Victoria University of Wellington. He has been working for two decades at the interface of science and policy in New Zealand with a goal of strengthening connections between science, policy and real outcomes to address the multiple environmental issues facing New Zealand. He explains the multiple links between New Zealand’s dairy ind...

Frederic Hache is the cofounder and executive director of Green Finance Observatory , an NGO tracking the world of “sustainable finance”, debunking its claims, and working with European policymakers to warn against supposed market-based solutions. He joins me to explain how the markets have financialised and commodified the climate crisis: why carbon credit schemes are nonsense, the worrying adven...

Katherine Stewart is an investigative reporter and author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism . She’s spent the past 12 years investigating how USA’s far right got organised after the original Roe vs Wade ruling, using abortion to polarize political debate in the USA and unite a multi-denominational movement to enact their vision of white ethno-nationalism....

Henrik Nordborg is a physics professor at the Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences , and program director for the university’s Renewable Energy and Environmental Technology . He began giving public lectures about the climate crisis some years ago when he felt his students deserved more honest information about the state of the world and the looming crisis. This led to him developing...

Jeremy Lent is an author and integrator whose dedicated his life since the dot com boom to understanding meaning: how to find it, how to make it, and how to apply it. Author of renowned books ‘The Web of Meaning’ and ‘The Patterning Instinct’, Jeremy joins me to discuss how to combine traditional knowledge with scientific understanding to navigate the polycrisis, the impact of cultural worldviews...

How do we build resilient systems? How do we allow for transformation? How do we encourage adaptation? How does this apply to both to ecosystems and human systems? And how we use this to better understand and tackle the climate crisis? These are questions Professor Graeme Cumming answers on today’s episode. Graeme is the Director of the Arc Center of Excellence coral reef studies at James Cook Uni...

One of the greatest challenges we face when tackling the polycrisis is understanding and applying a diversity of approaches. This means recognising the solutions are as complex as the crisis itself. There is no singular, simple answer. Accepting the ecosystem of solutions we need to implement also comes with accepting both unknown variables and the fact that different people are going to attempt d...

“Too many cooks spoil the broth.” That’s the old adage—but could the opposite be true when it comes to politics? Researchers and writers Susan Clark and Tom Prugh say so. Their research into deliberative democracies show that inviting local communities to take responsibility for local governance improves engagement, depoliticises debate, and achieves excellent results. And the best thing about it?...

From the global financial crash in 2008 to Arab Springs in 2011 to the rise of authoritarian regimes climaxing in the election of a fake-tanned despot to the White House and a compulsive liar buffoon in Downing Street, the past decade and a half has seen the unravelling of political, financial and ecological stability. What was the first domino? Academic, documentarian and author, Rupert Russell,...