Macrodose

Your weekly fix of everything economics. Hosted by James Meadway.

  1. Order as Fiction w/ Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla

    8 HR AGO

    Order as Fiction w/ Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla

    Welcome back to After Order - a series from Macrodose and the Alameda Institute - exploring power, sovereignty, and crisis in today's unstable world. ⁠⁠Event Tickets: Political Economy in a Time of Monsters ⁠⁠ In this week’s show, host James Meadway is joined by Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla - political strategist, activist, Co-General Coordinator of the Progressive International, and Executive Secretary of the Hague Group, a coalition of Global South nations launched in 2025 to hold Israel accountable for its crimes in Palestine. Varsha’s work sits at the intersection of law, empire, and resistance - as both an organiser and an intellectual, grappling with what it might mean to build a decolonial internationalism rooted in the Global South. From Honduras, where a US corporation is suing the state for billions in a secret tribunal, to Ecuador, where an authoritarian regime with the direct assistance of the US is crushing democracy in the name of the War on Drugs, to the bombs falling on Gaza - in flagrant violation of international law - it’s clear we are living through a rupture in the global “order”.  But Varsha argues that “order”, the so called “rules-based international system”, was always and fundamentally a veneer, one that masked the systems of coercion, extraction and exploitation that uphold global capitalism.  In the context of war on Iran, it’s a particularly prescient argument. The veil has lifted, we are seeing the return of hard power across the world, and an open defiance of international institutions, from Cuba to Palestine.  But we’re also seeing something else. A wave of solidarity with the victims of colonial oppression, and new forms of coordination among states seeking to resist through the cracks of disorder. So the question at the heart of today’s conversation is this: as the old fiction of order breaks down, what comes next?  And what would it mean to build a different kind of sovereignty - and a different kind of internationalism - in a world After Order? Subscribe to support the show at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/Macrodose.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Your pledge is a donation supporting free public education; perks are thank-you gifts for your support. Got a question or comment? Reach out to us at ⁠macrodose@planetbproductions.co.uk⁠. To learn more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, head to ⁠⁠planetbproductions.co.uk⁠⁠. Listen to Death In Westminster - a new documentary podcast from Planet B Productions & Novara Media.

    48 min
  2. The New Age of Extraction w/ Thea Riofrancos

    9 APR

    The New Age of Extraction w/ Thea Riofrancos

    Event Tickets: Political Economy in a Time of Monsters Welcome back to the After Order podcast - a series from Macrodose in collaboration with the Alameda Institute. In our opening episode, host James Meadway spoke with Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff about their book Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed, using Elon Musk as a lens to examine the intellectual contours of our emerging post-liberal moment. Together, they traced how new ideological formations may be taking shape in the aftermath of neoliberalism. In today’s episode, we shift from those ideological roots to something more tangible, the material foundations of contemporary capitalism, and in particular, the accelerating green energy transition. To explore this, James is joined by Thea Riofrancos, author of Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism. As governments and corporations race to decarbonise the global economy, demand for critical minerals such as lithium has surged dramatically. Yet as Thea’s work shows, this transition is not simply a story of technological progress or environmental necessity. It is also opening up new frontiers of extraction - reshaping landscapes, transforming communities, and reconfiguring geopolitical relations in the process. At the centre of this conversation lies a pressing question: can the shift to renewable energy avoid reproducing the same extractive dynamics that defined the fossil-fuel era? And are we witnessing the emergence of a new form of “green capitalism” that carries forward many of the old logics under a different guise? In a world After Order, where crises no longer appear as temporary disruptions but as enduring conditions, the stakes of these questions are difficult to overstate.

    46 min

Trailers

About

Your weekly fix of everything economics. Hosted by James Meadway.

More From Planet B Productions

You Might Also Like