60 episodes

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.

The Overpopulation Podcast Population Balance

    • Society & Culture
    • 4.9 • 77 Ratings

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.

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

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

    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 face of massive and complex systems. Rieder offers suggestions on how to overcome this sense of ‘moral dumbfounding’ so that we can better align our actions with our values towards ethical living. Among the small and large individual actions that we discuss, Rieder places a special focus on the ethics of procreation — what he calls monumental ethics — and the degree of moral deliberation that is needed to arrive at the decision to have a biological child. We also discuss the dangers of utilitarian ethics, with a specific focus on Effective Altruism.
    See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/travis-rieder-2
     
    ABOUT US
    The Overpopulation Podcast features enlightening conversations between Population Balance executive director Nandita Bajaj, researcher Alan Ware, and expert guests. We cover a broad variety of topics that explore the impacts of our expanding human footprint on human rights, animal protection, and environmental restoration, as well as individual and collective solutions. Learn more here: https://www.populationbalance.org/ 

    • 1 hr 1 min
    Laura Carroll | Breaking Out of the Baby Matrix: Busting Common Pronatalist Myths

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

    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 About Parenthood & Reproduction Will Create a Better World, in which she busts the many pervasively pronatalist assumptions that people have to navigate while deciding whether or not to have children, and the effects of those decisions on people and planet. While laying out each of the assumptions, Laura offers alternative perspectives that elevate reproductive autonomy — such that parenthood and non-parenthood are equally acceptable options, and reproductive responsibility — a consideration of the wellbeing of potential child(ren) and the planet. She also shares important strategies on how to respond to pronatalist pressures from family and friends in as loving a way as possible, while staying grounded in our own knowledge and truth.
    See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/laura-carroll-2
     
    ABOUT US
    The Overpopulation Podcast features enlightening conversations between Population Balance executive director Nandita Bajaj, researcher Alan Ware, and expert guests. We cover a broad variety of topics that explore the impacts of our expanding human footprint on human rights, animal protection, and environmental restoration, as well as individual and collective solutions. Learn more here: https://www.populationbalance.org/ 
     

    • 1 hr 1 min
    Christopher Ketcham | The Megamachine and Green Growth Delusions

    Christopher Ketcham | The Megamachine and Green Growth Delusions

    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 caused by unregulated public lands livestock grazing, corruptly supported by the federal land management agencies, who are supposed to be regulating these industries. He tracks the Department of Interior’s failure to implement and enforce the Endangered Species Act and investigates the destructive behavior of U.S. Wildlife Services in their shocking mass slaughter of animals that threaten the livestock industry.
    We also chat about the green growth ideology behind the lithium mining at Thacker Pass in Nevada which is driving the destruction of ecosystems and species as well as the displacement of local Indian tribes from what they consider to be their sacred lands. This same ideology, combined with the failure to acknowledge and reckon with the realities of ecological overshoot, has caused many leading environmental groups to abandon their commitment to nature conservation in order to prioritize industry interests. Chris’ vision of ecological restoration calls for freeing the trampled, denuded ecosystems from the effects of grazing, enforcing the laws already in place to defend biodiversity, allowing the native species of the West to recover under a fully implemented Endangered Species Act, and establishing vast stretches of public land where there will be no development at all, not even for recreation.
    See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/christopher-ketcham
     
    ABOUT US
    The Overpopulation Podcast features enlightening conversations between Population Balance executive director Nandita Bajaj, researcher Alan Ware, and expert guests. We cover a broad variety of topics that explore the impacts of our expanding human footprint on human rights, animal protection, and environmental restoration, as well as individual and collective solutions. Learn more here: https://www.populationbalance.org/ 
     

    • 52 min
    Angela Saini | The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule

    Angela Saini | The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule

    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 patriarchies – are very recent phenomena, which emerged with the rise of the early states and empires, with pressure on women to have many children for the state and on men to defend the state. By detailing the diversity of human arrangements, including the prevalence of egalitarian and matrilineal societies around the world – past and present – Angela reveals that male-supremacy is neither natural nor immutable. However, she notes that as long as nation states remain committed to valuing productivity and growth – primarily by maintaining control over women’s reproduction and over nature – achieving gender equality and ecological justice will remain illusory goals, even in the most progressive nations.
    See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/angela-saini
     
    ABOUT US
    The Overpopulation Podcast features enlightening conversations between Population Balance executive director Nandita Bajaj, researcher Alan Ware, and expert guests. We cover a broad variety of topics that explore the impacts of our expanding human footprint on human rights, animal protection, and environmental restoration, as well as individual and collective solutions. Learn more here: https://www.populationbalance.org/ 
     
     

    • 1 hr 3 min
    Diana Coole | The Toxification of Population Discourse: How Population Became a Dirty Word

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

    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 policymakers, journalists, and academics are too afraid to discuss population. In this episode with political theorist and feminist scholar, Dr. Diana Coole, we unpack the history of the toxification of the population discourse over the last 30 years and the dire social and ecological consequences that this silencing has unleashed. 
    See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/diana-coole
     
    ABOUT US
    The Overpopulation Podcast features enlightening conversations between Population Balance executive director Nandita Bajaj, researcher Alan Ware, and expert guests. We cover a broad variety of topics that explore the impacts of our expanding human footprint on human rights, animal protection, and environmental restoration, as well as individual and collective solutions. Learn more here: https://www.populationbalance.org/ 
     

    • 1 hr 5 min
    Asher Miller & Rob Dietz | Navigating the Great Unraveling with Resilience

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

    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 polarization, techno-solutionism, conflict, and suffering as the situation worsens. We speak about the need to grapple with complexity, uncertainty, and conflicting priorities, while maintaining social cohesion within societies and peaceful relations between them. Seeking wisdom and knowledge from communities who have experienced collapse and suffering, in order to build household and community resilience for this precarious time, can help us imagine a more hopeful future.
    See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/asher-miller-rob-dietz
     
    ABOUT US
    The Overpopulation Podcast features enlightening conversations between Population Balance executive director Nandita Bajaj, researcher Alan Ware, and expert guests. We cover a broad variety of topics that explore the impacts of our expanding human footprint on human rights, animal protection, and environmental restoration, as well as individual and collective solutions. Learn more here: https://www.populationbalance.org/ 
     

    • 1 hr

Customer Reviews

4.9 out of 5
77 Ratings

77 Ratings

Peter the Poet ,

Overpopulation podcast

I keep coming back to these podcasts. They are truly excellent. This material should be heard by everyone. It will be worth your time

Citizen, Ancestor ,

Rational, respectful, and thoughtful discussion of the problem of human overpopulation

No other podcast does such a fine job of looking unflinchingly but thoughtfully at both the challenges of and solutions to the world’s overpopulation problem. Podcasters and interviewers Nandita Bajaj and Alan Ware are extremely knowledgeable, and are well-prepared for each discussion. Their podcast guests provide the listener with a remarkable range of perspectives and expertise on the topic. The Overpopulation Podcast should be at the top of the listening list for anyone interested in halting the ongoing global ecological disaster, and in finding a path to true sustainability.

rlw1992 ,

Most informative podcast on the population crisis I have listened to so far!

This podcast is so well put together and so informative, I only wish it reached more people. I am supportive of a declining population and believe that the population must halve in order to save humanity (we have just passed 8 billion people), not grow. After listening to this podcast, I now have more tools in my toolbox, more data, and a better understanding of how crucial this topic is. Listening to this podcast has reassured my decision to live a child-free life for all the selfless reasons. I am even further inspired to continue my education in population studies, which am currently looking at Ph.D. programs where I hope to become a contributing members in the small community of those who favor population decline. This podcast has been inspiring, motivating, and above all, educational. Thank you for all the amazing work you have done! I highly recommend this podcast.

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