In this podcast we will listen to a lecture by Carolyn Steel, architect and author of the award-winning Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives and Sitopia: How Food Can Save the World. From our foraging hunter-gatherer ancestors to the enormous appetites of modern cities, food has shaped our bodies and homes, our politics and trade, and our climate. Whether it’s the daily decision of what to eat, or the monopoly of industrial food production, food touches every part of our world. But by forgetting its value, we have drifted into a way of life that threatens our planet and ourselves. Yet food remains central to addressing the predicaments and opportunities of our urban, digital age. 

Drawing on insights from philosophy, history, architecture, literature, politics and science, as well as stories of the farmers, designers and economists who are remaking our relationship with food, architect and writer Carolyn Steel offers a provocative and exhilarating vision for change, and how to thrive on our crowded, overheating planet. 

Twelve months. That is the time the world now has for global greenhouse gas emissions to start to fall. If not, we will miss the chance to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis. According to the 2022 report on mitigation by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) the world can still hope to stave off the worst ravages of climate breakdown, but only through a “now or never” dash to a low-carbon economy and society. Greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2025, and should be nearly halved this decade, to give the world a chance of limiting future heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. It is in effect a final warning for governments on the climate. So now what? Together with IPCC Lead Author and Professor of Socio-Technical Innovation and Climate Change Heleen de Coninck we will navigate through the latest climate science and what it should mean for our climate policies. What agency do we still have to turn things around? Could cities be the forerunners in the transformations we need? And as our planet is heating up: why are climate politics still frozen?

In this live episode we talk to Andrea Elliott on the occasion of her Pulitzer Prize winning book 'Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City'. Elliott is an investigative journalist for The New York Times whose work documents the lives of people on the margins of power. Based on nearly a decade of reporting, Invisible Child follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani Coates, whose story has become emblematic of America’s most wicked and growing urban problems: segregation, poverty and systemic inequality. It reveals the reality of child homelesness in New York City, and lays bare a strata of society far too often ignored. So what can we learn from Elliott’s vivid and powerfull narrative? Joined on stage by sociologist Bowen Paulle and urban geographer Cody Hochstenbach we analyse and unpack the power structures and unequal systems within which people become trapped, and its impact upon households and communities. And we look into concrete solutions and policies to tackle the divide. 

In this live edition of De Dépendance Podcast labour economist Guy Standing gives a short lecture on his book ‘The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class’. In it he provides a detailed understanding of how the situation of precarious employment affects the lives of the “Precariat”: the rapidly growing number of people facing lives of insecurity, on zero-hour contracts, moving in and out of jobs that give little meaning to their lives. Standing investigates this growing group, finding a frustrated and angry new underclass who are often ignored by politicians and economists. We have started to work more and more, and get less and less in return. But how did we end up here? And is there a way out?

In this live edition of De Dépendance Podcast we listen to a short lecture by journalist Sarah Jaffe on her book Work Won’t Love You Back – How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted and Alone. The last decade has seen a seismic shift in attitudes towards work and the idea of labour. Whether it is through the rise of the gig economy, the rapid proliferation of the new creator economy, or the pandemic-induced break from traditional office culture: work has seeped into our private lives, literally invading our homes. Meanwhile, more and more of us are pushed to make sacrifices for the privilege of being able to do work we enjoy. It has led to the idea that certain work is not really work, and should be done for the sake of passion rather than pay. So what is wrong with this ‘labour of love’ myth? And how can we fundamentally transform our perceptions of work?

In this special live edition of De Dépendance Podcast we listen to a short lecture by sociologist Bowen Paulle on one of the most pressing social issues of our time: educational inequality. In the past education has long served the function of being the 'great equaliser': not your origin or social class, but your talent and effort would determine your level of schooling and future prospects in society. But this engine of emancipation is grinding to a halt. Where you are born and the educational level of your parents increasingly determines the opportunities you get in life. And this growing inequality of opportunity tends to perpetuate or even reinforce itself: it stops intergenerational mobility. So what to do? What are the best practices, scalable solutions and concrete policies to tackle the current divide? And who should take the lead?

In this episode we talk to Professor of International Politics Laleh Khalili on the occasion of her latest book Sinews of War and Trade, Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula. Khalili travelled the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean aboard gigantic container ships to investigate the secretive and sometimes dangerous world of maritime trade. What she discovered was strangely disturbing: brutally exploited seafarers, heavily securitized cargo ports, and often unseen environmental catastrophes. From her research riding the sea lanes, Khalili exposes the frayed and tense sinews of modern capital, and shows that maritime transportation is not simply an enabling adjunct of trade, but a central node within our economic system. 

In this episode we will talk about one of the most pressing urban issues of our time: the housing crisis. Our guest is Leilani Farha, former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing and director of The Shift, a global movement to secure the human right to housing. Farha is also the central character in the acclaimed documentary PUSH regarding the financialization of housing. We will discuss why this housing crisis is predominantly a human rights crisis, what the systemic causes behind the growing shortages of affordable residential real estate are, and what we can do to turn the tide.

In this episode we talk to economic historian Aaron Benanav, researcher at Humboldt University Berlin, where he studies the history of unemployment and global labour markets. We will discuss his latest book, Automation and the Future of Work, which is a consensus-shattering account of automation technologies and the falling demand for labour. Benanav argues that Silicon Valley titans, techno-futurists, and politicians from all sides of the political spectrum are wrong when claiming that we are on the cusp of an era of runaway technological change, heralding the end of work as we know it. We will examine why they are wrong, how this dominant belief system came about, and what the real-world, problematic implications of this rhetoric are. And if not technology is destroying our jobs, what is? 

In this episode we talk to Syrian architect and urban thinker Marwa-al-Sabouni. When war enveloped her city, Homs, she refused to leave and remained a virtual prisoner in her home for two years. In her autobiography, The Battle for Home: The Vision of a Young Architect in Syria, al-Sabouni analyses how architecture and city planning have played a role in fueling violence and civil conflict by distorting community relationships and fragmenting societies. In her most recent book, Building for Hope: Towards an Architecture of Belonging, she explores how cities and buildings might and should be rebuilt in the aftermath of war, and what tangible lessons we can draw from the history, culture, and architecture of Syria. We will discuss how the built environment was a factor leading to war and which urban reconstruction strategies will benefit the city the most.  And we will talk about life in contemporary Syria.