EQUALS: Reimagining Our Economy

As we launch our new season focusing on fighting inequality, Max and Grazielle host Oxfam’s new Executive Director, Amitabh Behar.

From growing up in Bhopal, India, a city infamous for the chemical leak by a US corporate that killed thousands, Amitabh talks us through his life experiences and how they have shaped his thinking and his passion to fight inequality and advocate for social justice and human dignity. Of the urgent need to build people’s power to demand a more equal world.

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As the World Health Organization (WHO) continue to negotiate the Pandemic Accord, Max and Grazielle interviews Nick Dearden on Pharma patents, monopolies and greed that makes them price medical tools out of reach by people who need them.

They also discuss how the public funded research changes hand to be a patent for big pharmaceutical companies whose only concern is to make profit rather than save lives.

Nick Dearden is the Director of Global Justice Now and the author of Pharmanomics a book on how big pharma destroy global health.

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Imagine someone owing you money, but instead of paying you, they offer you a loan with conditions on how to use it. That is the how climate financing looks like according to Fadhel Kaboub.

Fadhel, hosted by Max and Nafkote, breaks down bit by bit, the situation in climate financing and why it is impossible to have just transition within the structures of colonialism and extractivism.

Fadhel is an associate professor of economics at Denison University (on leave), and the president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. He serves as the Senior Advisor to Power Shift Africa.

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Imagine a private company creating its own jurisdiction in a sovereign country. It sets up its own laws, currency, and tax, labour and environmental regulations regardless of their compatibility with national laws. And when the democratically elected government steps in, the company sues it in little-known ‘corporate courts’ for billions of dollars citing its projected financial loss. Listen to our dystopian story of how the private sector is “buying up sovereignty” and the shocking abuses of power now happening.

Nabil and Max interview the amazing Ana Arendar on corporate owned-and-run cities in Honduras and the Caribbean Islands and how countries, both in Global North and Global South, are fighting back.

Ana is the Campaign Strategist for Progressive International.

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In this episode of EQUALS, we talk about how wealth and power defy gravity by making water flow… upwards!

Max and Nafkote interview Sushmita Mandal about water inequality and how climate breakdown is already affecting water access for people around the world.

Sushmita shares amazing stories about a young boy in India (who observed water flowing upwards from his community to posh apartment buildings), ecosystems on the Mekong River and a dam threatening fishers’ livelihoods.

Sushmita Mandal is a Senior Research Fellow for Water, Food and Ecosystems at Stockholm’s Environmental Institute in Asia.

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On International Women’s Day, Max and Nafkote interviewed Bhumika Muchhala, a development and feminist economist, on the possibility of being a feminist in an economic system that thrives on the exploitation of people and nature.

This episode explores the importance of the way our global economy is organized in understanding the fight for gender equality. How issues like labour rights, fair taxation and debt cancellation are feminist issues.

Bhumika is the Political Economist and Senior Advisor at Third World Network.

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Nafkote and Max interview Dr. Faiza Shaheen on how capitalism has failed on its main selling point – work hard and you will succeed. The idea that everyone has equal opportunity in life is just a myth. Your success in life is significantly influenced by where you are born, your social class, race, and education.

This episode is a powerful critique of our system - one that perpetuates wealth concentration among the rich while leaving the majority behind.

Faiza Shaheen is Professor of Economics at London School of Economics and the author of the book Know Your Place.

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Max and Nafkote interview the brilliant Dr. Clara Mattei on the history of austerity and how it was created to maintain “the capital order”.

Austerity today the world over remains a favored tool of policymakers. And yet it is far more than just a policy. We examine the roots of austerity and its fundamental role in entrenching capital, and disciplining people to never dare to create alternative economic systems.

Dr. Clara Mattei is Associate Professor of Economics at the New School for Social Research. She is the author of The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved The Way to Fascism.

Remember to share the podcast on social media and leave a review! You can find us on Twitter at @EQUALShope.

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Nafkote and Nabil welcome the pioneering Senegalese development economist Ndongo Samba Sylla onto EQUALS.

We talk about the untold vision of former Burkina Faso President Thomas Sankara for economic liberation.

The role of the French colonial currency in today’s world.

What Modern Monetary Theory can mean to the Global South.

And what a Green Bandung Woods – picking up from where liberation leaders left off – can do to rethink the global financial architecture.

Ndongo Samba Sylla is a Senegalese development economist. He has previously worked as a technical advisor at the Presidency of the Republic of Senegal, and is Programme manager at the West Africa office of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. He is the co-author of Africa’s Last Colonial Currency: The CFA Franc Story and author of The Fair Trade Scandal.

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Max and Nafkote interview the world-famous economist Professor Ha Joon Chang to ask what is causing the inequality crisis and what governments can do to stop it.

How are traffic lights, neoliberalism, and the Catholic Church in medieval times linked? How can we create a new generation of developmental states that face down corporates and build equal societies? An EQUALS episode not to be missed, with a giant of economic thinking.

As ever follow us on Twitter and leave us a review. Tune in to our new season’s previous episodes on Wall Street Consensus by Daniela Gabor and Climate inequality with Oxfam’s Climate Inequality minds.

Read Inequality Inc., Oxfam's latest inequality report.

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