For 5,000 years civilizations have told themselves stories of progress. Today, the progress myth has become humanity's most dangerous illusion. Samuel Miller McDonald, geographer and author of Progress: A History of Humanity’s Worst Idea, illuminates the destructive lineage of progress, why these myths endure, how they enable socially and ecologically parasitic societies, and what values might guide us beyond them. Highlights include:

• How narratives of progress have persisted from Mesopotamia to today, and how those narratives have persisted even as the means of material subsistence and political economy have changed enormously over time;
• How the progress narratives of today are primarily divided into four camps: techno-liberal, Silicon Valley's android kingdom, the social justice vanguard, and right-wing grifters and political opportunists;
• How the ecological, energy exchange relationships of mutualism, commensalism, and parasitism offer a framework for understanding human societies' concrete and abstract energy capture historically and in the present;
• Why long-lived societies tend to be mutualistic or commensalistic with animistic, biophilic worldviews and egalitarian practices, while parasitic societies collapse due to the ecological and social destruction they cause;
• How parasitism has evolved across three broad ages of mythical, secular, and today's economistic, fossil-fueled, and globalized capitalist network;
• Why neoliberalism, the latest economistic project, is so resilient - and how it prioritizes economic growth over political rights, co-opts reformist movements and exploits the human cooperative impulse while entrenching corporate power at the expense of democracy;
• Why elite fantasies of transhumanism and off-planet escape are dangerous and delusional extensions of parasitic growthism;
• What more mutualistic and commensalistic alternative paths forward might look like, from agroecological local systems and rewilding to indigenous land rights, fossil fuel bans, rejecting AI, and class struggle - all guided by values of biophilia, fairness, and restraint.

See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: 

https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/samuel-miller-mcdonald-2

OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance

OVERSHOOT tackles today’s interlocked social and ecological crises driven by humanity’s excessive population and consumption. The podcast explores needed narrative, behavioral, and system shifts for recreating human life in balance with all life on Earth. With expert guests from wide-ranging disciplines, we examine the forces underlying overshoot: from patriarchal pronatalism that is fueling overpopulation, to growth-biased economic systems that lead to consumerism and social injustice, to the dominant worldview of human supremacy that subjugates animals and nature. Our vision of shrinking toward abundance inspires us to seek pathways of transformation that go beyond technological fixes toward a new humanity that honors our interconnectedness with all beings. 

Hosted by Nandita Bajaj and Alan Ware. Brought to you by Population Balance.

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Support our work with a one-time or monthly donation: https://www.populationbalance.org/donate

Learn more at https://www.populationbalance.org

Copyright 2025 Population Balance

Modern techno-industrial civilization is running up against the law of diminishing returns - and societal collapse is inevitable. B, author of The Honest Sorcerer blog, reveals why our civilizational complexity carries the seeds of its own destruction. Highlights include:

• What led B (who also shares his reasons for remaining anonymous) from believing modern civilization would persist for centuries to recognizing collapse as inevitable;
• Why diminishing returns on energy, materials, and innovation are central to the collapse of complex societies;
• Why societal collapse is a long process taking place over decades or centuries rather than a single event, unfolding as a stair-step decline with sharp drops in complexity followed by brief recoveries and stabilizations;
• Why declining fertility rates should be embraced as a natural adjustment to overpopulation, rather than a cause for elite-driven panic;
• Why collapse will be liberating for some, devastating for most, and why adaptation to a simpler life will favor poorer communities that already know how to live simply;
• How and when to strategically leverage large-scale political change, and the role writers, thinkers, and local action can play in helping people face collapse more calmly .

See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: 

https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/the-honest-sorcerer

OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance

OVERSHOOT tackles today’s interlocked social and ecological crises driven by humanity’s excessive population and consumption. The podcast explores needed narrative, behavioral, and system shifts for recreating human life in balance with all life on Earth. With expert guests from wide-ranging disciplines, we examine the forces underlying overshoot: from patriarchal pronatalism that is fueling overpopulation, to growth-biased economic systems that lead to consumerism and social injustice, to the dominant worldview of human supremacy that subjugates animals and nature. Our vision of shrinking toward abundance inspires us to seek pathways of transformation that go beyond technological fixes toward a new humanity that honors our interconnectedness with all beings. 

Hosted by Nandita Bajaj and Alan Ware. Brought to you by Population Balance.

Subscribe to our newsletter here: https://www.populationbalance.org/subscribe

Support our work with a one-time or monthly donation: https://www.populationbalance.org/donate

Learn more at https://www.populationbalance.org

Copyright 2025 Population Balance

From center-left Ezra Klein to right-wing Matt Walsh, the fertility panic is an elite fixation that is rooted in a human supremacist worldview and a deep fear of slowing growth. Samuel Miller McDonald, geographer and author of the book Progress: A History of Humanity's Worst Idea, exposes how our parasitic relationship with Earth lies at the core of ecological overshoot, and why resisting authoritarianism in an age of contraction means embracing a pluralistic and just degrowth vision. Highlights include:

• Why our modern relationship to Earth is fundamentally parasitic - regardless of whether societies are capitalist or socialist;
• How media commentators resist degrowth in various stages and how their rejection reveals their lack of maturity in accepting responsibility for the ecological destruction we are causing;
• Why degrowth policies and practices should emphasize pluralistic, context-specific approaches rooted in democratic participation, not top-down master plans;
• Why many degrowth proponents have been dismissive of population concerns;
• Why the political right is more poised to benefit from ongoing economic contraction and why the liberal 'abundance agenda' needs to be resisted;
• Why conviviality and class solidarity are key to a successful degrowth transition and how modern societies undermine them;
• Why core values like fairness, autonomy, and ecological integrity will be essential in resisting authoritarians' claims to power in the coming challenging decades.

See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: 

https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/samuel-miller-mcdonald

OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance

OVERSHOOT tackles today’s interlocked social and ecological crises driven by humanity’s excessive population and consumption. The podcast explores needed narrative, behavioral, and system shifts for recreating human life in balance with all life on Earth. With expert guests from wide-ranging disciplines, we examine the forces underlying overshoot: from patriarchal pronatalism that is fueling overpopulation, to growth-biased economic systems that lead to consumerism and social injustice, to the dominant worldview of human supremacy that subjugates animals and nature. Our vision of shrinking toward abundance inspires us to seek pathways of transformation that go beyond technological fixes toward a new humanity that honors our interconnectedness with all beings. 

Hosted by Nandita Bajaj and Alan Ware. Brought to you by Population Balance.

Subscribe to our newsletter here: https://www.populationbalance.org/subscribe

Support our work with a one-time or monthly donation: https://www.populationbalance.org/donate

Learn more at https://www.populationbalance.org

Copyright 2025 Population Balance

In vitro fertilization (IVF) is often seen as a triumph of reproductive freedom, but its origins are deeply entangled with patriarchy, pronatalism, and eugenics. Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos, IVF survivor and author of Silent Sorority and Finally Heard, discusses how under-regulation and cultural obsession with biological motherhood allows the multi-billion dollar fertility industry to obscure the truth about its low success rates and the trauma it causes. Highlights include:

• What the IVF process entails how time-consuming, expensive, and emotionally and physically wrenching it is;
• How John Rock, pioneer of the birth control pill, was motivated by a religiously pronatalist desire to help specifically Catholic women conceive, and how IVF pioneer, Patrick Steptoe, performed experimental gynecological procedures on hundreds of women without their consent;
• How the multi-billion dollar fertility industry both benefits from and exacerbates pronatalism and exploits the hope of vulnerable patients, who are often treated as commodities, through aggressive marketing, unproven add-on services, and cherry-picked success rates;
• How Pamela found deep emotional connection with online communities around the world - the 'silent sorority' of IVF survivors;
• How pronatalist culture magnifies the emotional pain for IVF patients, surrounding them with pronatalist expectations and deeply rooted stereotypes, especially against women without children;
• Why feminist empowerment rhetoric can backfire if it uncritically promotes fertility services without acknowledging the exploitative practices and emotional toll experienced by the many female patients in the fertility industry;
• How individuals struggling with infertility can make better informed decisions about their available options.

See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: 

https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/pamela-mahoney-tsigdinos

OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance

OVERSHOOT tackles today’s interlocked social and ecological crises driven by humanity’s excessive population and consumption. The podcast explores needed narrative, behavioral, and system shifts for recreating human life in balance with all life on Earth. With expert guests from wide-ranging disciplines, we examine the forces underlying overshoot: from patriarchal pronatalism that is fueling overpopulation, to growth-biased economic systems that lead to consumerism and social injustice, to the dominant worldview of human supremacy that subjugates animals and nature. Our vision of shrinking toward abundance inspires us to seek pathways of transformation that go beyond technological fixes toward a new humanity that honors our interconnectedness with all beings. 

Hosted by Nandita Bajaj and Alan Ware. Brought to you by Population Balance.

Subscribe to our newsletter here: https://www.populationbalance.org/subscribe

Support our work with a one-time or monthly donation: https://www.populationbalance.org/donate

Learn more at https://www.populationbalance.org

Copyright 2025 Population Balance

The meat industry and its defenders promise ethical consumption and sustainable farming, but animal agriculture fuels ecological destruction, entrenches human supremacy, and masks cruelty with comforting myths. John Sanbonmatsu, philosopher and author of The Omnivore’s Deception, shatters the myths of “humane meat” and the 'naturalness' of eating meat, and explains why abolishing the animal economy is essential to living an ethical human life. Highlights include: 

• Why growing up as the child of a Jewish mother and Japanese-American father in the U.S. sensitized John to bullying and injustice - against both human and nonhuman animals;
• Why the origins of human domination over animals are rooted in patriarchy and an ancient human estrangement from animals, and reinforced today by a toxic nexus of masculinity, human supremacy, neoliberal capitalism, and pronatalism;
• Why focusing only on factory farming misses the fundamental problem of human domination of animals and the planet - and how books like Michael Pollan's The Omnivore’s Dilemma and the new American pastoral ethos perpetuate myths of so-called ethical meat while attacking the animal rights movement;
• Why justifying meat-eating as “natural” is ethically bankrupt - on par with past appeals to nature to justify slavery or denying women’s rights - and how vegans and vegetarians provoke defensive ridicule because they reveal uncomfortable truths;
• Why the flood of scientific studies on animal cognition and emotion hasn’t changed behavior - and how cultural fascination with AI and plant consciousness distracts from our brutal treatment of fully sentient animals;
• Why bad faith - our self-deception about how we treat animals - is the most destructive force preventing moral progress, and why what we’re doing to animals deserves to be called 'evil';
• How empathy, an evolved trait we share with animals and desperately need to nurture, is being eroded by increasing social disconnection and anti-empathy tech bro ideologies;
• Why lab meat, also known as 'clean meat', is not the solution to speciesism and human supremacism and consuming our way to animal liberation is a delusion;
• Why the animal rights movement is being undermined by the money pouring into utilitarian effective altruism and “realistic” approaches - when true compassion demands not animal welfarism, but the abolition of animal exploitation and a direct challenge to the entrenched power structures that prevent moral progress.

See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: 

https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/john-sanbonmatsu

OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance

OVERSHOOT tackles today’s interlocked social and ecological crises driven by humanity’s excessive population and consumption. The podcast explores needed narrative, behavioral, and system shifts for recreating human life in balance with all life on Earth. With expert guests from wide-ranging disciplines, we examine the forces underlying overshoot: from patriarchal pronatalism that is fueling overpopulation, to growth-biased economic systems that lead to consumerism and social injustice, to the dominant worldview of human supremacy that subjugates animals and nature. Our vision of shrinking toward abundance inspires us to seek pathways of transformation that go beyond technological fixes toward a new humanity that honors our interconnectedness with all beings. 

Hosted by Nandita Bajaj and Alan Ware. Brought to you by Population Balance.

Subscribe to our newsletter here: https://www.populationbalance.org/subscribe

Support our work with a one-time or monthly donation: https://www.populationbalance.org/donate

Learn more at https://www.populationbalance.org

Copyright 2025 Population Balance

The nuclear industry and its boosters promise clean, abundant energy, but nuclear power delivers expensive electricity while posing catastrophic radiation risks and a constant threat of nuclear war. M. V. Ramana, physicist and author of Nuclear is Not the Solution, explains why respecting the limits of the biosphere means reducing our energy use and rejecting elites’ push for endless growth. Highlights include: 

• Why nuclear energy is inherently risky due to its complex, tightly coupled systems that are prone to catastrophic failures that can't be predicted or prevented;
• Why nuclear waste poses long-term threats to all life by remaining dangerously radioactive for thousands of years, with no safe, permanent disposal solution and frequent storage failures;
• Why nuclear energy is expensive, with projects routinely running over budget and behind schedule;
• Why the expansion of nuclear energy increases the likelihood of devastating nuclear war;
• How climate change and war-time accidents or direct targeting increase the risks of nuclear catastrophe;
• Why nuclear Uranium mining and its wastes often require ‘sacrifice zones’ that are disproportionately found in indigenous land and less powerful communities;
• How the nuclear industry shapes nuclear policy and debate by capturing regulators and creating an energy ‘panic’ based on one-sided narratives that block democratic discussion and scrutiny;
• Why, despite the hype from the nuclear industry, new nuclear plant designs like small modular reactors are subject to the same cost and safety concerns as the old designs; 
• Why the best answer to dealing with renewable energy's variability is not nuclear or fossil fuels but reducing demand;
• Why renewable energy is no panacea for planetary overshoot and why we need to have a broadly democratic conversation about living within the limits of the planet.

See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: 

https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/mv-ramana

OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance

OVERSHOOT tackles today’s interlocked social and ecological crises driven by humanity’s excessive population and consumption. The podcast explores needed narrative, behavioral, and system shifts for recreating human life in balance with all life on Earth. With expert guests from wide-ranging disciplines, we examine the forces underlying overshoot: from patriarchal pronatalism that is fueling overpopulation, to growth-biased economic systems that lead to consumerism and social injustice, to the dominant worldview of human supremacy that subjugates animals and nature. Our vision of shrinking toward abundance inspires us to seek pathways of transformation that go beyond technological fixes toward a new humanity that honors our interconnectedness with all beings. 

Hosted by Nandita Bajaj and Alan Ware. Brought to you by Population Balance.

Subscribe to our newsletter here: https://www.populationbalance.org/subscribe

Learn more at https://www.populationbalance.org

Copyright 2025 Population Balance

The world is colliding with the ecological limits of growth - and mainstream economics is still looking the other way. Peter Victor, ecological economist and author of Escape from Overshoot, joins us. Highlights include:

• How 'the pre-analytic vision' of ecological economics, unlike mainstream economics, recognizes that all economic activity is embedded in the biosphere of Earth;
• Why population growth has been the main driver of ecological overshoot in recent decades;
• Why markets routinely fail to protect public goods like clean air and water and often produce socially and ecologically unjust outcomes without government intervention;
• Why the adjectives put in front of the word 'growth', like 'inclusive growth' or 'green growth', reveal how the goal of economic growth is failing on a wide range of dimensions;
• Why the goal of green growth is delusional, as emissions must fall by 10 percent annually for 30 years in a row to meet climate goals - something no country has ever achieved;
• Why the money metric of valuing nature is woefully inadequate and why we should embrace multiple perspectives that recognize the sacred and relational dimensions of our relationships to nature;
• Why mainstream economists' assumption of infinite wants is misguided and why we should focus instead on moderating our material wants to achieve an abundance of joy and wellbeing.

See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: 

https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/peter-victor

OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance

OVERSHOOT tackles today’s interlocked social and ecological crises driven by humanity’s excessive population and consumption. The podcast explores needed narrative, behavioral, and system shifts for recreating human life in balance with all life on Earth. With expert guests from wide-ranging disciplines, we examine the forces underlying overshoot: from patriarchal pronatalism that is fueling overpopulation, to growth-biased economic systems that lead to consumerism and social injustice, to the dominant worldview of human supremacy that subjugates animals and nature. Our vision of shrinking toward abundance inspires us to seek pathways of transformation that go beyond technological fixes toward a new humanity that honors our interconnectedness with all beings. 

Hosted by Nandita Bajaj and Alan Ware. Brought to you by Population Balance.

Subscribe to our newsletter here: https://www.populationbalance.org/subscribe

Learn more at populationbalance.org

Copyright 2025 Population Balance

Academy Award-winning vegan filmmaker and former National Geographic photographer Louie Psihoyos joins us to share how he is using the power of storytelling to spark transformation for animal rights, human health, and environmental conservation. Highlights include:

• How The Cove, his Oscar-wining documentary and the first documentary to sweep all the film guilds, inspired activism that helped reduce dolphin and porpoise slaughter in Japan by over 90%;
• How his team’s audacious projection events of endangered species on iconic buildings including The Empire State Building, The United Nations and The Vatican for their film Racing Extinction, received over 5.4 billion media views and led to laws that protect some of Earth’s most endangered animals;
• How his third film, The Game Changers, a film about plant-based super athletes that exposes the myth that meat is necessary for protein, strength, and optimal health, triggered a 350% spike in online searches within a month of premiering on Netflix;
• What his Netflix Series, You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment, uncovered about the 8-week health benefits of plant-based eating, and how the results went viral;
• His most recent film Mission: Joy a buddy film starring his Holiness, The Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu about how to find joy in a world of sorrow has been seen by 10’s of millions of people around the globe;
• Where Louie’s focus is turning next: a new film exposing the destructive health impacts of plastic.

See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: 

https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/louie-psihoyos

OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance

OVERSHOOT tackles today’s interlocked social and ecological crises driven by humanity’s excessive population and consumption. The podcast explores needed narrative, behavioral, and system shifts for recreating human life in balance with all life on Earth. With expert guests from wide-ranging disciplines, we examine the forces underlying overshoot: from patriarchal pronatalism that is fueling overpopulation, to growth-biased economic systems that lead to consumerism and social injustice, to the dominant worldview of human supremacy that subjugates animals and nature. Our vision of shrinking toward abundance inspires us to seek pathways of transformation that go beyond technological fixes toward a new humanity that honors our interconnectedness with all beings. 

Hosted by Nandita Bajaj and Alan Ware. Brought to you by Population Balance.

Learn more at populationbalance.org

Copyright 2025 Population Balance

• How her mixed Indigenous and German heritage in Brazil exposed her to a complex mix of love and violence, deepening her understanding of how socialization and education can perpetuate harmful relationships;
• Why the ‘house of modernity’, which is built on a foundation of humanity’s separation from the rest of nature, is structured to ultimately fail;
• Why we need to ‘hospice modernity’ both within and around us, without feeling overwhelmed or rushing for quick fixes, while making space for something much larger to emerge;
• Why we need to compost the ‘pedestal’ sense of agency from modernity and its elevated sense of certainty and subject-object relationships and embrace a more intersubjective mycelial sense of agency; 
• Why ‘outgrowing modernity’ will require us to prepare for a ‘well-died death’ and a greater sense of emotional sobriety, relational maturity, intellectual discernment, and interspecies and intergenerational responsibility.

See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: 

https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/vanessa-andreotti

OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance

OVERSHOOT tackles today’s interlocked social and ecological crises driven by humanity’s excessive population and consumption. The podcast explores needed narrative, behavioral, and system shifts for recreating human life in balance with all life on Earth. With expert guests from wide-ranging disciplines, we examine the forces underlying overshoot: from patriarchal pronatalism that is fueling overpopulation, to growth-biased economic systems that lead to consumerism and social injustice, to the dominant worldview of human supremacy that subjugates animals and nature. Our vision of shrinking toward abundance inspires us to seek pathways of transformation that go beyond technological fixes toward a new humanity that honors our interconnectedness with all beings. 

Hosted by Nandita Bajaj and Alan Ware. Brought to you by Population Balance.

Learn more at populationbalance.org

Copyright 2025 Population Balance

The rhetoric of “hopium” is failing as ecological overshoot deepens. “Hopium”, a colloquial term that is a blend of the words “hope” and “opium” (as though it were a drug), represents a faith in technological and market-based solutions to address our multiple reinforcing crises, despite evidence to the contrary. We're living in the long defeat and we must own and confront it with courage. Award-winning essayist, Pamela Swanigan, joins us. Highlights include:

• How children's literature is full of reverence for nature but children's literature analysis done in the academy is dominated by the perspective of human exceptionalism;
• The role that Judeo-Christianity has played in promoting the worldview of human exceptionalism while destroying the millennia-old biophilic and animistic belief systems;
• Why Pamela was astonished that she won the Berggruen Prize Essay Competition given the magical thinking of human exceptionalism and techno-solutionism embodied by the attendees;
• Social reformer and US Commissioner for the Bureau of Indian Affairs John Collier’s concept of the 'long hope'- that indigenous cultures and their nature-sacralizing beliefs could help humanity survive after the collapse of techno-industrial civilization;
• Why the delusional and pervasive rhetoric of hope among social change advocates (such as Jane Goodall and David Suzuki) defies evidence, and why we must embrace JRR Tolkien's concept of the 'long defeat' in order to courageously fight against ecological destruction and social injustice.

See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: 

https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/pamela-swanigan

OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance

OVERSHOOT tackles today’s interlocked social and ecological crises driven by humanity’s excessive population and consumption. The podcast explores needed narrative, behavioral, and system shifts for recreating human life in balance with all life on Earth. With expert guests from wide-ranging disciplines, we examine the forces underlying overshoot: from patriarchal pronatalism that is fueling overpopulation, to growth-biased economic systems that lead to consumerism and social injustice, to the dominant worldview of human supremacy that subjugates animals and nature. Our vision of shrinking toward abundance inspires us to seek pathways of transformation that go beyond technological fixes toward a new humanity that honors our interconnectedness with all beings. 

Hosted by Nandita Bajaj and Alan Ware. Brought to you by Population Balance.

Learn more at populationbalance.org

Copyright 2025 Population Balance