Collapse has historically benefited the 99%.

That’s the amazing conclusion of Luke Kemp, author of Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse.  Luke is a research associate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, and has spent the past five years studying the collapse of civilisations throughout history. He joins me to explain his research, detailing the difference between complex, collective civilisations and what he calls “Goliaths”, massive centralising forces by which a small group of individuals extract wealth from the rest through domination and the threat of violence. Today, he says, we live in a global Goliath.

In this astounding conversation, Luke takes us from the Ancient times to the modern day, revealing the root causes of collapse and paralleling them what we’re living through today. He explains the egalitarian nature of our species, and shines new light on what a future could look like free from today’s global Goliath. He reminds us all that we tend to view collapse through the eyes of the 1%, those who have the most to lose, and gives startling accounts of how populations bounced back after their domineering rulers fell. For a conversation about the collapse of the modern world, this conversation is as hopeful as it is brutal.

Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis. Join subscribers from 186 countries to support independent journalism.

How can we become good ancestors?

Permaculturist and educator, Kara Huntermoon, says the hobbies we pick up now can be skills we pass on to our children, even if we never have to use them ourselves. In this wide-ranging and empathetic conversation on relationality, intergenerational solidarity, and hard work, Kara explores how community sufficiency practiced properly creates the common ground in which we can plant the future.

This conversation weaves the importance of our relationships with the increasing political alienation experienced by many on the left, with Kara examining how to find allies in those our political binaries would deem enemies. Braiding feminism with back-breaking work, Kara invites us all to remember that there are always different worlds possible, but it's only if you get your hands dirty and do the work that they will grow from the soil.

Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis. Join subscribers from 186 countries to support independent journalism.

How we create knowledge is as important as the knowledge itself.

This is the message of this week’s guest, Aboriginal scholar and author, Tyson Yunkaporta. In his explanation of the importance of learning through living, and living with learning, Tyson points to the how the discourse around decolonisation has granted expertise based on identity rather than experience. He highlights how indigenous thinking is fundamentally consensus building, mirroring the Western scientific method, and warns that neoliberal thinking has infected what should have been a radical transformation, creating individuals who consider themselves fully contained “little corporations”.

In this unflinching and compassionate conversation, Tyson weaves the culture wars, knowledge production, indigenous science, landscapes and the body to reveal the mismatches between how we think and how we live, which have opened wounds in the collective body which act as voids into which our potential solidarity falls. This is a dialogue on truth, kinship and action, in which Tyson gives one of the most honest accounts of where the best of intention has gone wrong in recent years, delivering a call to refuse these narratives of separation between ourselves, our kinfolk and the great Earth upon which we all depend.

Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis. Join subscribers from 186 countries to support independent journalism.

Is the world even collapsing?

Joseph Tainter is a Professor at Utah State University and the author of The Collapse of Complex Societies. He explains on this episode that collapse happens when a civilisation experiences a diminishing return on complexity, the fact that it takes more capital, more energy, more resources to maintain society until eventually that maintenance is no longer useful.

We discuss his research and apply it to today’s world, linking in energy, technology, even geopolitical order, with Joseph—surprisingly, despite all the evidence that points to this moment in history as truly exceptional given Earth’s systems breakdown—stating that there is nothing special about the world we live in and its precarious future.

Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis. Join subscribers from 186 countries to support independent journalism.

We’ve been protesting for decades. Is it time to escalate?

Rowan Tilly is an elder of the British peace and environment movements. She has risked jail multiple times to raise awareness of the atrocities carried out against human beings and the planet. All of her direct action is non-violent, and she is deeply committed to an activism which provokes the public to confront the state’s violence. I am extremely grateful to Rowan for her activism and commitment over the years. I am especially grateful that she was open to recording this episode in which I challenge the current belief that non-violence is the only way to achieve our goals.

In this stark and compassionate episode, we discuss the traditional tenets of non-violence, their efficacy and their results. We hold different positions of what the future of activism should entail, and go deep into the weeds of morality, violence itself, and different cases of resistance from all around the world.

This episode went out to paid subscribers only yesterday because I ticked the wrong box. Apologies, everyone!

We’ve been protesting for decades. Is it time to escalate?

Rowan Tilly is an elder of the British peace and environment movements. She has risked jail multiple times to raise awareness of the atrocities carried out against human beings and the planet. All of her direct action is non-violent, and she is deeply committed to an activism which provokes the public to confront the state’s violence. I am extremely grateful to Rowan for her activism and commitment over the years. I am especially grateful that she was open to recording this episode in which I challenge the current belief that non-violence is the only way to achieve our goals.

In this stark and compassionate episode, we discuss the traditional tenets of non-violence, their efficacy and their results. We hold different positions of what the future of activism should entail, and go deep into the weeds of morality, violence itself, and different cases of resistance from all around the world.

Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis. Join subscribers from 186 countries to support independent journalism.

All of our industries are going to have to shrink. But how do we shrink the good ones?

Martin Hensher is a health economist and  a Professor of Health Systems Sustainability at the University of Tasmania. He’s spent years researching how to create a degrowth model for the health industry—and why it will be better for people as well as our planet. Martin argues that the way we currently run our healthcare is another symptom of overconsumption, explaining when healthcare benefits and healthcare expenditure actually decouple.

This is a fascinating episode in which Martin interweaves the health of the planet’s body with our own, providing a vision for a sustainable, global healthcare industry which doesn’t depend on economic growth, inequality, or over-extraction. He explains we can save lives and prevent disease—but to stay within our planetary boundaries, we’re going to have to transform how we do that.

Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis. Join subscribers from 186 countries to support independent journalism.

Women’s bodies have always been the cornerstone of reproduction. So has Earth’s. It’s why the enclosure and appropriation of both is fundamental to the accumulation of the capitalist class.

On this extraordinary episode, I interview Marxist-feminist scholar, Silvia Federici, author of Caliban and the Witch, a phenomenal book which articulates how capitalism did not naturally evolve from feudalism, but necessitated the violent displacement of women’s power in their communities and control over their own reproduction. We discuss this in the context of women’s rights being violated all around the world today as we enter a period of resource scarcity, and why it is therefore imperative that the Western feminist movement recover this analysis to create an effective resistance movement.

Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis. Join subscribers from 186 countries to support independent journalism.

Ask anyone anywhere what’s the leading cause of global heating and they’ll tell you: fossil fuels. But what if we’re all wrong?

Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop is a scientist for the World Preservation Foundation and worked as a Principal Scientist with Queensland Government Natural Resources, using satellite data to monitor three decades of vegetation cover and broadscale deforestation. In February 2025, he released a paper showing how the IPCC is using different models to calculate the emissions from fossil fuels and animal agriculture. Gerrard researches shows, when we use the same model for both, animal agriculture becomes the biggest driver of global heating.

In this episode, Gerard explains his research and other problems with emissions calculation, including how deforestation is disregarded and methane is misrepresented. He calls all of this inconsistent emissions accounting—and it could be leading policy-leaders astray.

Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis. Join subscribers from 186 countries to support independent journalism.

How do we survive?

Max Wilbert is a long-time activist who spent the past few years defending Thacker Pass, and recently joined CELDF to as part of their new strategy to build out community resilience. I first interviewed Max on why techno-optimism won’t save the day. As with many compatriots around the world, the answer he’s landed on as to what will is local action.

In this winding and weaving conversation we discuss the new bill on the floor of the New York State Senate which would give rights of nature to all water in the state before examining legal strategies more broadly under the umbrella of climate activism. We then examine Empire’s death throes and how it is violently grasping at power to maintain itself. We discuss violence and defence, patriarchy and permaculture, showing how resilience is an act of resistance in a system which has spent the past 500 years ripping apart our communal social fabric. This is a conversation about how to reweave a tapestry that had been lost to us, and why doing is of vital importance to survive what’s coming.

Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis. Join subscribers from 186 countries to support independent journalism.