What is one thing we could all do tomorrow?

Switch to a planet-based diet.

Sailesh Rao, Executive Director of Climate Healers, joins me to explain how emissions from animal agriculture are not being counted properly in the IPCC report, claiming that animal agriculture is, when analysed properly, responsible for 87% of climate change. Sailesh offers his hypothesis as to why animal agriculture isn’t taking as much heat as the fossil fuel industry, and of course I challenge his position which is contrary to most climate science which points to energy as the leading cause of climate change.

We go on to discuss strategies of non-violence, the problem of human supremacy, and how our relationship towards meat impacts our capacity to address the roots of the climate crisis: colonisation and domination.

Planet: Critical is 100% independent and community-powered. If you value it, and have the means, become a paid subscriber today.

Ed Zitron is one of Silicon Valley’s fiercest critics. Since A.I’s arrival, Ed has virulently exposed its singular lack of intelligence, its huge energy demands, and the dangerous way its hoovering up attention and capital on nothing more than the vague promises of a couple of zealots.

He joins me to reveals the myths that abound in the Valley, and the reality that everyone has run out of ideas. He explains that Big Tech is no longer run by techologists but by “barely smart” capitalists who are desperately banking on A.I. to create a new hyper growth market to pull their flailing companies out of their slumps. He walks us through the “enshittification” of tech — why things are getting worse, who’s in charge, who’s pretending to have ideas, and how these powerful men build up their images as geniuses rather than grossly wealthy headless chickens.

Sadly, this episode was recorded before Elon’s rapid takeover of the American government and China’s humble popping of the A.I bubble (proving Ed right). Get his take on DeepSeek on his Better Offline podcast, or read his lengthy investigation into Elon Musk on his newsletter.

Planet: Critical is 100% independent and community-powered. If you value it, and have the means, become a paid subscriber today.

Where does your body end?

The human body is filled with ecosystems of creatures keeping us alive. It exists within larger ecosystems keeping us alive. Yet considering ourselves as separate and apart, as whole and contained, dismisses the reality of our interconnection. What keeps us alive is everything, from the smallest things to the large web of life. Our very existence is an entanglement of possibility. To understand it, we have to figure out a way to think together, with our bodies, and the earth's body.

Craig Slee is a writer and theorist, and he joins me to discuss the permeability of our bodies and therefore of reality itself. This is a conversation about capitalism, ableism, suffering and language, how to find the words from our throats, and how to feel into the very edges of who we are, who we could be, and where, together, we can do.

Planet: Critical is 100% independent and community-powered. If you value it, and have the means, become a paid subscriber today.

A hotter world is a more violent world.

Peter Schwartzstein is an environmental journalist and researcher, and author of The Heat and the Fury which investigates the relationship between violence and climate change. He joins me to explain how a changing climate is creating pockets of violence in poor and rural communities around the world. Local and national governance failures are driving violence, with the changes to the earth's body being felt in our own.

Taking us all around the world, Peter explains the particular set of circumstances which generate violence, given communities often do their utmost to avoid clashing. Climate change alone does not brew violence, but combined with a loss of sense of self and an awareness of wealth disparity, people turn to extremes to protect themselves from further abandonment. We then turn this model on this West, hypothesising how violence could spring up in liberal democracies where increasingly people are feeling let down by their elected officials. Finally, we explore the trauma of watching the earth break down around us, and how people's minds are being lost with the stability we once knew and relied upon, inspiring behaviour that was also once previously unimaginable.

Planet: Critical is 100% independent and community-powered. If you value it, and have the means, become a paid subscriber today.

Samaneh Moafi is the Assistant Director of Research at Forensic Architecture, a research agency operating across human rights, journalism, architecture, art, academia and the law. Their interdisciplinary investigations have been crucial in providing evidence in cases of state violence where ordinary and typical investigative journalism has failed.

Samaneh joins me today to discuss their most recent report released on the state of genocide in Palestine at the hands of Israel. ‘A Cartography of Genocide’ shows how Israel has repeatedly reshaped the Gazan territory, attacked citizens in safe zones, destroyed food and water systems, targeted medical infrastructure, attacked civilian infrastructure and targeted aid. They have come to the conclusion that the violence in Gaza is a systemic and organized campaign to destroy life.

Planet: Critical is 100% independent and community-powered. If you value it, and have the means, become a paid subscriber today.

Ecological collapse doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

Our global economy will also collapse by up to 50% before the end of this century if we continue as we are. That’s the latest diagnosis by an interdisciplinary team who are sounding the alarm that current national climate policies are not enough to mitigate the damage to ecology and economy. The Institute of the Faculty of Actuaries and the University of Exeter today published Planetary Solvency which warns that widely used but deeply flawed assessments of the economic impact of climate change render policymakers blind to the immense risk created by current trajectories.

Sandy Trust, actuary and co-author, joins me to explain how these flawed assessments play out in climate policies and an alternative methodology for calculating risk laid out in the report. This is Sandy’s second time on the show, as in 2023 he joined me to explain how the world of finance underestimates the destruction climate change will cause on our economy after 1.5 degrees of warming. The update is no less frightening—especially, as Sandy reveals, given policy makers have little interest in heeding the warnings of experts.

Planet: Critical is 100% independent and community-powered. If you value it, and have the means, become a paid subscriber today.

How do we take Big Oil to the criminal courts?

There's been a major wave of climate litigation over the past 12 months, mostly in civil courts. But groups around the world are figuring out how to make polluting the planet a criminal offence. They're targeting the fossil fuel industries to attempt what governments, so far, are failing to do: Hold Big Oil to account, and stop them dead in their tracks before the whole world goes up in smoke.

Aaron Regunburg is  is a lawyer and progressive politician who served as a member of the Rhode Island House of Representatives from 2015 to 2019. Since leaving government, Aaron has become a progressive organiser, serving as senior policy counsel with Public Citizen’s climate program. Aaron joins me to discuss the  legal case they're building in order for local and state courts to take big oil companies to criminal trial for their part in causing climate change and human death.  He explains the legal layout of those cases, the precedent of criminal liability, what a positive result of these cases could look like, and the different strategies and going after both companies as legal entities and individual CEOs and board members as criminal defendants.

Planet: Critical is 100% independent and community-powered. If you value it, and have the means, become a paid subscriber today.

Happy New Year!

Following the success of last year’s special episode, we're ringing in 2025 with another one from me in which I answer your questions about the podcast and the new project we've just launched, Planet: Coordinate.

Here are the questions I chose this year.

* Why is the world in crisis ? Is there a time to cease dissent and protest, to move toward strategy and dreaming of places to survive ?

* Why can't we achieve the scale required to address the urgency of the climate crisis?

* Why do we leave the climate crisis problem-solving in the hands of the problem-makers? Government is not designed, nor interested, in solve the climate crisis. We need to look for other climate heroes.

* What do you see, or hope for, as the necessary social structure after capitalism inevitably collapses. The second thought is: how on earth do 'we' transition to that, given the appalling mess we are in today?

* Thank-you Rachel for your inspired work throughout 2024. I will not be following the new project which looks to me to be another unnecessary travel jolly, burning yet more fossil carbons. I wonder how you justify this when we know we are on the backside slide of the carbon pulse?

* How can we reform and transform mainstream science so it can help solve the multi-crisis / polycrisis rather than make it worse as science is doing now?

* How do we fully dismantle the Domination Paradigm?

* How much fun can we have while attempting to save the planet?

Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis—and what to do about it. Support the project with a paid subscription.

What is a system?

This is the type of question which can only be meandered through, which is exactly what Nathalie Nahai and I do on this week's episode. Nathalie is a polymath: musician, artist, psychologist, AI expert and the host of 'In Conversation', her own podcast which she interviewed me on at the beginning of this year. We had a stunning conversation, one which we continue today, discussing relationships, connections, ecosystems, resilience, care and love.

This is the perfect conversation to approach the new year with, filled with hope, uncertainty and laughter.

Thank you for our time together this year.

Planet: Critical is 100% independent and community-powered. If you value it, and have the means, become a paid subscriber today.

What is the United States for?

Journalist Matt Kennard would argue the most powerful nation in the world exists to undermine democracy, deny national sovereignty, and funnel wealth to the financial elite. His book, The Racket, exposed the true nature of the American Empire, a nature the mainstream on both the Left and Right refuse to acknowledge.

Matt’s first appearance on Planet: Critical saw him exposing How Corporations Overthrew Democracy. Today, he reveals the complicity and active participation of the American State as a counter-revolutionary force in the world, giving numerous examples from almost every continent as to how the United States has sought to undermine the rule of law and democracy in order to secure resources, security and power for itself. We also discuss how difficult it is to broach these topics in the mainstream, with Matt giving a searing critique of major journalism outlets who take up space as seemingly leftist publications without ever challenging imperialism. We also discuss the nightmare in Gaza and how bearing witness to a genocide is radicalising people all around the world to take action. This is an episode about the lies we have been told—and how to fight the information war while we can.

Planet: Critical is 100% independent and community-powered. If you value it, and have the means, become a paid subscriber today.