Planet: Critical

What is the role of art in any crisis? To understand what is and to imagine what could be; to transcend and birth and promise.

This is the message of today's guest, David Farrier.  David is a professor in literature and the environment at Edinburgh University, and the author of Nature's Genius: Evolutions Lessons for a Changing Planet (UK version, US version). He joins me to discuss poetry, literature, relationality, language and intelligence. In this wide-ranging and meditative conversation, we discuss how space and time are made between species, how the entire world is evolving with and through the crisis, and what we can learn from Nature herself to meet this moment exactly where we are.

From the Enlightenment to whale song, this conversation explores just how critical art is in a moment of breakdown to be a vehicle for transformation, for transmutation, and, perhaps most importantly, daring—mirroring Nature's very own life force.

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 What can we actually do if we want to achieve real change?

We have been sold a comforting lie that our purchasing power is the best way to change the world. But rather than offer anything substantial, this lie promotes a myth of individual responsibility that actually inhibits the drastic structural change we desperately need. 

Michael Maniates is an environmental social scientist working on issues of environmental governance, sustainable consumption, and sociotechnical change, and the author of The Living Green Myth: the Promise and Limits of Lifestyle Environmentalism (UK version, US version). He joins me to discuss how we were sold that big green myth, how it relates to the global neoliberal overhaul of the role of markets in the 80s, how it frustrates structural change, and what we can do instead. He also reveals the social science on how people react when their attempts to change the world through this very process are repeatedly frustrated—and how this impedes future action.

The women's movement sprang into being in a different world. How must it adapt to meet the challenges we face today?

We also explore the effects of a neoliberal feminism on young women around the world, many of whom are now turning their backs on the women's movement to instead pledge allegiance to "tradwives" and other typically patriarchal forms of social organisation. We ask: What is feminism failing to provide these young women? And what about the women's movement needs to change to confront and overcome the political, economic and ecological crises which threaten our very future?

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We don't need more ecological ideas, we need ecological selves. That's the message of this week's guest, John Seed, a longtime environmental activist who has been instrumental to the Deep Ecology movement. John joins me to explain exactly what Deep Ecology can offer us—a sense of place, time and connection in a world coming apart. He walks us through the philosophy and multiple exercises, revealing how our coming together with the world around us can also help us come together as people—to grieve, to love, to be.

This a beautiful, resonant and poetic episode, with John's wisdom and humility blooming forth to offer a vision which neither despairs nor denies, but is instead devoted to truths that surpass humans alone and encircle all of us, each of us, in this great web of life, to be held and to hold, even for just a moment. 

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A flourishing human society doesn't have to cost the earth. In fact, our wellbeing and Earth's wellbeing hinge on the same thing: reducing inequality.

Julia Steinberger is a renowned degrowth scholar at the University of Lausanne where she and her colleagues recently produced Living Well Within Limits, which shows there is no tension between human and ecological flourishing. Julia joins me to explain their award-winning research in this exciting and hopeful episode. To reduce our pressure on the planet and to improve our wellbeing, we simply need more public services. This would reduce our material footprints, energy footprints, and, of course, societal inequality. This is not a vision which has room for billionaires and autocrats. But by getting rid of them, we have room for all 8 billion of us—on a healthy, regenerating planet. 

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Silicon Valley's robotic grip on the world is destroying our social fabric. "Artificial intelligence" models are now baked into our militaries, economies and political institutions—without there being a clear benefit yet as to why. a.i. is behind the indiscriminate attacks on civilian lives in Gaza and Iran, has encouraged users to commit suicide in the United States, and helped one Canadian plan the worst mass shooting in recent history. Despite the risks to us and the planet, the incredibly wealthy individuals pushing our dystopia insist its for our own benefit, while cementing their political and financial power. 

Paris Marx is one of the most vocal tech critics in the Minority World, challenging the techno-capitalist hegemony on his podcast Tech Won't Save Us, his newsletter Disconnect, and his first book, Road To Nowhere. He joins me to explain the deepening relationship between the tech industry and the military, who and what is being sacrificed in the pursuit of "artificial intelligence", and Silicon Valley's disturbing vision for our future. These technologists promise revolution—but not the kind any of us want to see. 

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Capitalism was envisioned—and is still defended—as a vehicle for growth. This growth was meant to increase everyone's share of the pie. But one of the most opaque and unregulated finance sectors got its fingers into that pie—and built a mechanism to extract wealth from the very companies, public services and infrastructure it buys.

Welcome the the world of private equity, a shadow fleet of financial vehicles which are buying up our homes, schools, nurseries, roads, technology and everything in between—and yet that we know very little about. Journalist Hettie O'Brien, author of the newly released The Asset Class: How Private Equity Turned Capitalism Against Itself, joins me to expose just how wide the influence of this crooked sector is, explaining how over the past few decades private equity has undermined democracy, caused avoidable deaths in care homes, lobbied—and secured—access to our pensions, and has driven economic stagnation. Crucially, private equity does not create value—it extracts it, with no thought for the consequences which are offset onto the rest of us while the super rich get even richer off of our misfortune.

🔴 Get the UK version of The Asset Class today, or pre-order the USA version here.

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Andrés Velasco is the Dean of the School of Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Chile's former Minister of Finance. He and his colleagues at LSE recently released The London Consensus, a collection of economics essays arguing for the a range of reforms to neoclassical, capitalist economics. Much needs to change, they argue—but it can be done within the existing institutions, and without affecting growth. 

Andrés joins me to explain their position and reasoning, and we enjoy numerous disagreements about the need for growth, the definition of development, the determining factors of inequality, the limits of redistribution and resource exploitation. While we agree that much must change, for Andrés the solution lies not in overhauling the fundamentals, but regulating the excesses.

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The Founding Fathers were legal revolutionaries. But over two centuries on, the world needs an update.

Reverend Laura George is the co-founder of the Founding Mothers, a movement dedicated to universal dignity, human rights, peace and ending war. By focussing on women's liberation, the Founding Mothers seek to protect the future for generations to come through policies which empower women to make very different choices to the power brokers of today. On the episode, she explains the architecture of the movement, its goals and strategies, the campaigns and strikes being organised, and the importance of centring women to achieve peace. Finally, we discuss the importance of collaborating across campaigns, with Laura calling for a fierce love—a love that can defend us. 

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Under the left-wing leadership of mayor Clara Brugada, Mexico City has invested millions in the city's poorest neighbourhoods, building UTOPIAs which provide food, healthcare, therapy, and many other public services to those in need. The story of this incredible project involves a century-old social movement which found support in the left-wing Moderna party, led by Claudia Sheinbaum, revealing a fascinating relationship between state power and people power which is radically transforming the material conditions of Mexico's poorest residents.

In this fascinating episode, professor of Environmental Studies ath Amherst College, Ashwin Ravikumar, walks us through the history of the social movement which mobilised both rural and inner-city workers, developing a collective political consciousness which made them a formidable political force in a time of land grabs and immense corruption. Ashwin explains how the national government also sprang out of this movement, and the tensions which have had to be navigated now that they have access to state power. He also explains the UTOPIAs in great detail, revealing the incredible services provided, how they're funded, and the plan to develop even more because, for the Mayor and the people, these spaces are to provide a physical space where people can come together and learn from one another, educate, agitate and win back the ground that was lost to a century of corruption to build a utopia for all. 

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