The Smart Cookies podcast

Bill McKibben is someone I've been wanting on the pod for ages - he's not only one of the most celebrated environmentalists alive, but is also widely credited as having written the first ever book on climate change for a general audience, The End of Nature.

Last year, he released another groundbreaking book called Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization.

In this conversation we talk about why this decade represents our last chance to steer away from our current, mortal trajectory, and why a turbocharged deployment of renewable energy globally is the only way we don't break the planet forever.

What do lunatic asylums, lobotomies and electroconvulsive therapy have in common? They were all desperate attempts to cure mental illness. Long before the advent of pharmacology, "maverick" psychiatrists proposed different theories on what caused madness - from germs and infections to abnormal pathways in the brain.

These ideas gave birth to a host of horrific "cures" that often left the patients worse off than before... if they managed to survive them in the first place.

In his acclaimed book Desperate Remedies: Psychiatry's Turbulent Quest to Cure Mental Illness, historian of medicine Prof. Andrew Scull traces the turbulent past of this new medical science that spurned on some of the most well known horror cliches ever...

In this haunting conversation, we talk about this dark history, but also about Freudian psychoanalysis, the wartime birth of psychotherapy and the poor state of psychiatric care today.

We always assume Hitler forced his way into the Chancellor's office and then single-handedly ended the Weimar Republic, ushering in his horrific dictatorship that would plunge Europe into WWII. It turns out that wasn't the case... at all.

In reality, Hitler campaigned his way into the German parliament (the Reichstag) and then skilfully maneuvered until he managed to take the top job. The most sinister part came right after that, however - without firing a single shot, it took the Nazis only 8 weeks to dismantle German democracy.

Even more, during these fateful 2 months Hitler convinced the majority of the parliament to pass the infamous Enabling Act, granting him unlimited power. These ominous events are unfortunately becoming very relevant again - democratic forces are in retreat, while the extreme right inches closer to power, even in places we would least expect it (like the AfD in Germany).

That's why it's more important than ever to understand how this catastrophic unfolding happened - and eminent Professor Timothy Ryback, author of the acclaimed book 53 Days: How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy, is probably the most qualified person to ask.

We've all noticed that food prices keep going up without an end in sight. Couple that with the increasingly dramatic effects of climate change and a world that's increasingly unstable, and you've got a legitimate crisis on your hands.

Which begs the question - will we really be able to feed a population that is projected to hit 10 billion soon?

Prof. Tim Benton, one of the biggest experts on food systems in the world, believes our economic model of infinite growth on a finite planet, will falter, and sooner rather than later. But how soon will that happen? What does it mean in practice? And finally, are we actually entering the era of famine?

Tune in to find out...

2026 has been a groundbreaking year for AI development - frontier models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google have not only reached frightening capability levels, but like the Hugging Face incident illustrates, they have also began to act autonomously in malicious ways.

And yet instead of pausing their development, AI labs rush ahead, doing everything they can to win the "AI race," (whatever that means). But what if the end result of all this is the end of humanity itself? This is exactly what David Krueger, Assistant Professor in Robust, Reasoning, and Responsible AI at the University of Montreal, worries about. That's why he founded Evitable, a nonprofit whose mission is to inform and organise the public to confront societal-scale risks of AI, and put an end to the reckless race to develop superintelligence.

We talk about AI skepticism, the pernicious ideology of AI CEO's and about our duty to organise and stop this madness before it's too late....

Most of us have probably wanted to lose some weight at some point or another, only to find out it's much easier said than done. And even if we actually managed to hit our goal, maintaining this new weight became all but impossible.

Why is it so hard?

It turns out that when trying to lose weight we aren't just fighting our daily temptations - we are taking on prehistoric mechanisms put there by evolution to ensure our survival. Couple that with our disastrous food environment, the growing obesity epidemic and fast lifestyles, and you've got a disaster on your hands.

So how can we get out of this vicious loop? To find out, I turn to dr. Stephan Guyenet - a neuroscientist, obesity researcher and author of the bestselling book, "The Hungry Brain: Outsmarting the Instincts That Make Us Overeat."

It's no secret that the West is in terminal decline, while China continues to grow and is currently on the verge of overtaking the US as the biggest economy on the planet.

Mainstream economics tells us that's impossible, since we supposedly live in the best system that was ever created. Which means something doesn't add up. Economist Steve Keen has an answer - our economic models are irreparably broken...

In this sobering conversation Prof. Keen, who predicted the 2008 financial crisis, explains why America remains a hopeless case, why China will continue to dominate world trade and finally, why the AI bubble is about to burst.

Michael Mann is a Presidential Distinguished Professor of Earth & Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Our Fragile Moment. He's also one of the most renowned climatologists in the world - and that's why I was over the moon when he agreed to have a chat with me...

Given the extremely grim daily news on climate change, I ask Prof. Mann whether the fight for a habitable planet is over, how bad he thinks the upcoming El Nino will be, and finally, what kind of consequences do Trump's insane, climate denial policies have for the world's decarbonisation plans.

I'm super stoked to welcome back the legendary blogger, journalist and author of Enshittification, Cory Doctorow.

This time around we tackle his latest book, The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence — Before It's Too Late.

I ask Cory about the ideology behind the shameless AI push, the state of this technology in 2026, the billionaires lapping it up, as well as the feared AI bubble that Corey believes will tank the entire system.

I'm super happy to welcome dr. Christopher Harding, lecturer in Asian history at the University of Edinburgh, back to the show, to have a chat about his amazing upcoming book, "Barbarians: The First Century of European Encounter with Japan."

This time around we talk about a myriad of fascinating episodes that arose from this dramatic exchange - the first Portuguese landing on Tanegashima, the curiosity their appearances caused, the introduction of Christianity in Japan, the growing power of the Jesuits and finally, the expulsion of all foreigners in 1641.

Obviously we can't get past the infamous bromance between William Adams and Tokugawa Ieyasu that inspired the popular TV show Shogun.

As a foreigner in Japan myself, I'm not exaggerating when I say this is one of my favourite conversations this year.