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The Overpopulation Podcast
The Overpopulation Podcast (here’s why we use the term “overpopulation”) features enlightening conversations between executive director Nandita Bajaj, researcher Alan Ware, and expert guests to discuss the often misunderstood impacts of our expanding human footprint on human rights, animal protection, and ecological preservation, as well as individual and collective solutions. We are proud to be the first and only nonprofit organization globally that draws the connections between pronatalism, human supremacy, social inequalities, and ecological overshoot. Ranking in the top 1.5% of all podcasts globally, we draw over 20,000 listeners from across 80 countries.
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New to our podcast?
There are over 60 episodes of The Overpopulation Podcast. If you are new to the podcast and are looking for a good place to start, we recommend you listen to these episodes first.
Latest Episodes
Being Better Together | Using Early Warning to Reduce Exposure to Climate Extremes
Climatologist and director of the Climate Hazards Center, Dr. Chris Funk talks about the links between population growth and vulnerability to extreme weather events, and how working together with local communities to employ early warning systems can reduce suffering and save lives.
The Delusion of Decoupling Economic Growth from Environmental Impact
Dr. James Hopeward, an environmental civil engineering professor at the University of South Australia, highlights the limitations of conventional economic growth models and their environmental impacts, emphasizing the need for more holistic and ecologically grounded engineering practices (and cultural beliefs).
Social Ecological Economics | Radical Transformation towards Social and Ecological Justice
In this episode we speak with Dr. Clive Spash, an economist who is fundamentally challenging conventional economic paradigms through his development of social ecological economics. His work addresses the intersections of human behavior, environmental values, and economic systems - advocating for a radical transformation towards a more socially and ecologically just world.
Confronting the Population Taboo: Moving from Dominator to Partnership Societies
In this episode we speak with Riane Eisler, a social systems scientist, futurist, cultural historian, attorney, consultant, speaker, and author of many books, including The Chalice and the Blade and The Real Wealth of Nations, about how to construct a more equitable, sustainable and less violent world based on partnership rather than domination.
The Toxification of Population Discourse: How Population Became a Dirty Word
When and why did population become a dirty word? And why are so many people shamed for advocating for population reduction? In this episode with political theorist and feminist scholar, Dr. Diana Coole, we unpack the history of the toxification of the population discourse over the last 30 years and the dire social and ecological consequences that this silencing has unleashed.
Confronting Overshoot: Changing the Story of Human Exceptionalism
We chat with population ecologist, originator of “ecological footprint”, and one of the world’s best big-picture ecological thinkers, Dr. Bill Rees. Bill explains how our blind faith in human exceptionalism, technological optimism, and neoliberal economics fooled us into disregarding ecological limits and brought us into a state of extreme overshoot. How can we confront this reality, in which we are degrading the biophysical basis of existence, to prepare for a post-industrial world?
Population Growth, Modern Slavery, and Ecocide
Dr. Kevin Bales, world-renowned expert on contemporary global slavery, shines a light on the human rights violations and ecocidal impacts of modern day slavery, and the role that population growth, patriarchal pronatalism, religion, political regimes, global and local economies, and conflict play in perpetuating it.
Neoliberalism in the Womb: Japan’s Answer to its Baby Shortage Panic
Japan-based feminist scholar, Dr. Isabel Fassbender, discusses the toxic mix of patriarchy, biomedical capitalism, and nationalism that has emerged in response to Japan’s slightly declining population.
Population: A Threat Multiplier for Climate Change, Biodiversity Loss, & Pandemics
In this interview with Dr. Camilo Mora, widely acclaimed professor and award-winning researcher, we discuss the impacts of human activity on climate change, biodiversity loss, resource scarcity, and pandemics, and how to move past population denial to grapple with our compounding crises.
How Free-Market Fundamentalism Fuels Population Denialism & Undermines Democracy
Naomi Oreskes, a world-renowned earth scientist, historian and public speaker explains how free-market fundamentalism has had a long history of undermining democracy and exploiting marginalized communities to benefit a small minority of elites.
The Beauty and Complexity of Animal Cultures
Ecologist Carl Safina challenges the notion that culture is exclusive to humans beings, and reveals the rich cultures and inner lives of non-human animals, and discusses how to move beyond human supremacy, which keeps us from appreciating the incredible beauty and complexity of other creatures.
The Social and Ecological Costs of Population Denialism | In memory of Haydn Washington
Dr. Helen Kopnina pays tribute to late Dr. Hadyn Washington and his uncompromising commitment to sustainability and justice. She also discusses her personal introduction to an eco-centric worldview through nature’s healing power, as well as the social and ecological costs of population denialism.
Accounting for Nature: The Economics of Biodiversity
Sir Partha Dasgupta takes us on a journey on how the current growth-based economic models came to be, and why their Nature-destructive policies have turned our planet into a house of cards. We unpack his most recent publication UK government-commissioned publication, The Economics of Biodiversity.
Embracing Limits With Ecospheric Grace
Author Robert Jensen discusses his latest book An Inconvenient Apocalypse that he co-authored with The Land Institute’s co-founder Wes Jackson, about the need to grapple with difficult questions and to consciously embrace limits, as a pathway to a more graceful and meaningful co-existence with Nature.
A Profound Vision For An Ecological Civilization
Dr. Eileen Crist—a deep, profound, and compassionate systems thinker—shines a light on the worldview of human supremacy that foregrounds our relationship of dominion towards non-human animals and all of nature, and offers a vision for cultivating a more indigenous-inspired identity as Earthlings.
Sawing off the Limb on Which We are Perched
Co/author of over 40 books, including the best-selling book The Population Bomb, Dr. Paul Ehrlich gives us a 50,000-ft view of humanity’s evolution over 300,000 years and the misunderstood and manufactured “normal” that currently defines us.
Rome is Burning. The Time is Now
On a mission to bend the curve on population and consumption, Dr. Phoebe Barnard discusses the need to move beyond dichotomous thinking and to rally together leaders from across faith, science, and activism to urgently protect our incredible spaceship Earth-with humility, love, and deep collaboration.
Sex, Religion, Politics and Overpopulation
In part two of our conversation with Chris Tucker, author of A Planet of 3 Billion, we continue exploring how to make the “uncomfortable” conversation more comfortable. He explains that we must absolutely figure out how to run a prosperous global economy under continuous population decline.
How Many of Us Can Earth Support?
We’re asking the Earth to support 80 million more humans every year, yet too few us ask, “What is a sustainable human population?” We talk to Chris Tucker, who wrote a book about it: A Planet of 3 Billion: Mapping Humanity’s Long History of Ecological Destruction and Finding Our Way to a Resilient Future.
Aging Population: Nothing to Fear
Are nations with low birth rates going to collapse due to a temporary bulge in the ranks of the elderly? On an overpopulated planet, this is an important question. Depopulation alarmists in numerous countries are pushing for baby bonuses or high immigration quotas in order to avoid getting into recovery from growth addiction.