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The Overpopulation Podcast

The Overpopulation Podcast 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. Ranking in the top 1.5% of all podcasts globally, we draw over 15,000 listeners from across 80 countries.

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Breaking Out of the Baby Matrix: Busting Common Pronatalist Myths

Breaking Out of the Baby Matrix: Busting Common Pronatalist Myths

In this interview with Laura Carroll, internationally recognized expert on pronatalism and the childfree choice, we unpack the many pervasively pronatalist assumptions that people have to navigate while deciding whether or not to have children, and the effects of those decisions on people and planet.

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The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule
Pronatalism, Reproductive Rights Population Balance Pronatalism, Reproductive Rights Population Balance

The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule

In this interview with award-winning science journalist Angela Saini, based on her bold and radical book The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule, we explore the roots and complex history of how patriarchy — in the form of gendered roles, pronatalism, and militarism — first became embedded in societies and spread across the globe from prehistory into the present.

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The Toxification of Population Discourse: How Population Became a Dirty Word

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.

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Navigating the Great Unraveling with Resilience

Navigating the Great Unraveling with Resilience

In this episode, we chat with Asher Miller and Rob Dietz of the Post Carbon Institute about their latest report "Welcome to the Great Unraveling", which explores ways to navigate the environmental and social breakdown resulting from multiple intersecting crises.

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Phoenix Rising: Pathways toward Animal and Human Liberation

Phoenix Rising: Pathways toward Animal and Human Liberation

Dr. Hope Ferdowsian, president of Phoenix Zones Initiative and a public health physician, discusses how she and her colleagues are working to dismantle the roots of oppression, exploitation, and domination harming humans and non-humans, and how we can cultivate the strength and resilience needed to facilitate that “phoenix effect” transformation for ourselves and for those in need.

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Confronting Overshoot: Changing the Story of Human Exceptionalism

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?

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Population Growth, Modern Slavery, and Ecocide

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.

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Population: A Threat Multiplier for Climate Change, Biodiversity Loss, & Pandemics
Ecological Overshoot, Population Denialism Population Balance Ecological Overshoot, Population Denialism Population Balance

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.

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The Environmental Impact of Overpopulation: The Ethics of Procreation

The Environmental Impact of Overpopulation: The Ethics of Procreation

Dr. Trevor Hedberg discusses his recent book The Environmental Impact of Overpopulation: The Ethics of Procreation about the ethical implications of procreation, both in terms of the risk of harm to the child and to the planet, understanding how pronatalism influences procreative decision-making, while rejecting antinatalist and misanthopic philosophies.

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How Free-Market Fundamentalism Fuels Population Denialism & Undermines Democracy

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.

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Powering Down: Beyond Growth, Toward Simplicity

Powering Down: Beyond Growth, Toward Simplicity

Richard Heinberg, one of the world’s foremost experts on energy and sustainability explains why unfettered human expansionism, even with a “green” tint, is incompatible with natural limits and how we might deliberately rein in our power and move toward a culture of sufficiency, simplicity, and resilience.

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Patriarchy, Motherhood, and the Search for Meaning

Patriarchy, Motherhood, and the Search for Meaning

Dr. Amrita Nandy, India-based feminist scholar addresses the questions: If autonomy is a basic human right, why do many women have little or no choice when it comes to motherhood? Do women know they have a choice? And how might we reimagine the widest sense of family-making and spiritual kinship that includes our love for all humans and more-than-humans?

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Embracing an Aging Population & Declining Fertility with Dignity
Pronatalism, Reproductive Rights Population Balance Pronatalism, Reproductive Rights Population Balance

Embracing an Aging Population & Declining Fertility with Dignity

Population economist and author of the book, Decline and Prosper! Changing Global Birth Rates and the Advantages of Fewer Children, Dr. Vegard Skirbekk takes us through decades of demographic research to show why a declining birth rate is not only a positive trend but one that can lead to more prosperity.

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