OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance

• Oscar Winner Fighting for Animals | Louie Psihoyos

  Academy Award-winning vegan filmmaker and former National Geographic photographer Louie Psihoyos joins us to share how he is using the power of storytelling to spark transformation for animal rights, human health, and environmental conservation. Highlights include: How The Cove, his Oscar-wining documentary and the first documentary to sweep all the film guilds, inspired activism that helped reduce dolphin and porpoise slaughter in Japan by over 90%; How his team’s audacious projection events of endangered species on iconic buildings including The Empire State Building, The United Nations and The Vatican for their film Racing Extinction, received over 5.4 billion media views and led to laws that protect some of Earth’s most endangered animals; How his third film, The Game Changers, a film about plant-based super athletes that exposes the myth that meat is necessary for protein, strength, and optimal health, triggered a 350% spike in online searches within a month of premiering on Netflix; What his Netflix Series, You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment, uncovered about the 8-week health benefits of plant-based eating, and how the results went viral; His most recent film Mission: Joy a buddy film starring his Holiness, The Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu about how to find joy in a world of sorrow has been seen by 10’s of millions of people around the globe; Where Louie’s focus is turning next: a new film exposing the destructive health impacts of plastic. See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:  https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/louie-psihoyos   OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance OVERSHOOT tackles today’s interlocked social and ecological crises driven by humanity’s excessive population and consumption. The podcast explores needed narrative, behavioral, and system shifts for recreating human life in balance with all life on Earth. With expert guests from wide-ranging disciplines, we examine the forces underlying overshoot: from patriarchal pronatalism that is fueling overpopulation, to growth-biased economic systems that lead to consumerism and social injustice, to the dominant worldview of human supremacy that subjugates animals and nature. Our vision of shrinking toward abundance inspires us to seek pathways of transformation that go beyond technological fixes toward a new humanity that honors our interconnectedness with all beings.  Hosted by Nandita Bajaj and Alan Ware. Brought to you by Population Balance. Learn more at populationbalance.org Copyright 2025 Population Balance

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• Hospicing Modernity | Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti

  Modernity is dying within and around us, and we need to face that death with courage and compassion. Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti, author of Hospicing Modernity, joins us. Highlights include:    How her mixed Indigenous and German heritage in Brazil exposed her to a complex mix of love and violence, deepening her understanding of how socialization and education can perpetuate harmful relationships; Why the ‘house of modernity’, which is built on a foundation of humanity’s separation from the rest of nature, is structured to ultimately fail; Why we need to ‘hospice modernity’ both within and around us, without feeling overwhelmed or rushing for quick fixes, while making space for something much larger to emerge; Why we need to compost the ‘pedestal’ sense of agency from modernity and its elevated sense of certainty and subject-object relationships and embrace a more intersubjective mycelial sense of agency;  Why ‘outgrowing modernity’ will require us to prepare for a ‘well-died death’ and a greater sense of emotional sobriety, relational maturity, intellectual discernment, and interspecies and intergenerational responsibility. See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:  https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/vanessa-andreotti   OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance OVERSHOOT tackles today’s interlocked social and ecological crises driven by humanity’s excessive population and consumption. The podcast explores needed narrative, behavioral, and system shifts for recreating human life in balance with all life on Earth. With expert guests from wide-ranging disciplines, we examine the forces underlying overshoot: from patriarchal pronatalism that is fueling overpopulation, to growth-biased economic systems that lead to consumerism and social injustice, to the dominant worldview of human supremacy that subjugates animals and nature. Our vision of shrinking toward abundance inspires us to seek pathways of transformation that go beyond technological fixes toward a new humanity that honors our interconnectedness with all beings.  Hosted by Nandita Bajaj and Alan Ware. Brought to you by Population Balance. Learn more at populationbalance.org Copyright 2025 Population Balance

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• “Hopium” and the Long Defeat | Pamela Swanigan

  The rhetoric of “hopium” is failing as ecological overshoot deepens. “Hopium”, a colloquial term that is a blend of the words “hope” and “opium” (as though it were a drug), represents a faith in technological and market-based solutions to address our multiple reinforcing crises, despite evidence to the contrary. We're living in the long defeat and we must own and confront it with courage. Award-winning essayist, Pamela Swanigan, joins us. Highlights include: How children's literature is full of reverence for nature but children's literature analysis done in the academy is dominated by the perspective of human exceptionalism; The role that Judeo-Christianity has played in promoting the worldview of human exceptionalism while destroying the millennia-old biophilic and animistic belief systems; Why Pamela was astonished that she won the Berggruen Prize Essay Competition given the magical thinking of human exceptionalism and techno-solutionism embodied by the attendees; Social reformer and US Commissioner for the Bureau of Indian Affairs John Collier’s concept of the 'long hope'- that indigenous cultures and their nature-sacralizing beliefs could help humanity survive after the collapse of techno-industrial civilization; Why the delusional and pervasive rhetoric of hope among social change advocates (such as Jane Goodall and David Suzuki) defies evidence, and why we must embrace JRR Tolkien's concept of the 'long defeat' in order to courageously fight against ecological destruction and social injustice. See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:  https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/pamela-swanigan   OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance OVERSHOOT tackles today’s interlocked social and ecological crises driven by humanity’s excessive population and consumption. The podcast explores needed narrative, behavioral, and system shifts for recreating human life in balance with all life on Earth. With expert guests from wide-ranging disciplines, we examine the forces underlying overshoot: from patriarchal pronatalism that is fueling overpopulation, to growth-biased economic systems that lead to consumerism and social injustice, to the dominant worldview of human supremacy that subjugates animals and nature. Our vision of shrinking toward abundance inspires us to seek pathways of transformation that go beyond technological fixes toward a new humanity that honors our interconnectedness with all beings.  Hosted by Nandita Bajaj and Alan Ware. Brought to you by Population Balance. Learn more at populationbalance.org Copyright 2025 Population Balance

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• The "Energy Transition" Delusion | Jean-Baptiste Fressoz

  There is no energy transition - only ongoing and symbiotic energy addition. Historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, author of More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of Energy, joins us. Highlights include: How the symbiotic relationships between wood, coal, and oil have led to increased use of all of them; Why decoupling economic growth from energy and materials use is a delusional myth; How the energy transition narrative evolved and why it's an "intellectual scandal" used to delay climate action through faith in techno-driven growth; How the IPCC’s focus on economic growth drives the energy transition narrative, downplays degrowth and sufficiency, and relies on unproven techno-fixes, such as Carbon Capture Storage (CCS); How safety norms were invented to secure industrial capital, and how criticisms and objections around technological risks were silenced or overcome to establish technological modernity. See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:  https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/jean-baptiste-fressoz   OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance OVERSHOOT tackles today’s interlocked social and ecological crises driven by humanity’s excessive population and consumption. The podcast explores needed narrative, behavioral, and system shifts for recreating human life in balance with all life on Earth. With expert guests from wide-ranging disciplines, we examine the forces underlying overshoot: from patriarchal pronatalism that is fueling overpopulation, to growth-biased economic systems that lead to consumerism and social injustice, to the dominant worldview of human supremacy that subjugates animals and nature. Our vision of shrinking toward abundance inspires us to seek pathways of transformation that go beyond technological fixes toward a new humanity that honors our interconnectedness with all beings.  Hosted by Nandita Bajaj and Alan Ware. Brought to you by Population Balance. Learn more at populationbalance.org Copyright 2025 Population Balance

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• Global Conflict, Misogyny, and Resistance | Sally Armstrong

  Patriarchy and misogyny fuel global conflicts that further increase the oppression of women and girls. But the resistance of women and girls remains steadfast. Sally Armstrong, award-winning war correspondent, author, and human rights activist, joins us to share their stories. Highlights include:  How Sally broke the story about mass rape in the Balkan War in the 1990s that was ignored by male-dominated mainstream media; How patriarchy became established and why women’s role in human history has been unrecorded and ignored;  Why cultural relativism can be an enemy of greater justice for girls and women; How misinterpretations of religious doctrine are used as justification for continued oppression of girls and women; How women and girls from Bosnia to Kenya to Afghanistan to Senegal continue to resist the injustice of patriarchy and misogyny in their daily lives. See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:  https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/sally-armstrong   OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance OVERSHOOT tackles today’s interlocked social and ecological crises driven by humanity’s excessive population and consumption. The podcast explores needed narrative, behavioral, and system shifts for recreating human life in balance with all life on Earth. With expert guests from wide-ranging disciplines, we examine the forces underlying overshoot: from patriarchal pronatalism that is fueling overpopulation, to growth-biased economic systems that lead to consumerism and social injustice, to the dominant worldview of human supremacy that subjugates animals and nature. Our vision of shrinking toward abundance inspires us to seek pathways of transformation that go beyond technological fixes toward a new humanity that honors our interconnectedness with all beings.  Hosted by Nandita Bajaj and Alan Ware. Brought to you by Population Balance. Learn more at populationbalance.org Copyright 2025 Population Balance

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