OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance

For most of our history, humans lived in relatively egalitarian societies that actively prevented the accumulation of power. Author of Goliath's Curse, Luke Kemp, examines how hierarchical states, 'Goliaths', came to dominate the world. We explore why Goliaths repeatedly collapse, the likely trajectories of today's global Goliath, and what it might take to radically democratize power before history repeats itself. Highlights include:
Why Luke rejects the term 'civilization' in favor of 'Goliath' to describe the large-scale societies that have emerged over the past several thousand years and were built on dominance hierarchies such as ruler and ruled, rich and poor, man and woman, and free and slave;
How archaeological and anthropological evidence suggests that for most of human history people lived in relatively egalitarian, democratic, and cooperative societies, challenging long-standing assumptions about humanity's supposedly violent and selfish nature;
How humans historically constrained would-be tyrants through ridicule, ostracism, exile, and if necessary group execution;
How the first Goliaths emerged thousand of years after intensified agriculture, using war and violence and growing their power through the 'Goliath fuel' of 'lootable resources, monopolizable weapons, and caged land';
How 'babies, bombs, bacteria, and barbarism' enabled Goliaths to expand across the globe, conquering and absorbing non-state people into today's global Goliath;
Why the 'darker angels of our nature' - status competition, the 'dark triad' of personality traits, and the authoritarian impulse - also provide fuel to the growth and persistence of Goliaths;
Why Goliaths function as engines of inequality that become increasingly vulnerable to shocks like popular rebellion, environmental stress, disease, and how this makes societal collapse a recurring feature of large-scale societies throughout history;
Why, if we continue with business as usual, the most likely long-term fate of today's global Goliath is collapse, and why in the short term we may be heading toward a 'Silicon Goliath' of increased digital surveillance and potential for autocratic repression;
How we might 'shackle' Goliath through a process of radical democratization in 4 different forms of power - political, economic, violence, and information.
See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: 
https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/luke-kemp
 
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.
Subscribe to our newsletter here: https://www.populationbalance.org/subscribe
Support our work with a one-time or monthly donation: https://www.populationbalance.org/donate
Learn more at https://www.populationbalance.org
Copyright 2016-2026 Population Balance

Every age is the Stone Age. Geologist and author Marcia Bjornerud discusses how thinking like a geologist can cultivate the grounded humility of a deep time perspective. We explore Earth's turbulent history, humanity's emergence as a geologic force, and why humanity and all of life - past, present, and future - is utterly dependent on the rocky planet beneath our feet. Highlights include: 
Why geology is not just the study of rocks but the habit of seeing in four dimensions - including time;
Why rocks should be seen as 'verbs' and not just 'nouns', preserving the memory of long ago ecosystems and Earth processes that created them;
The geologic history of Earth in about 5 minutes;
Why humanity's massive impact on the planet is affecting Earth and its atmosphere faster than any known geologic force in Earth history;
Why the process of evolution is not inherently 'progressive' and how Earth's long history teaches us that change is the only constant - and that 'bad things do happen to good planets';
Why geology is in a 'golden age' of discovery and has made incredible advancement in both the understanding of Earth processes and the tools to measure and analyze those processes;
Why we're still in the 'stone age' - utterly dependent on the rocky Earth for biological life and all of the products of humanity's modern techno-industrial civilization;
How 'timefulness' - thinking like a geologist - can help us develop a deeper sense of both the past and the future, cultivating humility and countering the narcissistic focus on the perpetual 'now'.
See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: 
https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/marcia-bjornerud
 
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.
Subscribe to our newsletter here: https://www.populationbalance.org/subscribe
Support our work with a one-time or monthly donation: https://www.populationbalance.org/donate
Learn more at https://www.populationbalance.org
Copyright 2016-2026 Population Balance

The uncritical adoption of 'humane', 'cage-free', 'free-range', and lab-grown meat by animal advocates, funded by effective altruism philanthropy and the animal agriculture industry, not only reproduces the myth that meat is normal, natural, and necessary, it represents an ultimate defeat for animals. Vasile Stănescu, animal liberation scholar exposes the 'humane' hoax and explains why the failure of many animal advocates to frame veganism as a social justice movement in solidarity with other social justice movements is sustaining and reproducing systems of oppression and exploitation of humans, animals, and nature. Highlights include:
How parents and society teach us to repress the childhood trauma that's triggered when we learn about the animal suffering and death from eating animal products;
Why the so-called 'humane', 'cage free', and 'free range' agriculture practices are a hoax funded by the animal agriculture industry that are even more harmful for the animals — both wild and domesticated — and the planet than the conventional factory farming systems they claim to replace;
Moral philosopher Peter Singer's complicity in perpetuating these 'humane' myths, and the growing shift from liberation to welfarism within the animal advocacy movement through Singer-supported effective altruism philanthropy;
The relevance of Jevon's paradox to animal advocacy and how new categories such as 'cage-free' or 'free-range' do not replace the old system, but rather expand it, and why animal advocates must reject market-based or technology-based 'solutions' as they sustain and reproduce the current system of speciesism, exploitation, and growthism;
How the slaughterhouse and its dis-assembly line of animals' bodies became the template for the manufacturing assembly line of modern capitalism;
How western governments historically promoted 'cheap meat' to keep the laboring classes content with their low wages and help them continue feeling superior to the 'effeminate' and 'weak' rice and corn eaters of colonized Asia and South America;
How vegetarian and vegan eating are pathologized in a way that diets with animal products are not — even though large consumption of animal products is in no way 'natural' in much of the world or through the majority of human history;
Why lab-grown meat — still in its experimental phase — is not vegan, as its growth medium relies on the blood of unborn cows, not environmentally beneficial, as it requires huge amounts of energy, and is exorbitantly expensive; meanwhile, in collaborating with the animal agriculture industry for its creation, proponents of lab-grown meat are throwing animals — and animal advocacy — under the bus;
Why some animal rights activists turn to effective altruists and the money they offer to placate their despair and see short-term 'faux wins' - while not appreciating that successful social justice movements have always taken time and persistence;
Why veganism should be framed not as a consumerist diet lifestyle option but as a social justice movement in solidarity with other social justice movements.
See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: 
https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/vasile-stanescu
 
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.
Subscribe to our newsletter here: https://www.populationbalance.org/subscribe
Support our work with a one-time or monthly donation: https://www.populationbalance.org/donate
Learn more at https://www.populationbalance.org
Copyright 2016-2026 Population Balance

Pronatalism is the oldest form of reproductive control. Population Balance Executive Director, Nandita Bajaj, joins fellow guest and legal scholar Michele Goodwin and host Shoshanna Ehrlich in this republished episode of Ask a Feminist, a podcast from the Signs Journal. They discuss the rise of patriarchy and pronatalism in the first empires, the racist and eugenicist history of pronatalism in the U.S., and why 'progressive' pronatalism must be resisted as forcefully as pronatalism from the right. Highlights include:
How pronatalism arose with patriarchy in the first states and empires to serve economic, nationalist, religious, and expansionist state goals;
How pronatalism has historically been shaped by racism, classism, and eugenicist beliefs - with some people encouraged to reproduce and others discouraged;
How pronatalism and 'fertility crisis' rhetoric has been embraced not only by racist, anti-immigrant far-right advocates but also by mainstream liberals and progressives who advance growthist, supposedly 'pro-family' agendas;
Why pronatalism, as a primary feature of patriarchal control, must be challenged by anyone committed to feminist principles.
See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: 
https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/nandita-bajaj-michele-goodwin
 
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.
Subscribe to our newsletter here: https://www.populationbalance.org/subscribe
Support our work with a one-time or monthly donation: https://www.populationbalance.org/donate
Learn more at https://www.populationbalance.org
Copyright 2016-2026 Population Balance

As South Korea's birth rates continue to decline, reporter JiHye Jeong highlights the rising tide of young feminists who are staging a strike against patriarchy. Despite relentless cultural and political backlash, the surge in South Korea's women's resistance movements - from the 2015 feminist 'reboot' to 'escape the corset' and 4B - offers a radical response to the misogynistic forces that compel women into marriage and motherhood. Highlights include:
How strong cultural expectations in South Korea pressure women toward marriage, motherhood, and male approval from an early age,
How women's high educational achievement contrasts sharply with persistent gender inequality in pay and leadership roles;
How the 2015–2018 feminist 'reboot' emerged and was fueled by events like the Gangnam Station murder and #MeToo;
How spy cams in public and private spaces and the widespread distribution of these materials combined with weak government responses fueled feminist anger and 'my life is not your porn' protests;
How despite intense political and media backlash, there is a dramatic rise in women-led resistance movements like 'escape the corset', which challenge both the outward corset of beauty norms and the inner corset of gendered behavioral expectations, and the 4B movement, which represents a radical rejection of dating, marriage, sex, and childbirth under patriarchy;
How the ideal of a normal, desirable life centered on motherhood fuels South Korea's growing IVF industry and makes critical media coverage of the industry nonexistent;
How media narratives frame low birth rates as an economic issue rather than a gender inequality problem;
What JiHye's upcoming film, No-Birth Generation, reveals about a growing generation of women rejecting patriarchal life paths and pushing for greater autonomy in their lives.
See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: 
https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/jihye-jeong
 
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.
Subscribe to our newsletter here: https://www.populationbalance.org/subscribe
Support our work with a one-time or monthly donation: https://www.populationbalance.org/donate
Learn more at https://www.populationbalance.org
Copyright 2016-2026 Population Balance