Jo-Anne McArthur | Hidden: Animals in the Anthropocene
Release Date: 05/14/2024
Riane Eisler | Confronting the Population Taboo: Moving from Dominator to Partnership Societies
The Overpopulation Podcast
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. Highlights include: Riane’s childhood experiences of being a Holocaust survivor and living as a refugee in Cuba, which informed her study of contrasting societal models of dominator versus partnership; How domination systems enforce...
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Jo-Anne McArthur | Hidden: Animals in the Anthropocene
The Overpopulation Podcast
In this episode we speak with Jo-Anne McArthur, acclaimed animal photojournalist and founder and president of We Animals Media, an organization whose photographers document the lives of unseen and ignored animals caught within human systems of exploitation and oppression. HIghlights of this episode include: How, motivated by the power of photography to catalyze social change and to raise awareness about animal exploitation, Jo-Anne created a new genre of photojournalism, namely Animal Photo Journalism (APJ); APJ’s mission to capture, memorialize, and expose the experiences of animals who...
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Émile P. Torres | Highway to Hell: The Dystopian Fantasies of Tech Billionaires
The Overpopulation Podcast
In this episode, we chat with philosopher and historian Dr. Émile P. Torres about the dystopian fantasies of ecologically-blind tech billionaires – transhumanists, longtermists, and effective altruists – of defying nature, transcending humanity, and colonizing the universe. Highlights of our conversation include: how transhumanism is built on the idea of creating God-like AI to reengineer humanity to achieve immortality, sustain capitalist growth, and colonize space; how the effective altruism’s utilitarian approach to philanthropy is not only blind to systemic change, social...
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Alan Weisman | Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth?
The Overpopulation Podcast
In this episode with award-winning author and journalist Alan Weisman, we discuss his 2013 book Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth? capturing his journey to over 20 countries over five continents to ask what experts agreed were probably the most important questions on Earth, and also the hardest. ‘How many humans can the planet hold without capsizing?’ This wide-ranging and immensely stimulating interview captures how growth-biased cultures, religions, nationalities, tribes, and political systems are collectively undermining our ability to live within planetary limits,...
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Jennifer Watling Neal and Zachary Neal | Getting the Numbers Right: The Childfree Choice More Prevalent than Reported
The Overpopulation Podcast
In this episode with Dr. Zachary Neal and Dr. Jennifer Watling Neal, we explore their research about the prevalence and characteristics of childfree adults in the US and globally. Despite the fact that people without children make up a significant portion of the population, both nationally in the US (20-25%) and globally, this group remains largely underrepresented in policymaking and demographic surveys. Driven by the desire for more inclusive representation of this group and for more objective demographic reporting, Zak and Jenna’s research tackles the inconsistency across various surveys...
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Travis Rieder | Catastrophe Ethics: How to Choose Well in a World of Tough Choices
The Overpopulation Podcast
In this episode with bioethicist and moral philosopher Dr. Travis N. Rieder, we discuss his latest book Catastrophe Ethics, in which he explores how individuals can make morally decent choices in a world of confusing and often terrifying problems. We explore the morally exhausting and puzzling nature of modern life in which individual actions can often seem insignificant in the face of massive and complex systems. Rieder offers suggestions on how to overcome this sense of ‘moral dumbfounding’ so that we can better align our actions with our values towards ethical living. Among the small...
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Laura Carroll | Breaking Out of the Baby Matrix: Busting Common Pronatalist Myths
The Overpopulation Podcast
To celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8th, we interviewed Laura Carroll, internationally recognized expert on pronatalism and the childfree choice, who starts by sharing highlights from her latest book A Special Sisterhood: 100 Fascinating Women From History Who Never had Children. We also unpack her book The Baby Matrix: Why Freeing Our Minds From Outmoded Thinking About Parenthood & Reproduction Will Create a Better World, in which she busts the many pervasively pronatalist assumptions that people have to navigate while deciding whether or not to have children, and the...
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Christopher Ketcham | The Megamachine and Green Growth Delusions
The Overpopulation Podcast
In this interview with freelance writer Christopher Ketcham, we unpack the techno-industrial extractivism that plagues modern societies and the media’s complicity in failing to challenge the growth model on which it is based. We discuss Chris’ book This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption Are Ruining the American West in which he outlines the environmental destruction caused by unregulated public lands livestock grazing, corruptly supported by the federal land management agencies, who are supposed to be regulating these industries. He tracks the Department of Interior’s failure...
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Angela Saini | The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule
The Overpopulation Podcast
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 first became embedded in societies and spread across the globe from prehistory into the present. Angela discusses how gendered roles, pronatalism, and militarism – key features of patriarchies – are very recent phenomena, which emerged with the rise of the early states and empires, with pressure on women to have many children for the state and on men to defend the state. By detailing the...
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Diana Coole | The Toxification of Population Discourse: How Population Became a Dirty Word
The Overpopulation Podcast
When and why did population become a dirty word? And why are so many people shamed for advocating for population reduction? Despite innumerable scientific studies showing the impact of human overpopulation and overconsumption on mounting social and ecological catastrophes, including climate change, biodiversity destruction, ocean acidification, resource scarcity, and conflict, most policymakers, journalists, and academics are too afraid to discuss population. In this episode with political theorist and feminist scholar, Dr. Diana Coole, we unpack the history of the toxification of the...
info_outlineIn this episode we speak with Jo-Anne McArthur, acclaimed animal photojournalist and founder and president of We Animals Media, an organization whose photographers document the lives of unseen and ignored animals caught within human systems of exploitation and oppression. HIghlights of this episode include:
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How, motivated by the power of photography to catalyze social change and to raise awareness about animal exploitation, Jo-Anne created a new genre of photojournalism, namely Animal Photo Journalism (APJ);
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APJ’s mission to capture, memorialize, and expose the experiences of animals who are caught within the complex human-dominated systems and whom we fail to see - animals within the industrial food systems, animals used for entertainment, such as in circuses, zoos, aquaria, theme parks, and rodeos, and animals used in research;
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Jo-Anne’s travels to over 60 countries that catalogue our complex relationship with animals, captured in her three books, We Animals, Captive, and Hidden: Animals in the Anthropocene, and her feature role in the acclaimed Canadian documentary, The Ghosts in Our Machines;
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inspiring stories of animal advocacy and highlights of the work of women on the front lines, captured in the Unbound project by We Animals Media;
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how Jo-Anne manages the emotional impact of documenting animal suffering while staying committed to animal liberation;
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and finally, on behalf of our planet which is groaning under the pressure of human dominion, Jo-Anne’s reflection on her personal journey of choosing not to have children, emphasizing the importance of considering alternative and richer ways to express love and fulfillment.
See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:
https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/joanne-mcarthur
ABOUT US
The Overpopulation Podcast features enlightening conversations between Population Balance executive director Nandita Bajaj, researcher Alan Ware, and expert guests. We cover a broad variety of topics that explore the impacts of our expanding human footprint on human rights, animal protection, and environmental restoration, as well as individual and collective solutions. Learn more here: https://www.populationbalance.org/
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