Listen on your favorite app
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. Ranking in the top 1.5% of all podcasts globally, we draw over 20,000 listeners from across 80 countries.
Read our Listener Feedback. | Support this podcast. | Subscribe to our newsletter.
New to our podcast?
There are over 80 episodes of OVERSHOOT. If you are new to the podcast and looking for a good place to start, we recommend you listen to these episodes first.
Latest Episodes
Global Conflict, Misogyny, and Resistance
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, journalist, author, and human rights activist, joins us.
The Sexual Politics of Meat
Our patriarchal culture animalizes women and sexualizes animals, and without compulsory pregnancy among human and nonhuman females, both patriarchy and animal agriculture would fail. Carol Adams, author of The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegan Critical Theory, joins us.
Rising from the Ashes of “Development” | Stories of Radical Ecological Democracy from India and Beyond
In this episode, we explore with environmentalist and author Ashish Kothari how entrenched “development” ideologies have led to both ecological and social destruction in India and globally, and how Ashish works to elevate and connect movements of radical community-led alternatives around the world that harmonize human activities with the planet's needs.
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 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.
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.
Engaging Boys and Men to Confront Patriarchy in Uganda
Andrew Kyamagero, an award-winning Ugandan journalist and family-planning advocate discusses the interaction of population dynamics, family planning, and male involvement in the promotion of gender equity within Uganda.
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?
Breaking the Taboo on Motherhood Regret
Israeli sociologist Dr. Orna Donath discusses her groundbreaking research on motherhood regret, including the stringent control that society has over our emotions and actions, and how pronatalism is a cause for much confusion and suffering for parents and non-parents alike.