OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance – Details, episodes & analysis

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OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance

Population Balance

Science

Society & Culture

Frequency: 1 episode/35d. Total Eps: 97

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.

Recent rankings

Latest chart positions across Apple Podcasts and Spotify rankings.

Apple Podcasts

🇨🇦 Canada - science
03/10/2025
#97
🇨🇦 Canada - science
02/10/2025
#88
🇨🇦 Canada - science
14/08/2025
#86
🇨🇦 Canada - science
13/08/2025
#41
🇨🇦 Canada - science
12/08/2025
#19
🇨🇦 Canada - science
11/08/2025
#21
🇨🇦 Canada - science
10/08/2025
#16
🇨🇦 Canada - science
09/08/2025
#20
🇨🇦 Canada - science
08/08/2025
#21
🇨🇦 Canada - science
07/08/2025
#50

Spotify

No recent rankings available

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https://www.populationbalance.org/
90 shares
https://www.populationbalance.org/subscribe
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https://www.populationbalance.org/donate
14 shares

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Score global : 53%

Publication history

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Latest published episodes

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The Elite’s Fixation with Low Birth Rates | Samuel Miller McDonald

Tuesday, July 8, 2025 • Duration 01:06:32

From center-left Ezra Klein to right-wing Matt Walsh, the fertility panic is an elite fixation that is rooted in a human supremacist worldview and a deep fear of slowing growth. Samuel Miller McDonald, geographer and author of the book Progress: A History of Humanity's Worst Idea, exposes how our parasitic relationship with Earth lies at the core of ecological overshoot, and why resisting authoritarianism in an age of contraction means embracing a pluralistic and just degrowth vision. Highlights include:

Why our modern relationship to Earth is fundamentally parasitic - regardless of whether societies are capitalist or socialist;
How media commentators resist degrowth in various stages and how their rejection reveals their lack of maturity in accepting responsibility for the ecological destruction we are causing;
Why degrowth policies and practices should emphasize pluralistic, context-specific approaches rooted in democratic participation, not top-down master plans;
Why many degrowth proponents have been dismissive of population concerns;
Why the political right is more poised to benefit from ongoing economic contraction and why the liberal 'abundance agenda' needs to be resisted;
Why conviviality and class solidarity are key to a successful degrowth transition and how modern societies undermine them;
Why core values like fairness, autonomy, and ecological integrity will be essential in resisting authoritarians' claims to power in the coming challenging decades.

See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:

https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/samuel-miller-mcdonald

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

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From Grief to Regeneration | Sarah Bexell

Tuesday, February 4, 2025 • Duration 01:05:12

We have it in us to create a more beautiful, regenerative future that allows both humans and nonhumans to flourish. Dr. Sarah Bexell, professor of social work and co-founder of the Center for a Regenerative Future at the University of Denver, joins us. Highlights of our conversation include:

Why captive breeding programs for endangered species are both cruel and ineffective;
How the mental health of both conservation professionals and animal rights activists is deeply impacted by the ongoing suffering of both wild animals and farmed animals;
How ongoing ecological destruction is causing eco-anxiety and eco-distress in students and some of the more effective classroom approaches to address it;
How environmental justice differs from ecological justice and why we need to address both if we hope to create a more just, regenerative future;
How Sarah helps students become aware of the role that human overpopulation plays in humanity’s ecological overshoot and helps make the classroom a comfortable place to discuss it.

See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:

https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/sarah-bexell-2

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.

The Biggest Risk to Humanity | Mathis Wackernagel

Tuesday, January 21, 2025 • Duration 01:07:58

Ecological overshoot is the second largest risk to humanity. Not reacting to it is the biggest. Mathis Wackernagel, co-creator of the ecological footprint and co-founder of the Global Footprint Network, joins us. Highlights of the conversations include:

How ecological footprint is calculated as a measure of how much of nature’s regenerative capacity humanity is using;
Why the estimate that we’re using the natural regenerative capacity of 1.7 Earths is an underestimate of humanity’s actual ecological overshoot;
Why shrinking our ecological footprint needs to be framed as an opportunity for resource security, not just noble and charitable but absolutely necessary if humanity hopes to end overshoot more by design and less by disaster;
Why international development schemes that emphasize GDP growth and not resource security won’t work for the ¾ of humanity stuck in the ‘ecological poverty trap’ of depleted resources and insufficient income to buy those resources from other countries;
Why countries not putting resource security at the center of their economic development plans is suicidal;
Why peoples’ motivation to end ecological overshoot will be driven by desire, agency, and curiosity - not by trying to command and control peoples’ behavior.

See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:

https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/mathis-wackernagel

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.

New Podcast Name - We are now OVERSHOOT

Thursday, January 16, 2025 • Duration 02:25

ANNOUNCEMENT

Hello everyone, here we are in 2025 and we have some important news to share. Last year was a really challenging year – we grappled with new climate records, we saw worsening global conflict, and we saw an upsurge in regressive pronatalism. And the year ahead looks like it will include much of the same—which means that all of us will have to remain steadfast, and become even bolder in our work to fight back and advocate for life-affirming alternatives.

PODCAST NAME CHANGE

As part of that commitment, we’ve decided to rename the podcast. It’s been called the Overpopulation Podcast since 2016, yet in recent years we have increasingly explored subject-matter that goes well beyond the problem of overpopulation. We’ve delved into the injustice of pronatalism, the fallacy of pursuing endless economic growth, the inadequacy of technological solutions, and the hubris of human supremacy on a planet of unbounded natural wonders and riches. All these are facets of our perilous state of overshoot, wherein modern humanity’s demands on Earth’s natural systems outstrip their ability to recover and regenerate.

Overshoot has increasingly been the underlying target of our podcast, and it’s driven by more than excessive human numbers. Although overpopulation will remain a central theme, it is time that the podcast name reflects the full scope of our concerns. We will continue to bring you the same caliber of guests and range of topics as always—with the drivers of overshoot, and pathways out of this predicament, the common unifying theme.

ARTWORK

We also have new artwork. The design juxtaposes an impoverished biosphere that is the result of continued overshoot and the Earthly abundance that is possible if we reverse overshoot by downscaling the human enterprise. The exponential growth curve at the root of our predicament separates these two realities.

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 inspires us to seek pathways of transformation that go beyond technological fixes toward a new humanity that honors our interconnectedness with all beings.

The Other Significant Others | Rhaina Cohen

Monday, December 23, 2024 • Duration 01:04:18

Friendship is not a “nice-to-have” but a core, potentially transformative human connection. Rhaina Cohen, author of The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life With Friendship at the Center, joins us. Highlights of our conversation include:

The “friendship recession” and how modern culture undervalues friendships compared to romantic or family ties;
Historical and cross-cultural insights into how friendship has been understood and prioritized in different societies;
Stories from Cohen’s book about people redefining relationships, including platonic co-parents and friends who live together as chosen family;
The legal and cultural barriers to elevating friendship as a socially sanctioned form of kinship and how policy reforms could better accommodate diverse relationships;
Cohen’s personal experiences with an intense friendship that reshaped her understanding of love, intimacy, and societal expectations.

See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:

https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/rhaina-cohen

ABOUT US

OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance [Formerly The Overpopulation Podcast]

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.

Animals are Not Ours | Ingrid Newkirk

Tuesday, December 10, 2024 • Duration 47:25

Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment. For International Animal Rights Day, we are joined by Ingrid Newkirk, co-founder and President of PETA, the world’s largest animal rights organization. Highlights of our conversation include:

The formative experiences that inspired Ingrid to co-found PETA and dedicate her life to animal liberation;
PETA’s groundbreaking campaigns that include both bold, confrontational activism as well as behind-the-scenes deliberation and negotiation;
Major victories of PETA in transforming industries like food, fashion, experimentation, and entertainment to reduce animal suffering and the challenges that remain;
Ingrid’s thoughts on global overpopulation, pronatalism, effective altruism, and the power that all of us have to help end animal suffering.

See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:

https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/ingrid-newkirk

ABOUT US

OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance [Formerly The Overpopulation Podcast]

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

Progressive Pathways for a Smaller Population | Hannah Evans and Pam Wasserman

Tuesday, November 26, 2024 • Duration 55:30

Population dynamics are deeply connected to environmental sustainability and social justice. That's the message of Pam Wasserman and Hannah Evans from Population Connection - the oldest grassroots population organization in the U.S. Highlights include:

The origins of Population Connection and its evolution from ZPG (Zero Population Growth) to a broader mission addressing the intersections of population, environment, and social justice;
How their K-12 education program trains thousands of teachers annually to teach students the importance of population dynamics within the broader issues of environmental sustainability;
The connections between population growth, resource consumption, and climate vulnerability, and how addressing reproductive health and gender equality is key to mitigating these challenges;
Insights into the challenges of discussing population in today’s polarized political climate and how depopulation panic gets in the way of meaningful dialogue;
The impact of global partnerships and advocacy efforts, including family planning initiatives and tackling patriarchal norms for the sake of community empowerment and environmental protection.

See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:

https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/hannah-evans-pam-wasserman

ABOUT US

OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance [Formerly The Overpopulation Podcast]

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.

Walking with Gorillas | Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka

Tuesday, November 12, 2024 • Duration 51:55

Healthy and thriving animal communities depend on healthy and thriving human communities. That’s the message from this week’s guest, Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, Uganda’s first wildlife veterinarian and founder of Conservation Through Public Health. Highlights include:

How a scabies outbreak among gorillas reshaped her approach to conservation, linking human health to the health of the gorillas;
The role of family planning and community health education in reducing human population pressure, human-wildlife conflict and improving both conservation outcomes and local livelihoods;
The balance between the benefits of ecotourism for funding conservation and the risks it poses to gorilla health;
How Gorilla Conservation Coffee provides alternative livelihoods for farmers while supporting endangered gorillas and their habitats.

See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:

https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/gladys-kalema-zikusoka

ABOUT US

OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance [Formerly The Overpopulation Podcast]

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

OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

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OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

Other99+

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

Similar podcasts and content

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Other99+

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities