OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance

Silicon Valley billionaires, such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Sam Altman, promise salvation through space colonization, immortality, superintelligent AI, and endless growth. Adam Becker, astrophysicist and author of More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity, debunks these profoundly immoral and biophysically impossible delusions, and explains why resisting them through collective action is essential. Highlights include:
How tech billionaires confuse science fiction for reality and why their fantasies of space colonization are biophysically impossible;
Why Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) remains an ill-defined concept that is based in the false assumption that humans' evolved brains work like computing machines;
Why large language models (LLMs), the dominant form of AI, are neither creative nor accurate enough to achieve the dreamed-for leap in machine intelligence;
What the end of Moore's Law tells us about diminishing returns to technological complexity and the expectation of endless technological growth;
Why longtermism is a dangerous ideology of technological salvation and endless growth, prioritizing hypothetical future populations while excusing present-day social injustice and ecological destruction;
How the fear of death underlies techno-utopian off-planet and transhumanist fantasies;
Why resisting their oligarchic visions requires calling out the ridiculousness of their ideas and organizing collectively to push back both politically and economically.
See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: 
https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/adam-becker
 
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

Data is the resource, and our lives are the territory. Ulises Mejias, co-author of Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back, reflects on data colonialism as a new social order that extends the extractive logic of historical colonialism into our everyday lives. Highlights include:
How terms of digital service agreements, written in dense legalese, resemble past colonial proclamations to indigenous people intended to dispossess;
How data colonialism, a system of continuous data extraction from our everyday lives, mirrors traditional colonialism in that both generate wealth for the few and enable new forms of social and behavioral control;
Why colonialism was essential for the development of capitalism and remains central in understanding today's data-driven capitalism;
How data colonialism uses the 4 X's of traditional colonialism - explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate - to move into new 'data territories' like education, health, agriculture, policing, and war;
How both traditional and data colonialism use 'civilizing narratives' to justify their extraction and colonize peoples' minds;
How AI amplifies the worst of bureaucratic proceduralism and the costs fall on the least powerful in society;
What resistance to data colonialism can learn from resistance to traditional colonialism: working within the system, against the system, and beyond the system.
See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: 
https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/ulises-mejias
 
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

Shaped by fears of overpopulation and ecological collapse, Stephanie Mills was launched into prominence with her 1969 college commencement vow not to have children. A long-time bioregionalist, Mills reflects on decades of questioning growth and cultivating a rooted relationship with the living world, and explains why bioregional living will become a necessity as global industrial civilization continues to unravel. She finds solace in and advocates for an Epicurean simplicity - choosing the simple pleasures of community, place, and nature. Highlights include:
How the conversation around overpopulation has shifted over time and why today's birth-rate panic and pronatalist politics are a retrograde distraction from the deeper failures of growth-based economics;
How exposure to bioregionalist ideas and people and a deep desire to reconnect with land led Stephanie from urban San Francisco to rural Michigan in the 1980s;
Why our sense of awe and meaning arose within wild and biodiverse habitat and what we lose when nature is reduced to resources that feed the technosphere;
Why ecological restoration and bioregionalism are fundamentally community endeavors, grounded in cooperation, mutual aid, and shared stewardship;
How learning the natural history, watershed, and foodshed of one's place help us become more bioregional in thought and action;
How 'epicurean simplicity' provides a materially simple but inwardly rich approach to living, helping us distinguish needs from wants and avoiding the pain caused by a life of 'getting and spending'.
See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: 
https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/stephanie-mills
 
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

Effective altruism's technocratic worldview narrows our moral imagination and helps sustain human and animal injustice. Philosopher Alice Crary argues that effective altruism (EA) and longtermism, both shaped by Silicon Valley's techno-utopian fantasies, ignore social structures of oppression and offer either incremental welfarism or galactic transhumanism over genuine animal and human liberation. Highlights include:
Why effective altruists treat concerns about personal integrity as a form of self-indulgence;
How EA's welfarist approach functions as a band-aid that allows its billionaire funders and organizations like Open Philanthropy, Animal Charity Evaluators, and Faunalytics to avoid confronting the larger systems generating animal and human oppression;
How longtermism - rooted in Silicon Valley transhumanist ideology - both preceded EA and continues to shape EA's pro-technology stance;
What longtermism's emphasis on maximizing numbers of future off-planet, posthuman beings reveals about its disregard for present-day ecological and social crises;
Why EA and longtermists are some of the biggest champions of declining-birth-rate panic;
Why longtermist transhumanism reframes existential risk not as threats to social justice or planetary limits but as anything that obstructs an off-planet, techno-utopian future - including growth-limiting social and ecological movements.
See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: 
https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/alice-crary
 
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 2025 Population Balance

We need an "abundance agenda" for nature. Ben Goldfarb, environmental journalist and author, challenges the techno-fix growth agenda that delivers an abundance of concrete and condos and a scarcity of wildness and wildlife. He urges us to replace extinction-prevention minimalism with a bolder commitment to restoring the abundance of keystone species, thriving ecosystems, and the freedom of wildlife to roam, migrate, and flourish. Highlights include:
Why the so-called "abundance agenda" and its proposed weakening of environmental laws creates an abundance of concrete and a scarcity of nature;
How the renewable energy abundance of solar and wind farms, and AI data centers, spells even greater destruction of wildlife habitat;
How 40 million miles of global roads devastate ecosystems through roadkill, noise, and pollution - and why electric vehicles aren't the solution;
Why the "development agenda", including the building of highways and induced demand for transportation, have been used as tools to subjugate the most marginalized human communities;
Why the first rule of environmentally sound road building is asking whether a new road is needed at all;
Why true abundance for wildlife depends on their ability to roam and migrate long distances, as shown by the Yellowstone-to-Yukon corridor;
How beavers generate extraordinary ecological benefits for both wildlife and humans;
Why restoring keystone species such as beavers, salmon, prairie dogs, and sea otters creates nature abundance by rebuilding biodiverse ecosystems;
Why fish and marine creatures are undervalued and how their beauty and ecological importance emerge when we pay closer attention.
 
See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript: 
https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/ben-goldfarb
 
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 2025 Population Balance