Episodes
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On this week’s Macrodose, James Meadway breaks down the global economic impact of Storm Helene and how it could disrupt the tech supply chain (0:36), plus a listener question about changes to the fiscal rules and their potential effect on Keir Starmer's government (7:40).
For more content and to support the show, visit: https://www.patreon.com/macrodose
Got a question or comment? Reach us at [email protected]
For more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, go to planetbproductions.co.uk
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Today's episode of The Break Down explores the idea and the power of utopian fiction with guest Kim Stanley Robinson, the acclaimed science fiction author whose most recent novel, The Ministry for the Future, offers a harrowing and detailed vision of how we might respond to the climate crisis.
Among other things, Adrienne and Stan discuss the politics of science and technology; the place of speculative fiction in an era dominated by nostalgia and the importance of utopia at a time when our political imaginations are so constrained.
Like The Ministry for the Future itself, this episode is dedicated to the late Fredric Jameson. You can find many of Jameson's incredible works here: https://shorturl.at/fYDNJ
Find more about the Break Down at break-down.org and be sure to follow us across social media to stay up-to-date with upcoming episodes, essay launches and more.
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Missing episodes?
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On this week’s Macrodose, James Meadway breaks down: Rachel Reeves’ first speech as Chancellor at Labour Party Conference (0:46), the reopening of Three Mile Island to fuel a Microsoft data center (7:13), and a listener question on the concept of public luxury in an era of economic stagnation (12:08).
For more content and to support the show, visit: https://www.patreon.com/macrodose
Got a question or comment? Reach us at [email protected]
For more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, go to planetbproductions.co.uk
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On this week’s Macrodose James Meadway breaks down: the resurgence of US fossil fuel power and its impact on the energy transition (0:39) Feedback from last week's theory episode, on the role of technology in combating the rising costs of climate change (5:17)
For more content and to support the show, visit: https://www.patreon.com/macrodose
Got a question or a comment? Reach us at [email protected]
For more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, go to planetbproductions.co.uk
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Followers of Macrodose may remember our Roundtable episode from earlier this year, in which Adrienne spoke to James and the brilliant Brett Christophers about the many and varied reasons why — despite all the hype about how cheap renewables have become — the transition to renewable energy cannot be left to the market and the profit motive. What that conversation didn't leave us with, however, was an answer to the obvious question: if not the market, then what?
Here to make the case for a simple but radical solution are Chris Hayes and Melanie Brusseler, the Chief Economist and US Programme Director, respectively, at Common Wealth, a progressive UK based think tank and our partners in this series. In today’s episode, Chris and Melanie break down how public ownership can transform our energy system, providing not only a faster and cheaper path to 100% clean energy, but also the foundations of a more just and democratic economy overall.
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James returns after a Summer break! This week we're running a special episode on Macrodose theory, taking you behind the scenes to look at some of the theoretical building blocks of how we put the show together (1:23).
What is Macrodose, why are we doing it, and who are the thinkers we should be reading to understand the world we now live in today?
READING LIST
Michael Kidron 'Failing growth and rampant costs': https://www.marxists.org/archive/kidron/works/2002/xx/ghosts.htm
Jason W. Moore & Raj Patel 'The History of the World in Seven Cheap Things': https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/817-a-history-of-the-world-in-seven-cheap-things?srsltid=AfmBOoovsDH9x0Ul8B5VanJBOwDVnQwTDcwd7Dcl0M9wXADgRgze-HBi
Jason W. Moore 'Capitalism and the way of life': https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/74-capitalism-in-the-web-of-life?srsltid=AfmBOopvBjmgELZS0p0byISi61atpkB_6TxzT96WxfkUwf4QAiGmWHDg
Kohei Saito 'Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism': https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/karl-marxa-tm-s-ecosocialism-capital-nature-and-the-unfinished-critique-of-political-economy-kohei-saito/2345756
Tithi Battacharyya 'Social Reproduction Theory': https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745399881/social-reproduction-theory/
Mike Davies 'Old Gods, New Enigmas': https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/820-old-gods-new-enigmas?srsltid=AfmBOorvAsqCHVKnEPCn-ynLLGA40RuCFWNZOpVpbD2HZGWiuVBA3VZp
Thomas Philippon 'Additive Growth': https://www.nber.org/papers/w29950
Potsdam Institute Research: https://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/38-trillion-dollars-in-damages-each-year-world-economy-already-committed-to-income-reduction-of-19-due-to-climate-change
Isabella Weber: https://academic.oup.com/icc/article/33/2/297/7603347
Enjoy! As always, a massive thank you to all of our existing Patreon subscribers - you make this show possible.
Find our socials, newsletter and more here: linktr.ee/macrodosepodcast
We want to hear from you! Leave a comment or get in touch at [email protected]
For more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, go to planetbproductions.co.uk
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On this week's Macrodose, Craig Gent explores algorithmic management. What is at stake when we speak of the creeping introduction of algorithms? Is it just an inevitable fact of the long march toward progress? Or does it open a new frontier that we need to take seriously and strategically?
Craig Gent is a writer and researcher and the North of England Editor at Novara Media. He’s also the author of a new book Cyberboss: The Rise of Algorithmic Management and the New Struggle for Control at Work, which is out this month tinyurl.com/3sxy2nsf
A massive thank you to all of our existing Patreon subscribers, your support keeps the show running and we are very grateful. If you have the means and enjoy our work, head over to patreon.com/Macrodose and subscribe today.
Find our socials, newsletter and more here: linktr.ee/macrodosepodcast
We want to hear from you! Leave a comment or get in touch at [email protected]
For more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, go to planetbproductions.co.uk
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As a listener of The Break Down, chances are you’re living in a political system that could be defined as “liberal”. But what does “liberalism” really describe? Is it about democracy? Free markets? The protection of individual freedom? Ask ten different people, and you’re likely to get ten different answers.
According to Chris Shaw, liberalism can boiled down to a system oriented around the “bourgeoisie” or, to put it more simply, the “middle classes”, in which technocratic governance is preferred to the messiness of politics, in which the individual takes precedence over the collective, and in which the protection of markets and private enterprise takes priority.
In this episode, Chris breaks down the ways in which liberalism has placed a stranglehold over our political imaginations; why this is so crucial when it comes to the climate crisis; and what a climate politics that takes class seriously would look like.
Chris Shaw is an Associate at the University of Sussex and former Director of Research at Climate Outreach, where he spent nearly a decade developing strategies for communicating climate change. His most recent book is called “Liberalism and the Challenge of Climate Change”.
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In this episode of Macrodose, guest host Isabelle Ferreras delves into the often-overlooked contradiction at the heart of modern democratic societies: while we live in democratic states, our workplaces are far from democratic. Isabelle explores the concept of "economic bicameralism" as a solution to bridge this gap and extend democratic principles into the workplace. She argues that if we truly value democracy, we must reconsider how power is distributed in the firms where we spend the majority of our lives.
You can order Democratizing the Corporation:The Bicameral Firm and Beyond, here from Verso Books: https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/3080-democratizing-the-corporation?srsltid=AfmBOorXp_sAFhpYJ2UZUWLbFyNO4sZvrMDiS-oZ2RVRFSm7jnh9EpCf
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On this week’s Macrodose James Meadway breaks down: the big tech stock plunge at the start of August (2:30), a brief look at new inflation figures in the UK (12:33) and Kamala Harris’ recent rhetoric on price controls (16:07).
A massive thank you to all of our existing Patreon subscribers, your support keeps the show running and we are very grateful. If you have the means and enjoy our work, head over to patreon.com/Macrodose and subscribe today.
Find our socials, newsletter and more here: linktr.ee/macrodosepodcast
We want to hear from you! Leave a comment or get in touch at [email protected]
For more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, go to planetbproductions.co.uk
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On this week's Macrodose, Helen Hester invites you to consider what the world will look like as work becomes increasingly automated. What will this mean for people whose job involves looking after people? What about the domestic caring work that is often unpaid and tends to fall most heavily on women and racialised minorities? How do we envision a world after work?
Helen Hester is a professor of gender, technology and cultural politics at the University of West London. She is also the author of several books including Xenofeminism tinyurl.com/3bke93ye and, most recently, After Work: A history of the home and the fight for free time - co-written with Nick Srnicek tinyurl.com/4de7krcw
A massive thank you to all of our existing Patreon subscribers, your support keeps the show running and we are very grateful. If you have the means and enjoy our work, head over to patreon.com/Macrodose and subscribe today.
Find our socials, newsletter and more here: linktr.ee/macrodosepodcast
We want to hear from you! Leave a comment or get in touch at [email protected]
For more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, go to planetbproductions.co.uk
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“To the question how shall we ever be able to extricate ourselves from the obvious insanity of this position, there is no answer.,” These words were written fifty years ago by philosopher Hannah Arendt, but are just as relevant to the present moment, in which our political leaders and systems continue to fail to grapple with climate and ecological crisis at the scale or urgency they demand. The degree to which these systems are failing has led many to question whether capitalism, democracy or even the nation-state are incompatible with a sustainable future, or whether they can survive accelerating climate change.
In today’s episode, Geoff Mann breaks down these political questions with Adrienne, focusing on the political ‘futures’ sketched in his acclaimed 2018 book “Climate Leviathan”, and asks what kind of politics we need to build a more just and sustainable world.
Geoff Mann is a Distinguished Professor in geography at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. He is the author, with Joel Wainwright, of the acclaimed Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future (Verso, 2018). His work is currently focused on the role of uncertainty in policy and politics.
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On this week's Macrodose, Luke de Noronha unpacks the political economy of migration and what we might expect from the new Labour government. In the context of the recent spate of far-right riots, it's more important now than ever to understand how we got to this point and to unmask the “legitimate concerns about migration” that have supposedly fuelled such racist violence.
Luke de Noronha is an Associate Professor at UCL and the author of Deporting Black Britons: Portraits of Deportation to Jamaica, and the co-author of Empires Endgame: Racism and the British State and Against Borders: The Case for Abolition.
A massive thank you to all of our existing Patreon subscribers, your support keeps the show running and we are very grateful. If you have the means and enjoy our work, head over to patreon.com/Macrodose and subscribe today.
Find our socials, newsletter and more here: linktr.ee/macrodosepodcast
We want to hear from you! Leave a comment or get in touch at [email protected]
For more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, go to planetbproductions.co.uk
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Today we're publishing part two of our sell-out live event recorded at London's Union Chapel on July 26th.
For this discussion we teamed up with our friends over at Verso Books and the Dig Podcast for a podcast extravaganza. Eleanor Penny of the Verso Podcast and Dig host Daniel Denvir sat down with writer and academic Laleh Khalili and the freshly re-elected, newly independent, MP Jeremy Corbyn, to talk about the past present and most importantly the future of Internationalism.
We talked about Palestine, Congo and Iran, about the Labour Party, the welfare state, the climate crisis and the economics of global trade. The event opened up with a live recording of Macrodose podcast which is already up on your feed if you want to take a dive into that.
Thank you so much to everyone who came down sold out the event and brought such an incredible energy to the evening. If you didn’t get the chance to come join us in person never fear we have the full recording for you here and now - I hope you enjoy the show.
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This week we are very excited to bring you a recording of the live event we hosted with the Verso and Dig podcasts last Friday at the Union Chapel in Islington. The Union Chapel is the most beautiful venue and it was a joy to share the evening with so many of you.
Thank you to Dalia Gebrial who chaired the event and our panelists James Meadway, Thea Riofrancos and Asad Rehman.
A massive thank you to all of our existing Patreon subscribers, your support keeps the show running and we are very grateful. If you have the means and enjoy our work, head over to patreon.com/Macrodose and subscribe today.
Find our socials, newsletter , merch and more here: linktr.ee/macrodosepodcast
We want to hear from you! Leave a comment or get in touch at [email protected]
For more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, go to planetbproductions.co.uk
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If you listen to this podcast, chances are you’ve heard of the global target of “net zero emissions” by 2050. You’ve probably also heard about how off track we are from meeting it. But what if I told you we’re even more off track than you might think, because thanks to some effective lobbying, governments don’t have to count the emissions from their militaries, despite their being some of the world’s foremost consumers of fossil fuels. Like me, you might be wondering how that happened, and what special treatment for the military might mean for our ability to tackle climate and ecological crisis.
Here to answer these questions and many more is Khem Rogaly, Senior Researcher at Common Wealth, our partners in The Break Down. In today’s episode, we break down the complex, often hidden, but vitally important relationship between militaries and the climate crisis, from their long-standing role in upholding the fossil fuel economy to the enormous extent to which governments prioritise military spending over other urgent tasks — not least addressing a climate crisis that makes us all more insecure.
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On this week's Macrodose, Adam Elliot Cooper takes a close look at prisons. What can we learn when we begin to think about the prison through an economic lens? What is the role of mass incarceration in our economy? And what can the relationship between crime and capitalism tell us about the world we are living in today?
Adam Elliot-Cooper is a lecturer in public and social policy at Queen Mary University, London. He is also the author of Black Resistance to British Policing tinyurl.com/54e5yhsn and co-author of Empire’s Endgame: Racism and the British State tinyurl.com/2nb77awb
A massive thank you to all of our existing Patreon subscribers, your support keeps the show running and we are very grateful. If you have the means and enjoy our work, head over to patreon.com/Macrodose and subscribe today.
Find our socials, newsletter and more here: linktr.ee/macrodosepodcast
We want to hear from you! Leave a comment or get in touch at [email protected]
For more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, go to planetbproductions.co.uk
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On this week's Macrodose, Eleanor Shearer takes us in a deep dive into AI and the enormous processing power that goes into sculpting vast quantities of data. How does the ownership and control of computing power define the very nature of our digital economy? What can we realistically do to prevent the monopolisation of compute by Big Tech? And is there a role for the government in sculpting the landscape of AI development - remaking tech for people, not for profit?
Eleanor Shearer is a senior research fellow at the London-based think tank Commonwealth. She is also a novelist by night, and you can find my debut book River Sing Me Home here: tinyurl.com/ymuthwaj
A massive thank you to all of our existing Patreon subscribers, your support keeps the show running and we are very grateful. If you have the means and enjoy our work, head over to patreon.com/Macrodose and subscribe today.
Find our socials, newsletter and more here: linktr.ee/macrodosepodcast
We want to hear from you! Leave a comment or get in touch at [email protected]
For more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, go to planetbproductions.co.uk
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Capitalism could not exist without the power and structure of the law — that’s the simple but radical argument made by my guest today, Katharina Pistor, law professor at Columbia University, and the author of The Code of Capital: How The Law Creates Wealth and Inequality.
On today’s episode, we break down how the law ‘encodes’ capital and invisibly structures our world, from giving corporations the rights of a person, to obscure treaties that allow fossil fuel giants to sue governments when they attempt to act on climate. Ultimately, Adrienne asks Katharina whether the law can be harnessed as a force for progress on climate and ecological crisis, and what needs to change to break the legal deadlock.
Katharina Pistor is a professor at Columbia University Law School, where she is the Director of the Center on Global Legal Transformation. She is the author of several celebrated books, most recently of The Code of Capital (Princeton University Press).
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This week on Macrodose, as James takes a summer break, Olly Haynes breaks down the weekend's French election results, in which the New Popular Front left alliance surprisingly emerged as the largest party ahead of Le Pen's RN and Macron's Ensemble.
Olly unpacks how the French left snatched a tentative victory from the jaws of defeat, potential outcomes of the gridlock, and a mixture of hope and warning signs for the future of France.
A massive thank you to all of our existing Patreon subscribers, your support keeps the show running and we are very grateful. If you have the means and enjoy our work, head over to patreon.com/Macrodose and subscribe today.
Find our socials, newsletter and more here: linktr.ee/macrodosepodcast
We want to hear from you! Leave a comment or get in touch at [email protected]
For more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, go to planetbproductions.co.uk
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