Shows
geopolitical ecologyFree Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature w/ Alyssa BattistoniIn this episode we speak with Alyssa Battistoni about her most recent book, Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature published back in August 2025 by Princeton University Press.Alyssa is a political theorist with research interests in environmental and climate politics, feminism, Marxist thought, political economy, and the history of political thought. She is the co-author of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal published by Verso in 2019. We highly recommend reading both of these books, found here: Free GiftsA Planet to Win Battistoni writes frequently for publications including th...
2026-01-121h 22geopolitical ecologyCan the State Protect Nature? w/ Rosemary Collard and Jessica DempseyIn this episode, we talk with Jessica Dempsey and Rosemary Collard about how to think about the capitalist state not as a unified actor, but as a contradictory and often incoherent set of institutions, practices, and relationships that both authorize extraction and seek legitimacy. We explore how environmental governance in Canada is shaped by this contradiction: despite laws and frameworks that are supposed to protect nature, we end up with continued and expanded ecological harm.We also dig into how Jess and Rosemary draw from feminist and abolitionist thought to analyze the state as a supplier of...
2025-08-011h 12geopolitical ecologyOrganizing the Tenant Class w/ Ricardo TranjanIn this episode, we’re joined by Ricardo Tranjan, political economist and author of The Tenant Class (2023). Ricardo’s work reframes housing—not as a temporary crisis—but as a long-standing, for-profit system that deliberately extracts wealth from tenants to enrich landlords, developers, and investors. Ricardo dismantles the conventional supply‑and‑demand narrative embraced by policymakers and the real estate industry—where building more is assumed to bring prices to "equilibrium"—showing instead how incentives for private developers can fuel speculation and steadily drive prices out of reach, all while wages stagnate or grow at a slower rate than...
2025-06-1948 mingeopolitical ecologyCritical Minerals, Critical Conflicts w/ Emily Iona StewartIn this episode, we speak with Emily Iona Stewart to unpack the complex and deeply political dynamics behind the global rush for critical minerals.Why are these minerals—like lithium, cobalt, copper, and nickel—so important? Where are they found? What are the implications of their extraction for Indigenous communities, ecosystems, and the development trajectories of post-colonial nations?We explore how critical minerals sit at the intersection of climate technologies, militarism, and digital technologies. From defense-for-minerals deals between the US and Ukraine or the DRC, to stockpiling strategies that prioritize military use over energy justice, this...
2025-05-2956 mingeopolitical ecologyChennai Floods: a decade’s hindsight w/ Priti NarayanIn this episode, we speak with Priti Narayan about the devastating floods that hit Chennai, India—a city grappling with the compounding effects of climate change and urban inequality. Reflecting on the floods a decade later, Priti unpacks how such dramatic events both reveal and deepen the everyday structural violence embedded in urban life.We explore how climate disasters are experienced unevenly, shaped by social, economic, and spatial injustices, and how responses to these events often reproduce the same inequalities they expose.Priti also shares powerful reflections on the role of public scholarship and activism—espe...
2025-04-091h 12geopolitical ecologyA state without borders; borders without states w/ Hicham SafieddineI had the honor to host Dr. Hicham Safieddine, a brilliant Lebanese scholar and historian at the University of British Columbia. His work has included a detailed study of the emergence and transformation of global and national monetary regimes and financial systems under capitalist expansion, debt, war, colonial conquest, national liberation and revolution. He also works on the history of economic thought, as well as modern Arab and Islamic thought, with an emphasis on the age of anti-colonial national liberation in the mid-20th century. In this episode, we discuss Hicham’s conception of the bord...
2025-03-021h 23geopolitical ecologyThe Present Moment in Lebanon, Syria, Palestine w/ Karim SafieddineA lot has happened and changed in Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine since we last spoke with Karim Safieddine over a month ago in our episode titled “Anti-Establishment Positions in Lebanon and Beyond.” So, we decided to have him back on to try and make sense of this moment, where a lot of shifts, some positive and some negative, are unfolding right before our eyes. We discuss a variety of issues, from the South of Lebanon which continues to have Israeli Occupation Forces on the ground in violation of the ceasefire agreement’s deadline to the introduction of two new figure...
2025-01-261h 03geopolitical ecologyon fireAs wildfires rage across Los Angeles, Erika takes a moment to reflect on the personal and the political dimensions of this catastrophe.
We urge listeners to think critically about the individuals and communities most impacted by this situation, and by the climate crisis more broadly.
These fires expose and remind us all that the vulnerability of physical structures people call home hinges upon the vulnerability of social structures that render home-making a precarious luxury.
With every crisis, cracks are exposed. In one of the richest economies in the world, and despite the fact...
2025-01-1603 mingeopolitical ecologyAnti-Establishment Positions in Lebanon and Beyond w/ Karim SafieddineKarim Safieddine is a PhD student interested in understanding the ways in which social movements, for what they represent in terms of various aspects of intellectual and organizational leadership, challenge or reproduce prevailing power relations and ideological norms between late 20th and 21st century Lebanon. In this context, his research focuses on the historical and contemporary development of the "Lebanese Left", particularly in relation to other more dominant local political forces. While he heavily relies on Gramscian optics in his studies, he is open to various models and methods. He was the President of the Secular Club at the...
2024-12-241h 36geopolitical ecologyFrom Urbicide To Solidarity: the fight for Palestine from campus and beyond w/ Hammad JabrIn this episode, we have a heartfelt and eye-opening conversation with Hammad Jabr, a dedicated Palestinian activist and emerging scholar whose work has been central to student organizing for Palestine at UBC and beyond. Hammad shares his journey from Palestine to Canada, discussing the personal challenges of navigating movement as a Palestinian and the impact of becoming part of the diaspora.
We talk about his role in building solidarity spaces on campus, especially amidst the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and dive into the student encampment movement. Hammad also introduces us to the concept of...
2024-11-121h 54geopolitical ecologya diasporic noteTending to this podcast and putting out episodes, let alone tending to our daily responsibilities, has been incredibly challenging. Our hearts break every day as we witness not only the continuation, but also expansion, of genocide.
This here is a reflective note from Youssef's experience trying to find the necessary balance between insanity and political consciousness to show up both for oneself and for others, in solidarity.
It is also a call to Arab activists, thinkers, and researchers to reach out to us if they'd like to participate in an episode.
2024-10-1508 mingeopolitical ecologyOn Worldviews and Climate Justice w/ Osprey Orielle LakeIn this episode, we sit with Osprey Orielle Lake and dig into the topics she explores in her book The Story is in Our Bones: How Worldviews and Climate Justice Can Remake a World in Crisis as well as her work with the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN). We discuss worldviews as a portal to different ways of knowing and being that resist the extractive and exploitative logics underpinning capitalism; origin stories and the ways in which what Osprey calls “dominant culture” alienates us from nature and one another; feminism and the intersections of feminism and climate just...
2024-07-281h 00geopolitical ecologyA People's Green New Deal w/ Max AjlIn this episode, we sit with Max Ajl, author of A People’s Green New Deal (2021), to discuss a range of issues pertaining to climate justice. We discuss the GND’s (lack of) engagement with anti/imperialism, class struggle over the socialization of the means of production and why it’s necessary in a just transition, the political economy of land, structural adjustment programs, national sovereignty, Palestine, and how all of these things connect.
Max Ajl is an associated researcher with the Tunisian Observatory for Food Sovereignty and the Environment and a postdoctoral fellow with th...
2024-05-2155 mingeopolitical ecologyCity Planning for Just Transitions w/ Holly CaggianoHolly Caggiano is an Assistant Professor in Climate Justice and Environmental Planning at the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning. Her research explores social dimensions of climate transitions in the US and Canada, and how diverse stakeholder groups form coalitions to advocate for energy systems change.
In this episode, we chat about efforts to mobilize towards a just energy transition, ranging from the Green New Deal as a framework for community action to building cultures of sustainability and care on campuses and beyond.
Paper by Holly discussed in podcast:
A...
2024-04-2147 mingeopolitical ecologyExtreme heat and uneven urban development: Planning & community responses to climate adaptation w/ Sophie Van NesteSophie L. Van Neste is an associate professor in urban studies at INRS (Tiohtià:ke/Montreal), holder of a Canada research chair in urban climate action. Her research focuses on social movements in urban environmental politics and participatory action research for justice in climate adaptation.
In this episode, we sit with Sophie and discuss the politics of climate adaptation, or how urban landscapes are changing as a result of a warming planet. Key topics include planning/organizing around extreme heat in Lachine, Montreal; the role of historical uneven development in present day climate adaptation; and “climate justice” as a f...
2024-04-1258 mingeopolitical ecologyOn Extractivism & "Sustainable" Development w/ Philippe Le Billon & Erik PostIn this episode, we sit with Philippe Le Billon and Erik Post and discuss a wide array of topics all connected by a thread of seeing ‘sustainable development’ as yet another iteration in a long history of capitalist development.
By examining violence and systemic injustices, as well as counter-hegemonic resistances, we situate the projects and paradigms advertised as ‘sustainable’ in a long history of colonial extraction and exploitation.
Of course, as with most things, there are nuances that cannot be ignored; that is, how does sovereignty and independence fit into this picture? How do we make sens...
2024-03-1758 mingeopolitical ecologyPipelines & Settler-Colonial Extractivism w/ Liam FoxLiam is a PhD researcher in Geography at the University of Toronto and a volunteer tenant organizer in Vancouver. He’s interested in labor, community, and movement organizing strategy, and the politics of reproduction under capitalism.
In this episode, we sit with Liam Fox to discuss the extractivist paradigm of pipelines ripping through Indigenous land in so-called Canada. Specifically, we discuss the regulatory regime in which oil and gas extraction (and the infrastructures required to move it) is articulated and applied. This inevitably entails the engagement with ‘Canada’ as a settler-colonial, extractivist state, bringing to the fore an eng...
2024-03-101h 20
Queer Collective PodcastCosmos with Youssef BouchiThis episode we're switching it up a little bit. I have my roommate Youssef with me and we're talking about Cosmos. If you haven't seen Cosmos, you can watch it on Disney +. Go watch and tell me what you think. Enjoy! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
2020-05-2049 min