Afleveringen
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On this week's Macrodose, James Meadway looks at how the cost of extreme heat requires urgent attention from our political leaders (0:36), if Andy Burnham’s speech this week laid out more of his economic vision (4:43), and how the straight of Hormuz may well be reopening, but the impacts are still to come (10:30).
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To learn more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, head to planetbproductions.co.uk.
Listen to Death In Westminster - a new documentary podcast from Planet B Productions & Novara Media:https://novaramedia.com/category/audio/death-in-westminster/#the-station
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On this week's Macrodose, James Meadway looks at likely next prime minister Andy Burnham and his economic agenda for Britain (0.43), the current heatwave gripping the UK and large parts of the rest of Europe (9:30), and the daft idea of putting data centres in space (13:00).
Heatstrike: heatstrike.notion.site
Subscribe to support the show at patreon.com/Macrodose. Your pledge is a donation supporting free public education; perks are thank-you gifts for your support.
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To learn more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, head to planetbproductions.co.uk.
Listen to Death In Westminster - a new documentary podcast from Planet B Productions & Novara Media:https://novaramedia.com/category/audio/death-in-westminster/#the-station
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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James is away this week so we have for you an event recording from Norwich Transformed, a festival of socialist ideas and culture.
Joining James is Jonas Marvin, author of the forthcoming book, the Breaking of the English Working Class. Together, they discuss the economics affecting food in a changing global climate, why so many are struggling to eat well, and what to do about it.
Subscribe to support the show at patreon.com/Macrodose. Your pledge is a donation supporting free public education; perks are thank-you gifts for your support.
Got a question or comment? Reach out to us at [email protected].uk.
To learn more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, head to planetbproductions.co.uk.
Listen to Death In Westminster - a new documentary podcast from Planet B Productions & Novara Media:https://novaramedia.com/category/audio/death-in-westminster/#the-station
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Last night, after more than 100 days since the US and Israel went to war against Iran, the US and Iran reached a partial framework for peace. When the war began at the end of February, it was all but impossible to make sense of the irrational explosion of violence. In the months since, that sense of irrationality has hardly ebbed, not least as the economic impacts of the war and resulting closures of the Strait of Hormuz—on food and oil prices, and on the supply of goods like ammonia and aluminium—have begun to bite.The destructiveness of this war is clear. Less clear is what it could mean for the future of an industry at the heart of the region and the conflict: oil.
Our guest today is Laleh Khalili, a Professor of Gulf Studies at the University of Exeter and author of several books, including Sinews of War and Trade. In this episode, she breaks down the mess of the US-Israeli war on Iran, shifting relations among the region’s petro-states, the US as an empire in decline, and the future of global energy.
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On this week's Macrodose, James Meadway looks at how the first signs of the incoming “Godzilla” el nino (6:29), how the big tech market crash could finally be arriving (0:47), and a listener question on what public investment looks like in a high-interest world (12:17).
Chuang (18 May 2020), “Free to move, forced to move: The present state of the hukou system”. http://chuangcn.org/2020/05/free-to-move/
Subscribe to support the show at patreon.com/Macrodose. Your pledge is a donation supporting free public education; perks are thank-you gifts for your support.
Got a question or comment? Reach out to us at [email protected].uk.
To learn more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, head to planetbproductions.co.uk.
Listen to Death In Westminster - a new documentary podcast from Planet B Productions & Novara Media:https://novaramedia.com/category/audio/death-in-westminster/#the-station
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On this week's Macrodose, James Meadway looks at how tech firms are cutting back AI spending after blowing budgets on it (0:42), how progressives are taking on the UK political culture of bond market fear (6:23), and how a recent change in China’s welfare system will have global consequences (10:06).
Chuang (18 May 2020), “Free to move, forced to move: The present state of the hukou system”. http://chuangcn.org/2020/05/free-to-move/
Subscribe to support the show at patreon.com/Macrodose. Your pledge is a donation supporting free public education; perks are thank-you gifts for your support.
Got a question or comment? Reach out to us at [email protected].uk.
To learn more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, head to planetbproductions.co.uk.
Listen to Death In Westminster - a new documentary podcast from Planet B Productions & Novara Media:https://novaramedia.com/category/audio/death-in-westminster/#the-station
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We're celebrating the launch of The BREAK—DOWN's spring issue, Airborne! On May 6th, The BREAK—DOWN hosted a live podcast where editor Adrienne Buller was joined by Geoff Mann, Daniela Gabor and Oliver Eagleton to discuss climate crisis through and beyond the contents of AIRBORNE.
ISSUE #3: Airborne
The engines of industrial production that power the modern economy release vast quantities of carbon and pollutants into the air, seeping into our soil, our water, and even our bodies. Air pollution alone is responsible for around ten million deaths each year. And yet this everyday emergency has not fundamentally reshaped how we understand our place in the world.
This issue explores the tensions between global causes and local effects, between the invisible and the immediate, by looking closely at the air itself: the medium that surrounds us, connects us, and sustains life, even as it is increasingly contested and compromised.
Featuring essays by Adam Almeida and Shruti Iyer on the inequalities of air pollution across time and place, from New York to India; Zsuzsanna Ihar on a spaceport in the outer Hebrides; Vera Huwe on the political history of air travel; Mae Losasso on the origins of “the environment” in airborne chemical warfare; Cecilia Rikap on Big Tech and the cloud; Drew Pendergrass on complexity and planning; Natasha Heenan on the politics of climate repair; a photo essay by Amelie David and Ségolène Ragu on the fight for clean air and energy in Beirut under renewed military assault; and an interview with journalist David Wallace-Wells.
Go to The BREAK—DOWN's website to become a member and get your copy of their latest issue - and follow their socials.
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On this week's Macrodose, James Meadway looks at how the question of adaptation to our changing climate has returned amidst Britain experiencing another heatwave (0:58), and how market-led solutions to adaptation will only entrench further inequality (6:48).
Subscribe to support the show at patreon.com/Macrodose. Your pledge is a donation supporting free public education; perks are thank-you gifts for your support.
Got a question or comment? Reach out to us at [email protected].uk.
To learn more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, head to planetbproductions.co.uk.
Listen to Death In Westminster - a new documentary podcast from Planet B Productions & Novara Media:https://novaramedia.com/category/audio/death-in-westminster/#the-station
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On this week's Macrodose, James Meadway looks at how talk of the bond markets is back after Andy Burnham announced his byelection candidacy and ambitions for Number 10 (0:44), a note on “Godzilla El Nino” - as the world is set to be hit by the mother of all weather disruptions (5:49), and reports that the UK government is pushing to cap the price of essential foods (9:36).
Subscribe to support the show at patreon.com/Macrodose. Your pledge is a donation supporting free public education; perks are thank-you gifts for your support.
Got a question or comment? Reach out to us at [email protected].uk.
To learn more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, head to planetbproductions.co.uk.
Listen to Death In Westminster - a new documentary podcast from Planet B Productions & Novara Media:
https://novaramedia.com/category/audio/death-in-westminster/#the-station -
Today's episode is the final in Season One of AFTER ORDER. It was recorded as a live show in collaboration with the Alameda Institute at the Art House in Bethnal Green, East London, earlier this week.
The conversation is hosted by Juliano Fiori (Alameda), featuring James Meadway (Macrodose), Clara Mattei (University of Tulsa), and Aditya Chakrabortty (The Guardian).
Together they explore the idea that we are no longer living between stable political and economic systems, but through an era defined by overlapping and ongoing crises.
From economic turbulence to geopolitical fragmentation, many of the frameworks that once made sense of the world are breaking down. The discussion asked what might replace them - and how we rethink political economy for a world shaped by uncertainty, conflict, and rapid technological change.
Across the evening, the panel reflected on what these shifts mean for power, politics, and the possibilities for building a different future.
It is your support that makes this show possible. Pleases consider becoming a subscriber today: patreon.com/Macrodose.
To learn more about the work we do, head to planetbproductions.co.uk.
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On this week's Macrodose, James Meadway looks at how the political turmoil around Starmer's ailing premiership is affecting the UK’s economic outlook (0:38), and how governments around the world will respond to the current chaotic state of the global economy (7:04).
Subscribe to support the show at patreon.com/Macrodose. Your pledge is a donation supporting free public education; perks are thank-you gifts for your support.
Got a question or comment? Reach out to us at [email protected].uk.
To learn more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, head to planetbproductions.co.uk.
Listen to Death In Westminster - a new documentary podcast from Planet B Productions & Novara Media:
https://novaramedia.com/category/audio/death-in-westminster/#the-station -
Event Tickets: Political Economy in a Time of Monsters (May 12th)
Welcome back to After Order - a series from Macrodose and the Alameda institute exploring power, sovereignty, and crisis in today’s unstable world.
This week, James is joined by Juliano Fiori, Director at Alameda, to look back at the series so far, and discuss its core premise: that we’re not living through what Antonio Gramsci called an “interregnum” - a moment where the old world is dying and the new struggles to be born. Instead, that our world is now one of sustained disorder.
In his own writing, Juliano takes this one step further, arguing that the very notion of order as we’ve come to understand it is tied to the system of US hegemony that has dominated global politics since the end of the second world war.
For Juliano this “order” is not only conceptual, but material. Sustained first by the unparalleled industrial base of American capitalism, and then by its transformation into the hub of global trade and finance - secured at every turn through military might.
He argues that, in losing sight of this, progressives too often take this exception for granted, and with it the belief that its decline will organically precipitate the rise of a new stability - perhaps one governed by a more just or democratic set of institutions.
But this is not a mistake we can afford to make. With the dominance of the dollar waning, the US grip on global capital is beginning to slip. And Trump's warmongerings, from Venezuela to Iran, now appear as the violent shocks of an empire in sharp decline.
The materiality of what we once called “order” is coming to an end. So what, if anything, comes next? The continued rise of China? A patchwork of competing regional powers? And a world defined by domination without hegemony?
All that and more, in this week’s After Order.
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While James Meadway is away for the local elections, this week's Macrodose is guest-hosted by Kojo Koram - author of the upcoming book 'The Next Fix: The Winners & Losers In The Future Of Drugs'.
For today's episode, Kojo explores the changing world of psychedelics - and how we’re on the cusp of a wave of corporate interests ready to sweep in to monopolise a new market.
Subscribe to support the show at patreon.com/Macrodose. Your pledge is a donation supporting free public education; perks are thank-you gifts for your support.
Purchase a copy of Kojo's new book 'The Next Fix' here:
https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/kojo-koram/the-next-fix/9781399807715/Got a question or comment? Reach out to us at [email protected].uk.
Event Tickets: The Break—Down Issue #3 Launch Party!
Event Tickets: Political Economy in a Time of Monsters
To learn more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, head to planetbproductions.co.uk.
Listen to Death In Westminster - a new documentary podcast from Planet B Productions & Novara Media:
https://novaramedia.com/category/audio/death-in-westminster/#the-station -
Event Tickets: Political Economy in a Time of Monsters (May 12th)
Welcome back to After Order - a series from Macrodose and the Alameda Institute - exploring power and crisis in today’s unstable world.
In this week’s episode, we’re turning to the concept of Popular Sovereignty. At a moment when the old order is breaking down - when states are less able to guarantee rights, stability, or even the basic conditions of life - what does it mean for movements, communities, and working people to build power for themselves?
Joining James to explore that question is Gabriel Tupinambá, Senior Researcher at Alameda. In an upcoming paper titled ‘Popular Sovereignties Under Peripheral Conditions’, Gabriel looks to social movements, especially those in Brazil, to understand how communities are attempting to reclaim sovereignty on new terms.
Gains that once seemed durable - access to land, political representation, legal recognition - now appeared increasingly fragile. Right-wing forces are reorganising both inside and outside the state, and progressives are too often clinging to outdated institutions that have themselves become unstable.
Under these conditions, Gabriel argues that we need to rethink sovereignty from the ground up. Not as a juridical status, or as participation in a national project, but as something more material and immediate, the means of life itself - food, land, shelter, social reproduction - as the basis for any sustained political struggle.
Was the stability of the postwar period always more fragile than it appeared? Are the conditions long associated with the global periphery now becoming generalised across the world? And if movements today can still disrupt systems of power, why is it so much harder to build alternatives that last?
All that and more, in this week’s After Order.
Image Credits:
Arquivo e Memória, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST)Sebastiao Salgado c/o https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=2560,quality=82,format=auto,fit=contain/filestore/images/after-months-of-occupation-of-the-cuiaba-plantation-by-landless-families-the-peasants-celebrate-the-official-expropriation-state-of-sergipe-brazil-1996.jpgWellington Lenon c/o https://www.brasildefato.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/MST-_-Foto-Wellington-Lenon.jpg Gilvan Oliveria, c/o https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2024/01/22/lasdless-workers-movement-celebrates-40-years-and-becomes-the-longest-running-peasant-movement-in-brazil/Douglas Mansur, c/o https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2024/01/22/lasdless-workers-movement-celebrates-40-years-and-becomes-the-longest-running-peasant-movement-in-brazil/Eraldo Peres, c/o https://www.thenation.com/article/world/brazil-mst-landless-workers-movement/Alf Ribeiro, c/o https://dissentmagazine.org/article/brazils-landless-workers-rise-mst-land-occupation/Duda Oliva c/o https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/03_Duda-Oliva-2.jpgJudy Duarte c/o https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/02_Juliana-2.jpgNatália Gregorini c/o https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/04_Natalia-2.jpgArtworks
Duda Oliva c/o https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/03_Duda-Oliva-2.jpgJudy Duarte c/o https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/02_Juliana-2.jpgNatália Gregorini c/o https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/04_Natalia-2.jpg
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On this week's Macrodose, James Meadway looks at BP's mega-profits - this time as an inevitable result of the war on Iran (0:42), whether or not we could be on the verge of another 2008-style financial crisis (3:26), and the shock announcement that the UAE is leaving OPEC (9:57).
Subscribe to support the show at patreon.com/Macrodose. Your pledge is a donation supporting free public education; perks are thank-you gifts for your support.
Got a question or comment? Reach out to us at [email protected].uk.
Event Tickets: The Break—Down Issue #3 Launch Party!
Event Tickets: Political Economy in a Time of Monsters
To learn more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, head to planetbproductions.co.uk.
Listen to Death In Westminster - a new documentary podcast from Planet B Productions & Novara Media:
https://novaramedia.com/category/audio/death-in-westminster/#the-station -
Event Tickets: Political Economy in a Time of Monsters
Welcome back to After Order - a series from Macrodose and the Alameda Institute - exploring power, sovereignty, and crisis in today’s unstable world.
In this week’s episode, we turn to Digital Sovereignty in the age of Big Tech. What does it mean that the infrastructures underpinning our everyday lives - from search and cloud computing to communication and logistics - are owned and controlled by a tiny handful of Silicon Valley elites? What does that concentration of power mean for democracy, for states, and for the possibility of political autonomy in the digital age? And what, if anything, can we do about it?
Joining host James Meadway to explore these questions are Cecilia Rikap and Paolo Gerbaudo. Cecilia is Professor of Economics and Head of Research at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at University College London. Paolo is Senior Researcher at the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology at the Complutense University of Madrid, and author of The Great Recoil: Politics after Populism and Pandemic.
In 2025, Cecilia and Paolo co-authored a major report for the Alameda Institute titled Reclaiming Digital Sovereignty: A Roadmap to Build a Digital Stack for People and the Planet. The report sets out a bold vision: to treat digital infrastructure as a public good - one that is democratically governed, ecologically sustainable, and oriented toward social need rather than private profit.
Their argument centres on a simple but far-reaching claim, that digital infrastructure is not just technical - it’s geopolitical. From the dominance of US Big Tech to the rise of Chinese platform ecosystems, control over data, computation, and networks has rapidly become a fundamental and contested terrain of global power.
But if that’s true, then the challenge is not just to critique existing systems - it’s to build new ones. What would it take to construct a public-interest digital stack? Who has the capacity to do it? And how do you navigate a world shaped both by corporate monopolies and intensifying geopolitical competition?
In a moment where sovereignty is increasingly exercised through platforms and protocols, this question becomes unavoidable. So what would it mean to reclaim digital infrastructure?
All that and more, in today’s After Order.
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On this week's Macrodose, James Meadway looks at how Europe now has only six weeks’ worth of jet fuel supplies left (1:52), how the big six investment banks are making record profits on the back of the Iran War (7:22), and some positive news around the decline of fossil fuels, and the future of our energy markets (11:48). James also pays tribute to the life and work of economist and biographer of Keynes Robert Skidelsky.
Subscribe to support the show at patreon.com/Macrodose. Your pledge is a donation supporting free public education; perks are thank-you gifts for your support.
Got a question or comment? Reach out to us at [email protected].uk.
Event Tickets: Break-Down Issue #3 Launch Party
Event Tickets: Political Economy in a Time of Monsters
To learn more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, head to planetbproductions.co.uk.
Listen to Death In Westminster - a new documentary podcast from Planet B Productions & Novara Media:https://novaramedia.com/category/audio/death-in-westminster/#the-station
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Welcome back to After Order - a series from Macrodose and the Alameda Institute - exploring power, sovereignty, and crisis in today's unstable world.
Event Tickets: Political Economy in a Time of Monsters
In this week’s show, host James Meadway is joined by Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla - political strategist, activist, Co-General Coordinator of the Progressive International, and Executive Secretary of the Hague Group, a coalition of Global South nations launched in 2025 to hold Israel accountable for its crimes in Palestine.
Varsha’s work sits at the intersection of law, empire, and resistance - as both an organiser and an intellectual, grappling with what it might mean to build a decolonial internationalism rooted in the Global South.
From Honduras, where a US corporation is suing the state for billions in a secret tribunal, to Ecuador, where an authoritarian regime with the direct assistance of the US is crushing democracy in the name of the War on Drugs, to the bombs falling on Gaza - in flagrant violation of international law - it’s clear we are living through a rupture in the global “order”.
But Varsha argues that “order”, the so called “rules-based international system”, was always and fundamentally a veneer, one that masked the systems of coercion, extraction and exploitation that uphold global capitalism.
In the context of war on Iran, it’s a particularly prescient argument. The veil has lifted, we are seeing the return of hard power across the world, and an open defiance of international institutions, from Cuba to Palestine.
But we’re also seeing something else. A wave of solidarity with the victims of colonial oppression, and new forms of coordination among states seeking to resist through the cracks of disorder.
So the question at the heart of today’s conversation is this: as the old fiction of order breaks down, what comes next?
And what would it mean to build a different kind of sovereignty - and a different kind of internationalism - in a world After Order?
Subscribe to support the show at patreon.com/Macrodose. Your pledge is a donation supporting free public education; perks are thank-you gifts for your support.
Got a question or comment? Reach out to us at [email protected].uk.
To learn more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, head to planetbproductions.co.uk.
Listen to Death In Westminster - a new documentary podcast from Planet B Productions & Novara Media.
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On this week's Macrodose, James Meadway looks at some changing rhetoric from Keir Starmer on the changing world we live in, and how it affects our economy. But does he really get it? (1:02), And second: how the surge in energy prices is prompting a jump in home installations of renewable energy generation (5:52).
Subscribe to support the show at patreon.com/Macrodose. Your pledge is a donation supporting free public education; perks are thank-you gifts for your support.
Got a question or comment? Reach out to us at [email protected].uk.
Event Tickets: Political Economy in a Time of Monsters
To learn more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, head to planetbproductions.co.uk.
Listen to Death In Westminster - a new documentary podcast from Planet B Productions & Novara Media:
https://novaramedia.com/category/audio/death-in-westminster/#the-station -
Event Tickets: Political Economy in a Time of Monsters
Welcome back to the After Order podcast - a series from Macrodose in collaboration with the Alameda Institute.
In our opening episode, host James Meadway spoke with Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff about their book Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed, using Elon Musk as a lens to examine the intellectual contours of our emerging post-liberal moment. Together, they traced how new ideological formations may be taking shape in the aftermath of neoliberalism.
In today’s episode, we shift from those ideological roots to something more tangible, the material foundations of contemporary capitalism, and in particular, the accelerating green energy transition.
To explore this, James is joined by Thea Riofrancos, author of Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism. As governments and corporations race to decarbonise the global economy, demand for critical minerals such as lithium has surged dramatically. Yet as Thea’s work shows, this transition is not simply a story of technological progress or environmental necessity. It is also opening up new frontiers of extraction - reshaping landscapes, transforming communities, and reconfiguring geopolitical relations in the process.
At the centre of this conversation lies a pressing question: can the shift to renewable energy avoid reproducing the same extractive dynamics that defined the fossil-fuel era? And are we witnessing the emergence of a new form of “green capitalism” that carries forward many of the old logics under a different guise?
In a world After Order, where crises no longer appear as temporary disruptions but as enduring conditions, the stakes of these questions are difficult to overstate.
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