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.

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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