Macrodose

Event Tickets: Political Economy in a Time of MonstersWelcome 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.

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 ⁠macrodose@planetbproductions.co.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.

Event Tickets: Political Economy in a Time of MonstersWelcome 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.

Welcome to the After Order podcast - a new series from Macrodose and the Alameda Institute. This series emerges from Alameda’s ongoing After Order research project, which begins from a simple but unsettling proposition, that we may no longer be living through an interregnum between stable systems, but in a period defined by recurring crises - a time after stable orders.Over the coming weeks, host James Meadway will sit down with leading thinkers from around the globe, exploring topics from the decline of American hegemony and the rise of a multipolar world, to the struggle to reclaim digital sovereignty from Big Tech, and the geopolitical tensions emerging from the global energy transition under green capitalism.We’ll ask, where does power actually lie in a world after order, and what new pathways might still be opened within it?In today's episode, James meets with Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff to discuss their new book, Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed.Using Elon Musk as a lens, Quinn and Ben unpack what they call Muskism - a new political-economic logic emerging out of the ashes of neoliberalism, and one that might - just as Fordism did a century earlier - provide a roadmap to the ideological terrain of our present moment.If the neoliberal era is coming to an end, can Muskism help us interpret the ensuing disorder? And what can be done to push back against it?

On this week's Macrodose, James Meadway looks at how the ongoing Iran war forms part of a longer story of US decline (0:45), why a direct consequence of the war is higher borrowing costs for government (7:50), and what the UK government actually doing in response to the crisis (12:22).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 ⁠macrodose@planetbproductions.co.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

On this week's Macrodose, James Meadway looks at the how the US-Israel war on Iran will impact global food prices (3:07), and how data centres are the newest target in modern warfare (9:47).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 ⁠macrodose@planetbproductions.co.uk⁠.To learn more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, head to ⁠planetbproductions.co.uk⁠.Apply for Planet B's Digital Content Lead job opportunity: https://planet-b-productions.homerun.co/digital-content-lead/enListen to Death In Westminster - a new documentary podcast from Planet B Productions & Novara Media: https://novaramedia.com/category/audio/death-in-westminster/#the-station

On this week's Macrodose, James Meadway looks at the US and Israel’s illegal war on Iran (1:18), and the stark international economic constraints now facing the UK (9:37).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 ⁠macrodose@planetbproductions.co.uk⁠.To learn more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, head to ⁠planetbproductions.co.uk⁠.Apply for Planet B's Digital Content Lead job opportunity: https://planet-b-productions.homerun.co/digital-content-lead/en

On this week's Macrodose, James Meadway looks at fresh warnings that climate change is coming straight for your supermarket shelf (0:40), and a rare piece of good climate news - from India - where a solar boom is helping leapfrog the old, fossil-fuelled path to industrialisation (8:26).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 ⁠macrodose@planetbproductions.co.uk⁠.To learn more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, head to ⁠planetbproductions.co.uk⁠.

On this week's Macrodose, James Meadway looks at how coal use has now passed it's peak since the industrial revolution (0:41), how far short the world is from adapting to the costs of climate change (6:59), and some dodgy claims being made to support the UK government’s rush to roll out data centres (13:07).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 ⁠macrodose@planetbproductions.co.uk⁠.To learn more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, head to ⁠planetbproductions.co.uk⁠.

In the latest episode of The Break–Down, host Adrienne Buller is joined by renowned economist Ann Pettifor to discuss her new book, The Global Casino: How Wall Street Gambles with People and Planet.We’ve all heard the refrain. Whenever a politician proposes a policy that might genuinely improve people’s lives — free and fast buses, affordable housing, large-scale renewable energy — the response is immediate: we can’t afford it. Media pundits and technocrats fixate on national debt, balanced budgets and the need not to “spook” the ever-mysterious bond vigilantes.This obsession doesn’t just dominate public debate — it paralyses action on the very challenges we urgently need to confront, from transforming our energy system to properly funding care for the most vulnerable.As this episode makes clear, it’s also profoundly misleading.The Global Casino traces the extraordinary power of Wall Street, revisits Keynes’s legacy, and asks a fundamental question: what is money, really? For Ann Pettifor, money is an extraordinary human invention — one that could be used to reshape our world for the better, rather than to enrich a powerful few.In today’s episode, she explains how — and why it matters now more than ever.

On this week's Macrodose, James Meadway looks at the worsening trade and tariff war over Trump’s plans for Greenland (1:24), some positive climate news from India and China, where coal-fired power generation has fallen for the first time in decades (13:13), and an interesting new report on AI productivity (15:23).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 ⁠macrodose@planetbproductions.co.uk⁠.To learn more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, head to ⁠planetbproductions.co.uk⁠.Planet B, the production company that brings you Macrodose, is hiring a new Head of Production: https://planet-b-productions.homerun.co/head-of-production/en

For the first Macrodose episode of 2026, James Meadway takes a look at US President Donald Trump's operation in Venezuela and the seizure of the nation's leader Nicolas Maduro (1:26). Plus Trump's posturing about his desires to annex Greenland (7:39).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 ⁠macrodose@planetbproductions.co.uk⁠.To learn more about the work we do at Planet B Productions, head to ⁠planetbproductions.co.uk⁠.