#22 Corey Bradshaw: Extinction, Overpopulation, and the Future We Can Still Shape

About this episode

Corey Bradshaw discusses the ecological crisis, extinction, and the importance of facing uncomfortable realities for a better future.

In this episode of The Initiation , I speak with Corey Bradshaw, ecologist, modeler, and global change scientist, about the uncomfortable realities of the ecological crisis — and what it means to face them honestly. Corey’s path began far from academia: growing up in the Canadian wilderness with a trapper father, learning the intelligence of animals, the harshness of wild places, and the power humans have to alter the living world. Today, he uses mathematical models to understand ecosystems, extinction, population dynamics, climate trajectories, and the future of human civilization. Together we explore why the sixth mass extinction is not just a distant scientific abstraction, how overpopulation and overconsumption are inseparably linked, why efficiency often leads to more exploitation rather than less, and why denial is such a deeply human response to ecological breakdown. This is not an easy conversation — but it is a deeply clarifying one. Corey offers a form of grounded realism: not the fantasy that everything will be fine, and not the despair that nothing matters, but the possibility of making the future “less shitty” through honest seeing, better choices, and a renewed…

People in this episode

Host: Sebastian Dienst

Guest: Corey Bradshaw

Topics covered

• ecological crisis
• extinction
• overpopulation
• climate change
• human responsibility
• population dynamics

Keywords

• ecology
• overconsumption
• sixth mass extinction
• denial
• resilience
• climate trajectories

Mentioned in this episode

Places: Canadian wilderness

More episodes of The Initiation

• #25 Sheldon Solomon: How the Fear of Death Shapes the World · September 3, 2026 · 1h 6m
• #24 Sarah Wilson: How to Live Fully in a Collapsing World · August 27, 2026 · 1h 6m
• #23 Luke Kemp: Why Civilizations Collapse - and How We Might Avoid the Next One · July 24, 2026 · 1h 24m
• #21 Jeff Booth: Bitcoin, AI, and the End of the Zero-Sum Game · June 19, 2026 · 1h 0m
• #20 Jeremy Lent: Eco-Civilization and the Possibility of a Life-Affirming Future · June 4, 2026 · 1h 8m
• #19 Energy, Ecology, and the Limits of Industrial Civilization - with Richard Heinberg · April 30, 2026 · 1h 9m