Macrodose

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.

TICKETS: Political Economy in a Time of Monsters
On this week's Macrodose, James Meadway looks at a surprising side effect of the war on Iran. As shares in arms manufacturers take an unexpected dip, has this conflict actually damaged the Western arms industry?
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]⁠.
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

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 the latest economics fall-out from the war on Iran (2:25), oil thieves in East Anglia, and how they are a harbinger of the near future (11:14), and Verdant - a new think tank launched by James himself (14:22).
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 ⁠[email protected]⁠.
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
UK Food resilience:
https://www.uea.ac.uk/about/news/article/uk-food-needs-radical-transformation-on-scale-not-seen-since-second-world-war
https://nationalpreparednesscommission.uk/publications/just-in-case-7-steps-to-narrow-the-uk-civil-food-resilience-gap/
Verdant's first report on government efficiency sacings:
https://www.verdantthinking.org/publications/wastenot

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 ⁠[email protected]⁠.
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