Podcast from the Prairie: Intellectual Grounding

This chapter of the Seeds Series explores “relationality” as a foundation for regenerative cultures, drawing on insights from various interviewees to show how empathy, accountability, place-based belonging, and interdependence can help heal the social and ecological fractures of modern life.

For 6,000 years, human societies have sought to control water through ever-larger infrastructure. As climate change brings more extreme floods, droughts and heatwaves, a growing number of cities are exploring a different path: adapting to water’s rhythms rather than trying to dominate them.

Nandita Bajaj, executive director of Population Balance, defies stereotypes. She chose not to have children and has dedicated her life to research and advocacy on how pronatalism, overpopulation, and human supremacy fuel social inequality and ecological overshoot, and to confronting tough questions about humanity’s outsized footprint on Earth.