The Canary Has Fallen Silent: Episode 2 of Going Steady with Herman Daly

Listen to Episode 2, “The Canary Has Fallen Silent”

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We follow Herman from the lecture halls of Louisiana to the forests of Brazil – and through a period of global upheaval and personal transformation. It’s the late 1960s: war, civil rights, and the first whispers of ecological collapse are reshaping the world. At the same time, Herman has started a family and is beginning to forge the ideas that would soon shake the foundations of economics.

Through his work across Latin America, Herman was profoundly shaped by the realities of inequality and ecological fragility in the Global South. These experiences helped crystallize his vision of a steady-state economy, one that operates within the planet’s ecological limits and prioritizes human wellbeing and ecological boundaries over endless growth.

We trace how Herman’s ideas took root against the backdrop of a wider cultural shift, including the first Earth Day and the publication of the groundbreaking Limits to Growth. With reflections from his family and followers, including economists whose lives were irrevocably changed by Herman’s ideas, this episode captures the moment Daly’s thinking moved from quiet resistance to creating economic theories that would go on to have a truly global influence. 

Featured in this episode:

• Clovis Cavalcanti, Ecological Economist
• Brian Czech, Author of Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train and Executive Director of the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE)
• Rob Dietz, Program Director at the Post Carbon Institute, co-author of Enough Is Enough, and co-host of the Crazy Town podcast
• Terri Daly Stewart, Senior Occupational Therapist, and Herman and Marcia’s eldest daughter
• Karen Daly Junker, Senior Manager of Provenance Research at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and Herman and Marcia’s youngest daughter
• Denis Lynn Daly Heyck (Deni), Professor Emeritus of Spanish Language and Literature and Herman’s sister
• Katy Shields, Regenerative Economist, and co-creator/host of the Tipping Point podcast
• Peter Victor, Professor Emeritus of Ecological Economics and author of Herman Daly’s Economics for a Full World
• Kate Raworth, Author of Doughnut Economics> and co-founder of the Doughnut Economics Action Lab

Thank you to the Daly family for their generous support in sharing Herman’s story.

Thank you also to our series consultants and fact checkers, Peter Harnik, Rob Dietz, and Peter Victor, who also graciously supplied the interview tape with Herman Daly, recorded in 2022.

Media citations in this episode by order of appearance:

• Timothy Leary – “Turn on, tune in and drop out.”
• Robert F. Kennedy on GDP
• The Martin Luther King Center
• Tipping Point – “The Problematique (Part 1)”

About the Podcast:

“Going Steady with Herman Daly: How to Unbreak the Economy (and the Planet)” is a five-episode miniseries from the team behind the acclaimed Cities 1.5 podcast, and is created in partnership with C40 Cities, the C40 Centre and University of Toronto Press.

Featuring previously unreleased interviews with Daly, the miniseries guides the listener through a life shaped by childhood polio, Latin American epiphanies and a passionate, lifelong love story. Daly’s economic ideas – which advocated for a system which incorporated climate, social, and economic justice – were considered so radical that threats were made against his family, and traditional economists shunned him, all culminating in a dramatic resignation from the World Bank. Yet three years after his death, in the face of rising temperatures, extreme weather events, and ecological and economic collapse, climate leaders and progressive economists, globally, feel that Herman’s heretical thinking may be the only way to unbreak our economy. and our planet.

For media citations, please go to the Cities 1.5 episode webpage on the University of Toronto Press website, here.