The BREAK—DOWN

You may never have heard of private equity firms like Blackstone, KKR, Bain Capital or the Carlyle Group, but in recent decades they have quietly become some of the most powerful companies in the world. They own your hospitals, your nurseries, your energy systems. Their reach stretches from formerly public utilities to the home you rent and the food you eat. In their rise to power, they have reshaped capitalism in their own image – all by using debt as a weapon to produce vast returns for the companies who own and control them. The implications for inequality, for how our economy functions, and for the fight to build a sustainable future, are profound.Our guest this week is the Guardian journalist Hettie O’Brien, who is the author of new book The Asset Class: How Private Equity Turned Capitalism Against Itself.

In the mid-20th century, nuclear energy was seen as the technology of the future. Then, questions about its environmental impact and waste, alongside crises like  Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, created a major public backlash, and the construction of new nuclear in places like the US stalled altogether.But as the climate crisis pushes demand for non-fossil fuel energy, nuclear is once again being positioned as the energy source of the future: emissions free and a reliable baseload, ready to be deployed at scale again.As M. V. Ramana, physicist and Professor at the University of British Columbia, argues in today’s episode however, the case for new nuclear power is not just misguided, but potentially dangerous. But the reasons he thinks so might surprise you, going beyond the standard points about accidents and waste to the heart of the political economy of the energy transition.This talk was originally presented in partnership with the How The Light Gets In Festival, held in London in September 2025

We’ve all heard it before: any time a politician tries to put forward a policy that might finally improve people’s lives—think Mamdani's fast free buses, affordable homes, or renewable energy infrastructure—they’re met with the same line: we can’t afford it. Media pundits and technocrats alike obsess over the national debt, balancing the books and not “spooking” the ever mysterious bond vigilantes. It’s an obsession that paralyses action on the very challenges we most need to meet, from transforming our energy system to providing care for the most vulnerable. It’s also, as today’s episode explores, deeply misleading. Our guest today is Ann Pettifor, the esteemed political economist and author most recently of The Global Casino: How Wall Street Gambles with People and Planet, which covers everything from the shocking power of Wall Street to Keynes's legacy to what money really is: in Ann’s view, an incredible human innovation that could be leveraged to transform our world for the better, rather than enrich a small minority. In today’s episode, she tells us how.

David Edgerton, historian of science and industry, rethinks how production and technology shape the climate crisis. He questions tech optimism, explores China’s role as both polluter and clean‑tech maker, critiques nostalgic industrial revivalism, and warns against AI and innovation hype that preserve the status quo.

Capitalism is often defended on the basis of freedom — “free markets”, free choice, as well as being credited with producing the wealth and material abundance that has freed countless people from poverty.Marx, meanwhile, described workers under capitalism as “free in the double sense”: “free” to sell their labour power in the market, and “free” or divorced from the means of production: the land, machinery or materials to sustain themselves on their own. In other words: not particularly free, at all. We can add to this the countless things that are, within market systems, “free” insofar as they are assigned no value, from the free gifts of nature to uncompensated environmental destruction and the unpaid labour that creates and sustains life. What, then, does freedom really mean within a capitalist society? When wealth is so vastly unequal, can it really be argued that market exchange is “free” in any real sense? And when the harms of our economic actions are invisible in the prices we pay—from deforestation to child labour—can we really be said to be making “free choices”? These are the questions at the heart of Alyssa Battistoni’s book Free Gifts. In this episode, she joins Adrienne to talk about value, the politics of nature, and how we might live freely in a finite world. 

We hear a lot about “sustainable development”—it’s the buzzword of virtually every UN convening—but often with little clarity on what it means in practice. Countries like the US, Canada or the UK hardly developed “sustainably”, so to demand that others organise their economies and societies in ways that we never did can feel like pulling up the ladder behind us. Moreover, how is “development” really defined? Reaching a certain level of GDP per capita? Having the right kinds of “advanced” industries, like finance or tech? And what do any of these indicators  tell us about the things that really matter, like ensuring a decent, affordable life for everyone without compromising the planet?Joining Adrienne to answer these questions is Amir Lebdioui, a development economist, Associate Professor in Political Economy at the University of Oxford and author of “Survival of the Greenest”. In this episode, Amir breaks down the economics of sustainable development, the implications of global tariff wars and what we should all be learning from China.

When Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, or Lula, was re-elected as the President of Brazil in 2022, defeating Jair Bolsonaro in a tense election, the Brazilian left and many around the world breathed an almost literal sigh of relief. Under Bolsonaro, Brazil’s ecological and climate record was scorched, with deforestation in the Amazon reaching record highs.Hopes were high, and for good reason: Lula campaigned on the rights of the working class and Brazil’s Indigenous peoples; under his watch deforestation quickly began to fall; and at COP27 in Egypt he declared in no uncertain terms: "Brazil is back." Yet Lula’s record so far is complex, particularly when it comes to the challenges and perceived trade-offs of economic development and the climate, all while managing powerful competing forces in Brazilian politics. As COP30 begins in Belém Brazil, Adrienne is joined by Sabrina Fernandes, an economic sociologist and head of research at the Alameda Institute, to discuss her essay “Lula’s Dilemma”, which she wrote for the second print issue of The BREAK—DOWN, on the complexities of Brazilian ecological politics, the power of big agri-business and what we can expect from Brazil’s leadership of this year’s climate conference. Further reading: Sabrina Fernandes, Lula’s Dilemma, The BREAK—DOWN

To celebrate the launch of The BREAK—DOWN ISSUE #1, editor Adrienne Buller was joined by Quinn Slobodian and Geoff Mann for a timely conversation on the afterlives of neoliberalism, the climate crisis, and the global rise of the far right.ISSUE #1The BREAK—DOWN is dedicated to exploring the political economy of the climate crisis. We bring together personal stories, cultural critique, expert insight and radical imagination to explore the systems driving ecological collapse — and what it might take to confront them.In the wake of Donald Trump’s return to the White House, our first issue, RIGHT TURN, explores climate politics in an age of rising authoritarianism, asking what happens when the future of the planet is shaped by a hardening new right.Issue ⁠#1⁠ is available now. Buy a print copy ⁠here⁠.

In much of the media, the importance of the legacies of empire and colonialism are often dismissed, with the public conversation dominated by the "culture war" elements, from debates about statues to institutions like the National Trust becoming "woke". The implication within much of this discourse is that empire and colonialism are features of the past, and should be left there. In reality, it is far from that simple. Our guest for Episode 18 is legal scholar Kojo Koram, whose first book, Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the Aftermath of Empire, unpacks how the legacies of empire continue to structure every part of our unequal global economy, from international tribunals that protect corporate interests to the systems that leave countries trapped in cycles of debt. Rather than a thing of the past, Kojo expertly breaks down just how present empire really is, and critically, how it has shaped both the roots and impacts of climate and ecological crisis.

Hans Stegeman, Chief Economist at Triodos Bank and advocate for post-growth economics, challenges the conventional belief that economic growth is a cure-all for societal issues. He discusses the urgent need to abandon growth dependency for greater environmental sustainability. Stegeman critiques traditional banking practices and explores the potential of alternative financial systems that prioritize equity. He also delves into the skepticism surrounding innovative financial ideas, emphasizing the need for systemic reforms to navigate a sustainable future.