EQUALS: Reimagining Our Economy

Imagine someone owing you money, but instead of paying you, they offer you a loan with conditions on how to use it. That is the how climate financing looks like according to Fadhel Kaboub.

Fadhel, hosted by Max and Nafkote, breaks down bit by bit, the situation in climate financing and why it is impossible to have just transition within the structures of colonialism and extractivism.

Fadhel is an associate professor of econom...

Imagine a private company creating its own jurisdiction in a sovereign country. It sets up its own laws, currency, and tax, labour and environmental regulations regardless of their compatibility with national laws. And when the democratically elected government steps in, the company sues it in little-known ‘corporate courts’ for billions of dollars citing its projected financial loss. Listen to our dystopian story of how the privat...

In this episode of EQUALS, we talk about how wealth and power defy gravity by making water flow… upwards!

Max and Nafkote interview Sushmita Mandal about water inequality and how climate breakdown is already affecting water access for people around the world.

Sushmita shares amazing stories about a young boy in India (who observed water flowing upwards from his community to posh apartment buildings), ecosystems on the Mekong ...

On International Women’s Day, Max and Nafkote interviewed Bhumika Muchhala, a development and feminist economist, on the possibility of being a feminist in an economic system that thrives on the exploitation of people and nature.

This episode explores the importance of the way our global economy is organized in understanding the fight for gender equality. How issues like labour rights, fair taxation and debt cancellation are f...

Nafkote and Max interview Dr. Faiza Shaheen on how capitalism has failed on its main selling point – work hard and you will succeed. The idea that everyone has equal opportunity in life is just a myth. Your success in life is significantly influenced by where you are born, your social class, race, and education.

This episode is a powerful critique of our system - one that perpetuates wealth concentration among the rich while lea...

Max and Nafkote interview the brilliant Dr. Clara Mattei on the history of austerity and how it was created to maintain “the capital order”.

Austerity today the world over remains a favored tool of policymakers. And yet it is far more than just a policy. We examine the roots of austerity and its fundamental role in entrenching capital, and disciplining people to never dare to create alternative economic systems.

Dr. Clara Mattei ...

Nafkote and Nabil welcome the pioneering Senegalese development economist Ndongo Samba Sylla onto EQUALS.

We talk about the untold vision of former Burkina Faso President Thomas Sankara for economic liberation.

The role of the French colonial currency in today’s world.

What Modern Monetary Theory can mean to the Global South.

And what a Green Bandung Woods – picking up from where liberation leaders left off – can do to ...

Max and Nafkote interview the world-famous economist Professor Ha Joon Chang to ask what is causing the inequality crisis and what governments can do to stop it.

How are traffic lights, neoliberalism, and the Catholic Church in medieval times linked? How can we create a new generation of developmental states that face down corporates and build equal societies? An EQUALS episode not to be missed, with a giant of economi...

EQUALS is back. Max and Nabil speak to Dr. Daniela Gabor, who says we’ve entered a new era of the “Wall Street Consensus”. Her macro analysis is lighting up debates around the world about how much power we’re giving up to global private finance - and what exactly comes after neoliberalism.

Daniela, Professor of Economics and Macro-Finance at UWE Bristol, breaks down what is driving this new paradigm, how it drives inequality, an...

Introducing a new EQUALS season and our new podcast co-host, Nafkote Dabi, Climate Policy Lead at Oxfam International.

Joining Nafkote and Max in this episode are Astrid Nilsson Lewis and Ashfaq Khalfan. Together, they delve into the latest Oxfam report “Climate Equality: A planet for the 99%”

How are the climate and inequality crises intertwined?

In this episode, we expose the profound disparities stemming from the dual ...

A season five wrap-up with just the co-hosts! Nadia is sadly leaving the podcast (and Oxfam). The co-hosts get together to look back on their time together and reflect on over fifty episodes of EQUALS. 

We’ll be back for season six folks. Inequality’s sky-high. The fight’s on this decade but there’s hope. You’ve asked us to cover issues from the global debt crisis facing developing countries to the new scramble for minerals...

Nadia and Nabil interview Nobel Prize Laureate Professor Joseph Stiglitz to ask just how dire the state of inequality is - and what we’ve got to do about it. 

Is it realistic to tax the richest at rates above 70%? What’s the connection between Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and IMF-backed austerity in low income countries?

An EQUALS episode not to be missed with a giant of economic thinking.

Make sure you share the po...

How exactly can rich countries address their past wrongs of slavery and colonialism? Well, there’s a plan. Jamaican scholar and UN leader Verene Shepherd outline what Caribbean nations have called for.

This EQUALS episode is the second of a two-part special on reparations. In the first episode, we heard the case for reparations – and went back to the 15th century to the moment European men began an era of the slave trade of colonial...

We start on the shores of the Caribbean islands of the 15th century. As white European men landed on its shores, the story of centuries of colonialism and slavery, and today’s global inequality begins.

This EQUALS is the first of a two-part special on the case for reparations.

Nabil and Nadia speak with the Jamaican scholar Professor Verene Shepherd who with others across the world is demanding repair for those atrocities.

Pr...

In this episode, Nafkote Dabi, Harjeet Singh, and extinction rebellion activist Teun Ott join Max and Nadia to talk about billionaires, inequality, and climate breakdown.

Nafkote and Harjeet joined us directly from the COP last week. Nafkote, Climate Lead at Oxfam describes how billionaires contribute to carbon emissions not only through their lifestyles but also through their investments. Harjeet, Head of Global political strat...

Ann Pettifor joins Max and Nabil on EQUALS. She famously predicted the global financial crash in 2007/8 and she’s worried again. She says it’s not just simply supply and demand that’s driving global food system shocks - and tells the story of how gambling-like practices in global financial markets are affecting all of us.

She’s got some big ideas to on reining in capital, and why poorer countries being crushed under mountains of...

We speak to three people reckoning with today’s massive cost of living crisis – with stories from Malawi, the United Kingdom and South Africa. Max speaks with Nellie Kumambala, a secondary school teacher in Lumbadzi, Malawi, and Walter, a security guard in London, United Kingdom. Nabil speaks with Wafaa Abdurahman, the National Coordinator, Fight Inequality Alliance South Africa.

Different countries, same story. People are suffe...

EQUALS is back! We're asking: What has *really* been happening in the board rooms of multinational companies? And what's that got to do with today's cost-of-living crisis being felt across the globe?

This new season on EQUALS we’ll focus on the crisis, bringing stories and solutions from across the globe.

Nabil and Nadia speak with Dr. Lindsay Owens and Irit Tamir. Lindsay is the Executive Director at the Groundwork Collabora...

Nadia and Nabil welcome former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark on the EQUALS podcast for a special episode.

The IMF, World Bank and the G20 all are meeting this week. The world is facing multiple crises that are converging from the COVID-19 pandemic to the Ukraine crisis, to soaring food and fuel prices.

Two years into the pandemic, we ask PM Clark what governments should have done to respond to the pandemic; what stil...