Couverture de Invisible Handcuffs: Unchaining Economics

Invisible Handcuffs: Unchaining Economics

Invisible Handcuffs: Unchaining Economics

De : Katy Shields
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Invisible Handcuffs is podcast series and documentary-in-the-making, hosted by Katy Shields, about how we can free ourselves from the economic ideology driving our crises. Each week we speak with economists, experts and activists who are working to reclaim economics across education, academia, policy and in their communities. Alongside our weekly episodes we'll also be posting ad-hoc interviews, out takes and reflections from the documentary we are making, planned for release within the next year. To learn more and subscribe go to www.invisiblehandcuffs.com Science Sciences sociales
Épisodes
  • Episode 09: Reimagining the university beyond neoliberal economics with Jennie C Stephens

    Episode 09: Reimagining the university beyond neoliberal economics with Jennie C Stephens
    Oct 15 2026
    In our first season we explored the various problems with the discipline of economics. In season two we’re starting to dive into the various ways — given all its flaws and given mounting frustration with the status quo — economics seems to resist reform, at least, in any serious, meaningful way. One of the ways is in the institution of education, the university, itself. Jennie C Stephens is professor of climate justice at the University of Maynooth in Ireland and author of the acclaimed open source book Climate Justice and the University: Shaping a Hopeful Future for All. After starting out in the natural sciences, she shifted to dedicating her research to climate justice. She ended up researching the university itself and the role it is playing in upholding the extractive, fossil fuel economy. We discuss how universities have become increasingly financialised and how many universities, event the most elite, rely heavily on private donors, on corporate partnerships, with Jennie citing research she’s undertaken into the role of fossil fuel funding in energy and technology departments in some of the most prestigious universities around the world. But as we also get into, it’s not just private funding. Public funds, where they do get directed towards education, also often go towards the same kinds of extractive industries. We talk particularly about how that is playing out in Ireland right now, one of the data centre capitals of the world, where public research funds are increasingly being funnelled towards AI and not towards, say — figuring out ways to live without fossil fuels. If you enjoy this episode please share it far and wide, sign up for future episodes and ad-hoc articles at invisiblehandcuffs.com, where you can also opt for a paid subscription if you'd like to support this project and our efforts towards making a documentary. Thank you for listening!
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    55 min
  • Episode 08: How economics education limits our understanding of what is possible with Stefan Pühringer and Theresa Hager

    Episode 08: How economics education limits our understanding of what is possible with Stefan Pühringer and Theresa Hager
    Oct 1 2026
    Our guests this episode, which kicks of Season 2, are Stefan Pühringer and Theresa Hager of the Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria. We recorded this conversation at the end of the summer 2026 and are releasing it a few weeks later, during a week in which many European universities are opening their doors for a new wave of students. Which makes it an apt episode to start with because, it is all about the influence of economics education on our mindsets, on our imaginations, and how this in turn feeds through into what we as a society believe is possible in the face of multiple, overlapping crises — from climate change through to cost-of-living crises and raging inequality. Stefan and Theresa work across two heterodox institutes: the Institute for the Complete analysis of the Economy and the Social Ecological Transformation Lab. Both seek to embed economics in society and in ecology, and to explore what both alternative economic approaches as well as other disciplines can offer in meeting today’s challenges. A common response by mainstream or neoclassical economists of anyone critiquing their field is that the said critic just doesn’t understand economics. Or indeed, that many of the critiques are only commons to introductory courses and that if you gone to do a masters or a PhD then you would encounter more nuance, more real world tethering. Well, both Stefan and Theras actually studied neoclassical economics to PhD level and they retained their criticisms so much so that they have effectively dedicated their academic careers to trying to reform economics from the ground up. Not only do they argue that those more advanced degrees are not necessarily any better are — citing for example the lack of reform since the financial crisis, or the shocking lack of interest in top journals to publishing anything about climate change. But they also argue that those introductory courses, the ones this week and next many young people across Europe and the Northen Hemisphere will be offered not only as part of their economics degrees but perhaps if they are study the humanities, law, accounting, finance even engineering — that these are actually the most formative. Their own research has shown economics 101 affects students’ political views and their understanding of societal challenges. We also address the on-going problem of gender bias in economics with woman and people of a non-male and also non-white, non-middle class background being least represented. About how competition in the higher education system but in particular in economics is partly to blame. Women respond differently to the competitive pressure to publish in those top journals. While for those who stay and fight their way to the top are often the ones who have, willingly or not, conformed to the neoclassical stereotype. As such, just having a few leading women economists doesn’t necessary mean we’ll see reforms, because they have often been trained in the same neoclassical mindset. And so we cannot just focus on trying to attract more women into the discipline absent a change in how economics is taught and practiced. If it doesn’t embrace pluralism of thought, and allow for more critical engagement, more critiques of fundamental assupmptions around say the sanctity of economic growth, or capitalism as the only possible system. This was a really valuable and insightful conversation. If you want to learn more, I’ve added links in the show notes.
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    58 min
  • Episode 07: What economists get wrong about risk, technology and progress with Luke Kemp

    Episode 07: What economists get wrong about risk, technology and progress with Luke Kemp
    Aug 14 2026
    In what way might economists’ flawed understanding of progress be driving the many risks we face today? This episode's guest is Luke Kemp, Research Affiliate at the Cambridge Center for the Study of Existential Risk and author of the best-selling, critically acclaimed book Goliath’s Curse, The History and Future of Societal Collapse. Luke actually trained and worked as a climate economist. Indeed he was drawn to researching civilisational collapse when he saw that climate economic models were tending to look only at average trajectories and not so-called tail risks — these are the worst case outcomes which may have a smaller probability, but could be potentially catastrophic. But to understand civilisational risk he realised he had to define what civilizations actually are. And this is where his work actually becomes highly relevant for understanding the ways in which economics is going wrong today, and how we might be able to fix it. Many of us, not just economists, equate civilisation with progress. That Hobbesian idea that life was nasty, brutish and short until the civilising force of states and empires came and liberated us. But when Luke started to dig into these periods he found contradictory evidence. Rather than being times of human flourishing, health and wellbeing actually tends to fall overall, while ecological degradation, resource conflicts, inflation, violence all tend to rise. So they were not really civil times in the sense we might understand the word today — but structured around what Luke terms dominance hierarchies - dominance of humans over nature, men over women, rich over poor, master over slave. It might have been good for elites, who got to hoard all the wealth and power — but not the broader population. Indeed, when these civilisations fall, most people tend to be better off. Hence Luke developed his preferred term: Goliaths. Well, today Luke claims we’re living in a Global Goliath, the period that effectively started with the industrial revolution. And this is where we make the link with economics, because much of economics takes the hockey-stick view of human progress as effectively starting a few hundred years ago, with industrialisation, which led to this massive expansion in the global economy, in wealth and so-called progress. And no doubt, a lot of good has come out of it. Especially since WWII life expectancy, nutrition etc has improved. But again, that’s not the whole story. Luke has found that for much of the industrial revolution, like past “Goliaths”, life was pretty terrible for most people, in many ways worse than before. It wasn’t until democratic struggle — labour movements, suffragettes, civil rights movements — that populations more broadly were able to benefit from the innovation, from this “progress”. So what does that mean for today? In my earlier discussion with economist Steve Keen we talked about how economists’ obsession with innovation as the key driver of growth overlooked that all technology requires energy. Luke's analysis helps us see that part of the reason why economists ignored and continue to ignore energy and nature stems from the idea that we can dominate nature, as well as a view of history effectively written by elites who have benefited from innovation and growth. Not only do such models ignore nature, but they ignore the social movements so critical to ensuring that innovations benefit people more broadly. And they also ignore the externalities —because each technology brings new problems. And yet today we still see economic models betting on innovation as the core means of producing growth, with growth overall necessarily assumed to be good, whatever the risks — not least as concerns AI — Luke's latest area of research, which we get to towards the end of the discussion. If you enjoy this episode, please like and share far and wide and consider a free or paid subscription at invisiblehandcuffs.com.
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    1 h et 1 min
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