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Captain Planet

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Captain Planet tour dates and tickets 2024-2025 near you

Want to see Captain Planet in concert? Find information on all of Captain Planet’s upcoming concerts, tour dates and ticket information for 2024-2025.

Captain Planet is not due to play near your location currently - but they are scheduled to play 10 concerts across 1 country in 2024-2025. View all concerts.

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Captain PlanET

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Captain Planet

World Music Central

Captain Planet Announces New Album “Sounds Like Home”

Captain Planet, the accomplished musician and DJ, has announced the impending release of his latest album, “ Sounds Like Home ,” scheduled for May 10th. The new album follows the recent debut of the energetic music video “Pambelé,” featuring the powerful vocals of Jimena. The uplifting lyrics in Spanish convey the message of never looking back and always pushing forward, while simultaneously battling against adversity.

Jimena’s soaring vocals are accompanied by a powerful bass line, wah-wah guitars, and a Hammond organ riff, along with syncopated horn punches, congas, and cowbells. The resulting sound is reminiscent of classic works by legendary artists such as Ray Barretto or WAR, while also incorporating contemporary elements to appeal to modern discerning listeners.

Captain Planet says about “Pambelé”: “ I was staying in a tiny thatched roof hut in the jungle by the side of the Guachaca river, making beats on my laptop with headphones in preparation before meeting up. This beat was one of the first ones I played Jimena and immediately she got the vibe and we started to jam. The song had a triumphant and empowering feel, and then somehow we locked into chanting the name “Pambelé”, who is an iconic Afro-Latin boxer, born in Palenque, who holds a stature similar to Muhammad Ali for many Colombians .”

After a remarkable year of travel and playing DJ sets in over 30 cities across ten countries, Captain Planet returned to the studio to create his fifth and most ambitious album to date. Titled “ Sounds Like Home ,” the album takes a turn toward the organic, retro sounds of musicians who initially inspired him as a young artist. Charlie Wilder, also known as Captain Planet, flexes his composer and bandleader muscles, incorporating horn sections, strings, and acoustic drums, instead of his previously electronic-focused big club sounds.

Captain Planet on ‘Sounds Like Home’: “T he basic concept was to make a record like the ones I constantly pull off my shelves at home and play on the weekends. The records that turn into living room dance parties with my family, the soundtracks while I’m cooking, the music that fills the backyard for lazy hang outs .”

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Captain Planet Drops New Single 'Pambele'

The new single is dropping ahead of the forthcoming album.

In his latest musical offering, Captain Planet collaborates with Colombian singer Jimena Angel to create a scorching slice of classic Afro Latin funk. The song began during a recent tour in South America where Captain Planet was playing some gigs around Santa Marta & Cartagena.

A fan of Jimena's previous work, he reached out and connected online, arranging several days of collaboration. "I was staying in a tiny thatched roof hut in the jungle by the side of the Guachaca river, making beats on my laptop with headphones in preparation before meeting up. This beat was one of the first ones I played Jimena and immediately she got the vibe and we started to jam. The song had a triumphant and empowering feel, and then somehow we locked into chanting the name "Pambelé", who is an iconic Afro-Latin boxer, born in Palenque, who holds a stature similar to Muhammad Ali for many Colombians."

The uplifting Spanish lyrics speak about always moving forward, never looking backward, while fighting adversity. Jimena's powerful vocals soar over a super heavy bass line, accompanied by wah wah guitars and a Hammond organ riff, with syncopated punches of horns, congas and cowbells.

While the sound is reminiscent of timeless gems from artists like Ray Barretto or WAR, there is also a very contemporary feel and updated thump for today's discerning listeners. The new single is dropping ahead of the forthcoming album. "Pambelé" is out now and available everywhere you stream music.

Listen to the new single here:

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Captain Planet - Moqueca

Song of the day, hosted by dj miss ashley.

Today's Song of the Day, as chosen by DJ Ashley is “Moqueca” by Captain Planet from the 2023 album Sounds Like Home on Bastard Jazz Recordings

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By your powers combined, Captain Planet has ignited crowds across the world. The ever-world-traveling DJ has picked up steam touring constantly since shows opened up again in the wake of the pandemic. But Captain Planet never slows down. Right after finishing his 2022 tour, he jumped back into the studio to create his latest record Sounds Like Home . For Captain Planet, the goal was to make a record like the ones he reaches for while relaxing or entertaining at home. What results is the perfect house party album, brimming with positive vibes and endless grooves. “Moqueca” features Zuzuka Poderosa and Raphael Futura for an infectious track that sounds primed for a rooftop party and endless refreshments. Throw this one in your home and you’ll feel instantly transported to the soiree of your dreams. – Dusty Henry

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Glen Powell Says ‘Captain Planet’ Movie Isn’t Dead Yet and Producer Leonardo DiCaprio Is ‘Super Passionate About It’: ‘I Want It to Work’

By Zack Sharf

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It’s been well over five years since news first broke that Glen Powell was writing a “ Captain Planet ” movie for Leonardo DiCaprio ‘s Appian Way Productions. Powell, who was coming off the success of his Netflix rom-com “Set It Up” at the time, described his take on the environmentalist superhero as “subversive and fun and like dark and irreverent.” Half a decade later, Powell is an even bigger star thanks to “Top Gun: Maverick” and still wants to play Captain Planet.

“I think those conversations will be happening shortly,” Powell noted. “I know DiCaprio is super passionate about it. I’m super passionate about it. I think it could be great…I want that one to work. I’d love to play that superhero.”

Getting the “Captain Planet” movie off the ground would give Powell a major superhero tentpole to lead. Rumors have persisted for months that Powell is being courted by Marvel (perhaps to play Cyclops in the rebooted “X-Men”), but he stressed to ET that he hasn’t “had a conversation with Marvel.”

“It takes a long time to navigate this town, so for anyone to be like, ‘Oh, he’d be great in this role,’ it’s humbling, it’s great,” Powell added.

Powell previously addressed Marvel rumors in an interview with Variety , saying, “Before Comic-Con, everybody was like, ‘Dude, are you Cyclops?’ No, I’m not. Nobody has called me. I don’t even have one contact info for Marvel, so I have no idea what people are talking about.”

The actor has been a fixture of this year’s awards season thanks to “Top Gun: Maverick,” which is now streaming on Paramount+. The action drama is expected to nab several Oscar nominations, including best picture.

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Season 1 – The New Adventures of Captain Planet

Where to watch, the new adventures of captain planet — season 1.

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The surprising story behind the making of ‘Captain Planet’

The ’90s cartoon show was based on real issues and real people..

This story is part of  Grist’s Summer Dreams  arts and culture series, a weeklong exploration of how popular fiction can influence our environmental reality.

Like many older millennials, I spent quite a few of my after-school hours in the 1990s parked in front of the TV. You name it — if it came on after 3:15 p.m. and didn’t require cable, I probably watched it. But thinking back on those many hours 30 years later, one show’s staying power rises above the rest: Captain Planet.

For those unfamiliar with the series, Captain Planet was an unlikely hit. It starred a preachy, green-mulleted, pollution-sensitive superhero who used his powers to combat issues like oil spills, greenhouse gases , and nuclear waste. He could only be summoned by the Planeteers, a group of five internationally diverse teens with magical, element-themed rings: Earth, Fire, Wind, Water, and Heart (the last one being a combination of empathy, telepathy, and extreme persuasion). When those powers combined, as they predictably did at some point every episode, Captain Planet would rise majestically into the air, ready to do battle with a wide array of pollution-spewing supervillains. 

Compared to the dark and brooding superheroes of the DC and Marvel universes, Captain Planet was a bit of a dorky doodle. Sure, he could deliver a well-timed dad pun while punching an offshore drill rig, but he also spent a significant portion of his airtime straight-up lecturing viewers about recycling and conserving electricity. All the same, kids like me kept watching. The series was one of the longest-running cartoons of the 1990s, with six seasons, 113 television episodes, and one set of Burger King collectible action figures. 

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But according to executive producer Barbara Pyle, the show’s success had nothing to do with selling merch. “Our mission was to inspire and to educate the next generation of environmental activists,” Pyle said. She and producer Nicholas Boxer made it a point to slip as much planetary realness into the show’s fantastical plotlines. In fact, Pyle says many ideas were taken directly from the Global 2000 Report to the President , a 1980 paper commissioned by Jimmy Carter that warned of environmental disaster should policies fail to account for the world’s booming population growth. 

It was no easy task. Pyle and Boxer had previously worked together on documentaries about global social issues, but translating environmental concepts into a kid’s show was a different kind of challenge. “The show was both revolutionary and flawed,” said Boxer. “It was very hard to take these really complicated subjects and integrate them seamlessly into good storytelling… The best episodes felt thoughtful and cohesive. The worst ones were kind of a mess. ” 

Pyle’s interpretation is a bit more forgiving.“We did our homework, and the science was clear,” she said. “We knew there was going to come a time when it would be necessary for an entire generation — your generation — to speak with one voice on behalf of the planet. In some ways, the entire Captain Planet series was about preparing us for this moment.”

Watching Captain Planet in 2021 is a lot less entertaining than it was in 1990.

As an 8-year-old, I focused on the action sequences, the cool time-travel narratives, and the inevitable triumph of good over evil. The environmental hazards and villains I saw on the screen were so cartoonishly over the top, it didn’t occur to me that they might pose actual threats to my future wellbeing. I assumed it was a piece of fiction, like talking gargoyles or sewer-dwelling mutant turtles . Doing my part for the planet seemed as easy as cutting the plastic rings on a six-pack of soda or flipping off the light in an unoccupied room.

But the seeds of the real climate crisis — the one that adult show creators like Pyle and Boxer knew was coming — were always there in the show’s plotlines. Take, for example, the two-part, season one episode “Two Futures,” in which pig-faced villain Hoggish Greedly decides to open up a golf resort in the Arctic. Naturally, he and his sidekick solicit the aid of mad scientist Dr. Blight — voiced by none other than actress Meg Ryan. Greedly’s strategy is to go back to the 1950s and “burn all the coal and fossil fuels” and use global warming to melt all the ice. 

The arc is kind of intense (and disturbingly prescient) for a kids’ cartoon show. That’s because Pyle had a secondary audience in mind: parents. “I wanted to make a show that was cross-generational,” she said. “In my head, my target demographic was people born around 1985. But I was hoping parents or grandparents watching alongside kids would pick up on the message too.” 

That family edutainment goal affected a lot of the show’s writing. Pyle didn’t want kids to see their family members as evil, ecologically speaking. “That’s one of the reasons we made the bad guys and their plans so ridiculous,” she explained, “We tried to point the finger at behaviors rather than industries. That way, no child would go home and say, ‘Oh, daddy, you’re in a blah blah business.’ It would be horrible for some child to see their family member as a Captain Planet villain.”

Unlike the show’s exaggerated villains, the inspiration for the Planeteers were very much grounded in reality. When creating the characters, Pyle drew inspiration from specific individuals, many of whom were prominent in the environmental movement of the 1980s and 1990s.

Linka, who controlled wind, was loosely based on German Green Party co-founder Petra Kelly . Gi, the bearer of the water ring, was inspired by Chee Yoke Ling , a Malaysian human rights advocate who attended the 1992 U.N. “Earth Summit” Conference in Rio de Janeiro. Fiery Wheeler was more of an everyman — a mishmash of Pyle’s father and her best friend from New York. Ma-Ti, who possessed the power of heart, was based on Paulinho Paiakan , chief of the Kayapó people and one of the best-known Indigenous defenders of the Amazon rainforest. Kwame, who controlled earth, was a combination of several young men — two from Zimbabwe and one from Ghana — that Pyle had met while making environmental documentaries.

Barbara Pyle based many of the Planeteers on real-life environmental activists active in the 1980s and 1990s. Heart-power Planeteer Ma-Ti was based on real-life activist Paulinho Paiakan, left, a leader of the Kayapo people in Brazil’s Amazon Basin. Wind-power Planeteer Linka was loosely inspired by German Green Party co-founder Petra Kelly, RIGHT, seen here in 1983. Photos by Scott Wallace / Getty Images, Gaby SOMMER / Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images.

As for the unifying character, the name had come from famously eco-conscious media mogul Ted Turner, who hired Pyle in 1980 to make critical global issues more fun and entertaining. “Captain Planet!” he allegedly exclaimed to Pyle. When she asked who that was, he responded , “That’s your problem.”

“On some level, we had lost faith that adults were really paying attention to the problem,” Boxer recalled. “So, we said, let’s go to the kids, in an entertaining way.”

Pyle liked the idea of a kids’ show to get the big takeaways from landmark reports, like the Global 2000 Report to the President, across to a wider audience, but she didn’t think the world needed another beefy superhero. She started working on the project with Boxer, who suggested they make sure Captain Planet would only make an appearance after the Planeteers had identified the problem and come up with their own plan. Instead of a brawny savior, they pushed to make Captain fun-loving, lean, and dependent on others — a metaphor for teamwork.

Some people didn’t get it. Boxer remembers having lunch with a high-ranking TV executive and being told: “I don’t like Captain Planet. I don’t believe in it. And I don’t think any cartoon should have a message.” 

Boxer was unphased. “I told him, ‘Everything has a message. The question is whether the message is intended or not. At least we know what we are trying to say.’”

Almost 31 years have gone by since Captain Planet first hit the airwaves and both a lot and too little has changed. We ‘90s kids who watched the show are all grown up now, able to vote and act and weigh our own decisions against their impact on the very real climate crisis still in progress. The power is ours, for real this time.

The weight of that realization is something I now grapple with. Sure, I still recycle and turn off lights, but now I’m keenly aware that individual actions simply aren’t enough to stave off the worst effects of climate change. Rather than viewing that purely as motivation to do more, I’ve become disillusioned, compromising, anxious. In other words, I grew up.

And I’m hardly alone: Back in 1990, TIME magazine dubbed my generation the “ecokids,” calling us, “the best hope for the cause of preservation.” The article quoted several earnest youngsters who vowed to keep fighting for the planet come what may. In 2019, TIME staff writer Olivia B. Waxman tracked down many of the same sources to ask how they felt about that pledge as adults. While some had carved out careers in the environmental movement and felt the cause had made progress, others had become jaded and given up hope.

Pyle, on the other hand, has become even more unrelenting in her optimism. Over the years, she learned of groups of real-life planeteers — her name for the generation of adults who grew up watching Captain Planet — who had organically begun organizing around local environmental issues. In 1997, she used the proceeds from the Sasakawa Prize to create the Barbara Pyle Foundation to support those efforts, building a more cohesive network of environmentally motivated millennials. The network is currently working on an urgent messaging campaign for the upcoming COP26 climate negotiations in Glasgow to convince world leaders to take action. “It’s been 25 years already,” Pyle said. “We don’t have another 25 years.”

If Captain Planet were like any other superhero, now would be a really great time for a reboot. Climate scientists are warning that we have to act immediately to avoid planet-altering tipping points ; the latest U.N. climate report hints that it may already be too late to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels; and anti-science sentiments are perpetuating the spread of a deadly global virus. We’ve identified the enemy and know generally how to defeat it, but we’ve so far failed to make that plan a reality.

There have been several attempts to make a Captain Planet movie, but the efforts always seem to stall out. Pyle says that may be due to outside writers’ misunderstanding of the show’s mythology. “I’ve heard, ‘He’s going to be an alcoholic and the Planeteers are going to find him somewhere in some old Irish bar in New York.’ Now, what is wrong with that premise? Captain Planet doesn’t exist without the Planeteers. He’s just a reflection of who we are.”

Boxer says he’s encouraged that pop culture is still talking about — and parodying — the show more than two decades since it left the air. But if he were to write new episodes for the show today, with so much uncertainty about our ability to act in the scientifically allotted time frame, he’s torn about how they would end.

“The jury is still out on what’s going to happen,” he said. “I think you’d have to go with ‘to be continued.’”

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30 years ago, Captain Planet and the Planeteers imagined a kinder world. What can we do better now?

Credit: TBS

Captain Planet and the Planeteers  is celebrating its 30th anniversary this month, and even though the show looks like a gentle relic now, back then it was hailed for its commitment to educating children about the role that they could play in preserving and protecting the world.

The animated superhero series was first broadcast by TBS on Sept. 15, 1990, and followed the story of five teenagers with magical rings (the Planeteers) fighting to save the world from pollution with the help of a "superhero" (Captain Planet) who formed when the Planeteers' power came together. Though Captain Planet was never as popular as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles , it performed well enough to run for six seasons from 1990 to 1996 — with the series run from 1993 to 1996 being retitled  The New Adventures of Captain Planet  and airing on Turner Program Services  — and have a spin-off video game, action figure line, Marvel comics limited series, and promotional crossover with Burger King. Today it is perhaps best remembered for its catchy theme song, whose lyrics many millennials still know by heart. 

Phil Harnage  was the senior staff writer of DIC Entertainment when Ted Turner, the billionaire TV producer and founder of TBS and CNN, approached the company with his idea. Harnage tells SYFY WIRE that the entire production team “had real visions of changing the world by doing something with real social ramifications." Though he feels that the show fell short of its goal, he takes comfort in the fact that it “got kids to step up further and start recycling."

A NEW VISION

Harnage says that Turner originally tasked DIC and Hanna-Barbera with creating a concept for the show. With nothing to go on except that there were superpowers involved that combined to make an even more powerful character, Harnage and his colleagues came up with a scenario wherein Gaia, the spirit of the Earth, reached out to teenagers from specific global regions — Africa, Asia, South America, Eastern Europe, and the United States — and tasked them with saving the planet from pollution.

Turner loved DIC’s approach and decided to commission them with his full support. This included pulling in famous actors to voice some of the characters; Whoopi Goldberg was the original voice of Gaia, and the musician Sting played her evil counterpart, Zarm. Then there was the question of who would voice Captain Planet. Turner originally wanted Tom Cruise, because he was the biggest movie star in the world at the time. But after Cruise recorded the first couple of episodes, Harnage says, “we had to face the unpleasant realization that he did not have a superhero voice.” (David Coburn would later be chosen as the titular hero.)

NAVIGATING DRAMA  

From the beginning, Harnage says that the show tried to tackle things that no other cartoon was dealing with: killing animals, genetic modification, and harmful things that humans do to the environment. He explains that  Captain Planet ran into controversy with its episode about overpopulation, " Population Bomb .” Though his script used mice as analogs for humans in a riff on Gulliver’s Travels , TBS refused to air the episode in the first season because it was worried about the trouble it might cause.

“We tried to take a stance with these things,” Harnage says, “and do it in such a way where we offended as few people as possible because we didn’t want the Catholic church or evangelicals condemning Captain Planet for trying to warp children’s minds."

That is why so many of the first season’s episodes covered benign issues that everyone could get behind, such as the need to protect the planet from pollution. But, while most episodes focused on more generic environmental issues, like recycling and protecting endangered animal species, Captain Planet was still able to address some more specific and serious topics. After getting past the population control episode, Harnage says they “felt more comfortable with tackling heavy subjects." One such highlight was  “A Formula for Hate ,” which tackled HIV stigma and helped viewers understand that the virus could not be spread through casual touch.

“ Captain Planet was trying to head off what actually turned out to be the whole anti-science thing," Harnage says. Reflecting on the legacy of Captain Planet , he accepts that there are limits to what one can do with a cartoon. The one big thing he would change, if the show were revived today, is its approach to violence and consequences.

Not because this generation has become desensitized, but because, as he explains, “Kids don’t have a concept of being the person that violence gets done to. So they get triggered into this pattern of othering people. It’s very ‘us versus them’ and ‘We don't care what they feel’ or ‘They can’t feel because they aren’t like us.’ I would want to use the cartoon to show the results of violence and pain in people's lives.”

The idea would be that developing empathy for others fits naturally with preserving the planet. Showing children how their actions affect the greater community not only makes them more responsible, it also helps them understand their place in the world and how they can make it a better place.

HOW ENTERTAINMENT CAN ENGAGE KIDS TODAY

Kenyon Farrow — the co-executive director of Partners for Dignity & Rights , a national organization that works to guarantee universal rights for people across the U.S. — recalls that shows like Schoolhouse Rock! and Captain Planet helped spur his interest in the world beyond his neighborhood. Whether they are demonstrating how a bill is passed through Congress or the importance of climate change, he believes shows that teach children how the world functions are essential.

“Imagine being a kid in California and no one being willing to explain to you why the sky is blood-red,” Farrow tells SYFY WIRE, explaining that a show like Captain Planet could help young viewers make sense of the wildfires that are ravaging large swaths of California. “I think kids see and understand what's happening more than we think they do," he says. "It is our role, not to shelter them from reality, but to help give them perspective. We give kids a sense of safety through knowledge, not by pretending that things don't exist.”

Looking at the impact that COVID-19 is having on the planet, Farrow says that an “animated program with catchy jingles and action that appeals to children could help them understand the full implications of the disease."

This is particularly important to Farrow because of his career in reporting on science, health issues, and leading economic justice organizations. “I was not a good student in science or math because those things were taught in ways that were disconnected from my lived reality," Farrow says. "But if my science and biology classes had focused on HIV, that would have changed my engagement, because at that point AIDS was impacting the entire planet.”

He believes that entertainment can offer accessible explainers outside of the traditional classroom setting. “That way we can create entry points into subject areas that are traditionally considered ‘too hard,'" he says. It could even inspire a new generation of science-focused kids to develop new cures for the coronavirus and the challenges the world will undoubtedly continue to face down the line.

DIGGING DEEPER AND ERASING STIGMA

Connecting kids to the bigger picture beyond fire safety and protecting the world from contagions is just as important now as it was when Captain Planet first aired. But this generation of media-savvy audiences is too sophisticated for didactic Planeteers. More than being told what to think, they want their entertainment to demonstrate the courage of its own convictions.

Kassandra Frederique — the executive director of Drug Policy Alliance, a national nonprofit dedicated to ending the war on drugs — tells SYFY WIRE that “entertainment too often puts forward a particular angle without spending enough time exploring the conversation.” This glib perspective affects everything from  how Black men are perceived to  how girls view their bodies . Frederique says changing this means “decolonizing information” so that it does not perpetuate harmful tropes. It also means dropping the “notion that ‘I know everything and I'm going to teach you,’ because it's not sustainable and it does not build trust.”

"Young people have access to more information than they've ever had before," she continues, which makes engaging them crucial. Instead of telling young audiences what to think, creatives should provide them with valuable information, and try to lead them toward making healthier decisions.

This guidance does not mean dictating the terms. Frederique says that “when an adult tries to lead and direct the conversation, they reinforce power dynamics, which forces young people to navigate those power dynamics to get to the thing that they need.” But when an adult shifts the power dynamics to create a conversation where she or he is learning about what a kid wants, it becomes a collaborative process and a mutually beneficial conversation.

Harnage acknowledges that Captain Planet failed at engaging kids in thoughtful discussions, noting the criticism he has received about its “heavy-handed messages.” Even though the show embraced teamwork, it still operated from a patriarchal and authoritative viewpoint of "do what I say, or the world will end."

Perhaps if Captain Planet is ever revived, it can fix that tone-deaf approach by demonstrating greater empathy for people who lack the privilege to pursue conservation and environmentalism as easily as its heroes did. After all, if entertainment wants to educate and engage the next generation, it needs to pursue sophisticated narratives that show viewers more than simple tropes, and leave dictating how they should see the world in the past.

• Environment

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Watch: Planet Zebulon and the 2024 Red Bull Slide-In Tour

L ast March, Zeb Powell, Brantley Mullins, Grace, Warner, Jesse Augustinus, and friends hopped in an RV with Red Bull in Minnesota and road-tripped from the Midwest to the East Coast. 

It was the annual trip made by the crew on the Red Bull Slide-In Tour, a park and go ride the park at favorite resorts, hanging with locals and taking laps along the way.

The tour began on the East Coast and this year expanded to include Hyland Hills in Minnesota, Trollhaugen in Wisconsin, and Pine Knob in Michigan before cruising east for stops at Hollimont, Killington, Sugarbush, and Darkside Snowboard Shop. 

A new Planet Zebulon just dropped that encapsulates the whole thing. Zeb wrote on YouTube:

"Another #RedBullSlideInTour is in the books! For 2024 we hit the road and drove from Midwest to East making stops at mountains and truck stops along the way. Shout out to all who joined us at Trollhaugen, Pine Knob, Sugarbush, and Killington. Special thank you to @RedBullSnow for making all of this possible." 

Alex Caccamo, Brantley Mullins, Grace Warner, Jesse Augustinus, Tweek Tune, Adrian Mitchell, Brett Stamper, Denver Orr, and Will Mayo were on the tour, so there's plenty of excellent boarding to watch in the edit.

Filmed by Dylan Demers, IV Stuart, and Peter Cirilli. Edited by Dylan Demers.

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