Episodit

  • Breaking the Chains of Empire w/ Abby Martin (Live Show)

    Breaking the Chains of Empire w/ Abby Martin (Live Show)

    · Upstream

    U.S. empire—the world’s greatest enemy. U.S. imperialism is not a "single issue," it's directly connected to hundreds of millions of people's lives, capital accumulation and global inequality, climate change, fascism in the US, crumbling infrastructure, monopolies, and much, much more. U.S. imperialism is the issue that ties all of the other issues together, founded as it is on capital's need to accumulate profits and maintain U.S. political hegemony. There is not a single issue in your life that cannot be traced back to our empire and its maintenance.

    Today’s episode is a special live conversation we did last month in Los Angeles with the terrific Abby Martin. Abby is journalist, filmmaker, activist, founder of The Empire Files and director of the films Gaza Fights for Freedom and the upcoming documentary Earth’s Greatest Enemy, which focuses on one particular aspect of U.S. empire: its environmental impact. The U.S. military is the largest institutional source of climate emissions on the planet—and yet it’s exempt from the climate protocols that aim to reduce emissions. However, this is not the only way the US Empire harms the planet.

    Abby’s upcoming film, as well as our conversation with her, take a deep dive into imperialism’s wider environmental impacts. We also discuss Abby’s other work, including her 2019 film, Gaza Fights for Freedom, which documents the Great March of Return in Palestine. We talk about what she learned in 2017 from her time in Jerusalem and witnessing Israeli society first hand, her experience being an unapologetically anti-Zionist voice for so many years, the business of war, the upcoming elections, the role of alternative media in breaking the chains of empire and much more.

    Thank you to All Power Books in Los Angeles for organizing this event—they are a radical bookstore and community space that are the real deal. Check them out and support their incredible work at: allpowerbooks.org. And also, visit earthsgreatestenemy.com to chip in and support Abby and her team in getting their film past the finish line—they are still raising funds to complete production.

    Further Resources:

    Donate to Earth’s Greatest Enemy Gaza Fights for Freedom Breakthrough News Project Censored Jerusalem street interviews All Power Books Donate to All Power Books Join us in supporting Palestine at MECA, Anera, or the Palestinian Red Crescent Society

    Related Episodes:

    Better Lives for All w/ Jason Hickel Walter Rodney, Marxism, and Underdevelopment with D. Musa Springer & Charisse Burden-Stelly [UNLOCKED] How the North Plunders the South w/ Jason Hickel Palestine Pt. 11: Israel and the U.S. Empire w/ Max Ajl Nationalism and the Error of Patriotic Socialism w/ Sina Rahmani and Nick Climate Leninism w/ Jodi Dean and Kai Heron Upstream's ongoing series on Palestine

    Covert art: Gage from All Power Books

    Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

    If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

    For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

    You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

  • [TEASER] Oil, Monopoly Capitalism, and Imperialism w/ Adam Hanieh

    [TEASER] Oil, Monopoly Capitalism, and Imperialism w/ Adam Hanieh

    · Upstream

    This is a free preview of the episode "Oil, Monopoly Capitalism, and Imperialism w/ Adam Hanieh." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

    As a Patreon subscriber you will get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. You’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. Find out more at Patreon.com/upstreampodcast or at upstreampodcast.org/support. Thank you.

    Oil is much more than just a source of energy—it’s a commodity that has shaped—and has been shaped—by the forces of capitalism perhaps more so than any other commodity. The story of oil is one of monopoly capitalism, one of imperialism, one of cheap labor, resource extraction, ecosystem devastation, climate change, assassinations, environmental disasters, genocides—the list goes on. Oil is the commodity which not just lubricates the actual, literal machinery driving the system—but which also lubricates the entire process of U.S. imperialism—the blood flowing through the empire’s many tentacles wrapped around the globe.

    As today’s guest has written, “Oil's centrality stems from what it does for the imperatives of accumulation: its ability to accelerate and expand capital's turnover, cheapen the costs of production (including labor), and knit together an international market. No other commodity plays this role.”

    Adam Hanieh is a Palestinian professor at the Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. He is the author of Lineages of Revolt: Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East, published by Haymarket Books, and most recently, Crude Capitalism: Oil, Corporate Power, and the Making of the World Market, published by Verso. Adam was on the show last year to talk about the political economy of Palestine, part of our ongoing series on Palestine.In this episode we explore the early history of oil, its emergence as a fuel source and how it eventually overtook other fuels like coal as the primary energy source of capitalism. We explore the role that oil has played in shaping geopolitics—from colonialism to coups, assassinations, and more, focusing on the way that oil has shaped the Middle East to this day. We talk about the major oil companies and how the world market for oil works, and finally, we bring into stark relief the environmental implications of this hydrocarbon and the way that oil companies continue to dominate and shape our response to climate change.

    Further resources:

    Crude Capitalism: Oil, Corporate Power, and the Making of the World Market

    Related episodes:

    Upstream's ongoing series on Palestine

    Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

    If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

    For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

    You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

  • Puuttuva jakso?

    Paina tästä ja päivitä feedi.

  • Better Lives for All w/ Jason Hickel

    Better Lives for All w/ Jason Hickel

    · Upstream

    We’re often told that it would be unfeasible for everyone on the planet to live good lives—that if there wasn’t some degree of poverty—or at least lower living standards—in the rest of the world, then we’d blow right through the ecological limits of the planet. Even if it’s not said explicitly, the argument is that some people need to be poor in order for us in the Global North to live good lives. There’s a lot wrong with this assumption on a lot of different levels, but most importantly—it’s empirically inaccurate.

    It is possible, in fact, for everybody on the planet to have their needs met and to live a good life and make it happen, in fact, with only 30 percent of current global resource and energy use. That might sound unbelievable, right? Well, that’s capitalist realism for you. Because not only is it believable—it’s based on solid research and empirical data. It would, however, require ending capitalism and moving towards eco-socialism. So yes, it’s possible. But it won’t be easy.

    To discuss the research behind these exciting findings we’ve brought on economic anthropologist Jason Hickel. Jason is a professor at the The Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and the author of the books The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions and Less is More: How Degrowth will Save the World. He’s the lead author of the paper “How much growth is required to achieve good lives for all? Insights from needs-based analysis” published in the journal World Development Perspectives, and which we’ll be discussing today.

    As you may know, Jason is a regular guest on the show and was on most recently to discuss two other fascinating and important papers he recently co-authored, “Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015” published in journal Global Environmental Change and "Unequal exchange of labour in the world economy" published in the journal Nature Communications.

    What assumptions go into traditional economic thinking and how have they limited the way we conceptualize poverty and how we address it? How do we conceive of good lives—and how does our current economic system limit these conceptions and perpetuate environmental destruction and social immiseration? What would an economic system that is designed around meeting actual human and planetary needs look like? And, perhaps most importantly, how do we get there? These are just some of the questions we discuss in this fascinating conversation with economic anthropologist Jason Hickel.

    Further Resources:

    The Political and Economic Determinants of Health Outcomes: A Cross-National Analysis, Hugh F. Lena and Bruce London How to pay for saving the world: Modern Monetary Theory for a degrowth transition, Christopher Olk, Colleen Schneider, Jason Hickel

    Related Episodes:

    How the North Plunders the South w/ Jason Hickel The Divide – Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Markets with Jason Hickel International Development and Post-capitalism with Jason Hickel How Degrowth Will Save the World with Jason Hickel The Green Transition Pt.1 – The Problem with Green Capitalism

    Covert art: Berwyn Mure
    Intermission music: One Last Wish

    Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

    If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

    For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

    You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

  • [TEASER] Nathan Fielder's

    [TEASER] Nathan Fielder's "The Curse" w/ Carlee

    · Upstream

    You can listen to the full episode "Nathan Fielder's 'The Curse'" by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

    As a Patreon subscriber you will get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. You’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. Find out more at Patreon.com/upstreampodcast or at upstreampodcast.org/support. Thank you.

    What happens when the contradictions of living under late capitalism—both internal and external—are revealed in excruciating detail? What happens when our performances break down, when they break us, when they break those around us? What happens when you take all of this and wrap it up in a faux reality TV show which is itself about a reality TV show?

    Well, you get The Curse—the latest masterpiece by comedian, actor, writer, director, and producer, Nathan Fielder. You may know Nathan from his satirical docu-reality comedy television series, Nathan For You. You may know him from his more recent TV series The Rehearsal. Or you may not know him at all—it doesn’t really matter, because in this episode we’re going to explain everything you need to know about how Nathan Fielder produces masterful media and art—and we’re going to do so by taking a deep dive into the 10 episode mini-series The Curse, written by and starring Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie—and also starring Emma Stone.

    And to have this conversation, we’ve invited on friend of the show and TV & film enthusiast Carlee. You may recognize Carlee from our episode on Capitalist Realism, or you may recall a couple of Patreon episodes ago when Robert read her piece, “The Puritanical Eye: Hyper-mediation, Sex on Film, and the Disavowal of Desire.”

    In this conversation, we discuss Nathan Fielder’s “The Curse”—walking you through the plot and the characters before analyzing and presenting a wide variety of scenes from the show and discussing what they tell us about our individuated, isolated, tortured, exhausted, and often performative lives under neoliberal capitalism. It really is a great show and this is a wide-ranging discussion that will have value whether or not you’ve seen the show. It’s also a lot of fun.

    Further resources:

    Egress: On Mourning, Melancholy and Mark Fisher The Puritanical Eye: Hyper-mediation, Sex on Film, and the Disavowal of Desire, by Carlee

    Related episodes:

    Capitalist Realism w/ Carlee Sex, Desire, and the Neoliberal Subject

    Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

    If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

  • The Logical Case for Socialism (and Against Capitalism) w/ Scott Sehon

    The Logical Case for Socialism (and Against Capitalism) w/ Scott Sehon

    · Upstream

    Facts don’t care about your feelings. Logic isn’t fair. Reason isn’t concerned with your emotions. These oft-regurgitated cliches hurled at the left by those on the right might sound familiar to you. Hey, maybe they’ve even been directed at you personally. And, aside from seeing these claims from the right as simply funny, they’re also quite ironic. Because, when you actually dig down into the arguments of both the left and the right, it becomes quite clear, quite quickly, that the facts are actually on our side. That when you use logic and reason to argue for either capitalism or socialism, it’s socialism that comes out as the winner. Everytime.

    There are many tools in the left’s toolbox when it comes to convincing those we interact with about the superiority of socialism. We do have arguments that center on fairness and equity, on more feelings-based arguments, which are very compelling and which we should certainly not abandon. But we also have a vast arsenal of arguments that rely on simple logic. And it’s some of these arguments that we’re going to explore—both in favor of socialism and against capitalism—in this episode. And we’ve brought on the perfect guest to walk us through this style of argumentation.

    Scott Sehon is a Professor of philosophy at Bowdoin College and author of the book Socialism: A Logical Introduction, published by Oxford University Press. In this episode, we introduce the philosophical study of logic and how to construct and deconstruct logical formulas and logical arguments. We then apply this knowledge to the real world by asking what is the better economic system: socialism or capitalism? In the process we discredit and overturn some of the most common arguments for capitalism, we explore what we actually mean by socialism and socialistic societies, we explore a great deal of empirical data suggesting the superiority of societies with more democratic control and more egalitarian distribution, and, we talk about the importance of utilizing the tools of logic and reason as socialists.

    Further resources:

    Socialism: A Logical Introduction, by Scott Sehon Taking Stock of Shock: Social Consequences of the 1989 Revolutions by Kristen Ghodsee and Mitchell Orenstein

    Related episodes:

    Dialectical Materialism w/ Josh Sykes Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism with Kristen Ghodsee [UNLOCKED] How the North Plunders the South w/ Jason Hickel Walter Rodney, Marxism, and Underdevelopment with D. Musa Springer & Charisse Burden-Stelly The Spirit Level with Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett Suburban Hell and Ugly Cities Debunking the Myth of Homo economicus (documentary) Socialism Betrayed w/ Roger Keeran and Joe Jamison

    Cover artwork: Carolyn Raider
    Intermission music: "Invisible Rain" by Stick To Your Guns

    Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

    If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

    For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

    You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

  • [UNLOCKED] Capitalism and the Weight Loss Industry w/ Johann Hari

    [UNLOCKED] Capitalism and the Weight Loss Industry w/ Johann Hari

    · Upstream

    Weight loss has become a fully fledged industry in the United States—another classic trick by the capitalist class: manufacture a problem to make profits, and then sell a half-solution back to the population to purportedly address that problem. Are you experiencing health issues from the poisonous food manufacturing industry in the United States? No problem, we got you. Here’s a drug.

    You might have heard of a drug called Ozempic—if not, don’t worry, we’ll bring you up to speed soon, but for now, all you need to know is that it’s a brand new weight loss drug that swept its way through Hollywood a couple of years ago and has now found its way into the bathroom mirrors of people around the world. Some predictions actually suggest that in a few years, a quarter of the U.S. population will be taking these drugs. In fact, it’s become so widespread that there’s been a decline in the stock value of companies like Krispy Kreme, the doughnut brand, which analysts have directly attributed to the growing popularity of drugs like Ozempic.

    But what problem are these miracle weight loss drugs really trying to solve? If they are meant to increase our health and well-being, how do they actually impact health indicators? And what if the ultimate solution to the problem of increasing stress under capitalism and a poisonous food industry is more complicated than injecting yourself with appetite suppressing hormones?

    These are the same questions that led today’s guest on a journey from Iceland to Minneapolis to Tokyo to find some answers about the impacts of industrial food manufacturing and “miracle” drugs. The answers aren’t black and white, and they take us through a deep and widely varying conversation that spans from body positivity movements, to weight loss drugs, fast food, anorexia, body dysmorphia, health and healing, and much more.

    Johann Hari is the author of the books Lost Connections: Why You’re Depressed and How to Find Hope, Stolen Focus: Why you Can’t Pay Attention, and, most recently, Magic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight-Loss Drugs. In this episode Johann tells us about his experience experimenting with Ozempic, the benefits and drawbacks of the drug, what it taught him about shame, willpower, and healing, and whether these magic little pills are a pathway towards liberation from diabetes, cancer, and an early death, or if they’re just another symptom of and false solution to a system that poisons us for a profit.

    Further resources:

    Magic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight-Loss Drugs, by Johann Hari

    Related episodes:

    Upstream: Stolen Focus with Johann Hari Upstream: The Political Economy of Food with Eric Holt-Gimenez

    Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

    If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

    For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

    You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

  • [TEASER] The Liberal Virus

    [TEASER] The Liberal Virus

    · Upstream

    You can listen to the full episode "The Liberal Virus" by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

    As a Patreon subscriber you will get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. You’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. Find out more at Patreon.com/upstreampodcast or at upstreampodcast.org/support. Thank you.

    Liberalism is a virus. It began to spread across Europe centuries ago and was later carried into other parts of the planet where it evolved and then returned back to Europe even more virulent than before. Liberalism, is, of course, used here in the philosophical sense, not in the sense that it is used in the United States’ electoral and political sense. Liberalism, for the most part, is synonymous with capitalism, and in this Patreon reading and analysis of the classic text, The Liberal Virus: Permanent War and the Americanization of the World, we go on a journey with the Egyptian and French Marxist, dependency theorist Samir Amin to explore the rise of liberalism and its implications for people and the planet.

    In doing so, we explore the basic tenets of liberalism, how it elevates the economy above all else, how it distorts human relations and infects us with pure economism and an exchange value mindset. We take detours into Mark Fisher’s concept of capitalist realism, into postmodernism and how it has been deployed as an ideological weapon against Marxism, into U.S. electoral politics and how identity is utilized by the liberal class, into U.S. imperialism, world systems theory, and much, much more.

    Further resources:

    The Liberal Virus: Permanent War and the Americanization of the World, by Samir Amin

    Related episodes:

    Walter Rodney, Marxism, and Underdevelopment with D. Musa Springer & Charisse Burden-Stelly Palestine Pt. 11: Israel and the U.S. Empire w/ Max Ajl [UNLOCKED] How the North Plunders the South w/ Jason Hickel Dialectical Materialism w/ Josh Sykes Climate Leninism w/ Jodi Dean and Kai Heron The Missing Revolution w/ Vincent Bevins What is To Be Done? with Breht O'Shea and Alyson Escalante Capitalist Realism with Carlee

    Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

    If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

    For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

    You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

  • Walter Rodney, Marxism, and Underdevelopment with D. Musa Springer & Charisse Burden-Stelly

    Walter Rodney, Marxism, and Underdevelopment with D. Musa Springer & Charisse Burden-Stelly

    · Upstream

    Pan-African Marxist, underdevelopment theorist, guerrilla intellectual, father, husband, radical—these are all terms that we could use to describe Walter Rodney. You may know him from his classic text, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, you may know that he was assassinated at the age of 38 for his activism, or you may not know who he was at all—either way, his ideas and his influence have most likely reached you, if not directly, then indirectly, through the waves and ripples that his life and work created in the many intersecting liberation movements throughout the planet.

    Described by some as decolonial Marxism, by others as Pan-African Marxism, or just as a continuation of Marxist theory as applied to the African continent and the African diaspora, Rodney’s work has been monumental in advancing and applying scientific socialism to updated physical and temporal regions which were not covered extensively until Rodney. His theories on underdevelopment as part of global capitalism opened up new spaces for theorizing and understanding imperialism, colonialism, and neocolonialism. His work in academia was imbued with a radical, guerrilla, fervor which resulted in institutions and states taking great measures to silence him, and the impact that he had was so monumental that he was tragically assassinated in his home country of Guyana almost 45 years ago.

    We’ve been exploring many ideas on the show recently that are founded on much of Walter Rodney’s work, and so an episode on his life and work are past-due. And we have brought on two guests who we could not be more excited to be having this conversation with.

    D. Musa Springer is a cultural worker, community organizer, and journalist based in Georgia. They are the International Youth Representative for Cuba's Red Barrial Afrodescendiente and an organizer with The Black Alliance for Peace. They produced the documentary “Parchman Prison: Pain & Protest (2020),” and are the host of the Groundings podcast. They are currently working on a documentary project titled “Y Mis Negros Que?”, and their book Alive & Paranoid was published in Spring, 2024 by Iskra Books.

    Charisse Burden-Stelly is Associate Professor of African American studies at Wayne State University, a member of The Black Alliance for Peace and Community Movement Builders, and author of Black Scare / Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States, published by the University of Chicago Press. You may remember that Charisse was on the show last year to talk about Black Scare / Red Scare.

    In this conversation, we introduce Walter Rodney biographically before we dive into his work applying scientific socialism to Africa, theorizing underdevelopment and capitalism as a world system, applying his work to events happening in the world right now in places like Palestine and Cuba, what Rodney had to say about education and academia, and much, much more.

    Further resources:

    Charisse Burden-Stelly Black Scare / Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States, by Charisse Burden-Stelly Alive and Paranoid, by D. Musa Springer The Walter Rodney Foundation

    Related episodes:

    Upstream: Black Scare / Red Scare with Charisse Burden-Stelly Upstream: [UNLOCKED] How the North Plunders the South w/ Jason Hickel

    Intermission music: "A Song for Walter Rodney" by Bocaflojay

    Cover artwork: B. Mure

    Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

    If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

    For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

    You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

  • [TEASER] Sex, Desire, and the Neoliberal Subject

    [TEASER] Sex, Desire, and the Neoliberal Subject

    · Upstream

    You can listen to the full episode "Sex, Desire, and the Neoliberal Subject" by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

    As a Patreon subscriber you will get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. You’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. Find out more at Patreon.com/upstreampodcast or at upstreampodcast.org/support. Thank you.

    What do sex scenes in film have to do with the crushing weight of capitalism? How have our bodily desires and passions been ambushed, commodified, and exhausted by the constant, catastrophic impacts of a system that alienates as it extracts? How have we been trained to conflate consumption and activism under neoliberalism, so that the very act of consuming limits our political aspirations and actions? And why the hell are there so few sex scenes in cinema these days?

    These are just some of the questions we explore in this episode as Robert reads a beautifully-written and wide-reaching piece by friend of the show Carlee (co-host of the podcast Hit Factory): “The Puritanical Eye: Hyper-mediation, Sex on Film, and the Disavowal of Desire.”

    Further resources:

    “The Puritanical Eye: Hyper-mediation, Sex on Film, and the Disavowal of Desire,” by Carlee Hit Factory Carlee on Twitter

    Related episodes:

    Upstream: Capitalist Realism with Carlee

    Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

    If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

    For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

    You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

  • Breaking Up with Capitalism w/ Malaika Jabali

    Breaking Up with Capitalism w/ Malaika Jabali

    · Upstream

    As socialists in the United States one of our most important tasks—at least under our current material conditions—is to raise class consciousness among the mass of people: the basic work of tuning people in to the existence of structures and systems that define and limit our lives.

    As much as we on the left might take these things for granted, it’s always important to remember that many, many folks out there don’t think of the world in terms of socialism, capitalism, Marx, Engels—certainly not the relations of production under monopoly capitalism. But that doesn’t mean they don’t get it. If you live under capitalism, you get it. If not theoretically or in terms of political analysis, you get it because you might hate your boss, or your landlord, or you might wish you could spend more of your day watching your kids grow up, or you might have had to skip a pill here or there because you couldn’t afford refills from the pharmacy. Most people get it. They just might not have an ideological framework within which to situate their frustration, their anger, their sadness, their hopelessness.

    So, in light of this, sometimes it’s helpful for us to frame issues of anti-capitalism and socialism in ways that are easily relatable and accessible. This is what our guest in today’s episode has accomplished in her latest book, which uses relationship analogies to provide you with everything you need to know about what a healthy relationship with our political economy could actually look like, issue by issue—from healthcare and housing to the whole concept of American democracy. Malaika Jabali is an award-winning journalist, policy attorney, life-long socialist, and author of the book, It’s Not You, It’s Capitalism: Why It’s Time to Break Up and How to Move On. In this conversation we have a wide-ranging discussion about raising class consciousness, Malaika’s organizing work in the midwest and the deep south, what different visions of socialism look like, and why it’s not too late to break up with your toxic partner and begin a new, thriving relationship with your new boo: socialism.

    Further resources:

    It's Not You, It's Capitalism by Malaika Jabali Malaika Jabali

    Related episodes:

    Upstream: Worker Co-ops Pt. 1: Widening Spheres of Democracy Upstream: Worker Co-ops Pt 2: Islands Within a Sea of Capitalism

    Intermission music: "Cost of Living" by Mom Friend

    Cover artwork: Kayla E.

    This episode of Upstream is brought to you in part by Alluvium Gatherings. Alluvium Gatherings designs, plans, and produces events for social and environmental justice movements that allow people to come together to solve the challenges of our time. Learn more at alluviumgatherings.com

    Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

    If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

    For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

    You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

  • [TEASER] Capitalism and the Weight Loss Industry w/ Johann Hari

    [TEASER] Capitalism and the Weight Loss Industry w/ Johann Hari

    · Upstream

    Listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

    As a Patreon subscriber you will get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. You’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. Find out more at Patreon.com/upstreampodcast or at upstreampodcast.org/support. Thank you.

    Weight loss has become a fully fledged industry in the United States—another classic trick by the capitalist class: manufacture a problem to make profits, and then sell a half-solution back to the population to purportedly address that problem. Are you experiencing health issues from the poisonous food manufacturing industry in the United States? No problem, we got you. Here’s a drug.

    You might have heard of a drug called Ozempic—if not, don’t worry, we’ll bring you up to speed soon, but for now, all you need to know is that it’s a brand new weight loss drug that swept its way through Hollywood a couple of years ago and has now found its way into the bathroom mirrors of people around the world. Some predictions actually suggest that in a few years, a quarter of the U.S. population will be taking these drugs. In fact, it’s become so widespread that there’s been a decline in the stock value of companies like Krispy Kreme, the doughnut brand, which analysts have directly attributed to the growing popularity of drugs like Ozempic.

    But what problem are these miracle weight loss drugs really trying to solve? If they are meant to increase our health and well-being, how do they actually impact health indicators? And what if the ultimate solution to the problem of increasing stress under capitalism and a poisonous food industry is more complicated than injecting yourself with appetite suppressing hormones?

    These are the same questions that led today’s guest on a journey from Iceland to Minneapolis to Tokyo to find some answers about the impacts of industrial food manufacturing and “miracle” drugs. The answers aren’t black and white, and they take us through a deep and widely varying conversation that spans from body positivity movements, to weight loss drugs, fast food, anorexia, body dysmorphia, health and healing, and much more.

    Johann Hari is the author of the books Lost Connections: Why You’re Depressed and How to Find Hope, Stolen Focus: Why you Can’t Pay Attention, and, most recently, Magic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight-Loss Drugs. In this episode Johann tells us about his experience experimenting with Ozempic, the benefits and drawbacks of the drug, what it taught him about shame, willpower, and healing, and whether these magic little pills are a pathway towards liberation from diabetes, cancer, and an early death, or if they’re just another symptom of and false solution to a system that poisons us for a profit.

    Further resources:

    Magic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight-Loss Drugs, by Johann Hari

    Related episodes:

    Upstream: Stolen Focus with Johann Hari Upstream: The Political Economy of Food with Eric Holt-Gimenez

    Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

    If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

    For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

    You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

  • Righteous Indignation, Love, and Running for President w/ Dr. Cornel West

    Righteous Indignation, Love, and Running for President w/ Dr. Cornel West

    · Upstream

    Righteous indignation, truth, justice, and, maybe most important, love. These are some of the pillars that support the work that Dr. Cornel West, today’s guest, has been committed to throughout his entire life.

    Dr. West, as you may likely already know, is a longtime political activist, philosopher, theologian, and public intellectual. He is the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary where he teaches courses in Philosophy of Religion and African American Critical Thought. He’s the former Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. Dr. West has written 20 books and has edited 13, and is best known for his classics, Race Matters and Democracy Matters. Dr. West is running for President of the United States with Vice Presidential candidate Melina Abdullah with the Justice for All Party.

    In this conversation, we explore what inspired Dr. West to take up the electoral path and take a stand against the corporate parties of our decaying empire—the Democrats and the Republicans. We talk about electoralism as a tool in a much larger toolkit of the left, a toolkit which includes trade union organizing, direct action, and building class consciousness. We talk about the importance of love and art in our movements as an antidote to capitalism’s totalizing, soul crushing hegemony in these dying years of the U.S. empire, and we discuss why it’s necessary to infuse our struggles here in the United States with an understanding of imperialism and the impact that the United States has on a global scale.

    Further resources:

    Cornel West 2024

    Related episodes:

    Upstream: A Marxist Perspective on Elections with August Nimtz Upstream: The Political Economy of Jazz with Gerald Horne Upstream's Series on Electoralism

    Intermission music by Noname

    Cover art by Berwyn Mure

    Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

    If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

    For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

    You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

  • [TEASER] Palestine Pt. 11: Israel and the U.S. Empire w/ Max Ajl

    [TEASER] Palestine Pt. 11: Israel and the U.S. Empire w/ Max Ajl

    · Upstream

    You can listen to the full episode "Israel and the U.S. Empire w/ Max Ajl" by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

    As a Patreon subscriber you will get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. You’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. Find out more at Patreon.com/upstreampodcast or at upstreampodcast.org/support. Thank you.

    There’s a widespread misconception among a significant number of people—including many on the left—that when it comes to the U.S./Israel relationship, it’s Israel that’s pulling the strings. It’s the belief that Israel is pulling the United States into something that it doesn’t want to be involved in, that the Israel lobby has held our policymakers hostage, and that the United States actually really, sincerely cares about the wellbeing of Palestinians, but that the White House, the State Department, and Congress, are all beholden to nefarious Israeli actors. Some even think that blackmail is involved.

    There’s something compelling to some about this narrative—it allows them to ignore reality, hiding the blood-soaked stains of U.S. empire under the rug. It conveniently dismisses the fact that the United States is literally built on the bones of the murdered, whether ethnically cleansed Indigenous children, enslaved Africans and their ancestors, or the child workers of the 19th century—to name just a few examples. The U.S. has no qualms about dead children, let alone innocent adults.

    And when it comes to so-called Israel, the United States’ relationship with the zionist entity is a relationship with a client state—a state which ultimately serves the interests of U.S. capital and U.S. imperialism more broadly. Don’t be distracted by liberal bloviations and other forms of erroneous analysis—the United States is willfully committed on all levels.

    And if you’re asking, well, why? Why is the United States so committed to its relationship with Israel? Well, that’s exactly what we’re going to be discussing with this week’s guest. Max Ajl is a Research Fellow at the Merian Centre for Advanced Studies at the University of Tunis, a Fellow at the University of Ghent, and a researcher with the Tunisian Observatory for Food Sovereignty and the Environment. He’s also the author of A People’s Green New Deal and, most recently, a two-part article titled “Palestine’s Great Flood.” Max was also featured prominently in our two-part audio documentary The Green Transition.

    In this Patreon episode, Max provides us with a Marxist-Leninst analysis of the U.S.’s relationship with Israel, unpacking how Israel has served as a watchdog for the U.S. in East Asia and how Israel has served the U.S. empire in crushing radical left movements globally—particularly, of course, in Palestine. We also discuss the role of the Israel lobby, the mechanics of imperialism and capital accumulation on a global level, and where the sick, twisted, morbid relationship between the United States and Israel might be headed.

    Cover illustration: Berwyn Mure

    Further resources:

    Max's ResearchGate page Palestine's Great Flood Pt. 1 Palestine's Great Flood Pt. 2 A People's Green New Deal

    Related episodes:

    Upstream's Ongoing Palestine Series [UNLOCKED] How the North Plunders the South w/ Jason Hickel Dialectical Materialism w/ Josh Sykes Donate to Middle Eastern Children's Alliance (MECA) Anera: Provide urgent humanitarian aid to Palestinians Gaza Mutual Aid

    Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

    If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

    For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

    You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

  • Palestine Pt. 10: Healing from Zionism w/ Meital Yaniv

    Palestine Pt. 10: Healing from Zionism w/ Meital Yaniv

    · Upstream

    "What Israel is doing right now has nothing to do with antisemitism. What Israel is doing right now is a genocide. What Israel has been doing for the past 75 years is apartheid, is occupation. There is no need for any one of us to serve in the IDF. The IDF should not exist. The state of Israel should not exist." These are the words of a former Israeli soldier turned anti-Zionist organizer: Meital Yaniv.

    Meital describes themself as a “death laborer tending to a prayer for the liberation of the land of Palestine” and has recently written the book Bloodlines which traces their paternal lineage being survivors of the Holocaust and subsequently migrating to Palestine. From there, Meital traces their lineage through indoctrination into Zionism and as settler-colonists, and defenders of the so-called “state of Israel.” Meital then describes their refusal to serve in the IDF and their subsequent departure from Israel and development into a death doula for Zionism and Israel.

    In this conversation with Meital, we hear about what it’s like to be raised “extremely Zionistic” and to serve in the IDF. We learn about the consequences of trauma that is passed down intergenerationally and what is necessary to truly heal individually and collectively. We explore how to talk to people who defend Zionism and the state of Israel and what the tradition of Judaism would say about Zionism and the genocide of the Palestinian people. And finally, Meital offers invitations for how we can all contribute to bringing the state of Israel to an end for the liberation of Palestine.

    And finally, Meital offers invitations for how we can all contribute to bringing the state of Israel to compassionate just death for the liberation of Palestine.

    Further resources:

    Bloodlines by Meital Yaniv Meital Yaniv's website

    Related episodes:

    Upstream: Palestine Pt. 1: A Socialist Introduction with Sumaya Awad Upstream: Palestine Pt. 2: Justice for Some with Noura Erakat Upstream: Palestine Pt. 3: Settler-Colonialism and Medical Apartheid with Rupa Marya & Jess Ghannam Upstream: Palestine Pt. 4: False Solutions and Paths of Resistance with Sumaya Awad Upstream: Palestine Pt. 5: The Political Economy of Palestine with Adam Hanieh Upstream: Palestine Pt. 6: One State with Ghada Karmi Upstream: Palestine Pt. 7: Direct Action w/ Max Geller of Palestine Action Upstream: Palestine Pt. 8: Indigeneity and Settler-Colonialism w/ Krystal Two Bulls & Sumaya Awad Upstream: Palestine Pt. 9: Palestine 2031 w/ Nadia Zanghari Donate to Middle Eastern Children's Alliance (MECA) Anera: Provide urgent humanitarian aid to Palestinians Gaza Mutual Aid

    Intermission music: “Arvoles Yoran Por Luvias (Trees Cry For Rain)” performed by Gloria Levy

    Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

    If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

    For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

    You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

  • [UNLOCKED] How the North Plunders the South w/ Jason Hickel

    [UNLOCKED] How the North Plunders the South w/ Jason Hickel

    · Upstream

    The imperial core—which is comprised of settler-colonial states like those in Western Europe, as well as states like the United States, Canada and Australia—have been stealing the resources and labor of the Global South—or the periphery—for centuries. It started with the direct colonial violence and resource exploitation that marked much of the last few centuries, but it didn’t end there.

    Neo-colonialism—a term that you’re probably familiar with—is broadly defined as the use of economic, political, cultural, or other pressures to control or influence other countries, especially former colonies. But what does it actually look like in practice? How is the imperial core still plundering and pillaging the periphery? The practice of widespread crude, cruel, brute force that marked direct colonialism may not exist in the same exact form as it once did—but the outcome is still the same: mass extraction and exploitation from the Global South which has resulted in a staggering net transfer of resources, wealth, and labor to the Global North.

    In this episode, we’re going to discuss the mechanisms and extent of neocolonial extraction and exploitation as they manifest today, and we’ve brought on the perfect guest to walk us through it.

    Jason Hickel is a professor at the The Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, the author of the books The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions and Less is More: How Degrowth will Save the World, and the the lead author of two papers that we’ll be focusing on today: “Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015” published in journal Global Environmental Change, and "Unequal exchange of labour in the world economy" forthcoming in the journal Nature Communications.

    In this conversion we explore the theory of uneven exchange and how it sheds light on neocolonialism in practice, we discuss some of the key findings from Jason’s research on imperialist appropriation in the world economy, we dispel some of the myths perpetuated by those claiming that capitalism has lifted “millions out of poverty,” we talk about what a just degrowth transition of the global economy would look like and, crucially, how we might achieve it.

    Further resources:

    Jason Hickel “Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015” published in journal Global Environmental Change

    Related Episodes:

    Upstream: The Divide – Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Markets with Jason Hickel Upstream: International Development and Post-capitalism with Jason Hickel Upstream: How Degrowth Will Save the World with Jason Hickel Upstream: The Green Transition Pt.1 – The Problem with Green Capitalism

    Thank you to Berwyn Mure for the covert art.

    Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

    If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

    For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

    You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

  • [TEASER] Suburban Hell and Ugly Cities

    [TEASER] Suburban Hell and Ugly Cities

    · Upstream

    You can listen to the full episode "Suburban Hell and Ugly Cities" by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

    As a Patreon subscriber, not only will you get access to at least one bonus episode a month, usually two or three, as well as early access to certain episodes and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers, depending on which tier you subscribe to, but you’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. Find out more at Patreon.com/upstreampodcast or at upstreampodcast.org/support. Thank you.

    Why is even just driving through suburbia soul crushing? Why are so many cities and towns in the United States so
ugly? All of us here would probably agree that car-centric city planning and corporate development are huge factors to consider when asking these questions. But what exactly about this type of planning and development is it that feels so oppressive? What exactly is it about that strip mall that makes your heart sink? What exactly is it about that suburban lawn that makes you feel so uncannily uncomfortable? These are some of the questions that we explore in this Patreon episode.

    In this episode Robert reads and comments on two separate but related pieces: Why even driving through suburbia is soul crushing, by Alex Balashov and Compromise, Hell! by Wendell Berry. These pieces explore the anti-social, barren, and soul-crushing aspects of how we, under late-stage capitalism here in the United States, design the spaces we travel through and live in. From freeway interchanges that jut out like decaying exo-skeletons, to the barren eight-late expressways that cut neighborhoods in half, to the giant lawns, fake porches, and kitschy columns that ornament many suburban homes—this reading not only calls out these monstrosities but explains what they do to us on a psychological, nervous system, and social level.

    Further resources:

    Why Even Driving Through Suburbia is Soul Crushing, by Alex Balashov Compromise, Hell! by Wendell Berry 27:10: Images 1 & 2 McMansion Hell

    Related episodes:

    Upstream: Everyday Utopia and Radical Imagination with Kristen Ghodsee Upstream: Capitalist Realism with Carlee Gomes Upstream: Dialectical Materialism w/ Josh Sykes Grassroots Urban Placemaking with Mark Lakeman

    Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

    If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

    For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

    You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

  • Dialectical Materialism w/ Josh Sykes

    Dialectical Materialism w/ Josh Sykes

    · Upstream

    Contradiction is one of the most important concepts in Marxist philosophy. When we think about Marxism, we typically think about the contributions that Marx, Engels, Lenin (and many others since) have made specifically to the study of political economy—but there are also deep philosophical underpinnings that form the foundation of Marxist political economy, and one of these foundational philosophies is dialectical materialism.

    Dialectical materialism brings together two important components of Marxist thought: dialectics and materialism. Broadly speaking, dialectics is grounded in the idea that in order to understand the world, we must look at things in relation to one another and not as isolated and separate phenomena. And we must also understand that those relations include opposing forces that act in contradiction to one another. For example, the two opposing forces at play in capitalism are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat—or capitalists and workers.

    The other part of dialectical materialism, the materialism part, is grounded in the idea that in order to understand the world, we must start by understanding our material reality, and that material conditions are primary over ideas. It’s not the ideas of great men that drive society forward, but the material conditions that give rise to those ideas in the first place. We’ll walk you through all of this in much more detail throughout this episode.

    Theory is an essential element of the revolutionary work that we do, and it’s crucial that we familiarize ourselves with Marxist theory to help inform and guide our revolutionary practice. As Lenin said, “Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.” Understanding the foundational theories and philosophies that underlie the work that we do helps take our work to the next level. Familiarizing ourselves with theory and grounding our practice in it elevates our work and gives us unique tools and specialized knowledge that helps us sharpen the tools in our revolutionary toolbox and understand the world around us with more clarity and focus.

    This is why we’re going to be sharing a few episodes over the coming months to explore Marxist theory in depth. And in this episode, we’re taking a deep dive into dialectical materialism. And we’ve brought on the perfect guest to help us through this.

    Josh Sykes is a writer and an activist organizing with Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO). He’s the author of the book The Revolutionary Science of Marxism-Leninism published last year by Freedom Road. Josh’s book is an introduction to Marxism-Leninism split up into seven sections, and in this episode, we’ll be taking a deep dive into the second section of the book which explores the philosophy underpinning Marxism-Leninism: dialectical materialism.

    Further resources:

    Freedom Road Socialist Organization The Revolutionary Science of Marxism-Leninism, by J. Sykes

    Related episodes:

    Upstream: Revolutionary Leftism with Breht O'Shea Upstream: What is to be Done? With Breht O'Shea and Alyson Escalante Upstream: Climate Leninism w/ Jodi Dean and Kai Heron

    Intermission music by Fugazi.

    Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

    If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

    For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

    You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

  • The Big Tech Con w/ Cory Doctorow

    The Big Tech Con w/ Cory Doctorow

    · Upstream

    Ever wonder why it feels like almost every single tech product you use is actively trying to screw you? Why it is that your printer requires you to subscribe to ink cartridges that, ounce for ounce, cost more than gold? Why you can’t read websites anymore because of all the moving, deceptive advertisements clogging up the screen? Why you’re paying substantially more for an entire suite of buggy streaming services than your parents ever were for cable TV? Why your BlueTooth enabled electric toothbrush keeps breaking? Why airplanes are falling apart mid-flight?

    Well, it might not seem like it at first glance, but all of these phenomena are related. They have a single cause: deregulation. Specifically, deregulation driven by big tech monopolies that have found all sorts of creative and coercive ways to use the legal system to screw over not just their customers, but increasingly their employees, clients, vendors, advertisers—basically everybody but a handful of shareholders and C-suite decision-makers who are growing filthy rich off of our impoverishment and immiseration.

    In this conversation, we’re talking big tech—how we got where we are and how we can fix things—with Cory Doctorow. Cory is an activist, journalist, and author. His two latest books are the science fiction novel The Bezzle and the nonfiction book, which we’ill be talking about today, The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation, published by Verso.

    In this conversation we explore the history of trusts and anti-trust laws originating in the late 1800s, and we discuss how deregulation, copyright, digital locks, IP law, and monopoly-friendly legislation have all led to a process of enclosure in multiple tech industries—from the internet to airplanes—resulting in a landscape fully devoid of anything resembling the promise of technology that has been whispered into ours ears since the dawn of the digital age.

    Further resources:

    Cory Doctorow The Internet Con:How to Seize the Means of Computation, by Cory Doctorow The Bezzle, by Cory Doctorow

    Related episodes:

    Upstream: NFTs with Nathan Schneider and Cory Doctorow

    Intermission music by Embrace.
    Episode artwork by Berwyn Mure.

    Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

    If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

    For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

    You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

  • [TEASER] How the North Plunders the South w/ Jason Hickel

    [TEASER] How the North Plunders the South w/ Jason Hickel

    · Upstream

    You can listen to the full episode "How the North Plunders the South" by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

    As a Patreon subscriber you will get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. You’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. Find out more at Patreon.com/upstreampodcast or at upstreampodcast.org/support. Thank you.

    The imperial core—which is comprised of settler-colonial states like those in Western Europe, as well as states like the United States, Canada and Australia—have been stealing the resources and labor of the Global South—or the periphery—for centuries. It started with the direct colonial violence and resource exploitation that marked much of the last few centuries, but it didn’t end there.

    Neo-colonialism—a term that you’re probably familiar with—is broadly defined as the use of economic, political, cultural, or other pressures to control or influence other countries, especially former colonies. But what does it actually look like in practice? How is the imperial core still plundering and pillaging the periphery? The practice of widespread crude, cruel, brute force that marked direct colonialism may not exist in the same exact form as it once did—but the outcome is still the same: mass extraction and exploitation from the Global South which has resulted in a staggering net transfer of resources, wealth, and labor to the Global North.

    In this episode, we’re going to discuss the mechanisms and extent of neocolonial extraction and exploitation as they manifest today, and we’ve brought on the perfect guest to walk us through it.

    Jason Hickel is a professor at the The Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, the author of the books The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions and Less is More: How Degrowth will Save the World, and the the lead author of two papers that we’ll be focusing on today: “Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015” published in journal Global Environmental Change, and "Unequal exchange of labour in the world economy" forthcoming in the journal Nature Communications.

    In this conversion we explore the theory of uneven exchange and how it sheds light on neocolonialism in practice, we discuss some of the key findings from Jason’s research on imperialist appropriation in the world economy, we dispel some of the myths perpetuated by those claiming that capitalism has lifted “millions out of poverty,” we talk about what a just degrowth transition of the global economy would look like and, crucially, how we might achieve it.

    Further resources:

    Jason Hickel “Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015” published in journal Global Environmental Change

    Related Episodes:

    Upstream: The Divide – Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Markets with Jason Hickel Upstream: International Development and Post-capitalism with Jason Hickel Upstream: How Degrowth Will Save the World with Jason Hickel Upstream: The Green Transition Pt.1 – The Problem with Green Capitalism

    Thank you to Berwyn Mure for the covert art.

    Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

    If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

    For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

    You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

  • Battling the Duopoly w/ Jill Stein

    Battling the Duopoly w/ Jill Stein

    · Upstream

    There’s no question that the crisis of capitalism and imperialism have reached a breaking point—it’s clearly visible not only in opinion polls but also just simply through our lived experiences. The system, and those who run it, have clearly abandoned any sense of popular wellbeing or even basic accommodations for a vast segment of the population. The system is running on fumes, the engines are sputtering out, and it’s only a matter of time before the decline turns into a freefall.

    Although the electoral process here in the United States is just one part of the puzzle—it’s an important one. Especially during a presidential election year, where more people than ever are paying attention to politics in a way that they normally don’t. This attention can be an opportunity to organize and mobilize people in a way that brings them into a kind of active political consciousness that can lead to many fruitful outcomes. This is why we’re continuing our exploration of electoral politics and presidential candidates in this episode.

    Dr. Jill Stein is a medical doctor, environmental activist, and the 2024 Green Party presidential candidate.

    In this conversation, we explore the conditions that have led to the many crises we’re currently facing, the failure of either of the corporate parties to address any of them, the many intentional barriers to third-party candidates running for office in the United States, and the importance of organizing and not losing hope.

    Further resources:

    Jill Stein 2024

    Related episodes

    Upstream: A Marxist Perspective on Elections with August Nimtz Upstream: [UNLOCKED] Voting for Socialism w/ Claudia De La Cruz & Karina Garcia

    Intermission music by Minutemen.
    Episode artwork by Berwyn Mure.

    This episode of Upstream is brought to you in part by the Alliance For Just Money. Help!! Mayday!! May 18th is the 110th anniversary of Congress ceding its power to create money to commercial banks nationwide. Alliance For Just Money allies are working to change our money system to focus on people and planetary and societal needs. Join the Alliance May 18th for a march and rally in downtown Chicago, and for teach-ins that weekend. Go to monetaryalliance.org/mayday to learn more.

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