Upstream
Episodes
Palestine Pt. 10: Healing from Zionism w/ Meital Yaniv
18 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"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 ...
[UNLOCKED] How the North Plunders the South w/ Jason Hickel
13 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 A...
[TEASER] Suburban Hell and Ugly Cities
11 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 P...
Dialectical Materialism w/ Josh Sykes
04 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Contradiction is one of the most important concepts in Marxist philosophy. When we think about Marxism, we typically think about the contributions tha...
The Big Tech Con w/ Cory Doctorow
21 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 su...
[TEASER] How the North Plunders the South w/ Jason Hickel
14 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Battling the Duopoly w/ Jill Stein
07 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 a...
[TEASER] International Workers' Day w/ John from Working Class History
01 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
You can listen to the full episode "International Workers' Day" by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast As a Patre...
[TEASER] Against Condemning Hamas
25 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
You can listen to the full episode "Against Condemning Hamas" by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast As a Patreon...
A Blunt Conversation about Cannabis w/ David Bienenstock
20 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and f...
[TEASER] Degrowth vs Eco-Modernism
16 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
You can listen to the full episode "Degrowth vs Eco-Modernism" by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast As a Patreo...
Post Capitalism w/ Alnoor Ladha
09 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"Post capitalism is not simply another 'ism' to replace previous ideologies. It's not a euphemism for socialism or anarchism or Nordic capitalism—al...
[TEASER] Palestine Pt. 9: Palestine 2031 w/ Nadia Zanghari
02 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
You can listen to the full episode with Nadia Zanghari by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast The revolutionary p...
Palestine Pt. 8: Indigeneity and Settler-Colonialism w/ Krystal Two Bulls & Sumaya Awad
26 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people continues, it's crucial that we continue to critically scrutinize and dismantle many of...
[TEASER] Nationalism and the Error of Patriotic Socialism w/ Sina Rahmani and Nick
19 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
You can listen to the full episode with Sina Rahmani of East is a Podcast and Nick of The Intervention Podcast by subscribing to our Patreon here: htt...
[UNLOCKED] Voting for Socialism w/ Claudia De La Cruz & Karina Garcia
12 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There's that saying that you've probably heard a million times: doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results is a sign of psycho...
Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism w/ Kristen Ghodsee
08 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When the Soviet Union collapsed and the Berlin Wall was toppled, a lot was unearthed and a lot of interesting information became available to scholars...
Climate Leninism w/ Jodi Dean and Kai Heron
27 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Transition is inevitable, we're past the point of literal climate denialism. Even the fossil fuel industry, which has known about the dangers of clima...
[TEASER] Voting for Socialism w/ Claudia de la Cruz & Karina Garcia
20 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
You can listen to the full episode with Claudia de la Cruz & Karina Garcia by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast...
Be More Pirate w/ Sam Conniff
13 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What do you typically think of when you think of pirates? Parrots? Peg Legs? Eye patches? Treasure? Is there more to pirates than these things, than c...
[TEASER] The Problem with Modern Monetary Theory w/ Doug Henwood
08 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
You can listen to the full episode with Doug Henwood by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast As a Patreon subscrib...
[TEASER] Socialism Betrayed w/ Roger Keeran and Joe Jamison
06 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
You can listen to the full episode with Roger Keeran and Joe Jamison by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast As a ...
Important Announcement: We Launched a Patreon
05 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Join the Upstream Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast Below is a transcript of the update shared in this announcement episode — ...
The Missing Revolution w/ Vincent Bevins
30 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The past decade or so was marked by mass protests—in fact, more people participated in protests than at any other point in human history, from Occup...
Drinkable Rivers with Li An Phoa
16 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"The sign of a healthy economy should be a drinkable river," these are the words of Li An Phoa, an environmental activist and our guest for this episo...
Palestine Pt. 6: One State with Ghada Karmi
02 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It may seem like a distant dream to imagine that the decades-long settler-colonial project which is Israel could finally end and transform into a stat...
A Winter Solstice Celebration for 2023 with Manda Scott and Nathalie Nahai
21 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Happy Winter Solstice! In this annual tradition, Della is joined by two fellow podcast hosts to reflect on the past year and set some intentions for t...
Palestine Pt. 5: The Political Economy of Palestine with Adam Hanieh
19 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The ongoing bombardment of the Gaza Strip has been front and center in the world's attention for the last couple of months, and it's important that we...
Palestine Pt. 4: False Solutions and Paths of Resistance with Sumaya Awad
12 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Before the Zionist project and the state of Israel placed their boots on the neck of Palestine, this region was a multicultural, multi-religious land,...
Palestine Pt. 3: Settler-Colonialism and Medical Apartheid with Rupa Marya & Jess Ghannam
05 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As the ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign against Palestinians continues, it's important that we also continue to raise a magnifying glass to its perpe...
Palestine Pt. 2: Justice for Some with Noura Erakat
23 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For those of us living in the United States, today — what we call Thanksgiving — is a very significant holiday because, for some of us at least, i...
Black Scare / Red Scare with Charisse Burden-Stelly
21 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Red Scare — perhaps most well known through the era of McCarthyism that dominated the social, political, and legal spheres of the U.S. in the 19...
A Marxist Perspective on Elections with August Nimtz
07 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
"This is the most important election of our lifetimes." "Voting for a third-party candidate? Might as well throw away your vote!" "You may not like hi...
How We Show Up with Mia Birdsong
24 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As we continue to work towards outer transformation, building the structures and models that will shape the transition to a post-capitalist society, i...
Palestine Pt. 1: A Socialist Introduction with Sumaya Awad
20 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Before 1948, the land of Palestine was dotted with olive groves along rolling hills between mountains and the Mediterranean sea. Palestinians, Arabs, ...
What Is To Be Done? with Breht O'Shea and Alyson Escalante
17 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What Is To Be Done? This is the question so profoundly posed by the Russian Revolutionary and Bolshevik leader, Vladimir Lenin, in his landmark text o...
How to Decolonize and Indigenize with Sikowis Nobiss
09 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What is the connection between capitalism, colonialism, consumerism, and Christianity? How do these systems and ideologies uphold and support one anot...
Class War and Beer with Brace Belden
26 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Although the reference to war that you just heard could very much be real, actual military conflict — after all, our guest on today's episode has fo...
Microlending and the Financialization of Poverty with Sohini Kar
12 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It was once very difficult for people experiencing poverty in the Global South to obtain credit and loans because they were seen as unable to provide ...
Capitalist Realism with Carlee
29 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
"It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism." Those words have been attributed to both the philosophers Fredric Jameson an...
Life Beyond the Clock with Jenny Odell
14 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Do you ever feel like time is marching in a particular direction? Towards, say, rising global temperatures, mass extinctions, ever-increasing division...
Buddhism and Marxism with Breht O'Shea
01 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When you think about the philosophies and practices of Buddhism and Marxism, you might not immediately think that they have much in common. However, y...
Health Communism with Beatrice Adler-Bolton
17 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When we think of health under capitalism, it's easy to go straight to the fight for universal healthcare, and understandably — that battle is one of...
Capitalism, The State, and How We Got Here with Christian Parenti
03 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Elements of capitalism have existed throughout history — in institutions like markets, class relations, ownership laws, credit systems, etc. But the...
Everyday Utopia and Radical Imagination with Kristen Ghodsee
19 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It's perhaps more important than ever in these especially tumultuous, lonely, and oppressive times that we continue to believe that another world is p...
The Political Economy of Jazz with Gerald Horne
06 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The music we know today as jazz has deep and contested roots, but likely arose in New Orleans, Louisiana in the late nineteenth and early twentieth ...
A History of California, Capitalism, and the World with Malcolm Harris
23 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We've been taught to think of staggering economic inequality, the disposability of nonwhite labor populations, hyper-exploitation, and minority rule...
Documentary #15: The Myth of Freedom Under Capitalism
08 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Although its intellectual handmaidens love to insist otherwise — capitalism is not a system that truly embodies freedom. We all feel it, of course —...
Reclaiming Time with Oliver Burkeman
25 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
At the beginning of the 20th century, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that within a century, thanks to the growth of wealth and the advance...
Trans Liberation and Solidarity with Alyson Escalante
24 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Our transgender comrades are under attack — not just by incendiary reactionaries on the right, but also by many of those on the more liberal or even...
Half Farmer, Half X with Mika Furugori and Naoki Shiomi
10 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine this week you spent half your time growing, harvesting, preserving, and cooking food for yourself, your family, and perhaps your community —...
Stop Cop City with Keyanna Jones and Matthew Johnson
14 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For the past couple of years, the city of Atlanta, Georgia, has been pushing forward a project known as "Cop City" — a tactical training compound ...
Surviving the Collapse, Agroecology, & Mutual Aid with Andy C. of Poor Prole's Almanac
28 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today on the show — surviving the collapse, permaculture and agroecology, native seed bombing, and much more with Andy C. from Poor Prole's Almana...
Whiteness and Capitalism with Eleanor Hancock
14 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In order to understand the disconnection, alienation, and immiseration wrought upon us by capitalism, it's imperative to understand this social and ...
Radical History: The Roots of Race & Class in the U.S. with Dr. Gerald Horne
31 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Much of what we learn about U.S. history — from middle school to high school to, well, most of adulthood, is a myth. Oftentimes these tales leave ou...
Liberation Ecotherapy with Phoenix Smith
17 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Although many therapists are beginning to understand the importance of the natural world in healing and overall mental health — for example by recom...
Breaking Things at Work with Gavin Mueller
03 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As the capitalist class continues to glom onto a kind of tech-utopianism, many of us are starting to recognize not just the detrimental impacts of cer...
A Winter Solstice Celebration for 2022 with Manda Scott and Nathalie Nahai
19 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Happy Winter Solstice! In the 3rd year of this annual tradition, Upstream host and producer Della Duncan joins two friends to reflect on the past year...
Liberation Psychology with Daniel José Gaztambide Nuñez & Harriet Fraad
06 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Mainstream psychology has been complicit — whether intentionally or not — in the establishment of colonial, white-supremacist, capitalist hierarch...
The Value of a Whale with Adrienne Buller
22 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Awareness of climate change has never been higher — outright climate denialism seems to be a thing of the past. Business leaders and the corporate m...
A Left Answer to Inflation with Hadas Thier
08 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Far from being some kind of transcendent economic phenomenon originating from higher realms of monetary physics that are indecipherable to us mere pro...
Decolonizing Archaeology with Dr. Paulette Steeves
25 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Colonialism and white supremacy have shaped the field of archaeology from its inception — and to this day continue to dominate the cultural and scie...
Documentary #15: The Green Transition Pt. 2 – A Green Deal for the People Part 2
11 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When it comes to climate policy, it probably won't come as a surprise to most that the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 is one of the weakest bills tha...
Terra Viva with Vandana Shiva
25 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Vandana Shiva is an activist and tireless advocate for food sovereignty for farmers', peasants', and women's rights. She's a world-renowned ecofeminis...
Documentary #14: The Green Transition Pt. 1 – The Problem with Green Capitalism
13 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It's clear that we need to decarbonize our economy as quickly as possible in order to avoid the worst of climate change — but carbon isn't the only ...
Revolutionary Leftism with Breht O'Shea
30 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
There are many traditions or tendencies among the left. In fact, sometimes just trying to wrap our heads around all of the rich theoretical frameworks...
The War on Cash with Brett Scott
15 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Is the growing ascendance of digital money simply an organic evolution away from the purported inconveniences of physical cash? Or is this transition ...
The Case Against the Professional Managerial Class with Catherine Liu
02 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Traditionally within Marxist thought, there are two major classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, or workers and capitalists. Within these two c...
How Degrowth Will Save the World with Jason Hickel
19 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It may not come as a surprise to most of you to hear that capitalism is the root cause of climate change. But if we unpack this a little bit, we see t...
The Problem with Economic Thinking with Jonathan Aldred and Elizabeth Popp Berman
05 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The logic of orthodox economic thinking has come to dominate and permeate every aspect of our lives, from the deeply internalized capitalism which sha...
A Socialist Perspective on Abortion with Diana Moreno & Jenny Brown
29 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The US Supreme Court has just overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling on abortion rights which had set the precedent for almost 50 years, throwing ...
The Limitations of Black Capitalism with Francisco Perez
20 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
There's a broad conflation within our present day capitalist society between the success of individual members of certain oppressed and marginalized g...
Decolonizing Conservation with Prakash Kashwan
07 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What if what we thought we knew about environmental conservation is wrong and it's not the ethical and regenerative movement we thought it was? Turns ...
Fully Automated Luxury Communism with Zarinah Agnew and Eric Wycoff Rogers
24 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Fully automated luxury communism. Fully automated luxury gay space communism..? Fully automated, queer, neo-decadent, meta-modern communism? Okay so, ...
When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley with Carolyn Chen
12 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
More than just a region, Silicon Valley has also become a concept — and what that concept represents means a lot of different things to different pe...
A Changing Climate with Amy Westervelt
19 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The latest installment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC report, released this month, gives us three years to drastically cut ...
A World Without Profit with Jennifer Hinton
05 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"The pursuit of private financial gain is what drives inequality and ecological harm." This is the perspective of Jennifer Hinton, a leading proponent...
Documentary #13: Stories of Indigenous Resistance and Regeneration
22 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Standing Rock was a pivotal moment in regards to Indigenous resistance — but it was just one in a long line of battles that Indigenous peoples have ...
Documentary #10: Feminism for the 99 Percent (Updated)
01 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
There are many ways women across the world have been disproportionately impacted by COVID. The pandemic has simultaneously increased the demand for un...
COVID and the Pandemic with Beatrice Adler-Bolton
15 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
By traditional metrics, the U.S. economy is doing pretty well right now — better than any other high income countries. But, at the same time, we hav...
Stolen Focus with Johann Hari
03 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the United States, teenagers can focus on one task for only sixty-five seconds at a time, and office workers lose focus every three minutes. We ten...
A People's Guide to Capitalism with Hadas Thier
20 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Why do so many of us often feel like shit when we leave work? Where does that ambient feeling of alienation come from? That nagging sense that we've s...
Climate Leviathan with Joel Wainwright and Geoff Mann
28 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It's probably safe to say that at this point, most people recognize that it's not a question of whether climate change will have devastating impacts o...
A Solstice Celebration for 2021 with Manda Scott and Nathalie Nahai
21 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Happy Solstice 2021! Here is our second annual solstice conversation with fellow podcasters Manda Scott and Nathalie Nahai. In this conversation we as...
Inflation with Richard Wolff & Dean Baker
07 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we're talking inflation — a somewhat slippery topic that has been dominating headlines recently. It's all caught up in the murky an...
NFTs with Nathan Schneider and Cory Doctorow
24 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode we're talking NFTs. If you don't know what this latest phenomenon in the crypto, blockchain, asset speculation world is, if you've hea...
Indigenous Economics with Tyson Yunkaporta
11 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It often feels like contemporary life diverges from everything that actually matters. Our global economic system could not be less in touch with patte...
Strike! Strike! Strike! ...with Alex Press
28 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
With strikes in a wide variety of private sectors popping up all across the country — Kelloggs, Kaiser Permanente, coal miners in Alabama, John Deer...
Against White Feminism with Rafia Zakaria
05 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Feminism means different things to different people. If you listened to our episode earlier this year, Feminism for the 99 percent, we took a deep div...
Documentary #12: Occupy Wall Street – A Decade Later (Documentary)
28 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It's pretty crazy to think that it's already been a decade since Occupy Wall Street — but, at the same time, it also feels like forever ago. So much...
Documetary #11: Abolish the Police
07 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The summer of 2020 saw perhaps the largest collective uprising in the United States. The uprising, sparked by the cold-blooded murder of George Floyd,...
American History and Much More with Matt Christman
17 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What are the material conditions which underpin much of the bizarre phenomena taking place during this strange era that we're in? What unites the cons...
Laziness Does Not Exist with Devon Price
03 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We are currently living in an era dominated by overwork. Whether it's your punch-in, punch-out job, the side hustles and extra gig work you pursue to ...
Work Won't Love you Back with Sarah Jaffe
20 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We're always told that if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life. But what if you're being tricked or manipulated into thinking yo...
Documentary #10: Feminism for the 99 Percent
22 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There are many ways women across the world have been disproportionately impacted by COVID. The pandemic has simultaneously increased the demand for un...
Decolonizing Medicine with Rupa Marya and Raj Patel
15 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Many of us around the world live on colonized land. In recent years, the conversation around "decolonization" has been seamed through many different c...
A Green New Deal with Thea Riofrancos
01 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
COVID has in many ways monopolized the public imagination in the last year or so, and at times it's seemed like many other conversations were put on h...
Abolition with Niki Franco (aka Venus Roots)
25 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this conversation, we spoke with Niki Franco, AKA, Venus Roots. Niki is a Caribbean abolitionist community organizer, multidisciplinary cultural wo...
A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things with Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore
11 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout history, crises and disasters have always catalyzed new strategies to make the world cheap and safe for capitalism. We are seeing this duri...
The Political Economy of Food with Eric Holt-Gimenez
23 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this Conversation, we spoke with Eric Holt-Gimenez, author of the book, "A Foodie's Guide to Capitalism: Understanding the Political Economy of Wha...