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 have the worst COVID health outcomes of any of these countries too. It seems pretty obvious that by reopening the economy and all but abandoning any interventions aside from the vaccine, the Biden administration has pretty much this outcome. But of course, the problem goes much deeper — it’s a combination of years of disinvestment and neoliberal policies. In this Conversation we’re talking COVID with Beatrice Alder-Bolton, co-host of the Death Panel podcast and co-author of the forthcoming book, "Health Communism: A Surplus Manifesto," which will be published by Verso Books this fall. What are the structural causes of our skyrocketing COVID rates? How has COVID laid bare the rotting foundations of not just the U.S. healthcare system — but almost every single institution in this country? How are our political leaders using the pandemic as a launching ground for the rewriting for the social contract in a way that even further minimizes the responsibility of the state to protect people? These are just some of the questions we explore in this Conversation with Beatrice Alder-Bolton.  This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. 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.

Join Johann Hari, author and journalist renowned for his exploration of attention and focus, as he discusses the alarming decline in attention spans due to systemic issues, not just personal shortcomings. He emphasizes the impact of digital distractions, urging a cultural shift towards mono-tasking for deeper connections. Hari critiques social media's negativity bias and the attention economy, calling for systemic changes to reclaim mental well-being, making a strong case for an attention revolution.

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 somehow been taken advantage of? That subtle anger — or sometimes even outright hatred — many of us feel towards our supervisors, our managers, our bosses? And why — despite devoting the majority of our waking hours to "making a living" — does it still feel like we’re always one emergency away from financial ruin? A lot of people these days are starting to seriously question the political-economic system we live under. And if you’re someone who listens to this podcast, you’re probably already well aware of the faults and, really, the horrors of this system that we’re all imprisoned in: capitalism. Although it’s relatively easy to critique capitalism through our lived experiences of it, it’s not always as easy to frame those critiques and those nagging feelings into economic language or a political framing. Canonical texts like Marx’s Capital can be fairly opaque and inaccessible, and oftentimes, even among those who study it, capitalism can be difficult to pin down. What is it, exactly? What is it not? And what precisely is that thing that we often think of as its opposition: socialism? In this Conversation, we’ve brought on someone who can explain all of that. Hadas Thier is the author of "A People’s Guide to Capitalism: An Introduction to Marxist Economics," published by Haymarket Books. In this Conversation, Hadas Thier will help us break down capitalism into its most fundamental components — and not in an overly technical way, but in a manner that situates it within historical and modern day events and processes — and which hopefully provides you with a pretty comprehensive and compelling explanation as to why we’re all feeling so exploited, alienated, and imprisoned in this oppressive and life-denying set of operating principles and beliefs we know as capitalism. This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. 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.

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 on humans and our environment — but more, just what the political fallout of inevitable climate collapse will look like… In this Conversation, we’re exploring just that: the political consequences of climate collapse. We’ve brought two guests to help explore this, co-authors of the book Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future, published by Verso Books. Geoff Mann is the Director of the Centre for Global Political Economy at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia and Joel Wainwright is a human geographer who teaches political economy and social theory at Ohio State University.  Thank you to Matt Kish for the cover art. This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. 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.

Happy Solstice 2021! Here is our second annual solstice conversation with fellow podcasters Manda Scott and Nathalie Nahai. In this conversation we ask each other the core questions at the heart of our shows, we reflect on key themes, insights, and inquiries that we have traced through our interviews and documentaries in 2020, and we give gratitude and gifts of inspiring books, practical invitations, and a beautiful closing solstice meditation. Manda Scott is an award-winning novelist, podcaster and smallholder whose life is underpinned by the shamanic dreaming she gave voice to in her Boudica: Dreaming novels. For the past two years, she has been host of the Accidental Gods podcast which originally aimed at fostering conscious evolution and is now leaning more towards finding an inspiring way through to a flourishing future. Nathalie is an international speaker, consultant and author of two books: the recently published Business Unusual: Values, Uncertainty and the Psychology of Brand Resilience, and best-seller, Webs of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion. Her work explores the intersection between persuasive technology, ethics, and the psychology of online behavior. Nathalie also hosts The Hive Podcast, and contributes to national publications, television and radio on the impact of technology in our lives.  This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. 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.

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 and often misleading narratives floating around on the pandemic economy, things we’ve discussed recently like the quote labor shortage, supply chains, spending bills in Washington. Anyways, the mainstream narratives get a lot wrong. Especially when they’re coming from the more right-wing elements — there’s just a lot of bad analysis and straight up mis- and even dis- information out there. So, we’re gonna take a shot at trying to actually unpack this idea of inflation: what is it? Why are we seeing inflation taking place? Why is the mainstream coverage of it often flawed? We’ve brought on two guests to unpack things for us. Dean Baker is an American macro-economist who co-founded the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Richard Wolff is an economist, Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School in New York.  This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. 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.

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 heard of NFTs but wanna know more, or if you wanna hear why NFTs might be leading us to an (even more) dystopian future — we’ve got you covered. We’ve brought on two guests to help unpack the NFT craze: Nathan Schneider is an Assistant Professor of Media studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, journalist, founder of the Media Enterprise Design Lab, and author most recently of Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition that Is Shaping the Next Economy, published by Nation Books. Cory Doctorow is an author, activist, journalist and blogger, editor of Pluralistic dot net, former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and author of the novels Attack Surface and Walkaway, as well as nonfiction books like How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism.  This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. 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.

It often feels like contemporary life diverges from everything that actually matters. Our global economic system could not be less in touch with patterns of creation, natural systems, and the real wealth of healthy soil, clear water, and bonded communities. Of course, it hasn’t always been this way — and it doesn’t have to continue to be. In this conversation, or yarn, we speak with Tyson Yunkaporta of the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland, Australia, about the connections between Indigenous economics, complexity theory, and systems thinking. We also discuss caring for the commons, explore how to hold each other accountable, and hear the story of the world’s first corporation. Tyson carves traditional tools and weapons, works as a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University in Melbourne, and recently authored the book Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World.  This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. 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.

With strikes in a wide variety of private sectors popping up all across the country — Kelloggs, Kaiser Permanente, coal miners in Alabama, John Deere, The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), Taxi Drivers on hunger strike in NY, and more — the United States might be on the verge of a strike wave, and we’ve brought on the perfect guest to explain exactly what’s going on. Alex Press is a staff writer at Jacobin Magazine, host of the Primer podcast, and author most recently of the Jacobin articles, “US Workers Are in a Militant Mood” and “Halyna Hutchins’s Death on the Set of Rust Was “Not a Freak Accident.” The Conversation will bring you up to date on all of the labor activity currently underway, but will also zoom out to explore the state of the labor movement more broadly, taking a deep dive on how the pandemic has transformed the movement, unpacking what’s really behind the so-called “labor shortage,” and getting to the root of why workers are starting to stand up to bosses in a way that we haven’t seen for quite some time.  This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. 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.

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 dive into this, unpacking how women’s issues intersect with class and race, what trickle-down feminism is, who’s included and precluded from certain forms of mainstream, American feminism, and why it’s important for feminism to be truly intersectional and inclusive. In this Conversation, we take a deep dive into how the ideology of whiteness permeates mainstream, Western feminism, and how those on the peripheries are often left out — and even exploited by — feminism and certain feminists. Rafia Zakaria is a columnist for Dawn in Pakistan and author, most recently, of Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption, published by Norton and Company. Against White Feminism has made quite a splash since its publication in August, with a lot of positive reception, but also drawing the ire of many of those who it seeks to critique — namely, a certain cadre of feminists, often upper-middle class and white, who hold onto their very specific ideas about what feminism is, what it’s not, and perhaps most importantly — who gets to define it. We explore how a certain liberal form of white-supremacy permeates much of mainstream feminism, how the white feminist savior complex and imperial feminism have been deployed throughout history — and well into our present times, such as in Afghanistan — to marginalize women of color and impose the “correct” form of feminism in non-consensual and harmful ways, what trickle-down or #girlboss feminism are, and more. Thank you to The Raincoats for the intermission music in this episode.  This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. 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.