Upstream

Today on the show — surviving the collapse, permaculture and agroecology, native seed bombing, and much more with Andy C. from Poor Prole's Almanac. This week's Conversation is a rebroadcast of an interview originally produced by The Response — a podcast that explores how communities respond to disaster — from hurricanes to wildfires to reactionary politics and more. The Response, co-produced by our very own Robert Raymond, is another podcast of interviews and documentaries — we definitely recommend checking them out and giving them some love by rating and reviewing them on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. They've done episodes on topics like mobile abortion vans, mutual aid efforts in war-torn Ukraine, and the Stop Cop City movement — and they just did an excellent episode on the disaster in East Palestine, Ohio. In this episode, Robert and Andy talk about a wide range of fascinating topics — including agroecology and sound ecological practices regarding the growing of food and the stewardship of land, native seed bombing and other forms of mutual aid and disaster preparation, and why building collective power and resilience is the best way to ensure that we not only survive the slow but inevitable societal collapses that have already begun — but to thrive through them and build a better world out of the ashes of the old. Resources: Poor Prole's Almanac on Instagram and Twitter Thank you to Haley Heynderickx for the intermission music and to Carolyn Raider for the cover art. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond. 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 order to understand the disconnection, alienation, and immiseration wrought upon us by capitalism, it's imperative to understand this social and economic system's reliance on separation — separation from nature, from each other, from ourselves, and, crucially, from our histories and lineages. White supremacy, for example, is not only an essential component in the creation of a class society within capitalism, but it also serves as a tool to separate us from what our guest in this episode refers to as our more animist, traditional lineages. Eleanor Hancock is the executive director of White Awake, an online platform and nonprofit that combats white supremacy by focusing on educational resources designed to support the engagement of people who've been socially categorized as white in the creation of a more just and sustainable society. In this conversation, we talk about Eleanor the history and function of white supremacy within capitalism, what it means to be truly anti-racist, how to engage in the work of reconciling and healing ancestral lineages, and how we can all contribute to the development of a democratically-managed economy free of white supremacy and instead based on liberation for all. Further Resources: White Awake Birth of a White Nation The Invention of White People and Its Relevance Today by Jacqueline Battalora Socialism Made Easy by James Connolly Upstream Documentary: Worker Cooperatives Pt.1 & 2 Thank you to The Evens for the intermission music and to Carolyn Raider for the cover art. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond. 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.

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 out important information, sometimes they draw misleading conclusions, and a lot of the time they're simply just made-up stories without any basis in actual history. This recognition is also true for much of what we're taught about the American Revolution of 1776. The standard tale is that a handful of so-called "founding fathers" discovered a so-called New World and set forth to establish a nation founded on the ideals of liberty and justice for all. But this is a tale that begins to fall apart pretty quickly once you start to examine it from a materialist perspective — one that starts with actual material conditions and contradictions instead of simply focusing on the ideas of certain thinkers that happen to have made their way onto paper. Understanding the true history behind the stories we've been told not only helps to give context to and explain why we are where we are right now, but it also helps us in understanding the roots of our problems, and as we'll see in this Conversation, to understand how deep they run — so that perhaps we can finally cast the false solutionary strategies of incrementalism and mere reform into the dust bin. Dr. Gerald Horne is the author of many books, including most recently The Counter-Revolution of 1836: Texas Slavery, Jim Crow and the Roots of U. S. Fascism, as well as, The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America — which we'll be focusing on in this Conversation. We spoke with Dr. Horne about what traditional versions of the American Revolution of 1776 get wrong — particularly when it comes to enslaved populations and their relationship to colonists at the time. We also explore how the unique phenomenon of the United States' racial capitalist system manifested in the 20th century, and developed into the 21st century — tying the fascist movements and white supremacy of today to the founding of this nation 250 years ago. Thank you to Bad Brains for the intermission music. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond. 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.

Phoenix Smith, an Ecotherapist and founder of the Alliance for Ecotherapy and Social Justice, shares insights into Liberation Ecotherapy, which connects personal healing with social and environmental justice. They discuss overcoming barriers to accessing nature, the importance of community care, and the role of ancestral wisdom in healing. The conversation emphasizes the deep ties between mental health and ecological restoration, advocating for a holistic approach to therapy that addresses systemic inequalities and fosters resilience through collective action.

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 certain technologies on our lives, but also the lies that have been sold to us about those technologies. Despite all of the technological advancements, we're more isolated, exploited, and alienated than ever before. And it really does feel like there's a growing, popular backlash against many of the technologies of our modern world as well as a resigned realization of their false promises. So, why is it that technological progress rarely seems to really improve our lives? Why does it feel like every new piece of software or gadget imposed onto us in our homes and workplaces more often than not adds to our stresses and leaves us with more to do? Well, we've brought on a guest today that has a pretty clear answer to these questions. Gavin Mueller's new book, Breaking Things at Work: The Luddites Are Right About Why You Hate Your Job, seamlessly weaves together the philosophies and strategies of Luddism and Marxism, to explain why technology itself is a site of class struggle, and that, to truly understand the role of technology in our lives, we must approach the topic from a Marxist perspective — one that is infused with the critical technological perspective of the Luddites of 19th century. In this conversation, we dispel a number of myths about who the Luddites were, what they believed, and what their goals were. We also explore a somewhat nontraditional perspective on Marxism and industrialization, what the Luddites taught us about how technology functions under capitalism, and how to resist the exploitation and alienation that often accompanies it. Thank you to Gray Matter for the intermission music and to Carolyn Raider for the cover art. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond. 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 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. Manda Scott is a novelist, podcaster, regenerative economist, and host of the Thrutopia Masterclass, which aims to help writers across all forms weave credible narratives that will lead us forward from exactly where we are, to a flourishing future we would be proud to leave to the generations that come after us. Her award-winning novels have been published in over 20 languages and have been best-sellers across the world. Now, she is turning from historical writing to Thrutopian fiction and her new book West of the Sunset, North of Tomorrow is due out in 2023. This fast-paced thriller embraces all of the ideals explored in the Accidental Gods podcast and membership project. She lives in the English Marches on the border with Wales, dreams of Scottish Independence, and shares her life with a wife, assorted four-legged friends and a community of dreamers intent on forging a flourishing future. Nathalie Nahai is an author, keynote speaker, and host of The Hive Podcast, a series that enquires into our relationship with one another, with technology, and with the living world. With a diverse background in human behavior, persuasive tech and the arts, she brings a unique vantage point from which to examine the complex challenges we face today. She is also the author of bestselling books: Webs Of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion and Business Unusual: Values, Uncertainty and the Psychology of Brand Resilience. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond. This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you and by the Guerrilla Foundation and Resist Foundation. 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 social media: Facebook.com/upstreampodcast twitter.com/UpstreamPodcast Instagram.com/upstreampodcast You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Mainstream psychology has been complicit — whether intentionally or not — in the establishment of colonial, white-supremacist, capitalist hierarchies of oppression around the world. Individualizing pain lets the systemic causes for our suffering off the hook and places the responsibility for healing and wellbeing on individual will. In the 1970's in El Salvador, confronted by these dangers of western psychology — during a civil war — psychologist Ignacio Martín-Baró started to develop an alternative, constructing a psychology relevant to oppressed peoples, like many of the people of El Salvador who were undergoing social, political, and war-related trauma. Martin-Baró was ultimately assassinated as a result of his work by a CIA-trained battalion of the Salvadoran army, but fellow therapists and theologians in Latin America carried his work on. His legacy, known as Liberation Psychology, is an attempt to bring the historical, political, and economic causes of our distresses and discontents into the therapy session. The aim is to bring about liberation through an understanding of the systemic causes of oppression, exploitation, and alienation and to offer pathways to more socialist, just, and regenerative models of relating that would bring about both human and planetary well-being. To learn more, we've brought on two guests with both a theoretical and experiential relationship to Liberation Psychology. Daniel José Gaztambide Nuñez, PsyD is a therapist and author of the book A People's History of Psychoanalysis: From Freud to Liberation Psychology. Daniel is the assistant director of clinical training in the Department of Clinical Psychology at the New School for Social Research, and the director of the Frantz Fanon Lab for Intersectional Psychology, Harriet Fraad is a feminist activist, psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, and host of the Capitalism Hits Home podcast. We begin the show with Daniel José Gaztambide Nuñez, PsyD exploring Freud, Marx, and the origins of Liberation Psychology. In the second half of the show, we speak with Harriet Fraad exploring a Marxist-Feminist approach to Liberation Psychology. Thank you to Noname for the intermission music and to Neil Ballard for the cover art. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond. Related Conversations / Further listening: Stolen Focus with Johann Hari 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.

Awareness of climate change has never been higher — outright climate denialism seems to be a thing of the past. Business leaders and the corporate media no longer shy away from terms like global warming or climate change like they used to, and policymakers from all sides of the political spectrum are claiming to be climate leaders. So why, then, do things seem to be getting even worse? Why are the actions of those in power so out of line with what scientists and experts at the IPCC are urgently calling for? Why does COP after COP continue to accomplish close to nothing? Why are we still on track for catastrophic levels of warming? Well, there are a lot of explanations for this, but they can all be distilled into one overarching reason: green capitalism. In this episode, we explore how the idea of green capitalism has hijacked any real possibility for climate solutions — and why the logic of mainstream economic reasoning has consigned us to a future where the continued habitability of our planet is up for question. Adrienne Buller is a Senior Research Fellow at Common Wealth and author of The Value of a Whale: On The Illusions of Green Capitalism, published by Manchester University Press. In this Conversation we explore how powerful financial interests shape the contours and curtail the possibilities of our response to climate change, how the flawed logic of dominant economic thinking sets dangerous parameters for policymakers, and why, if we're hoping to survive climate change and ensure a just, livable future for all, we must move beyond capitalism and embrace ecological, social, and economic principles designed to put people and the planet over profit. Thank you to Jenny Hval for the intermission music. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond. Related Conversations / Further listening: The Green Transition Part 1 & 2 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.

Far from being some kind of transcendent economic phenomenon originating from higher realms of monetary physics that are indecipherable to us mere proletarian mortals, the economy is actually pretty straightforward and easy to understand — it's mostly just politics. And that's still true when it comes to purposefully mystified topics like inflation — particularly to how policymakers respond to inflation — it's all just politics. Decisions made by those in power. But the thing is right now the decisions about how to respond to inflation are being made by a class of people whose job it is, under capitalism, to make sure that the economy works for just one small group of people: capitalists. There is, of course, an alternative — and that alternative is one that would look a lot better for the vast majority of us. In this Conversation we take a deep dive into inflation: what it is, what's driving it, what's wrong with the current response to it, and what a left response to inflation would look like. Hadas Thier is a writer, journalist, and activist based in Brooklyn, New York. We had her on the show earlier this year to talk about her book, A People's Guide to Capitalism: An Introduction to Marxist Economics, and for this Conversation we'll be talking about her latest article for In These Times, titled "A Left Answer to Inflation." Thank you to The Limeliters for the intermission music and to Bethan Mure for the cover art. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond. Related Conversations / Further listening: Inflation with Richard Wolff and Dean Baker (In Conversation) 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.

Colonialism and white supremacy have shaped the field of archaeology from its inception — and to this day continue to dominate the cultural and scientific paradigms of this field of study. One of the most significant ways that this has shown up in the discipline is through the hegemony of a single theory — the Clovis First Hypothesis — which claims that the Americas were populated roughly ten to twelve thousand years ago — and not earlier. In her book, The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere, Dr. Paulette Steeves meticulously deconstructs and dispels the myth that human beings have only been in the Americas for ten thousand years. She builds on decades of research which has been suppressed and erroneously refuted by those in the field who have never wanted to accept the fact that the Indigenous people of the Americas have been here for much, much longer than was ever admitted by the most influential and powerful archaeologists. Dr. Paulette Steeves is an Indigenous archaeologist, professor at Algoma University, and the Canada Research Chair in Healing and Reconciliation. In this Conversation, we discuss exciting new findings in the fields of archaeology and paleontology and what they tell us about the real history of Indigenous people in the Americas, the ways that white supremacy and racism still permeate the fields of anthropology and archaeology, what a decolonized archaeology could look like, and how to get there. Thank you to Willie Mitchell and the Desert River Band for the intermission music and to Bethan Mure for the cover art. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond. 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.