Sumaya Awad, a knowledgeable guest on the history of Palestine, discusses the origins of Zionism, Israel's suppression of Palestinian history and culture, and the importance of advocating for a ceasefire and ending funding for the apartheid state. She also talks about her work in advocating for Palestine in the US and her contribution to a book exploring a socialist perspective on Palestine.

Learn about the importance of organizing and forming a Vanguard Party. Explore revolutionary theory and practice, critiquing economism and the Leninist perspective. Dive into the debate between Marx and anarchists on revolutionary strategies. Discover the limited reach of reforms and the questioning of the welfare state. Explore the importance of political independence and conscious action. Understand the role of a vanguard party and the need for political organization. Explore the challenges of building a vanguard party and the significance of political education.

In this episode, Sikowis Nobiss, a Plains Cree/Saulteaux activist, discusses the connections between capitalism, colonialism, consumerism, and Christianity. Topics explored include the impact of wealth inequality, Christianity's role in oppression, the importance of decolonization, and indigenizing land acknowledgments and repatriation efforts.

Brace Belden, freedom fighter in a Kurdish militia in Syria, discusses class conflict in the workplace using the case of Anchor Brewery. They talk about the unionization campaign, acquisition by Sapporo, closure, and the workers' plan to turn it into a worker-owned cooperative. They also explore the challenges of keeping secrets, exploitation in the brewery industry, benefits of working under a union contract, unsafe workplaces, and the impact of closure on employees.

A discussion on microfinance and its impact on poverty in the Global South, with a focus on India. Dr. Sohini Kar explores the empowerment and exploitation aspects of microfinance, highlighting concerns about the financialization of poverty. The conversation also delves into the story of Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank, and practical ways to support women in India and the global south through microfinance institutions. The podcast concludes with a call to question investment financing and leverage financialization for social change.

Explore capitalist realism and its pervasive impact on our lives. Discuss the commodification of everything, including healthcare and cultural experiences. Examine the co-option of rebellion and anti-establishment movements by capitalism. Delve into the concept of inter-passivity and its influence on our desires and decision-making. Reflect on the portrayal of the real versus reality in various mediums. Explore the relationship between capitalism and mental illness, advocating for a collective understanding. Analyze distorted time perception and the hyper-mediated existence of the youth generation. Discern the centralistness of capitalism and its failure in the neoliberal world. Examine the impersonal and individualizing nature of capitalism and the importance of collective responses.

Do you ever feel like time is marching in a particular direction? Towards, say, rising global temperatures, mass extinctions, ever-increasing divisions — and ultimately, towards inevitable collapse? What if this particular perception of time contributes to our feelings of despair and hopelessness about our futures? What if it limits our ability to imagine and fight for a more just, equitable, and regenerative system? In this conversation, we’ve brought on Bay Area artist and author Jenny Odell to help us unpack and reimagine our experience of time and to foster hope and inspire action for a better future. We focus on insights and stories from Jenny’s two books, her 2019 New York Times Bestseller How to do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy and most recently, Saving Time: Discovering Life Beyond the Clock. In this conversation, we learn about the commodification and colonization of time under capitalism, how it happened, when it happened, and how the fungibility of time contributes to human and planetary suffering. We explore her unique reframe of classes to include those who time, those who are timed, and those who self-time. We also talk about a more ecological and place-based sense of time, a life beyond the clock, unbound from capitalism, that shows that neither our lives nor the life of our planet is a foregone conclusion, that we are not alone in our efforts to dismantle capitalism, and that the more-than-human world is actually an active participant in the endeavor — and here to help.  Thank you to Carolyn Raider for this episode’s cover art and to Bowerbirds for the intermission music. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond/Lanterns. Further Resources: Saving Time: Discovering Life Beyond the Clock, by Jenny Odell How to do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, by Jenny Odell The Bureau of Suspended Objects Where Almost Everything I Used, Wore, Ate or Bought on Monday, April 1, 2013 (That Had a Label) Was Manufactured, to the Best of My Knowledge 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.  

When you think about the philosophies and practices of Buddhism and Marxism, you might not immediately think that they have much in common. However, you might be surprised at how much overlap and complementary resonance there actually is between these two rich and beautiful traditions.  In this conversation, we’ve brought on Breht O’Shea, a Buddhist practitioner and Marxist political educator based out of Omaha, Nebraska. Breht is the host of the podcast Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the podcasts Red Menace, Guerrilla History, and, most recently, Shoeless in South Dakota. You might remember Breht from when he was on the show about a year ago to talk about revolutionary leftist theory.  In this conversation, we explore how both Buddhism & Marxism offer helpful pathways to liberation and provide a spot-on analysis of the root causes of suffering. We also explore some of the potential tensions between Buddhism and Marxism, as well as what each tradition can learn from the other. And we end with a powerful invitation to embark on the path of the Bodhisattva Revolutionary to both end the internal and structural causes and conditions of suffering and to bring forth the systemic changes necessary for the transition to a socialist and eventually communist economy based on liberation, equity, and justice for all.  This interview was inspired by an episode of Revolutionary Left Radio titled Dialectics & Liberation: Insights from Buddhism and Marxism where Breht read a speech he gave at Arizona State University on the topic of dialectical materialism, Buddhism, and Marxism. Definitely check that episode out when you’re done listening to this — it’s a great complement to this conversation. Thank you to Carolyn Raider for this episode’s cover art and to Mount Eerie for the intermission music. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond/Lanterns. Further Resources: Upstream: Revolutionary Leftism with Breht O'Shea (In Conversation) Dialectics & Liberation: Insights from Buddhism and Marxism, by Breht O’Shea on Revolutionary Left Radio  Revolutionary Left Radio Red Menace Guerilla History Shoeless in South Dakota 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.    

Guest: Beatrice Adler-Bolton, an expert in health under capitalism. Topics: Critique of health capitalism, struggle for universal healthcare, history of the asylum system, understanding madness as a political category, reclaiming language, threat of pharmaceutical companies, health capitalism, surplus populations, potential of health communism in leftist movements.

Elements of capitalism have existed throughout history — in institutions like markets, class relations, ownership laws, credit systems, etc. But they were never dominant until they came together, escaping the isolated, laboratory conditions in which they once existed, to coalesce and form a world-dominating capitalist order.  How did the bubonic plague, the world-shattering pandemic occurring in Western Eurasia in the 14th century, along with the Little Ice Age that followed it, give rise in the 1600s to the mode of production that has now come to take hold of the entire world? What is capital, and how is it a social relation, as Marx wrote? And what exactly is the relationship between capitalism and the state? Are these two opposed, like many on the reactionary right tend to assume, or are they one and the same thing, there to support and uphold one another? And what about capitalism itself — what different stages or phases of capitalism exist? How did we go from the more classic mercantile capitalist system to industrialization, culminating in monopoly, imperialism, and now what we tend to call neoliberal capitalism? And what’s coming next? To help us zoom out and give us a historical and overarching understanding of capitalism as a system and a process, we’ve brought on investigative journalist and scholar, Christian Parenti. Christian is the author of books such as Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence, and, more recently, Radical Hamilton: Economic Lessons from a Misunderstood Founder.  And just in case you were wondering, yes, Christian is the son of the political scientist, academic historian and cultural critic Michael Parenti, author of classics like Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism, as well as Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media. You might have come across Michael Parenti on our Instagram where Robert loves to post so-called Yellow Parenti lectures and memes — check out our Instagram page @upstreampodcast if you want to know more. This conversation is also an excellent complement to our recent documentary, The Myth of Freedom Under Capitalism, which you can learn more about at upstreampodcast.org Further resources: Radical Hamilton: Economic Lessons from a Misunderstood Founder The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time By Karl Polanyi Thank you to James Xerxes Fussell for the cover art. Upstream's 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.