The Chatterbox

In light of recent conversations about the crisis of masculinity, let's revisit Dr. Andy Oler's book Old-Fashioned Modernism: Rural Masculinity and Midwestern Literature. I sat down with Dr. Oler to discuss the persistent anxiety about masculinity, the role of regional literature in American modernism, and the need for an expansive definition of the Midwest. We also talked about literary representation of futuristic equipment such as the cabbage transplanter. And for our scholar friends, Dr. Oler offers tips on how to secure texts that are not available in libraries or archives. 

Andy Oler is a professor in the Department of Humanities and Communication at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach. 

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Today I talk with M. E. O’Brien and Eman Abdelhadi about their dazzling and challenging book, Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052 to 2072. They imagine a world haunted by genocide, ecocide, disease, fascism, and viral capitalism, but rather than writing a dystopian novel, O’Brien and Abdelhadi create a complex mosaic of oral histories, in which they each play the part of interviewer. The result is a story that far exceeds New York, and the twenty years noted in the title.  The histories cover generations across the globe, and reach into the deep sources of trauma, and the kinds of mutual care we will need to not only survive, but also to thrive in these frightening times.

Eman Abdelhadi is an academic, organizer and writer based in Chicago. She is co-author of "Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072," a revolutionary sci-fi novel published in 2022 with Common Notions Press. She is an assistant professor and sociologist at the University of Chicago, where she researches American Muslim communities, and she is a columnist at In These Times magazine where she writes on the Palestine Liberation movement and American politics. Eman organizes with the Salon Kawakib collective, Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine at the University of Chicago, Scholars for Social Justice and other formations.

M. E. O’Brien writes and speaks on gender freedom and capitalism. She has written two books: Family Abolition: Capitalism and the Communizing of Care (Pluto Press, 2023) and a co-authored speculative novel, Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072 (Common Notions, 2022). She is a member of the editorial collective of Pinko, a magazine of gay communism. Her work on family abolition has been translated into Chinese, German, Greek, French, Spanish, Catalan, and Turkish.

Previously, she coordinated the New York City Trans Oral History Project, and worked in HIV and AIDS activism and services. She completed a PhD at NYU, where she wrote on how capitalism shaped New York City LGBTQ social movements. 

She currently works a psychotherapist in private practice and is a psychoanalyst in formation.

Germany's 2025 federal election saw the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) double its support to 20.8%, becoming the second largest party, while the Green Party fell from 14.8% to 11.6%. The AfD denies climate science and opposes environmental policies on economic grounds. 

This week, Alasdair interviews academic Felix Schulz, whose recent research has examined public attitudes toward climate policy across six countries - three in the global north and three in the global south.  

The research found that core values – particularly those derived from neoliberalism and free-market ideology – are more effective than socioeconomic factors in indicating how people will respond to climate policies.  

Felix and Alasdair discuss how neoliberal thinking has shaped public opinion, why climate policy must integrate social and economic considerations, and how job security concerns in industrial roles affect political support for climate action. 

Felix Schulz is a postdoctoral research fellow at Lund University researching public opinion and climate policy.  

Further reading:  

• Why focusing on “climate change denial” is counterproductive, 2023,  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 
• People with neoliberal views are less likely to support climate-friendly policies, 2025, The Conversation 
• Public support for climate policies and its ideological predictors across countries of the Global North and Global South, 2025, Ecological Economics 
• Navigating sustainable futures: The role of terminal and instrumental values, 2024, Ecological Economics 
• German elections: why most political parties aren’t talking about the climate crisis, 2025,   The Conversation 

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Click here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.

If you look around at the state of the world—and the despair that comes with the reality of climate change, fascism spreading its tentacles around the world, the ethnic cleansing of Gaza—it's very difficult to feel hope. It begins to feel like the forces of destruction and death have colonized our futures, limiting our dreams and stifling our imaginations.

It's in these times specifically that it's essential we remember that the future, our dreams, our imagination—that these things are political. And that exercising our hope for a just and beautiful future is an important, in fact, crucial political act. Not on its own, of course, but imagining and dreaming fuels our actions and gives soul and spirit to our revolutionary movements. And as the poet Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote, "The future must enter into you long before it happens."

Rob Hopkins is the co-founder of Transition Network and of Transition Town Totnes, and the author of several books including The Transition Handbook, From What is to What if, and most recently, How to Fall in Love with the Future: A Time Traveller's Guide to Changing the World.

In this episode, we explore what it's like to be a time traveler from Rob's perspective, how dreams and imagination are powerful tools for driving change, and the role that art and music play in the fight for a better future. We explore examples of communities that have made a claim on the future, from the Afro-futurism and Black Utopianism of jazz musician Sun Ra to the occupation of Waterloo Bridge in London and the pop-up community that arose as a result. And finally, we look at how the future is not just an abstract concept, but something that can be felt, touched, heard, seen, and smelled.

Further resources:

• How to Fall in Love with the Future: A Time Traveller's Guide to Changing the World, by Rob Hopkins
• Field Recordings from the Future
• Crowdfunder: Field Recordings From The Future Immersive Show
• Sun Ra's Chicago: Afrofuturism and the City, by William Sites
• From What If to What Next: 72 - What if we shifted to a not-for-profit economy?

Related episodes:

• Transition Towns with Rob Hopkins
• Beer: Crafiting a Better Economy (Documentary)
• Everyday Utopia and Radical Imagination with Kristen Ghodsee
• Extinction Rebellion with Gail Bradbrook
• The Work that Reconnects with Joanna Macy
• A World Without Profit with Jennifer Hinton
• Doughnut Economics with Kate Raworth
• Fully Automated Luxury Communism with Zarinah Agnew and Eric Wycoff Rogers

Intermission music: "A Car-Free Neighbourhood" by Field Recordings for the Future Artwork: Aga Kubish

This episode was produced in collaboration with EcoGather, an experimental educational project focused on heterodox economics, collective action, and belonging in an enlivened world. EcoGather hosts gatherings to bring some Upstream episodes to life—this is one of those episodes. The EcoGathering for this episode will be held on Friday, June 27th. Find out more at ecogather.ing.

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. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

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

In this episode, Michael speaks with Maron Greenleaf, assistant professor of anthropology at Dartmouth College. They discuss Maron’s recently published book, Forest Lost: Producing Green Capitalism in the Brazilian Amazon, in which she examines a set of carbon offset programs in the Brazilian state of Acre. Unlike traditional forest commodities that require extraction, carbon offsets monetize forest protection by paying communities to keep carbon stored in standing trees. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, Maron describes how forest carbon markets and offsets can be unexpectedly inclusive, providing economic opportunities for marginalized communities, while simultaneously reinforcing some of the inequalities they claim to address. Maron uses this study to illuminate broader questions about whether market-based solutions can effectively address environmental crises. Her work suggests that while green capitalism offers compelling possibilities for reconciling economic growth with environmental protection, it also reproduces some of the structural problems inherent in capitalist systems.

References:

Maron’s website: https://www.marongreenleaf.com/forest-lost

Greenleaf, M. (2024). Forest Lost: Producing Green Capitalism in the Brazilian Amazon. Duke University 

Press. https://dukeupress.edu/forest-lost

Ferguson, J. (1994). The anti-politics machine:’development’, depoliticization and bureaucratic power in 

Lesotho. University of Minnesota Press.

La Escombrera, a vast rubble pile overlooking Medellín, is considered to be Colombia's largest urban mass grave. Its excavation this year has unearthed the remains of people whose families have been searching for them for decades.

Earlier this month, it was announced that the excavation there is being expanded. Some hope that what is found in that rubble will answer deeper questions - about how the conflict unfolded here in the city, and how the state was complicit in murders and human rights violations committed by paramilitary groups.

This week, Emily Hart, journalist and Colombia Calling host, takes us through an article she wrote on her Substack about La Escombrera, the dynamics and history of Colombia's civil conflict, and about how this war - largely characterised by rural conflict and guerrilla tactics - ended up radically changing the face of Colombia's cities.

Sign up and subscribe to Emily's Substack: https://harte.substack.com

And don't miss, the Colombia Briefing reported by Emily as well.

What happens when a former Soviet state experiments with Silicon Valley-style capitalism - when the worlds of open source hardware collide with proprietary corporate control? What happens when American landlords use the latest and greatest in surveillance tech to terrorize renters? McElroy also shares the origin story of SF BARF which Sonja Trauss led, which later became the Yes In My Backyard (YIMBY) movement. Entertain these questions and more in a chat between Talk of the Bay host Meilin Obinata and guest Dr. Erin McElroy, a professor of Geography at the University of Washington who co-founded the AntiEviction Mapping Project which includes maps of the "worst evictors" in the Bay Area and Landlord Tech Watch "dedicated to producing collective knowledge about landlord-driven surveillance techniques." If you like hearing about data practices, you also might enjoy this Moment of Truth episode featuring Dr. Anita Say Chan, author of "Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech" from March 2025.   

Journalist and author John Dinges joins Suzi to discuss his new book, Chile in Their Hearts. The book reopens the case of Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi — two young Americans who went to Chile to experience the radical democratic socialist experiment of Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity government — and were detained and executed in the days following the brutal military takeover of September 11, 1973.

The story was immortalized in Costa-Gavras’ Oscar-winning film Missing, which depicted Horman as the man who knew too much about U.S. involvement in the coup. That became the widely accepted story of Horman’s death, as well as that of Frank Teruggi, who was arrested, tortured and killed during the coup’s brutal early days. But John Dinges, himself a young journalist who lived in Chile from 1972-1978, uncovered circumstances and facts of their cases that challenge this version as a myth. His meticulous examination of the evidence reveals the shoddy investigation of the facts and the coverup behind its false conclusions.

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

On today’s show, host Esty Dinur is joined by two legal experts from Earthjustice–Andre Segura and Stefanie Tsosie–to talk about the Trump administration’s attacks on the environment. 

They discuss the reconciliation bill that was passed yesterday and what this billionaire’s bill will mean for the environment. Segura says that this bill is a huge giveaway to the oil and gas industry and will make it easier to drill and transport oil and gas, impacting ecosystems the world over. Increased drilling in the Alaskan Arctic, Gulf of Mexico, and beyond will further exacerbate the climate crisis. 

Tsosie says that this bill is just a continuation of what has been an ongoing onslaught on the environment, that includes issues of pipelines like Line 5 in Wisconsin. She debunks the myth that the US is experiencing an energy emergency–an argument commonly made by conservatives to support their drilling projects. Meanwhile the administration is cancelling clean energy projects left and right. Tsosie says that “you can’t put the oil back in the pipeline.”

Andre Segura is a Vice President of Litigation for Earthjustice and is based in Houston, Texas. Andre has been at the front lines of some of the most significant battles for civil rights and racial justice across the country. 

Stefanie Tsosie is a member of the Navajo Nation and a Senior Attorney in the Earthjustice Tribal Partnerships Program based in Seattle, WA.  Stefanie continues to litigate on behalf of tribal clients, most recently the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in their fight against the Line 5 Pipeline, and works to develop partnerships with tribal clients across the country.

Featured image by Simon Ingram via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

The post “You can’t put the oil back in the pipeline” appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Worries about the so-called “pussification of Silicon Valley” are not at all new.  Becca Lewis’ work reaches far back in American history to trace the nexus of gender, technology, and entrepreneurship, such that what we find today seems a foregone conclusion. In today’s wide-ranging discussion we talk about the central figure in this history—George Gilder, whose first book, Sexual Suicide, and subsequent forays into technology, conservative politics, and capitalism included much of what we see today in things like the echo chambers of misinformation of Fox News and the alienated “freedom” of Elon Musk’s SpaceX City. Who are these men, who Becca says, “leave behind the messy physical flows of women’s bodies in favor of the streamlined capitalism of male genius”?

Becca Lewis is a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford University Department of Communication and an incoming assistant professor of Comparative Media Studies at MIT. Her work examines the rise of reactionary politics in Silicon Valley and online. In September 2024, she received her PhD in Communication from Stanford University. She previously worked as a researcher at the Data & Society Research Institute, where she published flagship reports on far-right online broadcasting, media manipulation, and disinformation. Her work has been published in academic journals including New Media & Society, Social Media + Society, and American Behavioral Scientist, and in news outlets such as The Guardian and Business Insider. In 2022, she served as an expert witness in the defamation lawsuit brought against Alex Jones by the parents of a Sandy Hook shooting victim.