Artie Vierkant

This episode was recorded live at the 2025 Socialism Conference in Chicago, where we collaborated with conference organizers to host four discussions over the first weekend in July. All four recordings are now available for Death Panel patrons at www.patreon.com/deathpanelpod feat. Beatrice, Artie, and Vicky Osterweil Session description: With the new administration, the federal government has been actively attacking healthcare funding for the poor and intensified its targeting of trans and disabled people and the immiseration of healthcare workers. In this session, we discuss what the fight for health communism may look like under this new regime, and what strategies and forms of politics may help us move forward. With Death Panel co-hosts and co-authors of Health Communism Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant, joined by writer and organizer Vicky Osterweil. Find a written version of Beatrice and Artie's remarks here: https://blindarchive.substack.com/p/where-is-the-site-of-struggle-in Find our other Socialism Conference 2025 sessions here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/134644723 Thanks to Han Olliver for our Death Panel x Socialism Conference 2024 poster image, which is being used as the cover image for this episode on platforms that support it. Find and support Han's work at www.hanolliver.com Health Communism is now out in paperback! Find it here or order at this link to add a donation to Sameer Project: https://open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com/products/w4g-adler-bolton-beatrice-artie-vierkant-health-communism Find Tracy's book, Abolish Rent, here: www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2443-abolish-rent Find Phil's new book, Counting Like a State, here: kansaspress.ku.edu/9780700639687/ Death Panel merch here (patrons get a discount code): www.deathpanel.net/merch As always, support Death Panel at www.patreon.com/deathpanelpod

Beatrice Adler-Bolton, Artie Vierkant, and Vicky Osterweil speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. This session was sponsored by Death Panel. With the new administration, the federal government has been actively attacking healthcare funding for the poor and intensified its targeting of trans and disabled people and the immiseration of healthcare workers. Join us for a discussion of what the fight for health communism may look like under this new regime, and what strategies and forms of politics may help us move forward. With Death Panel co-hosts and co-authors of Health Communism Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant, joined by writer and organizer Vicky Osterweil. The next Socialism Conference will be held in Chicago, September 4-7, 2026. Learn more about the Socialism Conference at www.socialismconference.org. Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow Haymarket on podcast platforms for regular event recordings, book talks, political analyses and poetry readings!

This episode was recorded live at the 2025 Socialism Conference in Chicago, where we collaborated with conference organizers to host four discussions over the first weekend in July. All four recordings are now available for Death Panel patrons at www.patreon.com/deathpanelpod feat. Beatrice, Artie, and Vicky Osterweil Session description: With the new administration, the federal government has been actively attacking healthcare funding for the poor and intensified its targeting of trans and disabled people and the immiseration of healthcare workers. In this session, we discuss what the fight for health communism may look like under this new regime, and what strategies and forms of politics may help us move forward. With Death Panel co-hosts and co-authors of Health Communism Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant, joined by writer and organizer Vicky Osterweil. Find a written version of Beatrice and Artie's remarks here: https://blindarchive.substack.com/p/where-is-the-site-of-struggle-in Find our other Socialism Conference 2025 sessions here: Gender, Sexuality, Reproduction and the State: Fighting Back Against the So-Called Law (DP x S25) — Bea, Melissa Gira Grant, Sophie Lewis https://www.patreon.com/posts/134643775 Dean Spade on Community Care in the Face of Collapse (DP x S25) — Bea, Dean Spade https://www.patreon.com/posts/134644217 The Proletariat Has No Homeland: Property and the Surplus Class (DP x S25) — Bea, Tracy Rosenthal, Marques Vestal https://www.patreon.com/posts/134644582 Thanks to Han Olliver for our Death Panel x Socialism Conference 2024 poster image, which is being used as the cover image for this episode on platforms that support it. Find and support Han's work at www.hanolliver.com Find our book Health Communism here: www.versobooks.com/books/4081-health-communism Find Jules' latest book, A Short History of Trans Misogyny, here: https://www.versobooks.com/products/3054-a-short-history-of-trans-misogyny Find Tracy's book, Abolish Rent, here: www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2443-abolish-rent Find Phil's new book, Counting Like a State, here: kansaspress.ku.edu/9780700639687/ Death Panel merch here (patrons get a discount code): www.deathpanel.net/merch As always, support Death Panel at www.patreon.com/deathpanelpod

We’ve been talking about RFK Jr for years, and even dedicated an entire chapter to him in our 2023 book—and we’re going to keep covering him. Since his power and influence has only grown, and since he’s now in charge of America’s entire health apparatus, there’s no way to avoid it. This week we catch up on the last few months of MAHA. Derek looks into why he believes Kennedy’s apparatus, despite claims of being about health, is really a cover for Project 2025’s deregulatory agenda. Julian discusses a recent paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine by Covid contrarians Marty Makary and Vinay Prasad, who now both work under Kennedy. Finally, Matthew will contemplate Kennedy’s crude remarks on autism through the lens of disability politics. Show Notes What Has All This Restaurant Food Done to My Gut? Function Health is Another Theranosesque Scam MAHA’s Goal Is Not Health: Robert Kennedy’s movement promises more privatization RFK Jr. meets with health tech startups, most backed by Andreessen Horowitz COVID infection no longer gives lasting immunity Hybrid Immunity May Be the Key to Developing Better Vaccines Makary, Bhattacharya in New England Journal of Medicine Consequences of Work Requirements in Arkansas: Two-Year Impacts on Coverage, Employment, and Affordability of Care Concerns About ABA-Based Intervention: An Evaluation and Recommendations - PMC Adler-Bolton, Beatrice, and Artie Vierkant. 2022. Health Communism: A Surplus Manifesto. Verso Books. SURPLUS . Adler-Bolton, The New Inquiry. October 18, 2022. Extractive Abandonment - Stimpunks Foundation Social and medical models of disability and mental health: evolution and renewal - PMC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

in this episode I read, in part (with a digression mid-way on Dickens' A Christmas Carol and more), the transcript of Unlimited Liabilities (July 31, 2023) with Nate Holdren from the Death Panel podcast co-hosted by Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant. This episode is not meant to mimic their podcast but is a dramatic interpretation - my reading of the transcript itself - as experiment in performance.

It’s obvious that some lives are valued over others, and some commodities are valued more than life. How have these determinations been made? In this episode, we talk about how medical care prioritizes some patients over others—even to the extent of taking some people’s personal ventilators to give to others who were considered to have a greater life expectancy or quality of life—how supply chain issues exacerbated this problem during the pandemic, and what a system may look like that prioritizes people over profit. If you like ⁠Un/Livable Cultures⁠ , share with your friends, consider supporting the podcast on ⁠Patreon⁠ , or leaving us a review! And follow our Twitter ⁠@UnlivablePod⁠ for updates. Sources Health Communism: A Surplus Manifesto by Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure by Eli Clare State policies may send people with disabilities to the back of the line for ventilators How the Supply Chain Upheaval Became a Life-or-Death Threat Eric Garner’s Death Will Not Lead to Federal Charges for N.Y.P.D. Officer Eric Garner died during a 2014 police encounter. An officer involved might lose his job.

Nate Holdren, Artie Vierkant, and Abby Cartus speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2023. This session was sponsored by Death Panel. https://www.deathpanel.net Capitalism exploits not just the surplus labor of the working class; it also exploits our health. This panel will discuss Friedrich Engels’ concept of “social murder,” the structural forces within capitalism that abandon populations to injury, debility, and premature death. Marxist historian Nate Holdren is joined by co-hosts of the Death Panel podcast Artie Vierkant and Abby Cartus to discuss how “social murder” can be used to understand the politics inherent to things like workplace injuries and the capitalist normalization of covid-19, and how under capitalism, “social murder” is a feature, not a bug. Nate Holdren will participate in this session remotely. Learn more about the Socialism Conference at www.socialismconference.org. Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow Haymarket on Soundcloud for regular event recordings, book talks, political analyses and poetry readings: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

I’m starting an interview series — there are so many people whose brains I want to pick and a podcast feels like the perfect format for it. To kick off these conversations, I bring you a great chat I had with Micha Frazer-Carroll on her new book, Mad World: The Politics of Mental Health . Micha is a writer and editor based in London whose work focuses on the theme of liberation, and when she sent this book to me, I honestly screamed, because I’ve been waiting for something like this to exist. (Micha also quoted my work in this book which is to me, the highest honor, and I’m so excited to be included in a book that I love so much.) Mad World weaves together disability justice with mad studies and abolition to give us a political view of mental health that prioritizes solidarity, self-advocacy, and autonomy. What I love about it most is just how complicated it is — Micha gives us lots of questions with lots of different answers, and embraces the fact that there is a lot we can’t know, but that doesn’t mean we can’t work together to make change. This is an expansive conversation full of big ideas about the limits of rationality, the complicated nature of diagnosis, the liberating power of art, and all the big possibilities to be found in embracing disability and refusing to disavow each other in our political movements. I had so much fun chatting with Micha and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! [episode transcript] Order Mad World (Pluto Press): www.bit.ly/madworldbook Follow Micha on Twitter and Instagram , or check out her website Mentioned in this episode: * Health Communism by Beatrice Adler-Bolton & Artie Vierkant * Black Disability Politics by Sami Schalk * Crip Theory by Robert McRuer * Lydia X.Z. Brown on disavowal (@ 37:00) * Toward an Informed Consent Model for All Drugs by Devon Price * Recovery In The Bin * The MadZines project * Making Mad History: Mad Pride 2022, by the Campaign for Psychiatric Abolition This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sluggish.xyz/subscribe

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 the most contentious and important in the ongoing class war between the mass of people and those who rule us, the capitalist class. But it would be a mistake to think that that's where our battle ends, that there isn't an expanded struggle over the ways that health and sickness are even conceptualized under the capitalist ideological framework which shapes how we value ourselves and how we are either utilized or abandoned by this system. In this episode, we'll take a deep dive into all of the different places where health overlaps with capitalism, with Beatrice Adler-Bolton , co-host of the podcast Death Panel and co-author, along with Artie Vierkant , of Health Communism: A Surplus Manifesto . This conversation glides from Marxist economic analysis to healthcare policy to history and to some of the most foundational philosophical underpinnings of the political economy of health. Beatrice directs a striking blow against any perceived possibility of true health ever existing under capitalism, arguing that we must fight for our lives, literally, to bring forth the fall of capitalism and to build a new system that works for everyone — what she calls health communism. Thank you to Carolyn Raider for this episode's cover art and to Fugazi for the intermission music. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond/Lanterns . Further Resources: Health Communism: A Surplus Manifesto , by Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant Death Panel Podcast Death Panel Medicare For All Week Decarcerating Disability: Deinstitutionalization and Prison Abolition by Liat Ben-Moshe Mad World: The Politics of Mental Health by Micha Frazer-Carroll 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 <a href= "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/upstream/id10

In this episode Is capitalism bad for your health? Let’s talk about this and other questions in discussing the book Health Communism by Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant. Transcript Start gameplay Hey, how are you doing? You’re feeling alright? Or are you maybe a bit stressed? Burnt out from a heavy week at work? No worries, mate. I’ve got something to take your mind off of things for a couple of minutes. Oh and, by the way: Hello! Welcome to Vulnerable By Design, with me, Chris Onrust. In this episode, we will dive into a new-ish game that has been making the rounds for a bit, which you may have heard of? It’s called Capitalism. 1 In particular, we would like to find out how all of this capitalism fanfare may be affecting your health. Are you ready? Level 1: What is capitalism? First things first: What is Capitalism? From what I have heard: ‘Capitalism is an intense strategy game (…) where players must constantly think ahead.’ It is ‘very realistic’, encourages ‘sensible strategies’, and allows even office clerks to ‘claw [their] way to the top’. They say that Capitalism offers ‘… hundreds of hours of gameplay for the corporate enthusiast’. 2 Okay, good. But then how do you play Capitalism? Do you fancy having a go? Let’s start with the basics. In capitalism, you have got an economic-political system that works on a cycle. Businesses, investors or other private parties control the wealth, the land, or other sorts of assets that are needed to produce, distribute, and exchange goods or services. They use wage labor to get other people to do the work of actually producing those goods or services for them. Those produced goods and services are then sold on a market for a profit, resulting in the accumulation of wealth and assets in the hands of those same initial businesses, investors, or other private parties. In short, we are working with a cycle of assets and wealth accumulation. Terminology alert! This wealth and these assets are sometimes known as ‘ca-pi-tal’. And, by association, the businesses and people who own such wealth and assets can be known as ‘ca-pi-ta-lists’. Okay, now for clarification: when we’re talking about wealth and assets, do I mean that if you’ve got a couple of quid on you, and you own a laptop, does that mean that you are a capitalist? No! The hallmark of capitalism is not people owning or producing things. If you have a computer and you build software, that computer is not thereby capital, and you are not thereby a capitalist. If you own a loom, and you weave rugs, that loom is known to thereby capital, and you are not thereby a capitalist. If you have your own van, and you drive your mates to a rave, again: that van is not thereby capital, and that does not make you a capitalist. But then when is something capital? What does make you a capitalist? We’re only dealing with capitalism in a very specific economic-political structure. When a person, business or whatever type of shell organization they can come up with, owns and controls things—computers, looms, vans, whatever—but does not use those assets to code, weave or provide transport themselves. No. It is when, instead, they get other people to do the actual work (of coding, weaving, driving). They pay those workers a wage that is lower than the actual value of the work that’s been delivered. They slap a price tag on it, and—cha-ching—they sell that for a profit. So, my friends, having some savings or cooking utensils does not a capitalist make. It’s when you’ve got this —this specific structure—in place, that you’ve got capitalism. Level 2:

Hello from Tammy’s dark apartment! This week, Jay and Tammy are joined by Beatrice Adler-Bolton, co-host of the podcast Death Panel , with Artie Vierkant, and co-author, also with Artie, of the new book Health Communism , a manifesto that reimagines our systems of care. [2:00] But first, we try to process the horrific mass shooting at a dance studio in Monterey Park , California, in which eleven people were killed on Lunar New Year. We discuss Asian America’s reactive hyperfocus on racial identification and hate-crime designations and ponder alternatives. (We recorded on Monday evening, just before news broke of yet another mass shooting—this time, in Half Moon Bay , killing seven people. Jay expanded on these ideas in this essay for TTSG .) How should the left respond to violence that doesn’t fit into a predetermined, racialized narrative? [18:00] In our main segment, Beatrice takes us through the theory of Health Communism and its promise to save us from our financialized care nightmare. We discuss the transformation of “health” into an aesthetic commodity and the dogma of personal responsibility that keeps us from making population-level change. Though the book does not discuss COVID-19 , Beatrice explains how our pandemic response has highlighted the left’s blind spots with respect to disability. She endorses a "margin to center" / “edge case” method, drawing on Black feminism, and a global approach to social determinants of health. Plus: how mainstream talk of Medicare for All falls short, a Supreme Court case about nursing homes , and the meaning of “extractive abandonment.” Speaking of communism: On Tuesday, January 31, at 5pm EST, Tammy joins sci-fi novelist and activist China Miéville for a conversation about “contemporary capitalism’s rapidly multiplying crises and the Communist Manifesto’s enduring relevance,” in celebration of his new book, A Spectre, Haunting . Register here! Thanks for listening! Subscribe on Patreon or Substack and follow us on Instagram , TikTok , and Twitter . As always, feel free to email us at timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com . This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe

Beatrice Adler-Bolton, co-author of the new book Health Communism and co-host of the Death Panel podcast, joins us to discuss Bea & co-author Artie Vierkant’s aforementioned book, the irresponsible and minimizing ways the Biden administration and public health officials have responded to Covid, how taking a stance of “the pandemic is over” has left us unprepared for new variants and we take a look at the ways living in a capitalist healthcare system ultimately helped fueled the worst outcomes of Covid. A better world is possible.You can follow Bea here: https://twitter.com/realLandsEndSupport Death Panel here: https://www.patreon.com/deathpanelpodYou can purchase Health Communism here: https://www.versobooks.com/books/4081-health-communism Our most recent premium episode with Ken Klippenstein is available here: You can find us on…YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheInsurgents/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theinsurgentspod/Twitter: https://twitter.com/insurgentspodTo become a subscriber (paid intern!) and gain access to an additional episode every week, you can subscribe here: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.insurgentspod.com/subscribe