12:00 PM Pacific Time: Mondays - Wednesdays
Acclaimed program of ideas, in-depth analysis, and commentary on a variety of matters—political, economic, social, and cultural—important to progressive and radical thinking and activism. Against the Grain is co-produced and co-hosted by Sasha Lilley and C. S. Soong.
It’s easier to remember the histories of defeat, than those of social transformation. But in the three years preceding the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, the country experimented with a form of socialism that was both top down and bottom up. Historian Marian Schlotterbeck discusses how under Salvador Allende’s government, the radical left fueled changes at … Continued
How Chinese and Japanese people were depicted and treated in San Francisco had a lot to do with the creation of the American “Oriental,” argues Amy Sueyoshi in a new book. She links stereotypical portrayals of Asians to the process by which white San Franciscans viewed and addressed changes to their own sexual norms and … Continued
When you think of dictatorship, what comes to mind? Probably a repressive state controlling what we can say and do. But acclaimed political philosopher Elizabeth Anderson argues that the word describes the workplace. She discusses how we give up most of our rights when we take a job. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government: … Continued
When, after the U.S. entered World War I, Emma Goldman continued to speak out – this time against the draft – the authorities threw her in prison. The influential anarchist and agitator was deported two years later. Candace Falk, who directs the Emma Goldman Papers Project, is working on the fourth and final volume in … Continued
We’re often told that the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians rises out of a unique historical situation. But the dispossession of the Palestinians, rather than being exceptional, has strong echoes in other historical dispossessions. Gary Fields discusses the enclosure of the lands of the English peasantry, Native Americans, and the inhabitants of historic … Continued
What did anarchism and Marxism look like in the nineteenth century, and in the years leading up to the Russian Revolution? Were Marxists and anarchists always at loggerheads? And how did the Bolshevik Revolution affect the dynamics and development of these two great idea systems? Anthony D’Agostino weighs in on these and other questions. Anthony … Continued
Open any world history book and you’ll read that the Neolithic Revolution was the key turning point in human history, when hunter gatherers gave up roaming in small egalitarian tribes and settled down to farm. Out of that, civilization was born, with all the benefits and ills connected to it: the rise of cities, the … Continued
Was the post-9/11 use of torture by U.S. personnel unprecedented, as many have claimed? Alexa Koenig reveals that in the early decades of the twentieth century, police in the U.S. routinely employed torture during interrogations. Koenig draws parallels between those abuses, which were part of a cluster of practices known as “the third degree,” and … Continued
The U.S. was left the world’s sole superpower after the demise of the Soviet Union. Yet the U.S. spends a mind-boggling amount on weapons and we’re constantly warned, including in the liberal media, that there are dangerous governments out there in need of containment, Russia being first among them. John Marciano discusses the lessons of … Continued
As threats to the environment grow in number and severity, we tend to view conservation as an urgent imperative and an unmitigated good. But, as Anuradha Mittal has discovered, what’s being done to the indigenous Maasai people in Tanzania in the name of conservation is horrific. Mittal describes how foreign conservation and tourism companies, often … Continued
