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 produced and hosted by Sasha Lilley.
Are children inherently creative? What might be taken as a given is actually a relatively new notion. And, as Amy Ogata argues, it took hold in the United States under particular circumstances: driven in part by Cold War anxieties about the health of the nation, along with the desire by toy manufacturers to sell products … Continued
What accounts for the allegiance W. E. B. Du Bois professed to Stalin’s U.S.S.R.? What did the influential African American thinker and writer believe had happened to white supremacy and racial prejudice in the Soviet Union? According to Vaughn Rasberry, Du Bois believed that emerging communist nations like the U.S.S.R. had the right to experiment, … Continued
If you’re like most Americans, you probably feel overworked and underpaid. Americans, on average, labor 300 hours more per year than their counterparts in Northern Europe. And even workers in Europe, with some notable exceptions, have not seen substantial reductions in their hours for decades, despite increasing labor productivity. So what’s going on? Sociologist Christoph … Continued
Portions of two talks given by Alan Watts, the author, lecturer, and interpreter of Buddhist thought.
Is capitalism bad for your health? Gabor Maté thinks so. The acclaimed Canadian physician and Marxist discusses capitalism, stress, and chronic illness, inimitably combining profound humanism, dark wit, and extensive knowledge of science and social justice. He makes the compelling case that the psycho-social needs to be taken into account by both the medical establishment … Continued
“Polishing the Mirror,” by the influential spiritual seeker and teacher Ram Dass, has been turned into an audiobook.
In “I Am Not Your Negro,” Haitian director Raoul Peck, through the lens of writer James Baldwin, examines why racial oppression is at the heart of the American experience.
Selections from Voices That Change the World, a comprehensive 1300-hour Pacifica Radio Archives audio compilation featuring hundreds of thinkers, critics, activists, writers, and performers.
He was a trailblazing critic of imperialism, but chances are you’ve never heard his name. The radical Japanese journalist Kotoku Shusui, who moved from socialism to anarchism, wrote a seminal critique of imperialism — before Hobson and Lenin — and led the movement against empire in Japan. Robert Tierney discusses Kotoku, his classic work Imperialism, … Continued
As universities become increasingly infiltrated and transformed by capitalist logics, what do free universities add to the educational, social, and political landscape? Fern Thompsett, a Ph.D. student at McGill University, co-founded a free university in Australia; she’s also researched more than two dozen free university projects in North America. Thompsett describes both the free-of-charge and … Continued
