Noam Chomsky discusses the impact of the increasing concentration of wealth and power on our politics in the new film Requiem for the American Dream.
Against the Grain
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 Today’s Children Spoiled?
Today’s children are overindulged, coddled, and spoiled — lavished with praised and unearned ‘A’s at school, given trophies when they don’t win. They get everything too easily. It’s bad for parents, bad for children, and bad for society at large. But are any of these claims factually accurate? Leading education critic Alfie Kohn reflects on … Continued
Extinction, “De-Extinction,” and Capitalism
What should we do in the face of the ongoing extinction crisis? What is rewilding, and how does it work? Is de-extinction, which involves the resurrection of extinct species, advisable? Ashley Dawson puts mass extinction and the various efforts to address it in a broader political-economic context. Dawson’s new book is Extinction: A Radical History.
The Political Uses of Disaster Aid
What can the history of Reagan-era US foreign disaster aid in Ethiopia, El Salvador, and Armenia teach us about US policy today? Historian Alexander Poster discusses the political uses of foreign disaster relief. Resources: Alexander O. Poster, A Hierarchy of Survival: The United States and the Negotiation of International Disaster Relief, 1981-1989 Alexander Poster, Obama … Continued
Work, Life, and Class Difference
Is it true what many theorists are saying, that the line between work and the rest of life is blurring? Barbara Ellen Smith and Jamie Winders suggest that there’s a class bias to that claim; they contend, in the volume Precarious Worlds, that for millions of low-wage workers, the line is in fact getting more … Continued
The New Right’s Origins in the Labor Battles of the 1930s
What are the origins of modern conservatism? The failed Goldwater campaign? Or the Cold War era discontent of midwestern small capitalists? Historian Kathryn Olmsted argues that it should be located even earlier, in the intense and massive labor unrest that took place in the fields of California in the 1930s. The response by growers and other elites pioneered … Continued
Radical Politics and the American Superhero
How has the figure of the comic book superhero played into left-wing political projects and aspirations? In his new book, Ramzi Fawaz argues that the reinvention of the American superhero was a response to, and a factor in, the rise of radical political sensibilities and movements in the 1960s and beyond.
Creative destruction is the hallmark of capitalism, as the economist Joseph Schumpeter argued. But the destructive side is often overlooked. Francesca Ammon discusses the enormous wave of demolition that accompanied the postwar boom — transforming the rural, urban and suburban landscape, and displacing the residents of scores of communities around the United States. Resources: Francesca … Continued
White Women’s Roles in Slavery
Although white women have been largely excluded from histories of the domestic U.S. slave trade, they were in fact active participants in the buying and selling of enslaved Blacks. So argues Stephanie Jones-Rogers; she also elucidates the power slave owners had under federal and state law to go into so-called free states to reclaim runaway … Continued
In the popular imagination, U.S. anarchism ended with the deportation of Emma Goldman in 1919, only to re-emerge recently with the masked Black Bloc. But according to scholar Andrew Cornell, anarchism survived and thrived in mid-century America, deeply influencing bohemia, Civil Rights, and the New Left. Resources: Andrew Cornell, Unruly Equality: U.S. Anarchism in … Continued