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.
Democracy today is in a sorry state. Can Walt Whitman help us resuscitate it? John Marsh thinks so; he reveals how the thousands of visits Whitman paid to sick and wounded soldiers in Civil War army hospitals restored the poet’s faith in ordinary people’s ability to fashion a robust democracy. Marsh also shows how Whitman modeled … Continued
The Wire clearly wasn’t your typical police drama. Linda Williams describes the way in which the critically acclaimed television serial about the streets and institutions of Baltimore broke new ground. Among other things, Williams highlights The Wire‘s institutional focus and argues that the show rewrote what she calls the melodrama of black and white. For … Continued
E.P. Thompson was the greatest English socialist historian of the 20th century and his work still resonates today in how we understand class, social struggle, and history. Thompson’s student Cal Winslow reflects on his life, politics, and writings, from his early days in the Communist Party, to his key role in the early New Left, … Continued
Many of the Italians who migrated to the US in large numbers at the turn of the twentieth century were drawn to anarchism. Jennifer Guglielmo has studied Italian immigrant political culture with an emphasis on working-class women who espoused anarchism, labor militancy, and a radical, transnational feminism. For more details and higher-quality audio, visit againstthegrain.org.
Welfare supports were a fundamental feature of the Soviet Union. But then the USSR collapsed, leaving millions of Russians without either good-paying jobs or state assistance. Marianna Pavlovskaya reveals how Russian families resorted to household and other informal economic practices to cope, adapt, and survive in an era of relentless privatization and neoliberalization. For more details … Continued
Are the rich wealth creators, as we commonly hear? Should we be grateful to investors and entrepreneurs, as they like to be called, for generating jobs and greasing the wheels of the economy? Or is the source of their massive wealth the rest of us? Scholar Andrew Sayer discusses rentiers, capitalists, and why the planet … Continued
Death, decay, and interment are not the merriest of topics, but they are fundamental aspects of human life as part of nature. Yet much of the time, scholar Suzanne Kelly argues, we don’t want to acknowledge our connection with other natural cycles of life. Kelly reflects on American’s fear of decay, the social history of … Continued
A radio and web media project whose aim is to provide in-depth analysis and commentary on a variety of matters — political, economic, social and cultural — important to progressive and radical thinking and activism.
Terence McKenna challenges conventional understandings of reality and human consciousness.
A radio and web media project whose aim is to provide in-depth analysis and commentary on a variety of matters — political, economic, social and cultural — important to progressive and radical thinking and activism.
