Against the Grain – July 9, 2014
Sarah Nilsen discusses the relationship between television shows like Mad Men and the ideology of colorblindness pushed by the right. For more details and higher-quality audio, visit againstthegrain.org.

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.
Sarah Nilsen discusses the relationship between television shows like Mad Men and the ideology of colorblindness pushed by the right. For more details and higher-quality audio, visit againstthegrain.org.
In part two of an extended interview, Jason W. Moore talks about whether capitalism is running out of cheap nature — including labor — to exploit.
Corey Robin, author of “The Reactionary Mind,” discusses the intellectual underpinnings of the Right.
Incarceration is commonly understood as detention in prisons and jails. Liat Ben-Moshe argues that the term’s meaning should be broadened to include confinement in places like psychiatric hospitals, mental institutions, and even nursing homes. Ben-Moshe discusses the trend toward deinstitutionalization, the position of people with disabilities in capitalist society, and what she calls the institution-industrial … Continued
Jason W. Moore argues against the notion of the Anthropocene — or the age of humans — for understanding climate change. He argues that we should instead see it as an outgrowth of the Capitalocene, or age of capital. Part one of a two part interview.
Rebecca Gordon discusses her new book Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States.
Historical sociologist Fouad Makki discusses with host Sasha Lilley the massive rush by countries and corporations to acquire land in Africa, and considers the forces behind the “new enclosures” of commonly-held property. For more information, go to againstthegrain.org
Political theorist and media scholar Jodi Dean discusses why communism remains such a powerful ideological force — and why the left should claim the term without apology.
After World War II, the US pushed the European imperial powers to abandon their colonies; it also adopted an anticolonial stance based on its democratic, anti-imperial values and principles. That’s the conventional narrative — but is it correct? Julian Go confronts the widely propagated notion of American exceptionalism and discusses the postwar rise of US global … Continued
Marxist geographer Richard Walker, coauthor of “The Atlas of California”, talks about the most populous state in the US, from the dispossession of Native Americans at its founding to its overcrowded prisons, dynamic but unequal economy, stressed education system, and biodiverse but fragile environment today.