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.
In his book “Present Shock,” media theorist Douglas Rushkoff argues that the digital age has created a situation in which we must keep track of everything at once, resulting in the loss of the future and of ourselves.
Alison Mountz, a geography professor and principal investigator of the Island Detention Project, discusses US, Australian, and other national policies to house detainees in remote locations far from family, community, resources, and potential advocates.
Sujatha Baliga and Mia Mingus spoke about restorative and transformative justice at the recent symposium “Race, Domestic, and Sexual Violence: From the Prison Nation to Community Resistance.” In another talk, Clarissa Rojas discussed anti-imperialist feminist politics and the medicalization of anti-violence work.
According to Dean Spade, prisons, borders, the drive to criminalize more behaviors, and mainstream gay organizations stand in the way of efforts to transform society.
If the arts change with the times, why hasn’t literature kept up? In “How Literature Saved My Life,” David Shields picks apart most of modern literature and argues passionately for a new kind of narrative.
Are police, prisons, and criminalization the way to combat violence against women? In a recent talk at UC Berkeley, the black feminist scholar/activist Beth Richie said that’s exactly the wrong approach.
In his new book “Towards Collective Liberation,” Chris Crass draws organizing and movement-building lessons from the experience of San Francisco Food Not Bombs.
In “Song Without Words: Discovering My Deafness Halfway Through Life,” Gerald Shea writes about the lives of partially deaf people and about how society deals with them.
Award-winning author Joyce Carol Oates discusses her two newest novels: “The Accursed,” an historical work set in the Gilded Age at the dawn of the twentieth century, and “Daddy Love,” a thriller that looks at oppression, bigotry, and the notion of young people as a symbol of hope.
Sarah Swider describes what’s happening to millions of Chinese peasants who migrate to urban centers to do precarious work in China’s construction industry. She also considers what the growing concentration of Chinese migrant workers in cities might mean for working-class politics and solidarity.
