High school students are assigned massive textbooks overflowing with dates and events in U.S. history. But according to sociologist and educator James Loewen, these massive tomes often omit more than they include. Loewen’s classic work, Lies My Teacher Told Me, explores the whitewashing of Woodrow Wilson’s racism and imperialist ventures, and the exclusion of Helen … Continued
Against the Grain
12:00 PM Pacific Time: Mondays to Wednesdays
Award-winning 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 co-produced and co-hosted by Sasha Lilley and C. S. Soong.
Michael Albert discusses his vision of an equitable, sustainable, and participatory economy. photo: Wikipedia
Over the past half century, the US economy has undergone a profound change: wealth has been concentrated in the hands of a few, inequality has skyrocketed, and insecurity has reigned. And yet it’s a story mainly downplayed by mainstream pundits and the media. Noam Chomsky, arguably the most important public intellectual in the world, says … Continued
Alan Watts on the fundamentals of Buddhism, plus portions of a talk he gave called “Insight and Ecstasy.”
Who were the Jacobins? What did they believe in, what did they accomplish over the course of the French Revolution, and how should they be judged? Micah Alpaugh discusses the Jacobin clubs’ social and political stances, the policies they enacted, and the Jacobins’ turn toward terror. Micah Alpaugh, ed., The French Revolution: A History in Documents Bloomsbury, 2021 … Continued
Separating Children as Counterinsurgency
While the Trump Administration’s policy of separating children from their parents at the US-Mexico border drew intense condemnation, the practice has been going on in this country for centuries. Historian Laura Briggs argues that it has been part of strategy of counterinsurgency, as during the anti-communist wars in Latin America, in which rebellious populations are … Continued
Bunkering and doomsday prepping, far from being eccentric or fringe activities, are baked into U.S. politics. So argues Emily Ray, who describes how Americans have been encouraged, by both Cold War administrations and today’s political elites, to think of doomsday preparation as an individual rather than collective endeavor, one that involves looking to the market … Continued
A protracted but determined struggle to defeat an airport construction project produced an extraordinary victory. In the face of brutal police repression, Isabelle Fremeaux, Jay Jordan, and others created an autonomous zone and prevented the construction of a massive international airport on 4,000 acres of fields, forest, and wetlands in western France. Fremeaux and Jordan … Continued
In the United States, few things seem as wholesome as camping, letting us temporarily escape the daily grind and commune with nature and each other. But Phoebe Young argues that camping has a complicated history, which tell us a lot about Americans’ notions of nature and the nation. She discusses the various forms that camping … Continued
Most of us assume that our medical data is protected under U.S. law — but, as sociologist Mary Ebeling illustrates, that’s wrong. Even when we don’t collect it ourselves with fitness trackers and health apps, our most sensitive health information is gathered from across the web, and package and sold as data commodities by brokers … Continued