12:00 PM Pacific Time: Mondays to Wednesdays
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.
In his book "No Coward Soldiers: Black Cultural Politics in Postwar America," U.C. Berkeley professor Waldo Martin examines the role of black culture, including music, art and dance, in fueling and enriching the civil rights and Black Power movements.
David Edmonds and John Eidinow have produced their second book about philosophers in conflict. In Rousseau’s Dog, they document the stormy falling-out between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume. In their earlier Wittgenstein’s Poker, the bitter antagonists are Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper.
A debate on the viability of the plant-based petroleum substitute ethanol, with scientists Alexander Farrell and Tad Patzek, as well as Nathaniel Greene from the Natural Resources Defense Council and Mike Ewall of the Energy Justice Network.
Why did women involved in anarchist movements during the Spanish Civil War years of the 1930’s establish their own organization, called Mujeres Libres? Martha Ackelsberg discusses her book Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women.
There’s a kind of war being waged on the US-Mexico border, and the victims are defenseless civilians. Jose Palafox connects the dots between border policy, corporate globalization, trade pacts, and anti-immigrant sentiment. Sanctuary movement co-founder John Fife describes efforts to prevent migrant deaths along the border.
Acclaimed radical historian Robert Brenner talks about whether the invasion of Iraq can be explained as simply an act of imperialism within a long tradition or if it represents a substantive change from prior US foreign policy.
The members of the Retort Collective — Timothy Clark, Michael Watts, Joseph Matthews, and Iain Boal — discuss their interlocking arguments about imperialism and military neoliberalism at a symposium titled "States of War: The Geopolitical Logic of Contemporary Capitalism."
How should we understand the social and economic forces, often labeled "globalization," that have shaped our world for the last thirty years? Sasha Lilley talks to eminent Marxist geographer David Harvey about the origins, trajectory, and significance of neoliberalism.
How should the left understand the experiment that was the Soviet Union? Moshe Lewin, author of The Soviet Century, talks with host Sasha Lilley about the rise and fall of the USSR.
A look at the history of sectarian divisions in Iraq and the role the current US occupation has played in perpetuating communal strife. With Middle East scholar Stephen Zunes and host Sasha Lilley.
