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 co-produced and co-hosted by Sasha Lilley and C. S. Soong.
Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg discuss their book “Righteous Dopefiend,” which both records the experiences of homeless heroin injectors in San Francisco and analyzes the structural forces that shape their lives.
Mark Nowak, a poet, social critic and labor activist, talks about his book “Coal Mountain Elementary” and describes the dialogues he’s initiated between exploited workers in the US and South Africa.
Historian of technology Iain Boal speaks with Sasha Lilley about why the bicycle is not the green machine we all think it is. He also discusses the importance of the first public radio network in this country and what the anarchist founders of KPFA and Pacifica had in mind for the radio medium.
The diagnosis of mental illness has always been colored by societal assumptions and biases, but a striking shift occurred during the turmoil of civil rights movement. In this encore broadcast, Sasha Lilley speaks with Jonathan Metzl about how schizophrenia became a supposedly black disease.
Labor journalist Steve Early talks with Sasha Lilley about the challenges facing organized and unorganized labor in a time of crisis for the economy and for unions.
Feminist historian Sheila Rowbotham talks to Sasha Lilley about the utopian socialists, free love advocates, birth control campaigners, and trade unionists who transformed the status of women at the turn of the last century.
A first-time presentation of an extended interview with John Muir Laws about plants and wildlife commonly found in the Bay Area. Also, Katrina Browne’s film “Traces of the Trade” is about her slave-trading New England-based ancestors.
Printmaker Doug Minkler talks about radical politics, art, and censorship.
