Against the Grain
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.
Against the Grain – February 2, 2011
Can potentially violent students, like Jared Loughner and the Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho, be identified and caught before they kill? Benjamin Reiss objects to what he sees as the intrusion of psychiatric risk assessment and intervention into the classroom.
Against the Grain – February 1, 2011
Several guests weigh in on the protests in Egypt, US government interests, and the continuing crackdown on internet activism.
Against the Grain – January 31, 2011
Private foundations, including Bill Gates’s, are pouring billions of dollars into efforts to remake our public schools. Joanne Barkan finds these market-based initiatives and their wide-ranging impacts deeply disturbing.
Against the Grain with Sasha Lilley – January 26, 2011
Anthropologist Gerald Creed, editor of “The Seductions of Community, speaks with Sasha Lilley about what might be wrong with the notion of “community” and the uses the term is put to.
Against the Grain – January 25, 2011
Clichés about hope and individual responsibility pervade popular narratives about cancer in the US. Sarah Lochlann Jain critiques what she calls “the cultural management of cancer terror” and suggests alternative, politically conscious ways of discussing disease.
Against the Grain – January 24, 2011
Jared Diamond talks about why some civilizations endure and others are short-lived in this speech given in Los Angeles.
Against the Grain – January 19, 2011
Benita Roth contends that a New Left ethos of “organizing one’s own,” and not racism, explains why white feminists and feminist women of color did not build cross-racial coalitions in the 1960s and 70s.
Against the Grain with Sasha Lilley – January 18, 2011
Political scientist Mona El-Ghobashy discusses the recent parliamentary elections in Egypt–the second biggest recipient of U.S. military aid–and the social movements roiling the economic powerhouse of the Middle East.