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.
Walt Odets discusses the life and work of his playwright father, Clifford Odets, whose subject, according to one theater critic, "was always the struggle of the heartbroken American soul under capitalism." Also, Dario Robleto talks about his contributions to an exhibition called "Human/Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet."
Daniel Geary discusses his new book "C. Wright Mills, the Left, and American Social Thought."
George Katsiaficas discusses the formidable radical autonomist movements in Europe in the 1970s and 80s — their factory occupations, squats, mass demonstrations, and militant battles with neo-Nazis and the police. With host Sasha Lilley.
In David McNally's analysis of the nature and causes of the ongoing economic crisis, he highlights the volatility of money, the uses and abuses of working-class debt, and the fateful financialization of the economy.
Jon Tracy has adapted George Orwell's novel "Animal Farm" for the stage. And Ian Ruskin plays the labor leader Harry Bridges in the film ""From Wharf Rats to Lords of the Docks."
A landmark climate change conference will convene in Denmark in December. Environmentalist and author Bill McKibben describes the enormity of what's at stake, and how pressure on policymakers can best be exerted.
U.C. Santa Barbara sociologist Avery Gordon discusses the value of utopianism to leftist projects.
U.C. Santa Cruz professor Dana Frank comments on the recent coup in Honduras and its aftermath, and also talks about her book "Local Girl Makes History: Exploring Northern California's Kitsch Monuments."
Susan Crate and Kate Watters have written about several environmental justice struggles in the new volume "Environmental Justice and Sustainability in the Former Soviet Union."
In Arthur Miller's classic play "Death of a Salesman," Richard Lichtman sees a number of Marxist and psychoanalytic themes illustrated and illuminated.
