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.
In her book "Torture and the Twilight of Empire," the sociologist Marnia Lazreg argues that torture is essential to the imperial project, particularly when the empire — like the French in Algeria in the 1950s — is in decline. She also draws parallels to recent and current US military conduct in Iraq.
Immanuel Wallerstein discusses, in this second of a two-part interview, what the USSR’s collapse meant to the US; what kinds of strategies opposition movements might pursue; and why world-systems analysis, which he innovated, has merit. Also, the writer and poet Adam David Miller talks about his memoir "Ticket to Exile."
In this first part of a two-part interview, the influential scholar and writer Immanuel Wallerstein argues that the US was the sole global superpower from 1945 to around 1970, after which US hegemony went into decline. He also describes how the 1968 revolutionaries critiqued the Old Left movements that had taken state power, and contends … Continued
Chris Carlsson discusses his new book Nowtopia: How Pirate Programmers, Outlaw Bicyclists, and Vacant-Lot Gardeners are Inventing the Future Today!
Ellen McLaughlin talks about her play "The Trojan Women," inspired by Euripides’s classic anti-war tragedy. And Sara Shelton Mann and Jo Kreiter discuss the works they’ve contributed to "FOR THE RECORD: Dancers Debate the Body Politic," an ODC Theater festival.
Michael Klare discusses his new book "Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy."
Susan Greenbaum criticizes federal policies that disperse public housing residents in the name of reducing poverty. And radical historian Eric Hobsbawm discussed socialism, democracy, Poland, and the USSR in a 1981 Pacifica Radio interview.
Eyal Press examines the abortion debate and traces the rise of the evangelical anti-abortion movement in his book "Absolute Convictions: My Father, a City, and the Conflict That Divided America."
The geographer Saed Engel-Di Mauro discusses soil degradation and its impact on agriculture and the environment. And Paul Paz y Mino of Amazon Watch talks about a historic lawsuit against Chevron in Ecuador.
Co-editor William Minter and contributor Lisa Brock discuss the new book “No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists over a Half Century, 1950-2000.”
