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.
It’s no mystery that the fortunes of the very rich have soared under this administration, but the concentration of wealth in the hands of the very few is a hallmark of capitalism itself. Economist Rob Larson returns to discuss the state of capitalism today, with massive subsidies for the wealthy and a war that’s starting … Continued
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It’s been called a new gold rush, but not of our external environment, which continues to be plundered, but of our internal environment — of our psyches. Historian of science D. Graham Burnett, one of the Friends of Attention, lays out what’s at stake — and how they’re organizing a movement to reclaim our attention.
Recessions, trade wars, labor unrest — in moments of societal crisis in the United States, Asian-Americans have been perennially targeted, from the destruction of Chinatowns by white mobs, to the mass internment of Japanese-Americans during WW2, to attacks against Asians during Covid. Historian Scott Kurashige reflects on more than 175 years of anti-Asian violence and … Continued
Sugar may seem like a natural, almost eternal substance, cultivated over thousands of years. But it was remade by capitalism and turned into a homogenized commodity. Enslaved labor was central to sugar production on vast plantations, which would then be discarded as sugar laid waste to both the lands and human bodies. And, as historian … Continued
Fiction that imagines alternate futures is often associated with the left — with writers like Octavia Butler and Ursula LeGuin. But the tropes of science fiction are well-suited to the right and, as Jordan Carroll illustrates, far right authors and aficionados have populated the ranks of speculative fiction since its inception, like ardent science fiction … Continued
The power the police wield on the streets of this country is plain to see. Less visible, but no less formidable, is the immense political power and influence that the police exercise. Historian Stuart Schrader describes how police unions amassed enormous power over the last fifty years. Stuart Schrader, Blue Power: How Police Organized to … Continued
The left has a long history of predicting the decline of US capitalism and empire. Some argue that Trump is a symptom of that decline — a strongman chosen by capital to set things right — and that the ill health of U.S. capitalism is paralleled by the decline of the dollar. Political economist Stephen … Continued
Jews and the left have been closely associated with each other for well over a century, both in Europe where the Nazis genocidally linked one with the other, and in the United States. Scholar Benjamin Balthaser considers the history of American Jews and the left, including in opposition to Jewish nationalism, arguing that the recent … Continued
We often are told there is no other way to organize society — that by our very nature, we’re destined to try to dominate each other. But are such assumptions merited? Primatologist Agustín Fuentes pulls apart the supposedly evolutionary case that humans are hardwired for war. And the late anthropologist David Graeber discusses the active … Continued
