12:00 PM Pacific Time: Mondays to Wednesdays
Award-winning 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.
Where can one find an outstanding example of decentralized democracy? Richard Franke describes a remarkable initiative launched in the Indian state of Kerala that devolved power to the community level, made local development a bottom-up process, and drew on mass mobilizations to bring to light people’s needs and how best to address them. T.M. Thomas … Continued
Atlanta is a pivotal city for reasons cultural, economic, and political. And so the changes that the city and metropolitan area have undergone since the 1990s have been consequential, deepening class and racial inequality. As Dan Immergluck points out, these shifts were not the inevitable product of market forces, but the result of political decisions. … Continued
Belief conjures up political fanaticism and blind religiosity. But evolutionary anthropologist Agustín Fuentes argues that belief is also connected to our capacities to imagine, create, and change the world for the better. He reflects on why the ability to commit passionately and wholeheartedly to an idea is a central part of what makes us human. … Continued
The Republican Party is gripped by a hatred of immigrants. But geographer Reece Jones argues it has not always been so. Instead, one man, the late John Tanton, was responsible for making nativism appear a central concern of conservatives, by propagating scores of anti-immigrant organizations, some which eventually helped staff the Trump Administration. And, as … Continued
Bunkering and doomsday prepping, far from being eccentric or fringe activities, are baked into U.S. politics. So argues Emily Ray, who describes how Americans have been encouraged, by both Cold War administrations and today’s political elites, to think of doomsday preparation as an individual rather than collective endeavor, one that involves looking to the market for … Continued
Following the attacks of September 11th, the administration of George W. Bush instituted the widespread use of coercive interrogations of detainees, as well as kidnapping, forced disappearance, and sham commission proceedings. Yet for the first several years of the “war on terror” little was known about what the U.S. state was doing to prisoners, until … Continued
Species extinction and loss of biodiversity may seem like twenty-first century concerns, but according to Wai Chee Dimock, nineteenth-century thinkers like Thoreau anticipated irreversible changes to the natural world. Thoreau, she asserts, was deeply concerned about the fate of both wildlife and Native American populations. (Encore presentation.) Wiggins, Fornoff, and Kim, eds. Timescales: Thinking across Ecological … Continued
Modern art has always been a battleground — and the highly influential Museum of Modern Art has been partisan since its inception. Architectural historian Patricio Del Real discusses two differing political visions of modernism and modern architecture: one rooted in the left, and associated with figures such as Communist muralist Diego Rivera, and the other … Continued
According to Jesse Olsavsky, vigilance committees in Philadelphia, Boston, and other northern cities constituted the militant, highly organized urban wing of the Underground Railroad. Olsavsky stresses the importance of the interviews vigilance committee members conducted with runaways, interviews that acted as crucial conduits for information, ideas, and strategies for resistance. Jesse Olsavsky, The Most Absolute … Continued
The wines of Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand are widely consumed around the world, especially in the UK, the heart of the former British empire. And that’s no coincidence. The British imperial project was central to the cultivation and distribution of wine from its colonies, for reasons both ideological and economic. Historian Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre … Continued
