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.
How does a social movement attract younger participants, who may be turned off by older activists’ approaches, styles, and understandings? Elisabeth Jay Friedman describes how Ni Una Menos, an influential feminist formation in Argentina, managed to build an intergenerational mass movement. Elisabeth Jay Friedman and Ana Laura Rodríguez Gustá, ‘“Welcome to the Revolution’: Promoting Generational … Continued
As the world rushes headlong into the climate emergency, what might a liberatory approach look like, that would avert ecological disaster while making another world possible? Drew Pendergrass and Troy Vettese have laid out one vision for eco-socialism that takes on the difficult question of how to plan society in a radically different way. (Encore … Continued
To be queer and communist at a time when the Communist Party in the U.S. banned LGBT people was tricky and often perilous. In her new book Bettina Aptheker profiles Lorraine Hansberry (who famously penned the play “A Raisin in the Sun”), Harry Hay (best known for founding the Mattachine Society), and other figures with … Continued
What are the contradictions and uses of environmental conservation and land preservation in a settler colonial state? Like South Africa and the United States, the Israeli government has carved out large swaths of land for ecological protection — and the dispossession of native populations is often hidden from sight. Legal anthropologist Irus Braverman discusses the … Continued
An Asian Pacific Islander history-themed program featuring Jean Pfaelzer on anti-Chinese pogroms; Karen Ishizuka on API organizing; Craig Santos Perez on Guam’s indigenous Chamorro population; and Julie Otsuka about her novel about Japanese American incarceration. Jean Pfaelzer, Driven Out: The Forgotten War against Chinese Americans UC Press Karen Ishizuka, Serve the People: Making Asian America … Continued
North Americans are sick, stressed, and alienated, a state of affairs accentuated in recent years by Covid. The Hungarian-Canadian physician Gabor Maté argues that capitalism engenders illness, while the medical system blindly ignores the lives of its patients. Maté discusses individual and collective change, while reflecting on human nature, alienation and rightwing politics, and the … Continued
In the United States, few things seem as wholesome as camping, letting us temporarily escape the daily grind and commune with nature and each other. But Phoebe Young argues that camping has a complicated history, which tell us a lot about Americans’ notions of nature and the nation. She discusses the various forms that camping … Continued
Groundbreaking theorist David Harvey considers Marx’s analytical framework and applies it to contemporary conditions.
Audio highlights of the award-winning film “Aware: Glimpses of Consciousness.”
What can the work of Karl Marx tell us about the world we live in, beset by pandemics, economic distress, and vast inequality? The renowned geographer and radical theorist David Harvey has made answering that question his life’s work — and we on the left are so much richer for it.
