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 did the sixties unfold in Europe? Was it primarily a set of political rebellions? How did revolutionary movements in Western Europe compare with those in the Eastern bloc? Timothy Scott Brown talks about the desires, inclinations, and innovations of sixties radicals. Timothy Scott Brown, Sixties Europe Cambridge University Press, 2020 Timothy Scott Brown, West … Continued
The experience of trans people has burst into the mainstream in the last decade, although the struggles of gender variant people are nothing new. Jack Halberstam talks about the politics of categorization, generational differences, radical vs. single-issue politics, and anti-trans feminism. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Jack Halberstam, Trans* A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability … Continued
More than 110,00 Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to remote concentration camps in early 1942. Photojournalist Paul Kitagaki Jr. has tracked down dozens of camp survivors and their descendants. Charles Wollenberg has written about several key legal cases provoked by this tragic episode and the attorney who spearheaded them. (Encore presentation.) … Continued
Highlights of some of the best commentary presented on Against the Grain in 2020, featuring Caitlin Rosenthal on capitalism, commodification, and slavery; Victor Wallis on workers’ control and revolution; Catherine Squires on Harriet Tubman and Andrew Jackson; and Ashley Dawson on energy democracy and the transition to renewables. Full-length interviews with Caitlin Rosenthal, Victor Wallis, … Continued
The failed German Revolution, in which he was a participant, marked the Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse for life. But unlike some of his more pessimistic colleagues in the Frankfurt School, particularly after the rise of fascism, Marcuse did not give up on liberatory possibilities. In the 1960s, Marcuse became one of the key philosophers of … Continued
What are the origins of modern conservatism? The failed Goldwater campaign? Or the Cold War era discontent of midwestern small capitalists? Historian Kathryn Olmsted argues that it should be located even earlier, in the intense and massive labor unrest that took place in the fields of California in the 1930s. The response by growers and … Continued
The failure to unionize the South, to organize Southern workers in the 1930s and ’40s on the basis of interracial worker solidarity, had momentous and enduring consequences for race relations and worker well-being in the U.S. as a whole. So argues Michael Goldfield, who in his latest book points to the marginalization of leftists within unions … Continued
Radio in the twentieth century, which you could tune into in your car or at home, had a mass audience and was a collective experience, for good or ill. Radio today, which can be listened to when and how you want it, is a more private and atomized affair. Historian Matthew Lasar discusses the social … Continued
Alan Watts, the educator, author, and prominent interpreter of Eastern thought, gave a talk called “Way Beyond the West.” photo: Sean Benesh via Unsplash
What are the best means we have to affect lasting social change? Historian Kevin Young contends that even when progressive candidates are elected to positions of power, their achievements are constrained by the ability of the business class to disinvest in the economy in protest. He argues that, nonetheless, the Left has a powerful tool … Continued
