Fund Drive Special: Hannah Arendt
The film “Vita Activa” examines the life and ideas of Hannah Arendt, who wrote about totalitarianism, the plight of refugees, and the nature of evil.
Against the Grain
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.
Epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson, along with his co-author Karen Pickett, caused a sensation with their work The Spirit Level, which amassed vast amounts of data to illustrate that whether you are poor or well off, social inequality makes us ill, unhappy, and stressed. In the documentary film “Dysfunctional Societies” Wilkinson makes the case that equality is … Continued
Fund Drive Special: Nonviolent Communication
Marshall Rosenberg lays out some of the basics of Nonviolent Communication, the method he developed for connecting compassionately with others.
As movements highlight the perils of global warming and the inaction of governments in the face of it, what types of mechanisms could and should be considered to slow down the ravages of climate change? Geographer Holly Jean Buck argues that, as fraught as it is, the left needs to recognize the need for the … Continued
“Permanent Revolution” or Bust?
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels laid out their understanding of how a socialist revolution would unfold. Emanuele Saccarelli shows how that notion changed and evolved, in the minds of Marx, Engels, and a number of subsequent socialist thinkers who took part in debates over the value of reformism versus revolution. (May Day encore … Continued
The US-Mexico border is often in the news. But what’s usually missing is the cost of the border, both in human terms, and in terms of the political economy of the region itself — the deep entanglement of the livelihoods of people who live in places like Douglas, Arizona with the border industrial complex. Scholar … Continued
Adam Hochschild talks about two chapters in his latest book, one about surveillance and spying in the U.S. and the other about mining and people’s livelihoods in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Namwali Serpell describes her new novel set in her native Zambia, and Max Haiven discusses the book he’s written about art and … 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
Do fictional narratives, like those found in novels, plays, and films, promote empathy? Does emotion-based empathy spur people to alleviate suffering in the real world? Namwali Serpell calls into question much of the conventional thinking about empathy in relation to art. Drawing on thinkers like Arendt and Brecht, Serpell points to fiction’s capacity to enlarge … Continued
If it feels like an uphill battle to organize against climate change in this country, imagine the challenges in Canada where a significant part of the economy is based on fossil fuel extraction and transport. Yet Canada also has multiple inspiring movements, with indigenous people at the forefront, fighting to leave coal, oil and gas … Continued