4:00 PM PACIFIC TIME: MONDAYS - FRIDAYS
Hard Knock Radio is a drive-time Hip-Hop talk show on KPFA (94.1fm @ 4-5 pm Monday-Friday), a community radio station without corporate underwriting. Hosts Davey D and Anita Johnson give voice to issues ignored by the mainstream while planting seeds for social change.
In this timely episode, Davey D speaks with civil rights attorney and author Alec Karakatsanis about his new book, Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News. Alec unpacks how police departments deploy strategic storytelling and cultivate media partnerships to shape public perception of crime, fuel fear-driven narratives, and justify ever-expanding police budgets. The … Continued
Today on Hard Knock Radio we bring you a special edition of Rootwork on KPFK, Thandi Chimurenga of Black Liberation Media sat down with Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson to discuss bold strategies for grassroots survival and resistance. Part of the ongoing Build and Fight Formula series, their conversation explored the urgency of self-defense in … Continued
On this episode of Hard Knock Radio, host Davey D sits down with X. Eyee, one of todays leading voices in artificial intelligence ethics, policy, and responsible tech. With a career that spans Microsoft, Google, the U.S. Department of Defense, and now CEO of consulting firm Malo Santo, X. Eyee has seen AI from every … Continued
Hard Knock Radio is a drive-time Hip-Hop talk show on KPFA (94.1fm @ 4-5 pm Monday-Friday), a community radio station without corporate underwriting, hosted by Davey D and Anita Johnson.
Host Davey D opens with “Am I Human?” and frames Samora Pinderhughes as a Bay-raised, Juilliard-trained composer/pianist/vocalist who blends jazz, R&B, and movement work. Samora embraces that lineage—crediting his parents’ community praxis—and talks frankly about maintaining integrity in an industry that rewards spectacle and “Black dysfunction.” The antidote, for him, is purpose and craft. On abolition, Samora widens the lens: prisons, … Continued
On Hard Knock Radio, I sat down with Jelani Cobb—dean of Columbia’s Journalism School, longtime staff writer at The New Yorker, and a thinker rooted in Hip Hop’s habit of connecting dots across time. We talked about his new book, Three or More Is a Riot: Notes on How We Got Here (2012–2025). I called it “a … Continued
Host Davey D convenes SEIU 1021 organizer Jennifer Esteen and Women’s Economic Agenda Project director Ethel Long-Scott to unpack a seismic—and largely ignored—economic gut punch: 300,000 Black women cut from the federal workforce in the first half of 2025. Both guests frame the layoffs as part of a broader, deliberate restructuring—legal, political, and technological—that targets … Continued
Hard Knock Radio is a drive-time Hip-Hop talk show on KPFA (94.1fm @ 4-5 pm Monday-Friday), a community radio station without corporate underwriting, hosted by Davey D and Anita Johnson.
Host Davey D checks in with producer Tarik “Eccentric” Kazaleh and singer-organizer Naima Shalhoub about Gaza’s ongoing crisis, the grassroots effort Prosthetics for Palestine, their instrumental collective Shadow Band, and a benefit show this Sunday in Danville. Tarik explains Prosthetics for Palestine began as a family idea and, over the past year, has grown into … Continued
Davey D taps Netfa Freeman of Pan-African Community Action (PACA) and the Black Alliance for Peace to unpack what’s really happening in Washington, D.C. Freeman says the story isn’t a sudden “DC takeover” but an intensification of long-running policies: federal agents augmenting MPD, a crime narrative used to justify containment, and a local government—under Mayor … Continued
