KPFA - Against the Grain

Many in our society are struggling to provide care for their families or communities. Often they don't have time to do it and can't afford to pay for it. The right realizes this and has tried to woo women with a glorified vision of domestic life. Economist Nancy Folbre discusses the early fight for the recognition of unpaid care work as real work, while the economics profession has mainly ignored it, despite its crucial importance for capitalism. (Encore presentation.) Nancy Folbre, Making Care Work: Why Our Economy Should Put People First UC Press, 2026 Photo by Jill Brand on Unsplash The post Counting Care Work appeared first on KPFA.

Workers want and deserve decent, dignified, and democratic workplaces. But better wages and working conditions can be elusive in the face of management inertia and intransigence. Veteran organizer and Labor Notes board chair Ellen David Friedman talks about how to win workplace demands while building workers' collective power. Ellen David Friedman, Keep Going: A Guide to Organizing When It's Hard (PM Press / Labor Notes) The post Organizing to Win appeared first on KPFA.

The Trump administration has been unabashed in its intention to criminalize dissent, labeling protestors “domestic terrorists.” A recent verdict against anti-ICE protestors in Texas promises to be consequential in that effort.  Scholar Thomas Zeitzoff reflects on the administration's widespread attempts to quash opposition, from targeting fundraising by liberal nonprofits, knocking on the doors of former activists, or charging people with conspiracy for communicating on Signal about protests. (Encore presentation.) Thomas Zeitzoff, No Option But Sabotage: The Radical Environmental Movement and the Climate Crisis Oxford University Press, 2026 The post Criminalizing Dissent appeared first on KPFA.

The ramifications of the US attack on Iran have been a harsh reminder of the centrality of oil to the global economy – and not just for fuel and transport. Political economist Adam Hanieh reflects on the rise of crude oil in the 20th century. He argues that the blockage in the Gulf threatens to set off a more serious global crisis than seen in the 1970s. (Encore presentation.) Adam Hanieh, Crude Capitalism: Oil, Corporate Power, and the Making of the World Market Verso, 2025 The post Oil and Global Capitalism appeared first on KPFA.

Food affects all of us — but while it's a necessity for our survival, it's also a vast, sprawling industry spanning the globe, which generates enormous profits as well as significant damage to public health and the environment. Nutritionist and molecular biologist Marion Nestle sheds light on the choices we all must navigate when we enter the grocery store. (Encore presentation.) Marion Nestle, What to Eat Now: The Indispensable Guide to Good Food, How to Find It, and Why It Matters North Point Press, 2025 The post Marion Nestle on Food Choices and Food Politics appeared first on KPFA.

The powers of the president of the United States have grown since the Cold War, expanding under both Republicans and Democrats. And many of these presidential powers – such as those laid out in the presidential emergency action documents — are unknown to the US public. Journalist Andrew Cockburn reflects on the imperial presidency, the domestic motivations of US foreign policy, and the US-Israeli war on Iran, as well as the role of money in the politics of the Democratic Party. (Encore presentation.) Andrew Cockburn, Washington Is Burning: Corruption and Lies in the Age of Trump Verso, 2025 Photo by Ana Lanza on Unsplash The post Trump and the Powers of the U.S. Presidency appeared first on KPFA.

As mega-fires rage around the world, why have so many people given up on the climate fight? Environmental sociologist Diana Stuart examines how fatalism about the climate emergency has been shaped by the erroneous assumption that, if we exceed 1.5C of global heating, we've passed the point of no return. Diana Stuart, Rejecting Climate Doomism University of Michigan Press, 2026 Photo credit: Matt Palmer The post Against Climate Doomism appeared first on KPFA.

When we think of world makers, we're unlikely to picture a flower. Yet flowers completely transformed our planet, giving us rain forests, altering coastlines, producing the food we eat, and enticing our pre-human ancestors to climb down from the trees. And they did that partially through reshaping the formerly adversarial relationship between plants and insects into one of mutual aid and cooperation most of the time. Biologist David George Haskell enumerates our debt to flowers. Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash The post Fund Drive Special: Unlikely World Makers appeared first on KPFA.

The post Fund Drive Special: Unmasking the Far Right appeared first on KPFA.

Jessica Mitford revived muckraking journalism in the United States, shaping generations of investigative writers who followed her. She also lived an remarkable life on the left, despite her ultra-reactionary English upper class origins. Carla Kaplan argues that Mitford is woman for our times. Support Against the Grain and KPFA with your donation The post Muckraker Extraordinaire appeared first on KPFA.

Are women as strong as men? According to science writer Starre Vartan, in some cases, they are stronger. She argues that scientific research over the last several decades shows that culture shapes strength as much as hormones — and that much of what we presume about sex differences, strength, and athleticism harms all of us. Donate in support of Against the Grain and KPFA Photo by Peter Zhan on Unsplash The post Strength and Sex appeared first on KPFA.

The United States spends as much on healthcare as almost half the world combined, yet so many Americans are unhealthy. Would universal healthcare be enough alone to rectify this costly state of ill health? Stephen Bezruchka posits that inequality is at the root of our affliction — and that taxing the rich is a necessity. Stephen Bezruchka, Born Sick in the USA: Improving the Health of a Nation Cambridge University Press, 2026 Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash The post Americans: Unequal and Sick appeared first on KPFA.

In the decade of the 2010s, more people took to the streets than in any other time in history. And yet those horizontal protests, often spread through social media, were frequently co-opted by the right — and the decade ended with the rise of authoritarianism. Journalist Vincent Bevins spoke to activists around the world about the lessons they drew from the failed mass revolts, and discusses how democratic movements regained power in Brazil from the despotic Jair Bolsonaro. Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution Public Affairs, 2023 Vincent Bevins, “This Land Is Our Land: How Brazil's Landless Workers' Movement Emerged from Right-wing Rule Stronger Than Ever” The Nation, April 8, 2025 Photo credit: Jonathan Rashad The post The Mass Revolts of the 2010s appeared first on KPFA.

It's often argued that culture is the gateway to politics — that if you can influence cultural values, it will ultimately change society as whole. In the late Sixties, the counterculture was animated by that idea, including Rolling Stone Magazine, which began in the Bay Area. Peter Richardson reflects on Rolling Stone's debt to the counterculture – and the limits to both endeavors. Peter Richardson, Brand New Beat: The Wild Rise of Rolling Stone Magazine UC Press, 2026 The post Rolling Stone and the Limits of the Counterculture appeared first on KPFA.

Imagine, as a journalist or activist, trying to access your bank accounts and mysteriously finding them frozen. Debanking — when financial institutions close the accounts of those flagged as problematic, including at the behest of the government – appears to be growing. Civil liberties advocate Rainey Reitman, cofounder of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, reflects on the use of debanking, from Wikileaks to the Southern Poverty Law Center to the NRA. Rainey Reitman, Transaction Denied: Big Finance's Power to Punish Speech Beacon, 2026 Freedom of the Press Foundation Photo by Engin Akyurt on Unsplash The post Financial Censorship appeared first on KPFA.

Americans as a population have an unusually large appetite for psychoactive drugs, whether legal or illegal. And American history has been marked by periodic moral panics over drug use and normalization or legalization, as we're experiencing right now. Why is that? What is it about US society that makes drug use simultaneously so appealing and reviled? Writer and scholar Benjamin Fong weighs in. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Benjamin Yen-Yi Fong, Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge Verso, 2023 The post America's Drug Binge appeared first on KPFA.

Fossil fuel combustion has made dangerous heat waves ever more frequent. The short term answer — for those who have one — is to turn on the air conditioner. But air conditioning makes the the problem even worse. Environmental journalist Sam Bloch discusses the ways that cities used to be designed for shade, and stresses the urgent need for shelter from the sun — especially for the unhoused, farm workers, and others who labor outdoors. Sam Bloch, Shade: The Promise of a Forgotten Natural Resource Random House, 2025 Photo by Ivan Padial on Unsplash The post In Search of Shade appeared first on KPFA.

David Thomson, the great film critic, discusses his increasing disquiet with film — and how movies have helped deliver us to authoritarianism. He describes film's adulation of power, which has been almost religiously illuminated on the screen. David Thomson, A Sudden Flicker of Light: A Revisionist History of Movies Simon & Schuster, 2026 Book Launch with David Thomson at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley on July 12, 2026 The post What the Movies Have Wrought appeared first on KPFA.

Prisons won't be dismantled anytime soon. So what does—or should—prison abolition mean? Anna Terwiel draws from Angela Davis's writings a host of insights that buttress what Terwiel considers a realist political project. Among other things, she examines Davis's prison abolitionism in light of her democratic socialist commitments and her understanding of Radical Reconstruction. Anna Terwiel, Prison Abolition for Realists University of Minnesota Press, 2025 The post Thinking Beyond Prisons appeared first on KPFA.

Commercial sex and imperialism — army bases and brothels — have often gone hand in hand. But in the early 20th century an emergent U.S. empire defined itself as rooted in sexual purity. Historian Eva Payne describes how a heavy price for this notion of American exceptionalism was paid by women in the United States, who were policed and punished, along with those in U.S. colonies like the Philippines and the Panama Canal Zone. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Eva Payne, Empire of Purity: The History of Americans' Global War on Prostitution Princeton University Press, 2025 The post U.S. Empire and Sexual Morality appeared first on KPFA.

One of conservation's greatest achievements happened mostly by accident and is still hiding in plain sight from most of us. When settlers established cities in the United States, they decimated the existing ecosystems. But in recent decades, as environmental historian Peter Alagona illustrates, there has been a remarkable return of wildlife to urban areas across the country. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Peter S. Alagona, The Accidental Ecosystem: People and Wildlife in American Cities UC Press, 2023 Photo by Tj Holowaychuk on Unsplash The post The Fall and Rise of Urban Wildlife appeared first on KPFA.

How did conservatives come to dominate so much of the media in the U.S.? Historian A.J. Bauer looks at the formative period between the advent and repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in which the right looked to the left to sharpen a criticism of the media — which ultimately helped give rise to a media ecosystem on the right, with its own commercial imperatives. A. J. Bauer, Making the Liberal Media: How Conservatives Built a Movement Against the Press Columbia University Pres, 2026 The post The Making of a Rightwing Media System appeared first on KPFA.

For many decades, the idea has held sway that we humans should leave consequential decisions to a higher power: computers. And that assumption has become more deeply entrenched, the more powerful computers have become. How did our world come to be seen as an imaginary casino, with every decision to be stripped down to costs and benefits, risks and rewards? Computer scientist Benjamin Recht traces the development of mathematical optimization, game theory, statistical testing, and machine learning — the basis of AI — to understand how medicine, the economy, and governance have been outsourced to computing, concentrating enormous power in the hands of the few. Benjamin Recht, The Irrational Decision: How We Gave Computers the Power to Choose for Us Princeton University Press, 2026 Benjamin Recht's Blog Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash The post Deferring to Computers appeared first on KPFA.

The backlash against trans people, which has swept both the United States and the world in recent years, is not as new as it seems, according to historian Jules Gill-Peterson. She traces the emergence of trans misogynistic violence over the last two centuries, which she links to the establishment of colonialism, capitalism, and more recently neoliberalism. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Jules Gill-Peterson, A Short History of Trans Misogyny Verso, 2024 Photo credit: Norbu GYACHUNG The post Why Trans Misogyny? appeared first on KPFA.

The rise and fall of unemployment, our dependence on the market for our livelihoods — such things are taken as a given. But economist Clara Mattei suggests we need to recognize them as being fundamentally political phenomena, not the product of natural laws outside of our control. She argues that a reconsideration of our capitalist economy is long overdue. Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention Simon & Schuster, 2026 Forum for Real Economic Emancipation Photo by Julio Lopez on Unsplash The post Rethinking Capitalism appeared first on KPFA.

It's been called a new gold rush, yet not of our external environment, but of our internal environment — of our minds and psyches. Historian of science D. Graham Burnett, one of the Friends of Attention, lays out what's at stake and how they're organizing a movement to reclaim our attention. The Strother School of Radical Attention The Friends of Attention, Attensity! A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement Crown, 2026 The post Against the Attention Economy appeared first on KPFA.

The Texas Republican Party has involved from a corporate libertarian institution to one in which free market capitalism and evangelical Christianity are united in authoritarianism. Political scientist Clyde Barrow warns that Texan Christofascism serves as the rightwing blueprint for the rest of the United States in the coming years. Gregory Albo and Stephen Maher, eds. Socialist Register 2026: Late-Stage Capitalism? Accumulation in the Ruins Monthly Review Press, 2025 Photo by Pete Alexopoulos on Unsplash The post Texas: Vanguard of the Far Right appeared first on KPFA.

Scholar Emmaia Gelman reflects on the Anti-Defamation League's long history of targeting the left in the United States and abroad. She describes the purported civil right group's involvement in the Red Scare, its surveillance of left organizations, and role in branding as antisemitic those who criticize Israel. Emmaia Gelman, The Anti-Defamation League and the Racial State UC Press, 2026 The post The Anti-Defamation League and the Left appeared first on KPFA.

The Trump administration has exposed the enormous power, as well as astounding wealth, of the billionaire class. And the power of that class partially emanates from their ownership of much of our media system, with significant political consequences. Economist Rob Larson returns to discuss the 1%, AI and the massive build out of data centers, and the decline of press freedom in the U.S. (Full-length broadcast.) World Inequality Database Rob Larson, Mastering the Universe: The Obscene Wealth of the Ruling Class, What They Do with Their Money, and Why You Should Hate Them Even More Haymarket Books, 2024 Photo by Jingming Pan on Unsplash The post AI, the Media, and the Billionaire Class appeared first on KPFA.

The revelations of widespread surveillance by the National Security Agency after 9/11 brought to light one aspect of how the government has capitalized on digital technology to amass power – and such dangers have only multiplied. Cindy Cohn, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has been involved in numerous groundbreaking legal battles with the U.S. government over surveillance and privacy, including establishing encryption as protected speech. She discusses the battles over government spying from the rise of the internet to the present. Cindy Cohn, Privacy's Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance MIT Press, 2026 Electronic Frontier Foundation: Surveillance Self-Defense Section 702 Spying Photo by Chris Yang on Unsplash The post Fighting Surveillance appeared first on KPFA.

In the 1980s, yuppies were celebrated in the media and reviled by many others. Working in finance or as management consultants or lawyers, they quickly put their stamp on cities around the country, displacing working class people in places like New York, and remaking the Democratic Party. Historian Dylan Gottleib examines whether they were drivers of financialization and growing social inequality — or crucial cogs in the machine. Dylan Gottlieb, Yuppies: The Bankers, Lawyers, Joggers, and Gourmands Who Conquered New York Harvard University Press, 2026 Photo: Charles Hutchins The post Triumph of the Yuppie appeared first on KPFA.

Are women as strong as men? According to science writer Starre Vartan, in some cases, they are stronger. She argues that scientific research over the last several decades shows that culture shapes strength as much as hormones — and that much of what we presume about sex differences, strength, and athleticism harms all of us. Starre Vartan, The Stronger Sex: What Science Tells Us about the Power of the Female Body Seal Press, 2025 Photo by Peter Zhan on Unsplash The post Sex and Strength appeared first on KPFA.

Over the past four centuries, owners have sought to wrest control of the labor process away from the workers in plantations, factories, and warehouse, with the help of emerging economics profession. Ideas about labor, often dressed up as a science, have often failed on the shopfloor, but they have served a broader purpose. Labor historian Henry Snow interrogates how theories of discipline and management—from the Betham brothers' Panopticon to Frederick Winslow Taylor's ideas of labor optimization to General Electric's propaganda campaign featuring actor Ronald Reagan—have perennially reinforced the notion that there is no alternative to capitalism. Henry Snow, Control Science: How Management Made the Modern World Verso, 2026 The post The Long History of Controlling Workers appeared first on KPFA.

The Republican Party has traditionally been the party of the business class. But since the era of Newt Gingrich in the 1990s, the GOP has been marked by internal strife and ideological chaos — and in the last presidential election, the business class overwhelmingly supported Harris over Trump. Historian Paul Heideman considers the makings of a far rightward shift by the GOP, which has not been matched by an equivalent leftward turn of the Democrat Party. Paul Heideman, Rogue Elephant: How Republicans Went from the Party of Business to the Party of Chaos Verso, 2025 Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash The post How the GOP Lurched Further to the Right appeared first on KPFA.

We inhabit a world in which what we look at — what we see, read, scroll through — has often supplanted what we hear. The visual has replaced sound. But, of course, sounds are everywhere, both human-made and made by the rest of nature. Julian Treasure reflects on the importance of sound in our lives — between ourselves, other living things, and in the surroundings of our built environment. Julian Treasure, Sound Affects: How Sound Shapes Our Lives, Our Wellbeing, and Our Planet Grand Central Publishing, 2025 Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash The post Changing Sound appeared first on KPFA.

Over the last half century, diseases carried by insects — such as malaria and dengue, Zika and Lyme disease — have greatly increased. Sociologists Brent Kaup and Kelly Austin argue that the surge in vector-borne disease has been fueled by neoliberal capitalism, at times in unexpected ways, such as through loosened financial regulations governing mortgages and health insurance, as well as the gutting of health care. (Encore presentation.) Brent Z. Kaup and Kelly F. Austin, The Pathogens of Finance: How Capitalism Breeds Vector-Borne Disease UC Press, 2025 The post Capitalism and Insect-Borne Diseases appeared first on KPFA.

If it weren't obvious before, the Trump administration has exposed the enormous power, as well as astounding wealth, of the billionaire class. And the power of that class partially emanates from their ownership of much of our media system, with significant political consequences. Economist Rob Larson discusses the 1%, AI and the massive build out of data centers, and the decline of press freedom in the U.S. Please donate in support of KPFA and Against the Grain. The post Fund Drive Special: Artificial Intelligence, the Media, and the Billionaire Class appeared first on KPFA.

A radio and web media project whose aim is to provide in-depth analysis and commentary on a variety of matters — political, economic, social and cultural — important to progressive and radical thinking and activism. The post Against the Grain – May 19, 2026 appeared first on KPFA.

It's been called a new gold rush, but not of our external environment, which continues to be plundered, but of our internal environment — of our psyches. Historian of science D. Graham Burnett, one of the Friends of Attention, lays out what's at stake — and how they're organizing a movement to reclaim our attention. Please donate in support of KPFA and Against the Grain. The post Fund Drive Special: Against the Attention Economy appeared first on KPFA.

For as long as we've known, humans have revered ancient trees. We have also destroyed them, especially since the advent of colonialism and fossil fuel capitalism. Historian Jared Farmer reflects on what trees illuminate about our past and potential future. The post Fund Drive Special: Fossil Capitalism and Trees appeared first on KPFA.

What has the far right learned from the Frankfurt School? And what can we learn from Frankfurt School thinkers like Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse to understand the appeal of the right? Paul Fleming sheds light on the fixation of conservatives like Christopher Rufo — who has set about remaking higher education — with cultural Marxism. He also discusses Adorno's insights into the attraction of authoritarian leaders. The post Fund Drive Special: What the Frankfurt School Teaches Us About the Right appeared first on KPFA.

It's no mystery that the fortunes of the very rich have soared under this administration, but the concentration of wealth in the hands of the very few is a hallmark of capitalism itself. Economist Rob Larson returns to discuss the state of capitalism today, with massive subsidies for the wealthy and a war that's starting to send shock waves across the world. The post Fund Drive Special: Back to the Gilded Age appeared first on KPFA.

The Trump administration uses antifascism as a term of abuse and has branded Antifa domestic terrorists. Yet antifascism has a long but often little known history in the U.S.  Journalist Christopher Mathias describes the efforts of radicals to unmask and dismantle the far right. Please donate in support of KPFA and Against the Grain. The post Fund Drive Special: Unmasking the Far Right appeared first on KPFA.

It's been called a new gold rush, but not of our external environment, which continues to be plundered, but of our internal environment — of our psyches. Historian of science D. Graham Burnett, one of the Friends of Attention, lays out what's at stake — and how they're organizing a movement to reclaim our attention. The post Fund Drive Special: Against the Attention Economy appeared first on KPFA.

Recessions, trade wars, labor unrest — in moments of societal crisis in the United States, Asian-Americans have been perennially targeted, from the destruction of Chinatowns by white mobs, to the mass internment of Japanese-Americans during WW2, to attacks against Asians during Covid. Historian Scott Kurashige reflects on more than 175 years of anti-Asian violence and its connection to U.S. empire abroad and a divided working class at home. Scott Kurashige, American Peril: The Violent History of Anti-Asian Racism UC Press, 2026 Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash The post U.S. Capitalism, Empire, and Anti-Asian Violence appeared first on KPFA.

Sugar may seem like a natural, almost eternal substance, cultivated over thousands of years. But it was remade by capitalism and turned into a homogenized commodity. Enslaved labor was central to sugar production on vast plantations, which would then be discarded as sugar laid waste to both the lands and human bodies. And, as historian of science David Singerman illustrates, scientific techniques were utilized to standardize sugar, while attempting to replace the knowledge of the workers who labored in its refineries. David Singerman, Unrefined: How Capitalism Reinvented Sugar University of Chicago Press, 2025 Photo by Immo Wegmann on Unsplash The post Sugar and Capitalism appeared first on KPFA.

Fiction that imagines alternate futures is often associated with the left — with writers like Octavia Butler and Ursula LeGuin. But the tropes of science fiction are well-suited to the right and, as Jordan Carroll illustrates, far right authors and aficionados have populated the ranks of speculative fiction since its inception, like ardent science fiction fan and neo-Nazi party founder James Madole. Carroll discusses the right's ongoing fight to claim the future. Jordan S. Carroll, Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right University of Minnesota Press, 2024 Photo by Robynne O on Unsplash The post Science Fiction and the Far Right appeared first on KPFA.

The power the police wield on the streets of this country is plain to see. Less visible, but no less formidable, is the immense political power and influence that the police exercise. Historian Stuart Schrader describes how police unions amassed enormous power over the last fifty years. Stuart Schrader, Blue Power: How Police Organized to Protect and Serve Themselves Basic Books, 2026 The post The Political Power of the Police appeared first on KPFA.

The left has a long history of predicting the decline of US capitalism and empire. Some argue that Trump is a symptom of that decline — a strongman chosen by capital to set things right — and that the ill health of U.S. capitalism is paralleled by the decline of the dollar. Political economist Stephen Maher counters that U.S. capitalism is robust — to the detriment of most of us. Gregory Albo and Stephen Maher, eds. Socialist Register 2026: Late-Stage Capitalism? Accumulation in the Ruins Monthly Review Press, 2025 The post The Decline of U.S. Capitalism? appeared first on KPFA.

Jews and the left have been closely associated with each other for well over a century, both in Europe where the Nazis genocidally linked one with the other, and in the United States. Scholar Benjamin Balthaser considers the history of American Jews and the left, including in opposition to Jewish nationalism, arguing that the recent florescence of Jewish anti-Zionism is a return to a much longer tradition. (Encore presentation.) Benjamin Balthaser, Citizens of the Whole World: Anti-Zionism and the Cultures of the American Jewish Left Verso, 2025 Photo credit: Bruce Emmerling The post American Jews and the Left appeared first on KPFA.

We often are told there is no other way to organize society — that by our very natures, we're destined to dominate each other. But are such assumptions merited? Primatologist Agustin Fuentes pulls apart the supposedly evolutionary case that humans are hardwired for war. And the late anthropologist David Graeber discusses the active cultivation of pessimism about our ability to organize society in a more egalitarian way. To celebrate KPFA Radio's 77th birthday, please donate to Against the Grain and KPFA!  Photo by Egor Myznik on Unsplash The post Fuentes on Aggression; Graeber on Egalitarianism appeared first on KPFA.