Against the Grain Radio

16/07/2025

Feyzi Ismail on what today's climate movement can learn from the struggles of the British suffragettes:

They fought to secure the vote for women. They used direct action, civil disobedience, and increasingly militant tactics to pursue their goals. Feyzi Ismail assesses the strategies and tactics of a group of British suffragettes with an eye toward building a more effective climate movement. Gregory A...

14/07/2025

Owen Clayton talks about his new co-edited volume “The Popular Wobbly: Selected Writings of T-Bone Slim":

Over the course of two decades, publications of the Industrial Workers of the World featured the influential writings of a hobo, transient worker, columnist, poet, and songwriter named T-Bone Slim. Owen Clayton talks about Slim’s focus on workers’ everyday lives under capitalism, his political s...

08/07/2025

Alexander Menrisky argues that contemporary American culture furnishes a wealth of material for the far right, from the ubiquity of apocalyptic and misanthropic ideas to concerns with Wellness and bodily purity.

As the environmental crisis worsens, not everyone is drawing the same lessons. On the far right, xenophobic and racist ideas are increasingly dressed up as means of protecting nature. And, as scholar Alexander Menrisky posits, contemporary American culture furnishes a wealth of material for the righ...

01/07/2025

Thomas Marois on the role that public banks can play in advancing economic and climate justice, and on the importance of democratizing and definancializing public banks:

Massive amounts of money are needed to address the multiple social and ecological crises besetting societies around the globe. According to Thomas Marois, the lion’s share of that financing will need to come from public banks. But many public banking institutions, he argues, must be democratized a...

01/07/2025

Arun Gupta reflects on lessons from the last quarter century -- from the Global Justice Movement to Occupy, the George Floyd protests, the Palestine Solidarity Movement, the victory of Zohran Mamdani, and immigrant communities’ militant resistance to ICE.

The authoritarianism of the Trump regime calls out for mass radical organizing, but with some exceptions, much of the left has not mounted a coherent response. Journalist Arun Gupta reflects on lessons from the last quarter century – from the Global Justice Movement to Occupy Wall Street, from the...

25/06/2025

Penn professor David L. Eng discusses his Duke University Press book "Reparations and the Human":

Why are some victims of terror and injustice deemed deserving of care and repair, and others aren’t? David L. Eng looks to the Transpacific, and particularly the atomic bombings of Japan and their aftermath, for answers; he also argues that literature and psychoanalysis can enrich understandings o...

24/06/2025

Alex Hanna and Emily M. Bender warn us against falling for AI hype and discuss the impact of purported artificial intelligence on surveillance and work, education and science.

Will artificial intelligence usher in a world of increasing convenience and productivity, as its boosters claim? Or will AI take away our jobs and risk a robot apocalypse? Scholars Alex Hanna and Emily M. Bender say: neither. They warn us against falling for either version of AI hype and discuss the...

19/06/2025

William Costa talks about the new book “Paraguayan Sorrow: Writings of Rafael Barrett, A Radical Voice in a Dispossessed Land":

The journalist and essayist Rafael Barrett (1876-1910) inveighed against the array of injustices suffered by Paraguayans, including those working in the yerba mate forests. He also espoused political views that resonate today. William Costa talks about Barrett’s keen observations, blistering criti...

17/06/2025

Quinn Slobodian reflects on neoliberal thinkers’ preoccupation with racist and misogynistic ideas of human nature and intelligence, borders and gold — all in service to their war on the left.

Was the populist far right a reaction to neoliberal free market fundamentalism? Or, as historian Quinn Slobodian argues, did such rightwing currents come out of the ideas of neoliberalism itself? Slobodian reflects on neoliberal thinkers’ preoccupation with racist and misogynistic ideas of human n...

12/06/2025

A look at the U.S. Constitution — an object of great political veneration in this country. Legal scholar Aziz Rana examines the contradictions within it, which have allowed for the authoritarianism of the Trump administration.

As Trump sends troops into Los Angeles, a look at the U.S. Constitution — an object of great political veneration in this country. Legal scholar Aziz Rana examines the contradictions within it, which have allowed for the authoritarianism of the Trump administration. Aziz Rana, The Constituti...

10/06/2025

"Acting with the World" author Andrew Pickering contrasts no-till natural farming with mainstream approaches geared toward mastering and dominating nature:

What if humans acted with nature, not on it? What would farming look like if we stopped trying to master and dominate the environment? According to Andrew Pickering, the no-plowing, no-weeding form of farming developed by Masanobu Fukuoka is a shining example of poiesis, an acting-with that attunes....

09/06/2025

Coming up Tuesday at noon PT: Andrew Pickering talks about his new book “Acting with the World: Agency in the Anthropocene.”