KPFA - Against the Grain

A hallmark of our age is feeling we’re perpetually struggling with time — not having enough of it to accomplish seemingly endless tasks and obligations, while swimming in a sea of distractions. Can we cope if we learn, following the gurus of time management, to become ever more disciplined and productive? Or does that just feed into a capitalist logic that doesn’t benefit us? Journalist Oliver Burkeman discusses the perils of time management orthodoxy. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2021 The post Mastering Time? appeared first on KPFA.

In the award-winning film “Aware,” six thinkers weigh in on the nature of consciousness. The post Fund Drive Special: On Consciousness appeared first on KPFA.

The climate crisis no longer looms in the future, but has arrived in the form of deadly heat waves, enormous wildfires, floods, hurricanes, and droughts. While the fight to slow the effects of global warming continues, it’s clear that we also need to protect ourselves and the most vulnerable around us from the devastating effects of global warming. Award-winning science writer and broadcaster David Pogue discusses concrete steps to safeguard ourselves and our loved ones in an increasingly precarious world. The post Fund Drive Special: Preparing for the Climate Crisis appeared first on KPFA.

Peter Cave discusses his new book “How to Think Like a Philosopher: Scholars, Dreamers and Sages Who Can Teach Us How to Live.” The post Fund Drive Special: Enduring Ideas appeared first on KPFA.

The acclaimed physician Gabor Maté believes that capitalist society damages us at an early age and that we carry that trauma through our lives—making us alienated, sick, and often prone to destructive behaviors. Maté draws from his remarkable background and radical commitments to provide us with tremendous insights into the maladies that are the norm in our society. His deeply humanistic work is featured in an award-winning documentary film. The post Fund Drive Special: Gabor Mate on Trauma appeared first on KPFA.

Groundbreaking theorist David Harvey considers Marx’s analytical framework and applies it to contemporary conditions. The post Fund Drive Special: David Harvey appeared first on KPFA.

Modern art has always been a battleground — and the highly influential Museum of Modern Art has been partisan since its inception. Architectural historian Patricio Del Real discusses two differing political visions of modernism and modern architecture: one rooted in the left, and associated with figures such as Communist muralist Diego Rivera, and the other on the right, represented by the architect and fascist sympathizer Philip Johnson. He weighs in on MoMa’s promotion of a view of modernism in Latin America, stripped of its radical politics and racial fusions, and radiating American power and hegemony. Resources: Patricio del Real, Constructing Latin America: Architecture, Politics, and Race at the Museum of Modern Art Yale University Press, 2022 The post MoMa and Cultural Imperialism in Latin America appeared first on KPFA.

Why is the aging of populations framed as a crisis? What settler-colonial and capitalist logics are at work, and how are older people viewed and treated as a result? Sandy Grande delineates and critiques mainstream frameworks; she also advances a decolonial perspective that draws on indigenous attitudes toward elders and toward old age-associated conditions like dementia. René Dietrich and Kerstin Knopf, eds., Biopolitics, Geopolitics, Life: Settler States and Indigenous Presence Duke University Press, 2023 Sandy Grande, ed., Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought Rowman & Littlefield (Image on main page by Dwayne Reilander.)   The post Aged Out? appeared first on KPFA.

Island nations have produced the least carbon dioxide emissions, but are paying the greatest price for global warming as they face inundation and obliteration. Yet many in wealthy continental countries know little about them or their plight. Scholar and environmental journalist Christina Gerhardt discusses the circumstances of islands surrounded by a rising sea, many made more vulnerable by economies dependent on tourism and histories of military exploitation and occupation. Resources: Christina Gerhardt, Sea Change: An Atlas of Islands in a Rising Ocean UC Press, 2023 The post Islands in a Rising Sea appeared first on KPFA.

What stances did the renowned sociologist and historian W. E. B. Du Bois take toward race and class? And how and why did his convictions change over time? According to Michael Burawoy, Du Bois moved from a phenomenology of racism to a Black Marxism, a shift that culminated in Du Bois’s book on the Civil War and Reconstruction. (Encore presentation.) Michael Burawoy, “The Making of Black Marxism: The Complementary Perspectives of W. E .B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon” (pdf) Michael Burawoy, Public Sociology Polity, 2021 Part Two of the interview The post Du Bois on Race and Class appeared first on KPFA.