KPFA - Against the Grain

Max Haiven considers the relationship between board games and politics, and describes a new game he’s designed called Billionaires & Guillotines. He also talks about an initiative that resulted in a book featuring nine speculative-fiction stories written by current and former Amazon workers. The World After Amazon: Stories from Amazon Workers Billionaires & Guillotines and the Kickstarter campaign Max Haiven, “All Games are Political” Jacobin The post Workers’ Stories, Political Games appeared first on KPFA.

Blockbuster drugs are launched by the pharmaceuticals industry to great fanfare — with promises of treating intractable illness and often with a stratospheric price tag. Yet, despite the hype and cost, many of those drugs turn out to be less than useless. How is it that so many drugs that are vetted by the Food and Drug Administration escape real scrutiny? Jerry Avorn, one of the most cited scientists in medicine, discusses the deeply compromised state of drug production and government regulation, in thrall to a for-profit system. Jerry Avorn, Rethinking Medications: Truth, Power, and the Drugs You Take Simon & Schuster, 2025 Alosa Health Center for Science in the Public Interest Worst Pills, Best Pills The post Medicines: Expensive, Poorly Tested, and Often Useless appeared first on KPFA.

How have we been governed, regulated, ruled? What systems of knowledge and power have emerged over time, and with what consequences for individuals and populations? Lawrence Grossberg describes four “diagrams” of governmentality that the French theorist Michel Foucault identified: sovereignty, discipline, biopolitics, and neoliberalism. Lawrence Grossberg, On the Way to Theory Duke University Press, 2024 (Image on main page by Arturo Espinosa.) The post Foucault on Power appeared first on KPFA.

Floods are the most destructive natural disaster and, thanks to a heating climate, the damages caused by floods are expected to worsen significantly. Flood mitigation of the past, such as levies and dams, has proved inadequate and often counterproductive by misallocating precious resources. Tim Palmer argues that it’s time to start relocating our built environment out of the places with a high likelihood of flooding. Tim Palmer, Seek Higher Ground: The Natural Solution to Our Urgent Flooding Crisis UC Press, 2024 Photograph credit: Mark Moran The post Mitigating Flooding appeared first on KPFA.

Not one movement but a multiplicity of movements engaging in protest and direct action brought down France’s absolutist regime in 1789. Micah Alpaugh describes popular uprisings and insurrections in Paris and the provinces that unfolded without central leadership and later inspired anarchists around the globe. (Encore presentation.) Micah Alpaugh, The People’s Revolution of 1789 Cornell University Press, 2024 (Image on main page from Rama.) The post French Revolutionary Movements appeared first on KPFA.

Few things are more necessary than a roof over one’s head, and yet few things feel as precarious as housing. Rents have skyrocketed across the country, far outstripping wages, and homelessness has risen to an historic high. Fellow tenant organizers Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis argue that this is the latest chapter in a century-long assault on tenants, but that we can draw powerful lessons from housing struggles to fight for a world without landlords. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis, Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis Haymarket Books, 2024 The post The War on Tenants appeared first on KPFA.

KPFA first took to the airwaves on April 15, 1949. To mark the station’s 76th birthday, we present excerpts of interviews we’ve conducted with Jane Fonda; Louise Erdrich; Agustín Fuentes (about human evolution and aggression); Elizabeth S. Anderson (about the dictatorship of the workplace); and David Hawkes (about money, finance, and symbolism). The post Fund Drive Special: Commemorating KPFA’s 76 Years appeared first on KPFA.

Why is it that so many schools fail at teaching their students critical thinking skills that could help them understand the world? Political scientist Agustina Paglayan argues that mass primary education from its origins was set up not to raise children’s prospects — but rather to teach them to obey. She locates the Right’s recent attacks on schooling in the context of the social upheavals of our times. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Agustina Paglayan, Raised to Obey: The Rise and Spread of Mass Education Princeton University Press, 2024 The post Obedience and Mass Education appeared first on KPFA.

Capitalist processes wreak havoc on ecosystems. What stories or accounts can spur people to address environmental degradation, and help them grasp its root causes? Drawing on works by John Steinbeck and Anna Tsing, Tim Christiaens considers the impact of capitalist dynamics on ecological relations. Michiel Rys and Liesbeth François, eds., Re-Imagining Class: Intersectional Perspectives on Class Identity and Precarity in Contemporary Culture Leuven University Press, 2024 (open access) The post Ecological Relations Under Capitalism appeared first on KPFA.

Our lives are filled with innumerable choices, such as for the countless array of products for us to buy, assuming we can afford them. Our politics are often framed as a question of individual, not collective, choice such as the freedom to choose to have an abortion or the act of casting one’s vote in secret, away from the eyes other others. Historian Sophia Rosenfeld argues that the notion that freedom means “the freedom to choose” has been central to modern Western society, but may be coming apart. Sophia Rosenfeld, The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life Princeton University Press, 2025 The post Is Freedom a Choice? appeared first on KPFA.