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.

Renowned mycologist Paul Stamets talks about mushrooms, human health, bee populations, psychoactive fungi, and more. (Image by Alan Rockefeller.) The post Fund Drive Special: Mushroom Expert Paul Stamets appeared first on KPFA.

High school students are assigned massive textbooks overflowing with dates and events in U.S. history. But according to sociologist and educator James Loewen, these massive tomes often omit more than they include. Loewen’s classic work, Lies My Teacher Told Me, explores the whitewashing of Woodrow Wilson’s racism and imperialist ventures, and the exclusion of Helen Keller’s radical socialist views. The post Fund Drive Special: Whitewashing the Past appeared first on KPFA.

Michael Albert discusses his vision of an equitable, sustainable, and participatory economy. (Image on main page: Wikipedia.) The post Fund Drive Special: Participatory Economics appeared first on KPFA.

Over the past half century, the US economy has undergone a profound change: wealth has been concentrated in the hands of a few, inequality has skyrocketed, and insecurity has reigned. And yet it’s a story mainly downplayed by mainstream pundits and the media. Noam Chomsky, arguably the most important public intellectual in the world, says that any discussion of democracy is pointless if we don’t recognize the corrosive effects of this class war from above. photo: Pixabay The post Fund Drive Special: Noam Chomsky on Wealth and Power appeared first on KPFA.

Alan Watts on the fundamentals of Buddhism, plus portions of a talk he gave called “Insight and Ecstasy.” The post Fund Drive Special: Alan Watts appeared first on KPFA.

Who were the Jacobins? What did they believe in, what did they accomplish over the course of the French Revolution, and how should they be judged? Micah Alpaugh discusses the Jacobin clubs’ social and political stances, the policies they enacted, and the Jacobins’ turn toward terror. Micah Alpaugh, ed., The French Revolution: A History in Documents Bloomsbury, 2021 Micah Alpaugh, Friends of Freedom: The Rise of Social Movements in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions Cambridge University Press, 2021 The post The Jacobins appeared first on KPFA.

While the Trump Administration’s policy of separating children from their parents at the US-Mexico border drew intense condemnation, the practice has been going on in this country for centuries. Historian Laura Briggs argues that it has been part of strategy of counterinsurgency, as during the anti-communist wars in Latin America, in which rebellious populations are terrorized by having their children taken. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Laura Briggs, Taking Children: A History of American Terror UC Press, 2021 The post Separating Children as Counterinsurgency appeared first on KPFA.

Bunkering and doomsday prepping, far from being eccentric or fringe activities, are baked into U.S. politics. So argues Emily Ray, who describes how Americans have been encouraged, by both Cold War administrations and today’s political elites, to think of doomsday preparation as an individual rather than collective endeavor, one that involves looking to the market for solutions. The post Preparing for Disaster appeared first on KPFA.

A protracted but determined struggle to defeat an airport construction project produced an extraordinary victory. In the face of brutal police repression, Isabelle Fremeaux, Jay Jordan, and others created an autonomous zone and prevented the construction of a massive international airport on 4,000 acres of fields, forest, and wetlands in western France. Fremeaux and Jordan recount the now iconic struggle at the “zad” and describe how they understand the relationship between art, resistance, and commoning. (Encore presentation.) Isabelle Fremeaux and Jay Jordan, We Are “Nature” Defending Itself: Entangling Art, Activism and Autonomous Zones Pluto Press/Journal of Aesthetics & Protest, 2021 The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination The ReImagining Value Action Lab The Journal of Aesthetics & Protest (Image on main page by Bstroot56.) The post Victory at the Zad appeared first on KPFA.