“Smart” devices like TVs, speakers, and thermostats. Our cars. DNA tests we might take to learn about our ancestry. Our searches online. Along with Flock cameras and other forms of big data policing contracted by local governments, we’re unwittingly surveilling ourselves at every turn. Legal scholar Andrew Guthrie Ferguson describes how sensor-driven digital technology tracks our daily lives — whether we’re seeking an abortion or protesting our government — and are only, at best, a warrant away from being used against us.

Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, Your Data Will Be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self-Surveillance NYU Press, 2026

Photo credit: r.nial.bradshaw

The post Surveilling Ourselves appeared first on KPFA.

In 2024 the world, for a year, exceeded 1.5C – the line in the sand we weren’t supposed to cross or risk runaway global warming. We’re now in an era of overshoot, in which elites are depending upon untested technologies for managing the heating which they refused to halt. Political ecologist Wim Carton contends that there is no substitute for slashing carbon emissions and shutting down the fossil fuel industry. He discusses the perils of continuing to emit carbon dioxide with the plan of capturing it later or eventually harnessing geoengineering to cool the planet by spraying aerosols to block the sun.

Wim Carton and Andreas Malm, The Long Heat: Climate Politics When It’s Too Late Verso, 2025

The post Emit Now, Reverse Global Warming Later? appeared first on KPFA.

Journalist David Graham reflects on Project 2025, the blueprint that the Heritage Foundation drafted for Trump’s second term, and if its goals have been achieved so far – on the environment and economy, attacking trans rights and diversity policies, and projecting military might abroad. He also discusses what may come next.

David A. Graham, The Project: How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America Random House, 2025

The post Project 2025, A Year In 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.

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.

Our modern world was born from destruction — and no more so than in North America, which historian Clifton Crais describes as the most violent place on the planet in the 18th and 19th centuries. Crais describes what he calls the Mortecene against humans and the rest of nature.

Clifton Crais, The Killing Age: How Violence Made the Modern World University of Chicago Press, 2025

The post Violence and the Making of Our World appeared first on KPFA.

The global rise of the authoritarian right has confounded classification and led to contentious debates on the left. Do politicians like Modi, Bolsonaro, Orban, and Trump represent an extreme form of right-wing populism? Or are they fascists, as some claim? Historian and scholar of populism and fascism Federico Finchelstein argues that we’re seeing something new — a phenomenon that blurs the lines between the two. (Encore presentation.)

Federico Finchelstein, The Wannabe Fascists: A Guide to Understanding the Greatest Threat to Democracy UC Press, 2024

The post The Populist-Fascist Hybrid 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: Humans and Ancient Trees 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 — which celebrates its 23rd birthday today!

The post Fund Drive Special: Fighting the Fracking of Our Attention appeared first on KPFA.

Capitalism by its nature produces crises and, for the last century, states have responded by imposing austerity measures on the public. Economist Clara Mattei argues that austerity is actually a bludgeon to entrench elite power and repress workers’ aspirations for a more egalitarian society. She discusses its origins—and that of modern economics—during the greatest existential threat to the Western capitalist order.

Please donate in support of KPFA and Against the Grain.

The post Fund Drive Special: Against Austerity 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: Fighting the Attention Economy appeared first on KPFA.