Mark Matousek discusses his book “Emerson, the Stoics, and Me: Timeless Wisdom for Living an Authentic Life.”

The post Fund Drive Special: Emerson and the Stoics appeared first on KPFA.

Until the mid-17th century, for the vast majority of Europeans, medical care was administered by women in the household and neighborhood for free, using herbs and other formulas passed down between and among generations. Karen Bloom Gevirtz illustrates how and why — only a century later — they were supplanted by men who established the basis of our for-profit medical system.

The post Fund Drive Special: Making Medicine a Commodity appeared first on KPFA.

Christopher Bache, a professor emeritus of philosophy and religious studies, discusses the twenty-year psychedelic journey described and interpreted in his book “LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven.”

The post Fund Drive Special: Psychedelic Journey appeared first on KPFA.

Wealth inequality is off the charts, with corporations reaping record profits, and billionaires awash in money. Economist Rob Larson returns to make sense of the Trump administration’s relationship to the multimillionaire and billionaire class.

The post Fund Drive Special: The Rule of the Billionaires appeared first on KPFA.

Jodi Dean discusses her book “Capital’s Grave: Neofeudalism and the New Class Struggle.”

The post Fund Drive Special: Neofeudalism appeared first on KPFA.

Whether it’s basketball, billiards, or table tennis, sports in the U.S are segregated by sex. And most of the time those divisions are taken to be natural, not the result of social choices. Journalist Laura Pappano asserts that sports play a key role in shaping American politics and argues for breaking down the gender wall in sports.

Eileen McDonagh and Laura Pappano, Playing With The Boys: Why Separate Is Not Equal In Sports Oxford University Press, 2007

Photo credit of Manon Rhéaume: Tsunami330

The post Why are Sports Gender Segregated? appeared first on KPFA.

For over half a century, Big Oil and the plastics industry, through their trade associations and front groups, have sold the public the false idea that plastics are recyclable. Recycling became the mantra of good ecological stewardship, promoted by the likes of city governments, school children, and environmental groups. Davis Allen lays out the mass-marketing of a deception. (Encore presentation.)

Resources:

Center for Climate Integrity, The Fraud of Plastic Recycling: How Big Oil and the Plastics Industry Deceived the Public for Decades and Caused the Plastic Waste Crisis February, 2024

The post The Plastics Recycling Deception appeared first on KPFA.

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

The post Foucault on Power appeared first on KPFA.