KPFA - Against the Grain

Calling 911 can save lives. But all too often phoning the emergency hotline leads to maiming or death at the hands of the police. Rebecca Neusteter describes the origins of the emergency response system as a means of quashing social unrest, out of the urban uprisings of the 1960s.

Rebecca Neusteter, 911, What’s Your Emergency? The Promise and Peril of Crisis Response The New Press, 2026

Photo by Yassine Khalfalli on Unsplash

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Some of the most important struggles for health justice have taken place in New York City — from the Young Lords to ACT UP, from battles to make school lunches free to the Fight for $15 for low wage workers. Public health scholar Nicholas Freudenberg discusses the lessons he’s gleaned from fifty years of activism, including the need to start with people’s daily living conditions.

Nicholas Freudenberg, Fighting for New York: Activism for Health and Social Justice Since the 1960s Columbia University Press, 2026

Photo by CDC on Unsplash

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We live our lives often through the things we buy — presuming the more we have, the happier we’ll be. Have we always thought this way? Economist Mark Joseph Stelzner examines the need for ever more consumption under capitalism — and reflects on what our lives might be like if we exchanged the quest for goods for more leisure.

Mark Joseph Stelzner, Growth Machines: On the Hollow Joys of Consumption in the Desert of Economic Life University of Chicago Press, 2026

Photo by Obi on Unsplash

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Almost 98% of all state executions in the U.S. are conducted by lethal injection, purportedly a quick and painless death. Corinna Barrett Lain states nothing could be further from the truth — but that it’s in the interests of the killing state that we imagine it that way.

Corinna Barrett Lain, Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection NYU Press, 2025

Photo by Raghavendra V. Konkathi on Unsplash

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Why do poor, often sick, rural people vote for Republicans even after they slash funding for Medicaid and close rural hospitals? Michael Shepherd describes how conservative politicians and media have successfully built support for those cuts by claiming programs like Medicaid only help city dwellers, people of color, and immigrants.

Michael E. Shepherd, Rural Pain, Republican Gain: How the Republican Party Is Killing Rural America and Why Democrats Are Blamed University of Chicago Press, 2026

Photo by Engin Akyurt on Unsplash

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When we think of world makers, we’re unlikely to picture a flower. Yet flowers completely transformed our planet, giving us rain forests, altering coastlines, producing the food we eat, and enticing our pre-human ancestors to climb down from the trees. And they did that partially through reshaping the formerly adversarial relationship between plants and insects into one of mutual aid and cooperation most of the time. Biologist David George Haskell enumerates our debt to flowers. (Full-length presentation.)

David George Haskell, How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature’s Revolutionaries Viking, 2026

Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash

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The struggle for labor across the color line has often been credited to white activists. However, as sociologist Cedric de Leon argues, the black labor movement, independently organized outside of the official union movement, propelled such efforts. He discusses the black labor movement’s divisions, including in the face of the state’s attempt to destroy it. (Encore presentation.)

Cedric de Leon, Freedom Train: Black Politics and the Story of Interracial Labor Solidarity UC Press, 2025

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Jessica Mitford revived muckraking journalism in the United States, shaping generations of investigative writers who followed her. She also lived a committed life on the left, despite her ultra-reactionary English upper class origins. Carla Kaplan argues that Mitford is woman for our times.

Carla Kaplan, Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford Harper, 2025

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Big Tech’s owners see themselves as visionaries — as singularly capable of understanding and shaping the future — in contrast to the rest of us. Adrian Daub explores the worldview of Silicon Valley’s owners.

Adrian Daub, What Tech Calls Governing Stanford University Press, 2026

Photo by Igor Shalyminov on Unsplash

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After a century of drug prohibition, during which the use of many illicit drugs increased, states and countries are moving to decriminalize the usage of certain psychoactive substances. As corporations rush to profit, legal scholar Kojo Koram argues for the legalization of drugs without commercial gain.

Kojo Koram, The Next Fix: The Winners and Losers in the Future of Drugs Verso, 2026

Photo by Freestocks on Unsplash

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