KPFA - Against the Grain

The rise and fall of unemployment, our dependence on the market for our livelihoods — such things are taken as a given. But economist Clara Mattei suggests we need to recognize them as being fundamentally political phenomena, not the product of natural laws outside of our control. She argues that a reconsideration of our capitalist economy is long overdue.

Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention Simon & Schuster, 2026

Forum for Real Economic Emancipation

Photo by Julio Lopez on Unsplash

The post Rethinking Capitalism appeared first on KPFA.

It’s been called a new gold rush, yet not of our external environment, but of our internal environment — of our minds and 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 Strother School of Radical Attention

The Friends of Attention, Attensity! A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement Crown, 2026

The post Against the Attention Economy appeared first on KPFA.

The Texas Republican Party has evolved from a corporate libertarian institution to one in which free market capitalism and evangelical Christianity are united in authoritarianism. Political scientist Clyde Barrow warns that Texan Christofascism serves as the rightwing blueprint for the rest of the United States in the coming years.

Gregory Albo and Stephen Maher, eds. Socialist Register 2026: Late-Stage Capitalism? Accumulation in the Ruins Monthly Review Press, 2025

Photo by Pete Alexopoulos on Unsplash

The post Texas: Vanguard of the Far Right appeared first on KPFA.

Scholar Emmaia Gelman reflects on the Anti-Defamation League’s long history of targeting the left in the United States and abroad. She describes the purported civil right group’s involvement in the Red Scare, its surveillance of left organizations, and role in branding as antisemitic those who criticize Israel.

Emmaia Gelman, The Anti-Defamation League and the Racial State UC Press, 2026

The post The Anti-Defamation League and the Left appeared first on KPFA.

The Trump administration has exposed the enormous power, as well as astounding wealth, of the billionaire class. And the power of that class partially emanates from their ownership of much of our media system, with significant political consequences. Economist Rob Larson returns to discuss the 1%, AI and the massive build out of data centers, and the decline of press freedom in the U.S. (Full-length broadcast.)

World Inequality Database

Rob Larson, Mastering the Universe: The Obscene Wealth of the Ruling Class, What They Do with Their Money, and Why You Should Hate Them Even More Haymarket Books, 2024

Photo by Jingming Pan on Unsplash

The post AI, the Media, and the Billionaire Class appeared first on KPFA.

The revelations of widespread surveillance by the National Security Agency after 9/11 brought to light one aspect of how the government has capitalized on digital technology to amass power – and such dangers have only multiplied. Cindy Cohn, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has been involved in numerous groundbreaking legal battles with the U.S. government over surveillance and privacy, including establishing encryption as protected speech. She discusses the battles over government spying from the rise of the internet to the present.

Cindy Cohn, Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance MIT Press, 2026

Electronic Frontier Foundation: Surveillance Self-Defense

Section 702 Spying

Photo by Chris Yang on Unsplash

The post Fighting Surveillance appeared first on KPFA.

In the 1980s, yuppies were celebrated in the media and reviled by many others. Working in finance or as management consultants or lawyers, they quickly put their stamp on cities around the country, displacing working class people in places like New York, and remaking the Democratic Party. Historian Dylan Gottleib examines whether they were drivers of financialization and growing social inequality — or crucial cogs in the machine.

Dylan Gottlieb, Yuppies: The Bankers, Lawyers, Joggers, and Gourmands Who Conquered New York Harvard University Press, 2026

Photo: Charles Hutchins

The post Triumph of the Yuppie appeared first on KPFA.

Are women as strong as men? According to science writer Starre Vartan, in some cases, they are stronger. She argues that scientific research over the last several decades shows that culture shapes strength as much as hormones — and that much of what we presume about sex differences, strength, and athleticism harms all of us.

Starre Vartan, The Stronger Sex: What Science Tells Us about the Power of the Female Body Seal Press, 2025

Photo by Peter Zhan on Unsplash

The post Sex and Strength appeared first on KPFA.

Over the past four centuries, owners have sought to wrest control of the labor process away from the workers in plantations, factories, and warehouse. Ideas about labor management, dressed up as a science, have often failed on the shop floor, but they have served a broader purpose. Labor historian Henry Snow interrogates how theories of discipline and management — from the Bentham brothers’ panopticon to Frederick Winslow Taylor’s ideas of labor optimization to General Electric’s propaganda campaign featuring actor Ronald Reagan — have perennially reinforced the notion that there is no alternative to capitalism.

Henry Snow, Control Science: How Management Made the Modern World Verso, 2026

The post Controlling Workers appeared first on KPFA.

The Republican Party has traditionally been the party of the business class. But since the era of Newt Gingrich in the 1990s, the GOP has been marked by internal strife and ideological chaos — and in the last presidential election, the business class overwhelmingly supported Harris over Trump. Historian Paul Heideman considers the makings of a far rightward shift by the GOP, which has not been matched by an equivalent leftward turn of the Democrat Party.

Paul Heideman, Rogue Elephant: How Republicans Went from the Party of Business to the Party of Chaos Verso, 2025

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

The post How the GOP Lurched Further to the Right appeared first on KPFA.