KPFA - Against the Grain

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 The post All Consuming appeared first on KPFA.

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 The post When the State Kills by Lethal Injection appeared first on KPFA.

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 The post Why Do Rural Poor People Support the GOP? appeared first on KPFA.

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 The post Unlikely World Makers appeared first on KPFA.

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 The post The Black Labor Movement appeared first on KPFA.