KPFA - Against the Grain

It’s often argued that culture is the gateway to politics — that if you can influence cultural values, it will ultimately change society as whole. In the late Sixties, the counterculture was animated by that idea, including Rolling Stone Magazine, which began in the Bay Area. Peter Richardson reflects on Rolling Stone’s debt to the counterculture – and the limits to both endeavors.
Peter Richardson, Brand New Beat: The Wild Rise of Rolling Stone Magazine UC Press, 2026
The post Rolling Stone and the Limits of the Counterculture appeared first on KPFA.

Imagine, as a journalist or activist, trying to access your bank accounts and mysteriously finding them frozen. Debanking — when financial institutions close the accounts of those flagged as problematic, including at the behest of the government – appears to be growing. Civil liberties advocate Rainey Reitman, cofounder of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, reflects on the use of debanking, from Wikileaks to the Southern Poverty Law Center to the NRA.
Rainey Reitman, Transaction Denied: Big Finance’s Power to Punish Speech Beacon, 2026
Freedom of the Press Foundation
Photo by Engin Akyurt on Unsplash
The post Financial Censorship appeared first on KPFA.

Americans as a population have an unusually large appetite for psychoactive drugs, whether legal or illegal. And American history has been marked by periodic moral panics over drug use and normalization or legalization, as we’re experiencing right now. Why is that? What is it about US society that makes drug use simultaneously so appealing and reviled? Writer and scholar Benjamin Fong weighs in. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Benjamin Yen-Yi Fong, Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge Verso, 2023
The post America’s Drug Binge appeared first on KPFA.

Fossil fuel combustion has made dangerous heat waves ever more frequent. The short term answer — for those who have one — is to turn on the air conditioner. But air conditioning makes the the problem even worse. Environmental journalist Sam Bloch discusses the ways that cities used to be designed for shade, and stresses the urgent need for shelter from the sun — especially for the unhoused, farm workers, and others who labor outdoors.
Sam Bloch, Shade: The Promise of a Forgotten Natural Resource Random House, 2025
Photo by Ivan Padial on Unsplash
The post In Search of Shade appeared first on KPFA.

David Thomson, the great film critic, discusses his increasing disquiet with film — and how movies have helped deliver us to authoritarianism. He describes film’s adulation of power, which has been almost religiously illuminated on the screen.
David Thomson, A Sudden Flicker of Light: A Revisionist History of Movies Simon & Schuster, 2026
Book Launch with David Thomson at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley on July 12, 2026
The post What the Movies Have Wrought appeared first on KPFA.