KPFA - Against the Grain

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.

Prisons won’t be dismantled anytime soon. So what does—or should—prison abolition mean? Anna Terwiel draws from Angela Davis’s writings a host of insights that buttress what Terwiel considers a realist political project. Among other things, she examines Davis’s prison abolitionism in light of her democratic socialist commitments and her understanding of Radical Reconstruction.
Anna Terwiel, Prison Abolition for Realists University of Minnesota Press, 2025
The post Thinking Beyond Prisons appeared first on KPFA.

Commercial sex and imperialism — army bases and brothels — have often gone hand in hand. But in the early 20th century an emergent U.S. empire defined itself as rooted in sexual purity. Historian Eva Payne describes how a heavy price for this notion of American exceptionalism was paid by women in the United States, who were policed and punished, along with those in U.S. colonies like the Philippines and the Panama Canal Zone. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Eva Payne, Empire of Purity: The History of Americans’ Global War on Prostitution Princeton University Press, 2025
The post U.S. Empire and Sexual Morality appeared first on KPFA.