KPFA - Against the Grain

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.

One of conservation’s greatest achievements happened mostly by accident and is still hiding in plain sight from most of us. When settlers established cities in the United States, they decimated the existing ecosystems. But in recent decades, as environmental historian Peter Alagona illustrates, there has been a remarkable return of wildlife to urban areas across the country. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Peter S. Alagona, The Accidental Ecosystem: People and Wildlife in American Cities UC Press, 2023
Photo by Tj Holowaychuk on Unsplash
The post The Fall and Rise of Urban Wildlife appeared first on KPFA.

How did conservatives come to dominate so much of the media in the U.S.? Historian A.J. Bauer looks at the formative period between the advent and repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in which the right borrowed from the left to sharpen its criticism of the media — ultimately giving rise to a rightwing media ecosystem with its own commercial imperatives.
A. J. Bauer, Making the Liberal Media: How Conservatives Built a Movement Against the Press Columbia University Pres, 2026
The post Weaponizing the Left’s Media Criticism appeared first on KPFA.

For many decades, the idea has held sway that we humans should leave consequential decisions to a higher power: computers. And that assumption has become more deeply entrenched, the more powerful computers have become. How did our world come to be seen as an imaginary casino, with every decision to be stripped down to costs and benefits, risks and rewards? Computer scientist Benjamin Recht traces the development of mathematical optimization, game theory, statistical testing, and machine learning — the basis of AI — to understand how medicine, the economy, and governance have been outsourced to computing, concentrating enormous power in the hands of the few.
Benjamin Recht, The Irrational Decision: How We Gave Computers the Power to Choose for Us Princeton University Press, 2026
Benjamin Recht’s Blog
Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash
The post Deferring to Computers appeared first on KPFA.