Shows / Current Affairs
Current Affairs
A podcast of politics and culture, from the editors of Current Affairs magazine.
Episodes
- Current Affairs
Why Web3 Is Going Just Great (w/ Molly White)
Molly White is the world's foremost critic of cryptocurrency, according to a recent profile in the Washington Post. A veteran Wikipedia editor and software…
- Current Affairs
Thinking About Police After Uvalde and the San Francisco Prosecutor Recall (w/ Alex Vitale)
Alex Vitale is one of the country's foremost experts on policing and criminal punishment. He is a professor of Sociology at Brooklyn College and the CUNY…
- Current Affairs
Unearthing Queer History in America
Hugh Ryan is a writer and curator who unearths and preserves lost queer history. His books When Brooklyn Was Queer and The Women's House of Detention both tell…
- Current Affairs
Destroying Democracy in Education: The Case of New Orleans
Celeste Lay is a professor of political science at Tulane University and the author of Public Schools, Private Governance: Education Reform and Democracy in…
- Current Affairs
How To Create Beautiful Places - A guide to the work of the late Christopher Alexander
The architect Christopher Alexander died recently. As the (surprisingly good) New York Times obituary described him: [Alexander] believed that ordinary people…
- Current Affairs
Current Affairs Book Club: The Novels of Sally Rooney
The bestselling novels of Sally Rooney have been subject to endless chatter. She has been hailed as the great millennial novelist by some, her work called…
- Current Affairs
How Can We Plan a Viable Eco-Socialist Future That Everyone Likes?
One of the most fascinating and thought-provoking books of our time is Half-Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and…
- Current Affairs
Inside the Real World of Union Organizing
Daisy Pitkin has been in the labor movement for two decades and is the author of the new book On the Line A Story of Class, Solidarity, and Two Women's Epic…
- Current Affairs
How the War In Ukraine Can Be Ended
Anatol Lieven is an international relations expert and journalist who serves as a senior fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His books…
- Current Affairs
Why This Computer Scientist Says All Cryptocurrency Should “Die in a Fire”
Cryptocurrencies have been hyped in Super Bowl ads and promoted by everyone from Bill Clinton to Glenn Greenwald to Spike Lee to Larry David to New York City…
- Current Affairs
How to Get Past the Need for Endless Economic Growth (w/ "Doughnut Economics" author Kate Raworth)
Kate Raworth is an economist at Oxford University whose book Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist is a radical attempt to…
- Current Affairs
The Terrifying and Stupid Ideas of "Neoreactionaries"
A recent article in Vanity Fair about the National Conservatism Conference profiles figures on the "New Right," including Peter Thiel, J.D. Vance, Blake…
- Current Affairs
Santa Claus for Alaska
Santa Claus is the mayor pro-tem of North Pole, Alaska. Yes, he's real, and he's a democratic socialist running for Congress in the special election against…
- Current Affairs
How Do We Overcome Capitalism?
Tom Wetzel's forthcoming book Overcoming Capitalism: Strategy for the Working Class in the 21st Century (AK Press) is both a primer on the basic left critiques…
- Current Affairs
How Corporations Get Away With Criminality—And How to Stop Them
Jennifer Taub is a law professor whose book Big Dirty Money: Making White Collar Criminals Pay is about the double standard in American law that harshly…
- Current Affairs
The Life and Crimes of Winston Churchill
Tariq Ali is the author of two dozen books and his career as a public intellectual and activist stretches back to the 1960s. His new book Winston Churchill…
- Current Affairs
A View of British Government From the Inside w/ former Labour MP Chris Mullin
Chris Mullin served from 1987 to 2010 as a Labour MP in the British parliament. During that time, he kept a daily diary of his observations, which has since…
- Current Affairs
Dr. Mark Vonnegut on the Soullessness of Modern Medicine
Mark Vonnegut MD has been a pediatrician for over 30 years. He is the author of the books The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity, Just Like Someone Without…
- Current Affairs
How the Amazon Labor Union Defeated the Bezos Behemoth
Justine Medina is a member of the organizing committee for the Amazon Labor Union and a packer at the JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island. The ALU recently won a…
- Current Affairs
Why Are So Many Pedestrians Getting Killed in America?
Angie Schmitt is a transportation writer and planner whose book Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America examines the…
- Current Affairs
Noam Chomsky on How to Avoid World War 3
Noam Chomsky is "arguably the most important intellectual alive," the founder of modern linguistics, one of the most cited scholars in history, and the author…
- Current Affairs
How Finance Ate The Economy - w/ Grace Blakeley
Finance expert Grace Blakeley is a staff writer for Tribune magazine. She has served as economics commentator for the New Statesman and as a fellow at the…
- Current Affairs
Aviva Chomsky on Why "The Science" Isn't All We Need To Know About Climate Change
Prof. Aviva Chomsky teaches history and Latin American studies at Salem State University and has authored and edited numerous books including Central America’s…
- Current Affairs
How Does Economics Corrupt The World? - Jonathan Aldred, author of "The Skeptical Economist"
Jonathan Aldred is an economist at Cambridge University, but he is a fierce critic of the mainstream of his discipline. In his books The Skeptical Economist…
- Current Affairs
Are We In The Middle of A Sexual Revolution? Journalist Laurie Penny on changes in gender relations
Laurie Penny is a journalist and activist who has authored seven books including Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution, Bitch Doctrine: Essays for…
- Current Affairs
How Radical Teachers are Re-Igniting the Labor Movement - labor studies professor Eric Blanc on the Minneapolis strike
Eric Blanc's book Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strikes and Working-Class Politics is about the remarkable 2018-2019 educators' strikes that began in red…
- Current Affairs
How Pentecostal Christianity Is Taking Over The World - an interview with Elle Hardy, journalist and author of "Beyond Belief: How Pentecostal Christianity is Taking over the World"
Pentecostalism is the fastest-growing religious faith in the world—by one estimate it obtains around 35,000 new converts per day globally. It now has over…
- Current Affairs
SPECIAL: How Leftists Can Run, Win, and Govern - featuring interviews with six Democratic Socialists who have been elected to public office
Across the United States, over the last few years, democratic socialists have been running for office in numbers not seen for a century. The Bernie Sanders…
- Current Affairs
Understanding Putin's Criminal War in Ukraine - interview with Russia expert and publisher of The Nation Katrina vanden Heuvel
Katrina vanden Heuvel is the editorial director and publisher of The Nation magazine, as well as a columnist for the Washington Post. She is also the president…
- Current Affairs
How Companies Make Us Worship Our Work - interview with Carolyn Chen, author of "Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes a Religion in Silicon Valley"
Carolyn Chen's book Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion In Silicon Valley is about how something disturbing is happening in Silicon Valley: people are…
- Current Affairs
"How Are You Going To Pay For That?" and Other Dumb Political Questions - interview with Ryan Cooper, managing editor of The American Prospect
Ryan Cooper is the managing editor of The American Prospect and co-host of the Left Anchor podcast. He is the author of the new book How Are You Going to Pay…
- Current Affairs
How To Be A Foreign Correspondent Without Swallowing Propaganda - interview with Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent for The Independent, about his decades as a foreign correspondent
Patrick Cockburn has been a Middle East correspondent for The Independent for over 30 years and has become known for his combination of a deep knowledge of the…
- Current Affairs
How Bill Gates Makes The World Worse Off
Bill Gates has long cultivated a reputation as the Good Billionaire, giving away vast sums of money toward global health and education initiatives through the…
- Current Affairs
Astonishingly, There IS An Alternative! Interview with Yanis Varoufakis, former Finance Minister of Greece about his book "Another Now"
Yanis Varoufakis is the former Finance Minister of Greece, professor of economics at the University of Athens, co-founder of the Democracy in Europe Movement…
- Current Affairs
Why Suppressing "Fake News" Can't Fix Our Journalism Crisis
Victor Pickard is a professor of Media Studies at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication. His book Democracy Without Journalism?…
- Current Affairs
What Policing Looks Like From The Inside
Rosa Brooks is a professor of law at Georgetown University and the author Tangled Up In Blue: Policing The American City, named one of the best books of 2021…
- Current Affairs
War Zones & Prisons: The Places We Hide Suffering and The Ways We Rationalize It
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and the author of many bestselling nonfiction books. He began his career as a war correspondent, and was a…
- Current Affairs
How Do Hedge Fund Managers Justify Their Existence?
Megan Tobias Neely is a sociologist whose book Hedged Out: Inequality and Insecurity on Wall Street takes a deep look inside the world of hedge funds, those…
- Current Affairs
How To Think Sensibly About Apocalypse and Catastrophe
Phil Torres is a scholar of "global catastrophic risk," meaning that he studies the various ways in which terrible things could happen to humanity: nuclear…
- Current Affairs
Why Is Climate Communication So Impossible and Frustrating?
George Monbiot has been working on issues of climate and environmental justice for three decades. A columnist for The Guardian, George's books include Heat…
- Current Affairs
Our Era of Scams & Hype: From the Fyre Festival to Trump's Career to NFTs
We live in an age where economic success can depend a lot more on hype and branding than offering actual useful things that help people. Occasionally, we see…
- Current Affairs
How Did Anyone Ever Believe WeWork's BS?
Maureen Farrell is a business reporter with the New York Times and co-author of the book The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion…
- Current Affairs
Is The International Criminal Court a Functional Institution?
The International Criminal Court in the Hague is the place where war criminals are supposed to be tried and punished. It embodies a vision of global justice in…
- Current Affairs
Is Mocking the Deaths of Anti-Vaxxers "Necessary"? Or Cruel and Useless?
Michael Hiltzik is a Pulitzer Prize-winning business columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He has recently attracted a lot of (almost entirely negative)…
- Current Affairs
Why Judge Judy Is A Reactionary Enemy of the Poor Who Must Be Destroyed
Judge Judy Sheindlin has long been one of the highest-paid TV stars, earning a staggering $47 million per year for her show, Judge Judy. She is universally…
- Current Affairs
How Segregation Was Built—And Why It's Still With Us
Sheryll Cashin is the author of White Space, Black Hood: Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality. She has been called "one of the most…
- Current Affairs
Leadership Lessons from Bill Clinton
Editors of Current Affairs recently took Hillary Clinton's "MasterClass" and had a deeply unpleasant time. But Bill Clinton, too, has a MasterClass, and as…
- Current Affairs
How Can Socialists Get Things Done In State Government?
Today, in our last episode of the year, we present a hopeful discussion about what leftists can accomplish in power. Sam Bell is a Rhode Island state senator…
- Current Affairs
Why Are Student Loans Such a Catastrophe?
Today Nathan is joined by Wall Street Journal reporter Josh Mitchell, author of The Debt Trap: How Student Loans Became a National Catastrophe. Under pressure…
- Current Affairs
How Criminalization Destroys The Lives of Black Children
Kristin Henning directs the Juvenile Justice Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center. She has worked as a public defender for juveniles in Washington, D.C…
- Current Affairs
Is Julian Assange Being Unjustly Persecuted By The U.S. Government?
A UK court recently ruled that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can be extradited to the United States. Assange faces serious charges over violating the…
- Current Affairs
We Took Hillary Clinton's MasterClass So That You Don't Have To
Hillary Clinton has just released an online course on "The Power of Resilience" through the website MasterClass, where celebrities teach their skills. The…
- Current Affairs
Have Feminists Been Too Quick To Embrace Criminal Punishment?
Prof. Aya Gruber teaches criminal law at the University of Colorado Law School. Her book The Feminist War on Crime: The Unexpected Role of Women's Liberation…
- Current Affairs
What's Useful and Correct About Critical Race Theory? (w/ Randall Kennedy)
Harvard Law School professor Randall Kennedy has been known for decades as a critic of Critical Race Theory, which was developed in part by his late colleague…
- Current Affairs
How Have Elon Musk and Tesla Gotten Away With So Much Lying and Fraudulence?
Today Nathan is joined by Edward Niedermeyer, an investigative journalist whose book Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors remains the definitive…
- Current Affairs
Has "Wokeness" Become a "Religion"?
In this contentious conversation, Nathan speaks to Prof. John McWhorter about his book Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America. Prof…
- Current Affairs
How Did The COVID-19 Pandemic Actually Start? (w/ Alina Chan)
Today's guest is molecular biologist Dr. Alina Chan, a fellow at the Broad Institute and co-author of Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19. She has…
- Current Affairs
Why We Should Reclaim Thomas Paine and FDR (w/ Harvey Kaye)
Prof. Harvey J. Kaye is the author of books like Thomas Paine and the Promise of America, The Fight for the Four Freedoms: What Made FDR and the Greatest…
- Current Affairs
Why Is the Pursuit of Money Such an American Obsession? (w/ Lewis Lapham)
Today Nathan is joined by legendary former Harper's editor Lewis Lapham. Lapham is the author of numerous books including Money and Class in America, Age of…
- Current Affairs
Why All The Anti-Trans Arguments Are Ignorant Nonsense (w/ Julia Serano)
Julia Serano is a PhD molecular biologist, writer, and musician whose books include Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of…