Current Affairs

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 small boutique investment banks that play with a sizable chunk of the world's wealth. Neely's book draws on her observations from time working in a hedge fund as well as from dozens of interviews with professionals in the industry. In this conversation, we discuss:- How hedge fund managers justify their value to society and why there are reasons to doubt them- The internal culture of firms and how they resemble feudal kingdoms- Popular myths, such as the idea that the "only thing that matters is whether you make money for investors" and "the firm is horizontal and non-hierarchical" - How people with degrees in astrophysics and artificial intelligence find themselves using their skills to make money for rich people rather than doing what they love- How super-wealthy men convince themselves that their decisions are based on objective reason when they are of

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 war, global warming, asteroids, killer robots, pandemics, etc. His books include The End: What Science and Religion Tell Us About the Apocalypse and Morality, Foresight, and Human Flourishing: An Introduction to Existential Risks. Both are available free on his website. His upcoming book is Human Extinction: A History of Thinking About the End of the World.On today's episode, Phil joins to talk about how we can think rationally about the risks we face as a species, and figure out what to prioritize. Over the last decade or so, many more scholars have turned to thinking seriously about global catastrophic risks, trying to determine what threats we need to address. As Phil discusses, it's in many ways a good thing that more people are taking catastrophe seriously. As we can see from the COVID-19 pandemic, often we overlook these things until it's too late, a

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: How to Stop the Planet From Burning, Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis and How Did We Get into This Mess? Politics, Equality, Nature. His latest essay collection This Can't Be Happening "calls on humanity to stop averting its gaze from the destruction of the living planet, and wake up to the greatest predicament we have ever faced." As a public communicator on climate change, George has experienced deep frustration in trying to convey the urgency of the crisis to a media and and political establishment that refuse to confront reality or accept the need for drastic changes to the status quo. That frustration was captured well, he says, by the recent Netflix satire Don't Look Up, which is about scientists who are unable to convey the importance of stopping a planet-destroying comet from crashing into Earth. In fact, the film is such a

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 extreme examples of fakers and frauds, like Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos and Billy McFarland of the Fyre Festival. But those are the few that have seen their lies exposed and their careers come crashing down. There are others, like Tesla's Elon Musk, WeWork's Adam Neumann, and America's Donald Trump, who have reaped riches beyond comprehension by bullshitting and betraying people. Today on the podcast, journalist and attorney Gabrielle Bluestone joins to discuss how con artists get away with it, and the way scammers succeed in getting people to believe in images that depart completely from reality. Gabrielle is the author of Hype: How Scammers, Grifters, and Con Artists Are Taking Over The Internet and Why We're Following. She also produced the Netflix documentary FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened. Gabrielle's work exposes the ways that con ar

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, which documents one of the most bizarre stories in 21st century capitalism: the staggering rise (and subsequent collapse) of WeWork, an office space rental company that presented itself as a game-changing "technology company" that was going to revolutionize the world and change the way humans interacted with each other. Led by a strangely charismatic founder, Adam Neumann, who had sought his fortune in the baby clothes industry before pivoting to real estate, the company ascended to stunning heights, attracting investment from some of the most sophisticated capitalists in the world. Neumann successfully convinced legions of followers that WeWork was offering more than just co-working spaces, and developed what Farrell and co-author Eliot Brown call "the cult of We," infusing  the company's culture with quasi-religious belief in a destiny to change the w

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 which war crimes are universally forbidden, intended to carry forward humanitarian principles. But so far, the court has only completed a handful of trials, and it has been heavily criticized for focusing on crimes committed in Africa while ignoring Western atrocities. Yet the court has only existed since 2002, and many hold hope that it can someday be an institution that ensures victims of atrocities around the world receive justice. To better understand the court's operations, we are joined by ICC expert Richard Gaskins, Professor of Law and Social Welfare at Brandeis University and author of the book The Congo Trials in The International Criminal Court, available from Cambridge University Press.  Having closely watched and studied the ICC's first complete trials, Prof. Gaskins speaks to Current Affairs editor in chief Nathan J. Robinson about what t

Michael Hiltzik is a Pulitzer Prize-winning business columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He has recently attracted a lot of (almost entirely negative) attention for a column and tweets arguing that mocking the deaths of anti-vaxxers is "necessary." Hiltzik joins to defend and explain his position to Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson, who believes that Hiltzik's stance is cruel and unhelpful. Michael argues that his argument is more nuanced than it is being characterized as. Nathan suggests that as the one who intentionally tweeted an offensive provocation, Michael is responsible for that characterization. Michael argues that dark humor is an important weapon, citing the Current Affairs article "The Necessity of Political Vulgarity." Nathan argues that while incivility can be tactically useful, directing it against people who have died of COVID does nothing to create more productive discourse on vaccines. But what about people in positions of power who use that power to spread damaging misinf

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 known and loved nationwide for her acerbic, "take no BS" style of dispute resolution. "Who doesn't love Judge Judy?" asked Barack Obama. Current Affairs editor-at-large Yasmin Nair does not love Judge Judy. In a new article for In These Times magazine, Nair reviews Sheindlin's new show for Amazon Studios, Judy Justice, and argues that Judge Judy's judgments are full of implicit disdain for the poor, contempt for dysfunctional and broken people, and "bootstraps" ideology.While many of the cases Judy judges are amusing and trivial disputes over the custody of adorable little dogs, others illustrate the tragedy of American financial struggles at the bottom of the class ladder. And the spectacle of an extremely wealthy person snapping commands at those with very little can come to feel grotesque. Nair writes:"Nearly all of the people who end up on the show are

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 important civil rights scholars of our time." Her book "exposes the ways in which American policy decisions, from the early twentieth century to the present, have constructed a ‘residential caste system’ resulting in the entrapment of Black people in high-poverty neighborhoods while ‘overinvesting in affluent white space.’" In this rich conversation she talks to Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson about how racial segregation was created and why it persists. We dive deep into the mechanisms by which inequality reproduces itself from generation to generation. 

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 public interest journalists committed to understanding and explaining the political world, we felt obligated to take this one, too. To save you the $180 MasterClass fee, we tell you everything you'll learn from Bill Clinton's "Inclusive Leadership" lessons, including:- How to associate yourself with the legacy of Nelson Mandela and other great civil rights leaders - How to discuss your record as a politician without mentioning anything you actually did, like gutting welfare and speeding up the death penalty - How to charm people while saying absolutely nothing- How to champion "inclusivity" without advocating anything that could fundamentally challenge the existing social hierarchy - How to produce a glossy course syllabus containing very little other than photos of yourself and your pets Bill Clinton is genuinely a master of the art of bullshitting people

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 and Democratic Socialists of America member. The Boston Globe has called him "the most outspoken member" of the RI state senate, and he has tried to use his position to advance left policies in a state historically dominated by extremely conservative Democrats and a powerful political machine. In this episode, we have what is hopefully an uplifting and exciting conversation about what it's like to take on "machine politics" and why some victories are more within reach than you might think. This episode is a useful primer not only on Rhode Island politics, but on the way that leftists can win office and then use that office effectively to change the politics of their state. We talk about: - How his state became dominated by extremely right-wing Democrats out of step with the progressive inclinations of the electorate- Why state legislators are more powerf

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 from progressive Democrats, Joe Biden recently agreed to continue a pause on student loan payments. There has been a great deal of debate over whether Biden should consider canceling large amounts of student debt outright. Mitchell has spent years studying every aspect of the student loan crisis. On this episode, he helps us better understand what the crisis is and how we got here. We discuss:- What makes student loans a "catastrophe" to begin with, and why there needs to be some public policy solution - The mountain of human misery beneath the statistics, what life is actually like for people who can't pay their debts- Why Josh thinks the establishment of Sallie Mae was one of the most disastrous trainwrecks in the history of Congressional legislation - How college financial advisers have misled students into thinking their degrees are more valuable th

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. and is the author of the book The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth.  In the book, Prof. Henning "explains how discriminatory and aggressive policing has socialized a generation of Black teenagers to fear, resent, and resist the police, and details the long-term consequences of racism and trauma Black youth experience at the hands of police and their vigilante surrogates." In this episode, we talk about why over-policing destroys the ability of many Black children to have normal childhoods and why it's so essential to respond to the transgressions of kids with empathy and compassion rather than brutality. It's not that difficult: it just means treating all young people, regardless of race, with the kind of mercy and generous due process that some (e.g. Kyle Rittenhouse) are already given. 

A UK court recently ruled that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can be extradited to the United States. Assange faces serious charges over violating the Espionage Act, based on WikiLeaks' publication of classified United States government documents and video related to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The prosecution has been condemned by a number of press freedom and human rights organizations, but there are those who argue that Assange is a criminal or even a "terrorist."To discuss the case, Nathan is joined by one of the leading experts on it, Nils Melzer, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture. Prof. Melzer is a specialist in human rights law who has served as a legal adviser to the Red Cross, and is currently Human Rights Chair of the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights and Professor of International Law at the University of Glasgow. His book The Trial of Julian Assange: A Story of Persecution is forthcoming from Verso.

Hillary Clinton has just released an online course on "The Power of Resilience" through the website MasterClass, where celebrities teach their skills. The course has made the news because in it, she delivers the speech she would have given had she won the presidency in 2016, which she did not. We were curious what else is in Hillary Clinton's MasterClass, so Current Affairs editors Yasmin Nair, Nathan J. Robinson, and Lily Sánchez paid the fee and took the class. In this episode, we reveal all of the class's secrets, so that you can take Hillary's MasterClass without actually taking Hillary's MasterClass. Her useful lessons on resilience, negotiation, and more are helpfully summarized in this delightful conversation. We discuss:- Why the class seems to be more about helping Clinton process her loss to Donald Trump than a good faith attempt to teach anyone anything- How the class rewrites history and leaves out all of the horrible things the Clintons have done over the course of their political careers- How Cl

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 in Mass Incarceration makes the case that many feminists have been too quick to push for more severe criminal punishments for crimes against women, and have as a result ended up legitimizing or even contributing to the expansion of mass incarceration. Prof. Gruber makes a strong argument against "carceral feminism," claiming that it sees "putting offenders in prison" as the solution to harms women face, but that this remedy at best only imperfectly guarantees justice, and at worst reproduces cruel racist state violence. In this provocative conversation, we discuss:- How Prof. Gruber's experience in a public defender's office helped her see that some of the legal changes mainstream feminists pushed for ultimately ended up unfairly punishing poor men of color without helping women who were the victims of crimes- Why courts, police, and prisons are not good

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 Derrick Bell. But Kennedy's critiques come from a position of intellectual respect, and over the years he has become more sympathetic to some of the central claims CRT makes about the pervasive and intractable nature of American racism. His new book Say It Loud! On Race, Law, History, and Culture collects his essays from the past several decades, many of which deal with the question of how American racism has functioned historically, how it has morphed over time, and what a rational way to think about it is. In this wide-ranging conversation, he and Current Affairs editor in chief Nathan J. Robinson discuss:- The way Black intellectual thought has long had "optimistic" and "pessimistic" camps, and CRT fits squarely in with a long tradition of Black pessimism about racial progress- Why Prof. Kennedy thinks there are ample factual grounds for holding that

Today Nathan is joined by Edward Niedermeyer, an investigative journalist whose book Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors remains the definitive critical account of the rise of Elon Musk and Tesla. Edward is an auto industry expert whose work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg View, and elsewhere, and he currently hosts the Autonocast podcast about the development of autonomous cars. We discuss how Tesla motors has been built into a powerhouse in the automotive industry, and Edward argues that it has required a LOT of deception. We discuss:- Why Tesla has been so successful—is it mostly branding and hype or are there real innovations underneath it all?- Whether luxury electric cars are actually important in the fight against climate change- How government subsidies have played a role in making Musk's unprofitable venture survive- How dependent Tesla is on a constant hype machine that is not matched by its actual output- The strategies the company has used to di

In this contentious conversation, Nathan speaks to Prof. John McWhorter about his book Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America. Prof. McWhorter is a linguist at Columbia University, regular New York Times contributor, and host of the Lexicon Valley podcast. His book argues that anti-racist social justice ideology is properly described as a "religion" and that its practitioners are beyond reasoning with. It's a thesis Nathan takes serious issue with and the conversation illuminates deep points of disagreement on questions like:- Whether something having "religious" qualities makes it irrational- Whether the people Prof. McWhorter describes are really "beyond reason" - Whether Prof. McWhorter's characterization of several incidents of excesses by "woke religion" are presented fairly and accurately - If the California Education Department's new mathematics teaching framework really does, as Prof. McWhorter argues, constitute an abandonment of standards of rigor - Whether it's right to say that

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 been one of the most prominent commentators on the origins of COVID-19 and has attracted controversy for encouraging more serious consideration of the possibility that the pandemic began through an accident at a virology lab. She has been credited for changing the discussion about the issue and causing scientists and the media to pay more attention to the possibility of a lab accident than they were previously. In this episode we discuss:- The various possible ways the pandemic could have begun and why "lab leak" and "natural origin" can be somewhat misleading terms- How the politicization of the debate has gotten in the way of having a serious discussion about the facts, since the right is committed to the lab hypothesis and the left does not want to consider a hypothesis that the right is so committed to- What the actual evidence we currently have is (no