Current Affairs

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 Generation Truly Great, and most recently Take Hold Of Our History: Make America Radical Again. Running through his work is the argument that the social democratic left should draw more on the richness of the American radical tradition and take greater pride in the history of those who have struggled to achieve the promise of democratic equality. In this interview, we talk about why Kaye rejects the idea of leftist history as pure "debunking" of nationalist myths and sees it as important to create our own inspiring story about the path trodden by our ancestors. We talk about:- Why Thomas Paine, without whom the American Revolution would probably not have happened, and who alienated the other Founding Fathers and made himself despised, is the one member of the Founding generation radicals can be proud of and should celebrate- How we can take pride in the good

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 Folly, and Lapham's Rules of Influence. He currently edits Lapham's Quarterly. He also wrote and starred in the delightfully strange documentary/musical The American Ruling Class. He was called "without doubt our greatest satirist" by Kurt Vonnegut, is a member of the American Society of Magazine Editors Hall of Fame, and went to India with the Beatles. The New York Times once called him "amusing." Lapham's books focus heavily on the culture of the American financial and political elite. In Money and Class in America he writes about his own privileged upbringing and the spiritual emptiness of life among those who see price as synonymous with value. We discuss:- The way that rich people go to great lengths to pretend they don't care about money even when it's the main thing they care about- The shallowness of an Ivy League education, and the emphasis on ne

Julia Serano is a PhD molecular biologist, writer, and musician whose books include Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, Outspoken: A Decade of Transgender Activism and Trans Feminism, and the surrealist novel 99 Erics. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, TIME, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, Salon, and elsewhere.Dr. Serano is a patient debunker of anti-trans talking points, and has written a number of articles patiently taking apart common misconceptions. Her "transgender glossary of sorts" is also an essential resource for those who find gender and sexuality terms confusing or imprecise. Dr. Serano joined to go through some of the most common arguments made about trans people in the popular press and show why they are pernicious, factually incorrect nonsense. Having previously spent two decades as a professional biologist, she corrects the laughably ignorant claims that transgender people misunderstand or ignore "biology." In fact, it is the critics who

Dean Preston represents District 5 on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. A tenants' rights attorney and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, he was the first democratic socialist elected to the board in 40 years. Recently, a campaign by a group called the "YIMBYs" has accused Preston of denying housing to thousands of people. In this episode, we talk about why San Francisco has a housing crisis and how to solve it. We also talk about how pro-developer groups produce propaganda that portrays affordable housing activists as "opposed to affordable housing." Dean responds to the YIMBY charges and shows how corporate disinformation against socialists works. We discuss:- Why rent control is actually a very good thing - How the hypocrisy of San Francisco rich people has driven inequality spiraling out of control in the city- How the "YIMBY movement" paints anyone who opposes developers' interests as an anti-housing "NIMBY"- The things cities need to actually be affordable - How elected officials can

Aziz Huq is an expert in constitutional law at the University of Chicago law school. He is the author of the book The Collapse of Constitutional Remedies, available from Oxford University Press. Prof. Huq's book focuses on the fact that constitutional rights are meaningless unless there are remedies for violations of those rights, and that while we ostensibly have the same rights as always, courts have steadily eroded our ability to get anything if the government chooses to violate our rights. We discuss:- Why cops get away with brutality and lying- How the US court system is not set up to protect people's rights, but we still did have some once- How the right-wing turn of the courts has meant strong protections for corporate rights and few protections for personal rights against state violence - How we can perhaps one day have some rights that are more than just words on a piece of paper Our "cynical know-your-rights poster," mentioned in the episode, is here. 

Today's guest is Glenn Loury, professor of economics at Brown University. Prof. Loury has had a distinguished career—he was the youngest-ever tenured Black economics professor at Harvard and is known for coining the term "social capital." Prof. Loury is generally associated with political conservatism, but his books The Anatomy of Racial Inequality and Race, Incarceration, and American Values actually offer a rebuke to conservative "color blindness" rhetoric and sketch precise explanations for why contemporary racial inequality can only be understood in the context of historical racism. In this interview, Nathan tries to get at some of the seeming contradictions between Prof. Loury's written work on systemic racial inequality and his public statements heavily emphasizing the role of "culture." It is a contentious and challenging conversation. The Anatomy of Racial Inequality was recently reissued with a new preface. Prof. Loury's 2012 lecture "Race, Incarceration, and American Values," can be found here. 

Today's guest is Stephen Bright, one of the best criminal defense attorneys in the United States. Prof. Bright teaches at Yale Law School and Georgetown Law, but has spent most of his life working as an advocate for poor people accused of serious crimes. During his decades in charge of the Southern Center For Human Rights, he argued multiple times in front of the U.S. Supreme Court and represented defendants some of the most difficult death penalty cases. Today we discuss the status of the right to a lawyer in the United States. Constitutionally, everyone is guaranteed an adequate defense, but in practice, the amount of representation one gets is based on the amount of money one can spend, and public defenders offices vary wildly across the country. Nobody is better familiar with the situation than Prof. Bright, whose writings include:Counsel for the Poor: The Death Penalty Not for the Worst Crime But for the Worst Lawyer (1994)Fifty Years of Defiance and Resistance After Gideon v. Wainwright (2013) (w/ Sia S

In this, the second part of our look into the realities of abortion in the contemporary United States, Nathan talks to Prof. Diana Greene Foster, Director of Research at the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) collaborative research group at UC-San Francisco. Prof. Foster is the author of the new book The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having―or Being Denied―an Abortion. The book is based on a remarkable study that followed a thousand women over a decade, some of whom had abortions and some of whom were denied abortions. The study compared life outcomes for the two groups and found that not only does having an abortion not cause lasting regret or harm, but not having a desired abortion creates a host of negative life outcomes. We also discuss: - How those who are denied abortions accurately predict the negative life consequences they will face from the denial - Why access to contraception is still a long way from being universal - How the need to qu

Carol Joffe is one of the foremost experts on reproductive rights in the United States. A professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, she has been studying and writing about the battle over abortion rights for decades and received lifetime achievement awards from the Abortion Care Network and the Society of Family Planning. She is the co-author of the book Obstacle Course: The Everyday Struggle to Get an Abortion In America, and joined Nathan to discuss the various ways that the anti-abortion movement has already succeeded in creating obstacles to having abortions, as well as: - What a post-Roe America will actually look like: why it may not be quite as bleak as the pre-Roe era thanks to abortion pills, but will be worse if criminal punishments are widely deployed - The sneaky tactics that anti-abortion campaigners often use, including placing fake clinics next to real ones - Why the volunteer actions of ordinary people

Andrew Cockburn is a veteran journalist who serves as the Washington Editor of Harper's magazine. His new book, The Spoils of War: Power, Profit, and the American War Machine, available from Verso collects his reporting on the military-industrial complex and the way the public coffers are looted by profiteers. He joined Nathan to discuss why he thinks the ever-bloating military has become an out-of-control "virus," as well as: - The bureaucratic waste that means the US military isn't even good at defense - Why profit, rather than war, is what the military is built for - The defense companies that depend on constantly manufacturing new threats, which conveniently pop up just when it looks like the military budget might be scaled back - Why the new stories about Chinese hypersonic missiles are exactly this kind of self-interested threat inflation - The alarming situation with nuclear weapons, which are far too close to being used for anyone's comfort - Why defense spending isn't even a good way to "creat

Tara Isabella Burton is the author of Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World. She joined Current Affairs editor Nathan Robinson to discuss changing religious practices in the United States. Traditional organized religion has been on the decline for years, as more and more young people are identifying as nonreligious. But are we really? Tara's book looks at the way that new communities and spiritual practices, from SoulCycle to astrology to online political communities, have arisen in the place of churches. We discuss: - To what extent these are identities versus beliefs - What a "religion" is and whether the term should apply to these other kinds of beliefs and practices - How charlatans sell people the promise of spiritual fulfillment - The pluses and minuses of having "bespoke" religions for everyone. On the one hand, everyone gets the faith that suits them best. On the other, we may lose our sense of belonging in the broader human community Edited by Tim Gray Nathan's audio is absolutely

Today Nathan is joined by Oxford University philosophy professor Henry Shue, author of Climate Justice and most recently The Pivotal Generation: Why We Have a Moral Responsibility to Slow Climate Change Right Now. Prof. Shue's new book is about the moral obligations conferred on people by the historical circumstances they find themselves in. The actions of living people have huge consequences for those born to subsequent generations. What responsibilities do we have to those who come after us? We discuss: - The important questions of justice that need to be central to the climate discussion - Why people living in the future are just as morally important as people living now - What elementary principles of moral philosophy can tell us about the political action we need to take on climate - Why individual lifestyle choices are insufficient to fulfill our moral responsibilities - What those countries most responsible for the climate crisis owe to those who will suffer the most from it Edited by Tim Gray

Ross Barkan, author of The Prince: Andrew Cuomo, Coronavirus, and the Fall of New York, joins Nathan to discuss the career of the infamous ex-New York governor. We talk about: - How an un-charismatic and unpleasant bully made his inspiring journey from humble beginnings as the son of the governor of New York to become the governor of New York - How Cuomo managed to keep a blue state from actually passing progressive legislation - How his Machiavellian ruthlessness, and New York's broken election system, kept him in power for so long - How the media allows politicians like Cuomo to portray themselves as heroes when their actual policies are disastrous Ross' book is an important document of the lies and manipulation of one of our time's shadiest state leaders. It offers an important case study in how centrists govern and the kind of politics we need to overthrow. Edited by Tim Gray

Current Affairs editor and physician Dr. Lily Sánchez joins Nathan to discuss her new (and first) Current Affairs article, "Continuing The Pandemic Is A Choice." Lily explains: - the many things the U.S. could do differently if it was actually trying to get COVID-19 cases as close to 0 as possible - the weird lack of a serious public education and messaging campaign around vaccination - why having 50 different state policies makes no sense when you're trying to control a pandemic - the need for us to refuse to accept the status quo, and demand the elimination of preventable suffering Correction: the horrifying Rosa Parks tweet is in fact from contrarian writer James Lindsay, not a Daily Wire writer. Nathan was thinking of a different horrifying recent tweet that was from a Daily Wire writer. That one was in defense of genocide. Point of clarification from Lily: "I did not mean to imply I endorsed a "vax or test" approach when I was talking about vaccine outreach and testing. "Vax or test" doesn't rea

Ben Burgis is the author of the upcoming book: Christopher Hitchens: What He Got Right, How He Went Wrong, and Why He Still Matters, as well as the host of "Give Them An Argument" on YouTube. His previous book Give Them An Argument: Logic for the Left was covered in Current Affairs and he and Nathan have co-written before. In today's episode, Ben and Nathan discuss Hitchens' career, writings, and beliefs, including: - The enduring value of Hitchens' leftist polemics against Henry Kissinger and Bill Clinton - The roots of Hitchens' repugnant and despicable views on Islam and the Iraq War - The question of how useful his strident "anti-theism" was - The way the 80s and 90s neoliberal consensus caused certain socialists to lose their way - The need for the left to avoid Hitchens' worst tendencies while learning from his erudition, debating flair, and love of skewering overrated sacred figures The Trial of Henry Kissinger can be seen on YouTube. Ben's book on Hitchens is now available for pre-order. Edi

Lee McIntyre is a philosopher of science who serves as a research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and an instructor in Ethics at Harvard Extension School. His new book, How to Talk to a Science Denier: Conversations with Flat Earthers, Climate Deniers, and Others Who Defy Reason, is about how we can actually successfully talk people out of dangerous erroneous beliefs. Lee recognizes that merely providing people with correct facts does little, but also believes it's a terrible idea to let bad ideas go unrebutted, or conclude that there's "no point trying to reason with people." His book discusses the importance of building relationships and trust as part of the process of getting people to be open to new ideas, and shows why it's essential in an age of vaccine skepticism and climate denial that we learn how to effectively defend scientific truths. He joined Current Affairs editor Nathan J. Robinson to discuss what works and what doesn't when it comes to talking p

Thom Hartmann is the #1 progressive talk radio show host in the country. Today, he joins Current Affairs editor in chief Nathan J. Robinson to discuss the world of talk radio, as well as his book "The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed The American Dream." Nathan asks why the right has been so dominant in talk radio, and how leftists can effectively counter them. We talk about: - Why Rush Limbaugh was so good at what he did - Whether there is anything about talk radio as a medium that is inherently favorable to conservatives - How giant radio corporations limit the reach of progressive voices (including the billionaire station owner who once told Thom "I won't put anyone on the air who wants to raise my taxes") - What it takes to hold people's attention for 3 hours straight on the air - How to do a professional "radio voice" - How the left can produce successful radio (and why we need to) Thom's book on big business is here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49195416-the-hid

Author Jim Freeman discusses his book "Rich Thanks To Racism: How The Ultra-Wealthy Profit From Racial Injustice." Jim looks at three issue areas, education, policing, and immigration, and how in each, the ultra-wealthy have found ways to make vast fortunes off the suffering of Black and Brown people. Jim directs the Social Movement Support Lab, which provides multidisciplinary assistance to communities fighting for racial justice. He was formerly a Senior Attorney at Advancement Project, a national civil rights organization, where he directed the Ending the Schoolhouse-to-Jailhouse Track project. He served under President Obama as a Commissioner on the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans. His book is available here: https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501755132/rich-thanks-to-racism/ Nathan's audio quality is crap because he accidentally used his computer microphone instead of his podcasting mic. He will try to avoid doing this again. Edited by Tim Gray.

Seattle city council member Kshama Sawant was elected as an open socialist in 2013, long before the present wave of local socialist political victories began. During her time in office, she has taken on Amazon and helped make Seattle the first large city in the country to adopt the $15 minimum wage. In this interview, she discusses how she was able to get elected as a socialist during the Obama years, how movements can successfully pressure useless centrist Democrats to do what they are otherwise disinclined to do, why she doesn't think it's a good idea to associate with the Democratic party under any circumstances (but she supported Bernie anyway), and why she has recently joined the Democratic Socialists of America.

Author Jeremy Lent discusses his new book "The Web Of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place In The Universe." Jeremy's book shows how the individualistic philosophical underpinnings of capitalism destroy our ability to find meaning and our appreciation of the wonders of nature. He shows us the environmental horrors that are unleashed by free market thinking, but then begins to construct an alternative worldview that can help us live harmoniously and sustainably in the universe. He integrates both the insights of the hard sciences and wisdom from traditional religious and cultural practices around the world, showing how even slime molds have something to teach us. The Web Of Meaning can be purchased from New Society Press: https://newsociety.com/books/w/the-web-of-meaning Jeremy's demolition of Steven Pinker can be read here: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/transformation/steven-pinker-s-ideas-are-fatally-flawed-these-eight-graphs-show-why/ and the article in which Nathan J.