Current Affairs

Ben Clarkson is an illustrator and animator who has produced work for some of the best magazines in the country, including our own Current Affairs. Matt Bors is a leading political cartoonist and founder of The Nib. They have now teamed up to produce one of the wildest satirical comic books of all time, Justice Warriors. Set in a horrifying dystopia called Bubble City, where the rich live in a bubble dome and mutants inhabit a wasteland outside, the comic chronicles the times and crimes of the police, the mayor, and urban terrorists. The book satirizes everything from policing to influencer culture to cryptocurrency. It's like The Wire, but with a mutant poop emoji as the protagonist.Today, Ben and Matt join to explain the world of Justice Warriors and how they created this bizarre and wonderful (but bleak) caricature of our times. We talk about the comic's influences, what they're trying to say with it, whether the world they depict is entirely hopeless, and what the power of politically sharp comics can be

Naomi Oreskes is a historian of science at Harvard University. Erik M. Conway works as the historian at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Together they have just published The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market. We've talked a lot on this program about that failures of neoclassical economics and the myth of the pristine free market whose great Invisible Hand delivers justice to all. But Oreskes and Conway are historians of science rather than economists, so they are interested in where these damaging ideas came from. How did the "neoliberal consensus" actually form and why? How was the belief in New Deal principles destroyed over time? Oreskes and Conway showcase the formidable power of propaganda in changing the course of history. In this episode, we discuss both the origins of the "big myth" and somewhat more theoretical questions about how we can actually measure the effects of particular historical propaganda efforts. Oreskes and Conway are also the aut

Mehdi Hasan, who hosts The Mehdi Hasan Show on MSNBC, is known as one of the most formidable interviewers in journalism. He has tangled with Blackwater's Erik Prince, John Bolton, Richard Dawkins, Paul Bremer, and many others. A video of a powerful speech he gave defending Islam at Oxford University has received 10 million views. He has now written a book on his methods, Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking, showing how to effectively confront and expose toxic beliefs. In this high energy conversation, he joins to discuss such questions as: Is debate "worth it"? Can it actually accomplish anything?What beliefs are not worth debating? How do you decide what to "legitimize"?Should Mehdi have Marjorie Taylor Greene on his program? (Nathan thinks so. Mehdi very much does not.)Are "ad hominem" attacks illegitimate? Or are they legitimate? When is it fair to use "rhetoric" over "reason"?“Philosophically, I consider argument and debate to be the lifeblood of democracy, as well as

Johanna Fernández is a historian of social movements who is the author of The Young Lords: A Radical History, a deeply researched history of one of the most vibrant and fascinating social movements of the 20th century.From their origins as a Chicago street gang in the early 60s, the Young Lords became an effective grassroots radical movement, the Puerto Rican counterpart to the Black Panthers. They helped produce an early version of the "patient's bill of rights" in medicine, organized lead testing for children, protested inadequate garbage collection, and demonstrated a model of how to fight for the rights and dignity of a marginalized community. Though short-lived, the Young Lords offer a great many lessons for those in our own time who want to work on the same kinds of issues.Today, Prof. Fernández joins us to recount the history of the Young Lords, to show us how they succeeded and why they ultimately fell apart. It's an important story that everyone who wants radical social change should be sure to famil

Adam Glenn is a Current Affairs reader who has produced a free online book called Brain Worms: How Right-Wing Propaganda Destroys Reason, Conscience, and Democracy. Today he joins to discuss how (and why) to engage with conservative arguments (which Nathan does a lot as well). The text of Adam's book usefully explains in plain language the flaws in right-wing philosophy, but the comprehensive bibliography alone is well worth browsing through. Adam explains how familiarizing yourself with the other side's arguments thoroughly can help you feel less frustrated when you encounter those arguments, and we go through some of the key arguments. "Many liberals and leftists, however, don’t know the arguments. They might happen to be correct to think the Right’s arguments are flawed, but too often they don’t know why (or at least don’t know how to articulate why). When they’re confronted with the Right’s arguments, rather than responding in a rational manner, they’re often dismissive, combative, or taken aback—unable t

Alissa Quart is the executive director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and the author of the new book Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream. Her book looks at the cruelty of the myths of being "self-made" or "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps." In the first part of her book, Quart examines the works of Emerson, Thoreau, Horatio Alger, Ayn Rand, and Laura Ingalls Wilder (one of Quart's chapters is called "Little House of Propaganda") to show how radically our images of what it takes to succeed depart from the lived reality. She exposes the constraints that keep people from achieving a decent standard of living, and shows how "dependency" isn't a bad thing—in fact, we're all interdependent by our nature. Quart's book shows how people help each other through mutual aid and presents an inspiring alternative to the existing vision of the "American dream." "As much as individualism dominates, millions in this country have also pushed against the singular and toward its opposite,

R.S. Benedict is a speculative fiction writer whose popular 2021 essay "Everyone Is Beautiful But Nobody is Horny," published in Blood Knife, argued that the disappearance of sex from movies is linked to wider cultural trends toward the celebration of militarism and violence, the shunning of hedonistic pleasure, a utilitarian disdain for frivolous things, and increasing social isolation. Today, Benedict joins to discuss this essay as well as her 2022 piece on "safe fiction." We also tie in the rise of McMansions and defend messiness over sterility. The overarching theme of the conversation is the need to resist the drift toward a Spartan culture in which our bodies are built for fighting rather than pleasure, we are each worker-units whose job is to maximize GDP, and everything unnecessary, gratuitous, or chaotic is to be purged. Benedict is a defender of humanity in all its diversity, sloppiness, and, yes, horniness, and presents a vision for a culture—in film, architecture, and everywhere else—that lets us

Khaled Beydoun is a professor of law at Wayne State and the author of two books, American Islamophobia: Understanding the Roots and Rise of Fear and The New Crusades: Islamophobia and the Global War on Muslims. American Islamophobia is a definitive analysis of the roots and spread of anti-Muslim animus in the United States, but The New Crusades expands the analysis to look at how the same bigotry manifests around the world, from France to India to China to New Zealand. The new book also shows how the "Global War on Terror" launched by the U.S. after 9/11 helped to fuel anti-Muslim bigotry elsewhere—for instance, China's persecution of Uyghurs deploys justifications and rhetoric lifted straight from the Bush administration. "The way in which the media was disseminating this violent, vile information about Muslims—people like me, who sat across from him—mobilized [the soldier] to enlist in a war in a place that he had no knowledge of. He just knew that he wanted to defend his country, he wanted vengeance, and t

Émile P. Torres is an intellectual historian who has recently become a prominent public critic of the ideologies of "effective altruism" and "longtermism," each of which is highly influential in Silicon Valley and which Émile argues contain worrying dystopian tendencies. In this conversation, Émile joins to explain what these ideas are, why the people who subscribe to them think they can change the world in very positive ways, and why Émile has come to be so strongly critical of them. Émile discusses why philosophies that emphasize voluntary charity over redistributing political power have such appeal to plutocrats, and the danger of ideologies that promise "astronomical future value" to rationalize morally dubious near-term actions."A lot this is about working within systems. There's really no serious though within EA, at least that I've seen, about the origins of a lot of problems around the world, those origins being in systems of power, structures that have [caused] individuals in the Global South to end

Jennifer Jacquet is not actually an evil corporate consultant. She's a professor in NYU's Department of Environmental Studies and deputy director of the school's Center for Environmental and Animal Protection. But you might think otherwise if you flipped open her book The Playbook: How to Deny Science, Sell Lies, and Make a Killing in the Corporate World, a tongue-in-cheek handbook supposedly directed toward CEOs who want to fully follow Milton Friedman's dictum that "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits." The Playbook shows these readers what to do when they find that the spread of scientific knowledge is posing a threat to their bottom line. Using case studies from the cigarette industry, the fossil fuel industry, and more, it's a "guide on whom to hire, how to recruit experts, tips for effective communication, and ways to successfully challenge the science, the policy, and the scientists, reporters, and activists using science to further their policy agendas.”In fact, Prof. Jacq

Van Jackson is a dissident among foreign policy intellectuals, a harsh critic of the infamous "Blob." His Un-Diplomatic newsletter is essential reading (and its accompanying podcast essential listening), and his analyses of U.S. policy in the Pacific in Foreign Affairs are very useful for those who want to understand what is going on in the region. These include: Great-Power Competition Is Bad for DemocracyAmerica is Turning Asia into a Powder Keg The Problem With Primacy: America's Dangerous Quest to Dominate the Indo-PacificAmerica's Indo-Pacific FollyHe is the author of the new book Pacific Power Paradox: American Statecraft and the Fate of the Asian Peace (Yale University Press) and today he joins the Current Affairs podcast to explain why he thinks U.S. policy in Asia is dangerous and putting us unnecessarily on the path towards conflict with China. It's a vital conversation for understanding the most consequential tensions in the world today. "It's patently obvious that by pursuing primacy we're making

Cordelia Fine is a psychologist and philosopher of science whose work brilliantly demolishes myths about the "nature" of differences between men and women. Prof. Fine has written three books, A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives, Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences, and Testosterone Rex: Unmaking the Myths of Our Gendered Minds.Today she joins for a conversation about various popular myths about how men and women are "wired" and why a lot of supposedly sound science on sex differences is, in fact, untrustworthy or downright wrong. Prof. Fine shows how these kinds of claims about the biological roots of social gender differences have a long, long history, and they're not any more sound now than they were in the 1900s when suffrage was being opposed on the grounds that women were biologically incapable of voting intelligently. We discuss the contemporary claims of people like Jordan Peterson and the Google memo guy about the supposed scientific foundations of various

Today on the podcast: Nathan takes a turn as the guest, to discuss his new book Responding to the Right: Brief Replies to 25 Conservative Arguments. Get your copy now! Responding to the Right goes through arguments about abortion, minimum wages, trans rights, immigration, Big Government and much more and shows both why right-wing talking points are wrong and how to effectively defeat them. In Part I of the book, Nathan discusses how conservative arguments work and why they can sound persuasive to people. Then in Part II he responds to 25 different arguments. In each case, he uses direct quotes from right-wingers making the argument (to avoid the accusation of "attacking straw men.")In this episode, managing editor Lily Sánchez takes a turn as the host for a conversation with Nathan on the book, the question of why it's worth responding to the right at all, and the common structure of conservative arguments. "I've tried to make this book as comprehensive and useful of a handbook as I can. I think many of us on

“What I didn’t realize at the time was that what I was living through was the death paroxysms of the Jim Crow order.” — Adolph ReedProf. Adolph Reed Jr. has been called (by Cornel West) “the towering radical theorist of American democracy of his generation.” His new book The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives is a departure from Reed’s previous work in political science, as it is a personal reflection on his upbringing as part of the last generation to experience the Jim Crow south firsthand. Reed grew up mostly in New Orleans (where this interview also took place) and vividly recalls both the everyday realities of the Jim Crow order and the remarkable process by which the regime was shattered. His book discusses what has changed and what hasn’t in the South. Today he joins to discuss the book and tell us more about how the Jim Crow order functioned in practice, what brought it to an end, and how seismic historical changes happen (sometimes much more quickly than you expect).Adolph Reed’s previous appearance

Ben Tarnoff is the author of Internet For The People: The Fight For Our Digital Future. Today he joins to discuss what's wrong with the internet and how we fix it. Ben helps us to think more clearly about how the ownership of the underlying infrastructure of the internet affects our experiences—not just platforms like Facebook and Twitter but the "pipes." Ben takes us through the history of how the internet began as a public infrastructure project and gradually became privatized and shows us what the consequences of that privatization have been. He then helps us think through a vision for what a very different internet—one that operated in the interests of the people rather than for profit—would look like. "The profit motive is programmed into every layer of the network." — Ben Tarnoff 

"When the individualized self bears sole responsibility for its happiness and emotional wellbeing, failure is synonymous with failure of the self, not external conditions.” — Ron PurserRonald Purser is a Professor of Management at San Francisco State University and the author of McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality. Prof. Purser’s book exposes how corporations have pushed pseudo-Buddhist “mindfulness” training to shift the burden of dealing with stress to employees without having to address the toxic work conditions that create that stress in the first place. Today, Prof. Purser joins to discuss how mindfulness became a “therapeutic solvent” meant to help individuals cope with their problems but how it ultimately ends up obscuring the systemic causes of those problems and shifting responsibility for dealing with them. Prof. Purser is not an opponent of mindfulness practice, which he believes offers some benefits, but he is highly critical of the way mindfulness is presented as

Alex Lawson is the Executive Director of Social Security Works and the convening member of the Strengthen Social Security Coalition. He has spent his career working to try to save Social Security from Republican (and sometimes Democratic) attempts to "reform" (i.e., cut) it. Today, Alex joins to discuss:Why Social Security is a huge social democratic achievement and the fight it took to get it in the first placeWhy the right has always hated Social Security (it shows government can work and successfully help people) and the history of their attempts to undermine itThe lies and propaganda that are used to convince people that Social Security is in a crisis and urgently needs reforms that will cut people's benefitsHow the strong popularity of Social Security means politicians all pretend they support it even when they don't, and why we need to be vigilant against politicians who pretend they care about maintaining it and then try to sneak through measures to cut benefitsWhy we need to go on the offensive, not j

How To Hold The New York Times Accountable (w/ Margaret Sullivan)Margaret Sullivan is one of the country’s most astute media critics. During her time as Public Editor of the New York Times (essentially an ombudsman) Sullivan became widely respected for her willingness to call out the paper’s lapses, often to the considerable consternation of her Times colleagues. Sullivan criticized the paper’s reliance on anonymous government sources, its practice of allowing sources to approve their own quotes, its previous deference to the Bush administration's "national security" justifications for suppressing a story, its failure to adequately cover the Panama Papers, Chelsea Manning's trial, and the Flint Water Crisis, and even the paper’s habit of reporting nonexistent style trends as if they were real things (e.g., the supposed hip comeback of the monocle).Sullivan also spent much of her career in local journalism, serving as the managing editor of the Buffalo News. Her book Ghosting the News: Local Journalism and the

“It’s not that hard to let yourself be led by something that doesn’t match up with your morals, when you’re desperate.” — Jennifer DinesJennifer Dines is a Boston-based schoolteacher, poet, and essayist who has written an article for Current Affairs called "The Quit-Lit Pseudoscience and Faulty Feminism of Women’s Sobriety Memoirs," which critiques the bestselling books targeted at women recovering from alcoholism. In her piece, Dines shows how these books often try to sell women on expensive courses so they can "buy their way to health," disparaging free alternatives like Alcoholics Anonymous in favor of unrealistically expensive lifestyle changes (e.g. yoga retreats).Dines also discusses how these books use the language of social justice to try to convince readers that their own self-care (and their purchase of the authors' products) advances broader feminist goals. In this conversation, we discuss how difficult it is to get accurate information and receive quality healthcare, and how hard it is for despera

Thomas Geoghegan is a labor lawyer and writer whose latest book is The History of Democracy Has Yet To Be Written: How We Have to Learn to Govern All Over Again. MSNBC's Chris Hayes says of the book: "This book made me laugh out loud and also gave me glimpses of an entire horizon of possibility I hadn't seen before.” Indeed, while Tom's book examines the hopeless dysfunction of our political system (including amusingly describing his own effort to run for Congress), it's also a look at how we could make a much, much better system of government if we were committed to getting rid of the filibuster, making voting mandatory, restructuring congress, and passing the PRO Act. Even though we often assume that we stand on the cusp of an authoritarian end to democracy, we actually have within our grasp the possibility of making it far more stable and having a Congress that actually represents the people of the country. Today, Tom joins to discuss his book, telling us what it's like to run for Congress in Chicago in a