Current Affairs

Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs !Astra Taylor is a filmmaker, writer, and activist whose latest book is The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart, based on her CBC Massey Lectures. Today she joins to discuss the themes of her lectures, which are build around the ideas of security and insecurity. What makes us actually "secure"? Security is a word that has right-wing connotations (surveillance cameras, security guards, etc.) But we know that there is another kind of security, the kind promised by programs like Social Security. Astra explains why she, as a longtime activist for debtors, thinks we live in an "age of insecurity" and distinguishes between the kinds of "existential" insecurities we are stuck with and the "manufactured" ones we might be able to get rid of. “My perspective is shaped by the years I’ve spent focused on the topic of inequality and its pernicious effects on culture and democracy both in my creative work as a filmmaker and writer and as an activist.