Current Affairs

Katrina vanden Heuvel is the publisher and editorial director of The Nation, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and an advocate for diplomacy, disarmament, and international cooperation. She returns to Current Affairs to discuss the ongoing war in Ukraine, the erosion of U.S. diplomacy, and the bipartisan consensus around militarism. She outlines the details of the Quincy Institute’s U....

Even by the standards of right-wing rhetoric, Miller’s public statements are uncommonly shameless. He treats his audience as stupid and gullible.  🦎 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-brainless-propaganda-of-stephen-miller  🦩SUBSCRIBE TO CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership  🦩 PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/CurrentAffairs  🦩THE MYTH OF...

Andrew Cuomo is not just unfit for office—he’s dangerous. In this interview, Lindsey Boylan, the first woman to publicly speak out about Cuomo’s abusive behavior, explains how his pattern of harassment, retaliation, and intimidation mirrors the authoritarian tactics of Donald Trump. Boylan describes how Cuomo weaponized state resources, silenced critics, and surrounded himself with enablers, all w...

The former governor is a corrupt abuser of power with a pro-corporate agenda and a proven track record of deadly negligence. He will do nothing to improve New Yorkers’ lives. Why on Earth is he a contender for mayor?  Nathan J. Robinson, editor of Current Affairs Magazine, reads his article "Andrew Cuomo Is Worse Than You Even Know"  🗽 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/andrew-...

🦩 This episode originally aired on May 30, 2025. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs Professor Richard Wolff is the host of the weekly program Economic Update, co-founder of Democracy at Work, and the author of numerous books including Understanding Marxism, Understanding Socialism, Capitalism Hits the Fan, and The Sickness Is the System. He joins Current Affairs to explain how e...

This panel was recorded on October 16th, 2024 A special event hosted by Current Affairs Magazine at The New School in New York City to celebrate the release of The Myth of American Idealism, the new book co-authored by Noam Chomsky and Nathan J. Robinson. The panel explores Chomsky’s lifelong critique of U.S. foreign policy—from Vietnam and Iraq to Ukraine and Gaza—and examines why his radical ana...

🦩 This episode originally aired on May 20, 2025. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs John Cassidy, staff writer at The New Yorker and author of Capitalism and Its Critics, joins Nathan J. Robinson to explore the history of capitalism. Cassidy examines why capitalism has been criticized from its inception, the diverse range of critiques it has faced, and how these criticisms have...

The Democratic Party is sclerotic. It’s easy to heap blame on Joe Biden now that he is weak and powerless. But that’s a convenient way of avoiding a major reckoning.  Nathan J. Robinson, editor of Current Affairs, reads his article "The Problem Goes Well Beyond Biden"  🦚 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-problem-goes-well-beyond-biden  🦩SUBSCRIBE TO CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZI...

🦩 This episode originally aired on May 16, 2025. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs Chas Freeman is one of the most insightful voices in U.S. foreign policy, with a distinguished career as a diplomat and a deep expertise in U.S.-China relations. In this conversation with Nathan J. Robinson, Freeman offers a searing critique of America's current approach to diplomacy, the global...

🦩 This episode originally aired on May 14, 2025. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs Ted Rall is one of the most influential political cartoonists on the left today. In his new book “What’s Left: Radical Solutions for Radical Problems," he presents a manifesto for left-wing politics in 2025, blending incisive analysis with his political cartoons. Rall outlines what it means to be...

🦩 This episode originally aired on April 18, 2025. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs America is in crisis, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Around the world, other countries have already solved many of the problems we’re told are unsolvable here: from unaffordable healthcare to lack of parental leave, crumbling infrastructure, climate disaster, and more. So why can’t the U.S...

In “On Democracies and Death Cults,” Murray offers a straightforward “good versus evil” account of the Israel-Palestine conflict. He does this by excluding every piece of information that undercuts his thesis and even spreading outright falsehoods. 🦚 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/douglas-murrays-expertise-is-a-sham  🦩SUBSCRIBE TO CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE: https://www.curr...

🦩 This episode originally aired on May 6, 2025. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs Lorne Michaels might be the most powerful figure in American comedy — and yet, most people barely know who he is. In this episode, New Yorker editor Susan Morrison joins us to discuss her new book Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live, a deeply reported, wildly entertaining biography of...

🦩 This episode originally aired on April 29, 2025. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs! Liberalism and socialism are often treated as opposites — but what if they’re actually part of the same fight for freedom, equality, and democracy? We’re joined by political theorist Matt McManus, author of The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism, a new book that challenges conventional narr...

🦩 This episode originally aired on April 22, 2025. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs Most people never think twice about shrimp. But as it turns out, these creatures make up the majority of animals alive on farms at any given time—hundreds of billions every year. And the conditions they endure are often horrifying: overcrowding, eye mutilation, and inhumane slaughter methods ar...

A bit of a change of pace for the CA podcast today: We're going to be doing SCIENCE instead of politics. We're joined by one of the world's leading popular science writers, physics professor  Sean Carroll , whose bestselling books include The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself  and Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime . His lates...

🦩 This episode originally aired on April 4, 2025. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs! Sophia Rosenfeld is a distinguished historian and the author of Common Sense: A Political History. She joins Nathan to discuss how the idea of “common sense” has been used as a political weapon—from Thomas Paine to Donald Trump. Rosenfeld explains how appeals to common sense can both empower or...

🦩 This episode originally aired on April 8, 2025. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs! Zohran Mamdani represents the 36th District in the New York State Assembly. A member of the Democratic Socialists of America, he is currently running for mayor of New York City, hoping to unseat the controversial Eric Adams, who recently escaped federal corruption charges after signaling a will...

🦩 This episode originally aired on February 21, 2025. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs! Joe Biden is gone, but we are now living with the consequences of Biden's presidency, and it's important in this moment to look back over the last four years and try to understand what exactly happened to get us to this point. Was Biden's presidency doomed from the start? Which of the many...

🦩 This episode originally aired on February 26, 2025. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs! Sam Seder and Emma Vigeland of The Majority Report have spent years tracking the rise of the far right, the decay of liberal institutions, and the Democratic Party's refusal to meet the moment. They join Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson to talk about what Trump and the con...

🦩 This episode originally aired on March 18, 2025. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs! Peter Beinart is one of the most important Jewish intellectuals writing about Israel today. A professor, journalist, and former liberal Zionist, Beinart has undergone a profound personal and political transformation over the course of his career. In this episode, he joins Current Affairs edito...

🦩 This episode originally aired on March 5, 2025. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs! Dr. Cornel West is one of the most electric and morally serious voices in American public life. A philosopher, theologian, activist, and jazzman of the intellect, West fuses the prophetic traditions of Black Christianity with a ferocious critique of capitalism, empire, and nihilism. His books—f...

🦩 This episode originally aired on March 14, 2025. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs! Francesca Fiorentini is a comedian, journalist, and host of The Bitchuation Room. She joins Nathan to discuss her viral showdowns on Piers Morgan Uncensored, why compromising with the right is a losing strategy, and why the left-wing resistance should be bold and aggressive—but also fun. 0:00–...

🦩 This episode originally aired on March 11th. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/Current Affairs! Dr. Omar Suleiman is a distinguished Islamic scholar, civil rights activist, and President of the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research. He joins Nathan to discuss the deep roots of Islamophobia in American politics and the moral consequences of U.S. foreign policy—particularly the genocide in Ga...

This episode originally aired on February 10, 2025. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Eric Blanc is the author of We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big , which covers the recent wave of unionization drives in America and summarizes the lessons we can learn from them. Eric shows that today's new unions have succeeded against inc...