Current Affairs

Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Matthew Desmond's bestselling book Poverty, By America poses a straightforward question: Why is there any poverty at all in such a wealthy country as the United States? Surely we could solve the problem of poverty if we were committed to doing so. Desmond points a finger at those who profit from poverty and argues that there is no justificatio...

"I’m pretty sure that some of my colleagues have signed on to my bill because they wanted me to stop talking about periods on the floor of the House." — Grace Meng Grace Meng represents the 6th District of New York in the United States Congress. She recently reintroduced her Menstrual Equity for All Act , which aims to dramatically expand free access to menstrual products across the country. She j...

Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Lorne Stockman is the research co-director at Oil Change International , which is dedicated to exposing the harms caused by fossil fuel use and advocating for a green transition. Today Lorne joins us to rebut some common nonsense conservative talking points on climate change, to explain how a transition to 100% renewable energy can happen, and...

Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Jag Bhalla is a contributor to Current Affairs who has also written for Scientific American and Big Think . His pieces for our magazine have frequently focused on debunking popular narratives about climate change and arguing that anything resembling a just future will require a fundamental change in the distribution of global wealth and consum...

Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Alex Bronzini-Vender has contributed several articles to Current Affairs , about progressive politics in the U.S. today. In his first, " Progressives Aren’t Hurting the Democratic Party—In Fact, They’re The Only Thing Saving It ," he looks at his home state of New York. Bronzini-Vender argues that, contrary to the narrative that tough-on-crime...

Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Today we are joined by Stephen Bright and James Kwak to discuss their new book The Fear of Too Much Justice: Race, Poverty, and the Persistence of Inequality in the Criminal Courts . The book is a comprehensive primer on the problems with the American criminal court system, from the power of prosecutors to the underfunding of public defenders...

Philanthropy is a problem. Lots of contemporary philanthropy is either useless (Rich people funding new buildings for Harvard) or shouldn't have to happen in the first place (Nonprofits fulfilling crucial social roles that the state doesn't take care of in the age of neoliberalism). The standard left critique of philanthropy is that we should redistribute wealth and income rather than depending on...

Thom Hartmann is America's #1 progressive radio host and the author of the " Hidden History " series of books. His latest, The Hidden History of American Democracy: Rediscovering Humanity’s Ancient Way of Living , encouragingly argues that democracy is the most natural form of organization. Drawing from examples from the animal kingdom to the Iroquois confederacy to Thomas Paine, Hartmann lays out...

Tara Isabella Burton is a novelist and the author of the new nonfiction book Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians , a history of the rise of the idea of a curated self. Tara's book looks at the transition from seeing human beings as made by God to being made by our own individual wills. From Renaissance painters to the famous dandy Beau Brummell to Thomas Edison to c...

Current Affairs has recently launched a new project: the Current Affairs News Briefing , a twice-weekly digest of important (and often neglected) news stories. We're really tired of having to sift through a mountain of clickbait and ads every morning to "find the news," so we're putting together our own alternative, which relays the things that matter most in the distinctive CA style. We think fan...

Benjamin Y. Fong is the associate director of the Center for Work & Democracy at Arizona State University and the author of the new book Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge . From cigarettes to crack to opioids, Fong's book looks at how the United States became a country with a major drug habit. He talks about the role of private industry in monetizing addictiv...

Avi Shlaim is a distinguished historian and Emeritus Professor of International Relations at Oxford University. He is one of the Israeli "New Historians" whose pathbreaking work debunked some of Israel's most cherished national myths. Now he has written a fascinating memoir, Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew that challenges conventional understandings of Zionism, the binary categories of "Arabs...

Originally aired 7/23/2023. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Today we have another in our Contentious Arguments series, as Nathan clashes with Christopher Rufo, the architect of the right's "critical race theory" moral panic and a close advisor of Ron DeSantis. Rufo has lately been criticized by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education for appearing to retaliate agai...

Alyssa Hardy is a fashion journalist whose work has turned in recent years to exposing the underbelly of the industry, from the labor conditions of those who make the clothes to the colossal amounts of waste in our clothing industry and the climate consequences of "fast fashion."  Today she joins to discuss her book Worn Out: How Our Clothes Cover Up Fashion's Sins , which is appreciative of good...

School sucks. But why? And must it? For our print magazine , Lauren Fadiman writes about how radical leftists have historically tried to rethink schooling entirely, to create alternative schools that truly nourish the mind and soul rather than simply preparing kids to enter the workforce. Today she joins for a discussion of why we shouldn't just think of fixing schools as a matter of increasing th...

Perhaps only those between the ages of about 30 and 35 will remember the golden years of MySpace, which dominated social media before Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok. MySpace was a mess, but it's looked back on fondly by many, in part because it encouraged individual expression and customization. Michael Tedder, in his new book Top Eight: How MySpace Changed Music shows that MySpace allowed musical...

On this program, we have previously discussed the inspiring fight waged by the Amazon Labor Union on Staten Island , and the confrontational tactics that can help unions win recognition despite the best efforts of corporations to thwart them. But even when unions win recognition, in many ways the battle is only just beginning. At Amazon and Starbucks, workers may have won recognition, but they hav...

The Rickard Sisters, Sophie and Scarlett , have produced two wonderful graphic novel adaptations of books by early 20th century radicals. First they made The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists , adapted from Robert Tressell's classic socialist story about a group of house painters who experience all of the horrors of laissez-faire capitalism. Then the Rickards made No Surrender , adapted from Consta...

Kyle Chayka is a cultural critic and staff writer for the New Yorker . (Incidentally, he also wrote a piece back in 2017 that covered the early years of Current Affairs. ) Kyle's book The Longing For Less: Living With Minimalism , is a delightful, profound exploration of the idea of "minimalism." Beginning with the Marie Kondo phenomenon, Kyle tours world history and culture to discuss everything...

Benjamin Studebaker's new book The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy: The Way is Shut is a provocative critique of contemporary American politics. Studebaker argues that "none of the existing political movements in the United States are capable of responding to [our] economic problems." He's critical not only of conservatives who stir up culture war issues to distract from people's economic suf...

Sara Marcus is the author of Political Disappointment: A Cultural History from Reconstruction to the AIDS Crisis . A lot of studies of social movements look at movement triumphs, but Marcus is interested in what happens when people fail, when they throw themselves into a cause and (at least in the short term) it doesn't react its goals. Often, she argues, disappointment ends up forming the basis o...

You name it, it's been privatized somewhere in the United States. Schools, roads, libraries, courts, prisons, and even the law itself have been outsourced to private companies by state and local governments who buy into the idea that The Private Sector is more efficient at serving the functions of government. But this is baloney, as Donald Cohen shows in The Privatization of Everything How the Plu...

Benjamin Howard is a Current Affairs reader who was once a huge fan of Canadian psychologist, pundit, and self-help guru Jordan Peterson . But Howard eventually became a harsh critic of Peterson's work, to the point where he is putting together a website called JordanPetersonIsWrong.com . Today he joins us to explain how and why he changed his mind. We talk about the sources of Peterson's appeal a...

Michael Mechanic is a senior editor at Mother Jones and the author of Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All . Michael's book goes beyond quantitative statistics about inequality to take a close-up look at the actual lives of the American oligarchs. Today he joins to discuss life inside "the bubble" that the super-wealthy inhabit—why they ceaselessly pursue endle...

Danny Katch is the author of the most accessible and entertaining existing introduction to socialist ideas, Socialism...Seriously: A Brief Guide To Human Liberation , available from Haymarket Books (in a new edition that promises 50% more socialism). Danny's book attempts something quite difficult: it tries to make reading about socialism fun. It's full of jokes and is non-dogmatic. It's a real bl...