The Most Interesting People I Know

Brianna Rennix is an immigration lawyer and a Senior Editor at Current Affairs magazine. She works near the border in Dilley, Texas, helping prepare detained immigrant women for their asylum hearings. This is a job that requires you to ask people about the worst things that have ever happened to them. And if you fail, they may be deported to their death.  Immigration has been in the news a lot rec...

Spencer Greenberg is a mathematician, social scientist, and entrepreneur. He received his PhD in applied math from NYU and is the founder of SparkWave , a social venture foundry. As we discuss, SparkWave has created a number of apps tackling problems like depression, anxiety, and finding participants for academic studies. Spencer also created the site www.clearerthinking.org , which offers free on...

Emily Bazelon is a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine and the Truman Capote Fellow for Creative Writing and Law at Yale Law School. She is the author of Charged: the New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration. Emily is also the co-host of Slate’s “Political Gabfest” podcast. She has appeared on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Fresh Air, This American Lif...

Today’s guest is attorney, and writer Vanessa A Bee. Vanessa is the Social Media Editor and now Associate Editor at Current Affairs Magazine, where she runs a fiery and informative Twitter account : @curraffairs (in addition to her own: @vanessa_abee ). You can also catch her on Current Affairs’s wonderful podcast . On this episode, we cover: The role of social media in our politics, whether write...

Sam Miller McDonald is pursuing a PhD at Oxford studying the intersection of energy production and political power. He’s also an editor at The Trouble , a news site looking at climate change from a left perspective. In 2015, Sam co-founded ActivistLab , an online publication focused on improving social change. Sam is a prolific writer, with work in Current Affairs , the New Republic , the Baffler...

This is a special mini-episode giving a quick analysis of Tiffany Cabán’s likely election to be Queens’ next district attorney. This victory rivals the election of AOC in importance. Some further reading on the election:  An article I wrote for Jacobin on the significance of the race NYT coverage of the race The Nation: Tiffany Cabán is Running a Nationally Significant Race The New Yorker: Tiffany...

Today’s guest is Pete Davis. Pete wears many hats. I first came across his work as the host of the podcast for the Current Affairs magazine and we met at a live taping of a show in DC. But I also came across Pete through the commencement speech he gave at Harvard last year in which he implores the audience to ignore the siren song of “keeping your options open” and instead commit your life to a wo...

Emily Anthes is a science journalist and writer based in Brooklyn. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Nature, Scientific American, and many other outlets. She has also appeared on far more prominent shows than this one, including NPR’s Fresh Air, PBS News Hour, and BBC Radio. Her 2013 book Frankenstein’s Cat explores the cutting edge of bioengineered anim...

Malaika Jabali is an attorney, activist, and writer based in New York. She is a contributing writer to Essence Magazine and has had her work published in Current Affairs, Jacobin, the Intercept and elsewhere. She’s written on many topics including police shootings, white nationalism, black radicalism, and hip hop. She has also done excellent reporting on the dramatic declines in black voter turnou...

Nathan J. Robinson is the founder and editor of Current Affairs, a left-wing print magazine based out of New Orleans. He is also the author of five books on politics. Nathan holds a law degree from Yale and is pursuing a PhD in sociology from Harvard. He also happens to be my favorite active political writer. In today’s show we cover a lot, including: Current Affairs, persuading people on politics...

NOTE: This is a re-release of my discussion with Chloe Cockburn. At the beginning of the episode, I make the following endorsement of Tiffany Cabán, a candidate for Queens District Attorney: On Tuesday June 25th, Queens will hold an election for District Attorney. The DA is the top prosecutor for Queens, a borough of nearly 2.4 million people. If you are inspired by this episode, I would encourage...

Chloe Cockburn leads Open Philanthropy's strategic grant-making aimed at ending mass incarceration in the US. Prior to joining Open Phil, she oversaw state policy reform work for the ACLU’s Campaign to End Mass Incarceration. Previously, Chloe worked with the Vera Institute and the civil rights law firm of Neufeld, Scheck and Brustin, and clerked for Judge Sifton of the Eastern District of New Yor...