Current Affairs

Yanis Varoufakis is the former Finance Minister of Greece, professor of economics at the University of Athens, co-founder of the Democracy in Europe Movement, and member of the Greek Parliament. The Guardian describes him as "a motorcycling, leather jacketed former academic and self-styled rebel who took pleasure in winding up the besuited political class." He calls himself an "erratic Marxist," and has written economics textbooks, a memoir, and popular explainers of economic ideas. But now he has produced a novel: Another Now: Dispatches From an Alternative Present. Another Now is not a typical work of fiction. It is a novel of ideas, more like one of Plato's dialogues than an airport potboiler. Varoufakis draws on the tradition of leftist utopian fiction seen in 19th century works like William Morris' News From Nowhere and Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward. Those books tried to show readers a plausible depiction of what a socialist society might look like. In Another Now, Varoufakis is doing something simil

Victor Pickard is a professor of Media Studies at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication. His book Democracy Without Journalism?: Confronting the Misinformation Society is about the problem of misinformation: people not knowing what's going on in the world, or thinking they know what's going on but actually believing in propaganda or bullshit (see, e.g., Joe Rogan). There has been a lot of chatter about the problem of "fake news" and how it can be stopped, with many proposing that social media companies need to do more regulation of the internet and "content moderation." Victor thinks that this conversation misses something crucial: the need for well-funded public interest journalism. He believes that we cannot escape the "misinformation society" without changing the way that journalism is produced, since (regulated or not) the private market is incapable of fulfilling the public need for truthful information about topics that matter. In a democracy, where the citizens themselves

Rosa Brooks is a professor of law at Georgetown University and the author Tangled Up In Blue: Policing The American City, named one of the best books of 2021 by the Washington Post. The book chronicles Prof. Brooks' experiences as a reserve police officer with the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department. As an academic raised in a socialist household (her mother is a former Current Affairs podcast guest), Prof. Brooks wanted to get a better understanding of how police saw themselves and the sources of dysfunction in the system. In this episode we discuss:- How police officers are trained to fear the populations they police- The limits of police training: what police are taught (e.g., how to handcuff suspects) and what they're not (e.g., anything about racism)- How police officers are often called on to perform "social work" responsibilities that they are ill-equipped to handle, and why arresting and jailing people becomes an all-purpose tool- What it means to say that the problems with policing are "sy

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and the author of many bestselling nonfiction books. He began his career as a war correspondent, and was a reporter for the New York Times for fifteen years, reporting from over 50 countries. He has written books on religion, culture, poverty, and war. For the last ten years, Hedges has been teaching a class in a New Jersey state prison. His latest book, Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in An American Prison, is about his experiences as an educator among the incarcerated. It is a searing indictment of the way the humanity of prisoners is denied, but it is also a moving testament to the way that culture and curiosity can flourish even in conditions of extreme deprivation. Hedges' class, all of whom were serious offenders, studied drama and wrote a play together. His book chronicles the development of that play, Caged, which was eventually performed to sold-out audiences in Trenton. In this episode, we discuss both Hedges' time reporting on war and his exp

Megan Tobias Neely is a sociologist whose book Hedged Out: Inequality and Insecurity on Wall Street takes a deep look inside the world of hedge funds, those small boutique investment banks that play with a sizable chunk of the world's wealth. Neely's book draws on her observations from time working in a hedge fund as well as from dozens of interviews with professionals in the industry. In this conversation, we discuss:- How hedge fund managers justify their value to society and why there are reasons to doubt them- The internal culture of firms and how they resemble feudal kingdoms- Popular myths, such as the idea that the "only thing that matters is whether you make money for investors" and "the firm is horizontal and non-hierarchical" - How people with degrees in astrophysics and artificial intelligence find themselves using their skills to make money for rich people rather than doing what they love- How super-wealthy men convince themselves that their decisions are based on objective reason when they are of

Phil Torres is a scholar of "global catastrophic risk," meaning that he studies the various ways in which terrible things could happen to humanity: nuclear war, global warming, asteroids, killer robots, pandemics, etc. His books include The End: What Science and Religion Tell Us About the Apocalypse and Morality, Foresight, and Human Flourishing: An Introduction to Existential Risks. Both are available free on his website. His upcoming book is Human Extinction: A History of Thinking About the End of the World.On today's episode, Phil joins to talk about how we can think rationally about the risks we face as a species, and figure out what to prioritize. Over the last decade or so, many more scholars have turned to thinking seriously about global catastrophic risks, trying to determine what threats we need to address. As Phil discusses, it's in many ways a good thing that more people are taking catastrophe seriously. As we can see from the COVID-19 pandemic, often we overlook these things until it's too late, a

George Monbiot has been working on issues of climate and environmental justice for three decades. A columnist for The Guardian, George's books include Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning, Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis and How Did We Get into This Mess? Politics, Equality, Nature. His latest essay collection This Can't Be Happening "calls on humanity to stop averting its gaze from the destruction of the living planet, and wake up to the greatest predicament we have ever faced." As a public communicator on climate change, George has experienced deep frustration in trying to convey the urgency of the crisis to a media and and political establishment that refuse to confront reality or accept the need for drastic changes to the status quo. That frustration was captured well, he says, by the recent Netflix satire Don't Look Up, which is about scientists who are unable to convey the importance of stopping a planet-destroying comet from crashing into Earth. In fact, the film is such a

We live in an age where economic success can depend a lot more on hype and branding than offering actual useful things that help people. Occasionally, we see extreme examples of fakers and frauds, like Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos and Billy McFarland of the Fyre Festival. But those are the few that have seen their lies exposed and their careers come crashing down. There are others, like Tesla's Elon Musk, WeWork's Adam Neumann, and America's Donald Trump, who have reaped riches beyond comprehension by bullshitting and betraying people. Today on the podcast, journalist and attorney Gabrielle Bluestone joins to discuss how con artists get away with it, and the way scammers succeed in getting people to believe in images that depart completely from reality. Gabrielle is the author of Hype: How Scammers, Grifters, and Con Artists Are Taking Over The Internet and Why We're Following. She also produced the Netflix documentary FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened. Gabrielle's work exposes the ways that con ar

Maureen Farrell is a business reporter with the New York Times and co-author of the book The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion, which documents one of the most bizarre stories in 21st century capitalism: the staggering rise (and subsequent collapse) of WeWork, an office space rental company that presented itself as a game-changing "technology company" that was going to revolutionize the world and change the way humans interacted with each other. Led by a strangely charismatic founder, Adam Neumann, who had sought his fortune in the baby clothes industry before pivoting to real estate, the company ascended to stunning heights, attracting investment from some of the most sophisticated capitalists in the world. Neumann successfully convinced legions of followers that WeWork was offering more than just co-working spaces, and developed what Farrell and co-author Eliot Brown call "the cult of We," infusing  the company's culture with quasi-religious belief in a destiny to change the w

The International Criminal Court in the Hague is the place where war criminals are supposed to be tried and punished. It embodies a vision of global justice in which war crimes are universally forbidden, intended to carry forward humanitarian principles. But so far, the court has only completed a handful of trials, and it has been heavily criticized for focusing on crimes committed in Africa while ignoring Western atrocities. Yet the court has only existed since 2002, and many hold hope that it can someday be an institution that ensures victims of atrocities around the world receive justice. To better understand the court's operations, we are joined by ICC expert Richard Gaskins, Professor of Law and Social Welfare at Brandeis University and author of the book The Congo Trials in The International Criminal Court, available from Cambridge University Press.  Having closely watched and studied the ICC's first complete trials, Prof. Gaskins speaks to Current Affairs editor in chief Nathan J. Robinson about what t

Michael Hiltzik is a Pulitzer Prize-winning business columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He has recently attracted a lot of (almost entirely negative) attention for a column and tweets arguing that mocking the deaths of anti-vaxxers is "necessary." Hiltzik joins to defend and explain his position to Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson, who believes that Hiltzik's stance is cruel and unhelpful. Michael argues that his argument is more nuanced than it is being characterized as. Nathan suggests that as the one who intentionally tweeted an offensive provocation, Michael is responsible for that characterization. Michael argues that dark humor is an important weapon, citing the Current Affairs article "The Necessity of Political Vulgarity." Nathan argues that while incivility can be tactically useful, directing it against people who have died of COVID does nothing to create more productive discourse on vaccines. But what about people in positions of power who use that power to spread damaging misinf

Judge Judy Sheindlin has long been one of the highest-paid TV stars, earning a staggering $47 million per year for her show, Judge Judy. She is universally known and loved nationwide for her acerbic, "take no BS" style of dispute resolution. "Who doesn't love Judge Judy?" asked Barack Obama. Current Affairs editor-at-large Yasmin Nair does not love Judge Judy. In a new article for In These Times magazine, Nair reviews Sheindlin's new show for Amazon Studios, Judy Justice, and argues that Judge Judy's judgments are full of implicit disdain for the poor, contempt for dysfunctional and broken people, and "bootstraps" ideology.While many of the cases Judy judges are amusing and trivial disputes over the custody of adorable little dogs, others illustrate the tragedy of American financial struggles at the bottom of the class ladder. And the spectacle of an extremely wealthy person snapping commands at those with very little can come to feel grotesque. Nair writes:"Nearly all of the people who end up on the show are

Sheryll Cashin is the author of White Space, Black Hood: Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality. She has been called "one of the most important civil rights scholars of our time." Her book "exposes the ways in which American policy decisions, from the early twentieth century to the present, have constructed a ‘residential caste system’ resulting in the entrapment of Black people in high-poverty neighborhoods while ‘overinvesting in affluent white space.’" In this rich conversation she talks to Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson about how racial segregation was created and why it persists. We dive deep into the mechanisms by which inequality reproduces itself from generation to generation. 

Editors of Current Affairs recently took Hillary Clinton's "MasterClass" and had a deeply unpleasant time. But Bill Clinton, too, has a MasterClass, and as public interest journalists committed to understanding and explaining the political world, we felt obligated to take this one, too. To save you the $180 MasterClass fee, we tell you everything you'll learn from Bill Clinton's "Inclusive Leadership" lessons, including:- How to associate yourself with the legacy of Nelson Mandela and other great civil rights leaders - How to discuss your record as a politician without mentioning anything you actually did, like gutting welfare and speeding up the death penalty - How to charm people while saying absolutely nothing- How to champion "inclusivity" without advocating anything that could fundamentally challenge the existing social hierarchy - How to produce a glossy course syllabus containing very little other than photos of yourself and your pets Bill Clinton is genuinely a master of the art of bullshitting people

Today, in our last episode of the year, we present a hopeful discussion about what leftists can accomplish in power. Sam Bell is a Rhode Island state senator and Democratic Socialists of America member. The Boston Globe has called him "the most outspoken member" of the RI state senate, and he has tried to use his position to advance left policies in a state historically dominated by extremely conservative Democrats and a powerful political machine. In this episode, we have what is hopefully an uplifting and exciting conversation about what it's like to take on "machine politics" and why some victories are more within reach than you might think. This episode is a useful primer not only on Rhode Island politics, but on the way that leftists can win office and then use that office effectively to change the politics of their state. We talk about: - How his state became dominated by extremely right-wing Democrats out of step with the progressive inclinations of the electorate- Why state legislators are more powerf

Today Nathan is joined by Wall Street Journal reporter Josh Mitchell, author of The Debt Trap: How Student Loans Became a National Catastrophe. Under pressure from progressive Democrats, Joe Biden recently agreed to continue a pause on student loan payments. There has been a great deal of debate over whether Biden should consider canceling large amounts of student debt outright. Mitchell has spent years studying every aspect of the student loan crisis. On this episode, he helps us better understand what the crisis is and how we got here. We discuss:- What makes student loans a "catastrophe" to begin with, and why there needs to be some public policy solution - The mountain of human misery beneath the statistics, what life is actually like for people who can't pay their debts- Why Josh thinks the establishment of Sallie Mae was one of the most disastrous trainwrecks in the history of Congressional legislation - How college financial advisers have misled students into thinking their degrees are more valuable th

Kristin Henning directs the Juvenile Justice Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center. She has worked as a public defender for juveniles in Washington, D.C. and is the author of the book The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth.  In the book, Prof. Henning "explains how discriminatory and aggressive policing has socialized a generation of Black teenagers to fear, resent, and resist the police, and details the long-term consequences of racism and trauma Black youth experience at the hands of police and their vigilante surrogates." In this episode, we talk about why over-policing destroys the ability of many Black children to have normal childhoods and why it's so essential to respond to the transgressions of kids with empathy and compassion rather than brutality. It's not that difficult: it just means treating all young people, regardless of race, with the kind of mercy and generous due process that some (e.g. Kyle Rittenhouse) are already given. 

A UK court recently ruled that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can be extradited to the United States. Assange faces serious charges over violating the Espionage Act, based on WikiLeaks' publication of classified United States government documents and video related to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The prosecution has been condemned by a number of press freedom and human rights organizations, but there are those who argue that Assange is a criminal or even a "terrorist."To discuss the case, Nathan is joined by one of the leading experts on it, Nils Melzer, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture. Prof. Melzer is a specialist in human rights law who has served as a legal adviser to the Red Cross, and is currently Human Rights Chair of the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights and Professor of International Law at the University of Glasgow. His book The Trial of Julian Assange: A Story of Persecution is forthcoming from Verso.

Hillary Clinton has just released an online course on "The Power of Resilience" through the website MasterClass, where celebrities teach their skills. The course has made the news because in it, she delivers the speech she would have given had she won the presidency in 2016, which she did not. We were curious what else is in Hillary Clinton's MasterClass, so Current Affairs editors Yasmin Nair, Nathan J. Robinson, and Lily Sánchez paid the fee and took the class. In this episode, we reveal all of the class's secrets, so that you can take Hillary's MasterClass without actually taking Hillary's MasterClass. Her useful lessons on resilience, negotiation, and more are helpfully summarized in this delightful conversation. We discuss:- Why the class seems to be more about helping Clinton process her loss to Donald Trump than a good faith attempt to teach anyone anything- How the class rewrites history and leaves out all of the horrible things the Clintons have done over the course of their political careers- How Cl

Prof. Aya Gruber teaches criminal law at the University of Colorado Law School. Her book The Feminist War on Crime: The Unexpected Role of Women's Liberation in Mass Incarceration makes the case that many feminists have been too quick to push for more severe criminal punishments for crimes against women, and have as a result ended up legitimizing or even contributing to the expansion of mass incarceration. Prof. Gruber makes a strong argument against "carceral feminism," claiming that it sees "putting offenders in prison" as the solution to harms women face, but that this remedy at best only imperfectly guarantees justice, and at worst reproduces cruel racist state violence. In this provocative conversation, we discuss:- How Prof. Gruber's experience in a public defender's office helped her see that some of the legal changes mainstream feminists pushed for ultimately ended up unfairly punishing poor men of color without helping women who were the victims of crimes- Why courts, police, and prisons are not good