Current Affairs

Michael Mann is a sociologist who has spent his life trying to understand how power works. His latest book, On Wars, surveys the entire history of warfare between human societies to try to understand why wars happen and how they can be avoided. It is the culmination of a decade-long effort by Mann to try to comprehensively understand the origins of war. (See the New York Times review of Mann's book here.) Today he joins to help us better understand war. Are humans naturally warlike? Are wars rational ways to achieve political goals? Mann addresses the Steven Pinker narrative that civilization and enlightenment have brought about greater peace—in fact, he says, "civilization" has allowed us to build more efficient killing machines than ever. And he tells us what he knows on the subject that should interest all of us in the nuclear age: How do we end war? Note that this episode was recorded before the recent explosion of the Israel-Palestine conflict, so it is not addressed in the discussion. “War is the one instance where losing one’s temper may cause the death of thousands. War pays us back more swiftly for mistakes than any other human activity. Humans are not calculating machines—more’s the pity, since peace is more rational than war. If the social world did conform to rational theory, if rulers did carefully calculate the costs and benefits of war, trying hard to set emotions and ideologies aside and ignoring domestic political pressures, they would see that most wars are too risky and inferior to economic exchange, the sharing of norms and values, and diplomacy as ways of securing desired goals..War is the least rational of human projects, but humans are only erratically rational creatures...Human beings are not genetically predisposed to make war, but our human nature does matter, if indirectly. Its tripartite character, part rational, part emotional, part ideological, when set inside the institutional and cultural constraints of societies, makes war an intermittent outcome. Human nature does matter, and that is why when wars are fought, they are mostly fought for no good reason.” — Michael Mann, On Wars

Several years ago, Garrison Lovely wrote an insider account of McKinsey & Co. for Current Affairs. At the time he published using a pseudonym, but he's now gone public with a cover story for a recent issue of The Nation, entitled "Confessions of a McKinsey Whistleblower," where he recounts observations of the firm's work for ICE and the Riker's Island jail. Garrison joins today to tell us what McKinsey is like on the inside: how it justifies serving odious clients, why young "idealists" are tempted to join it, and what goes wrong with the logic of "optimization." The right-wing National Review's odd response to Garrison's piece is here. Our previous episode on the book When McKinsey Comes to Town provides useful context for today's episode. We are now living with the consequences of the world McKinsey created. Market fundamentalism is the default mode for businesses and governments the world over. Abstraction and myth insulate actors from the atrocities they help perpetuate. Businesses that resisted the pressure to rationalize every decision based on its impact on shareholder value were beaten out or eaten up by those who shed the last remnants of their humanity. With another heavyweight on the side of management, McKinsey tipped the scale even further away from labor, contributing directly to the increase in wealth inequality plaguing the world. Governments are now more similar to the private sector and more reliant on their services. The “best and the brightest” devote themselves to client service instead of public service. — Garrison Lovely, "McKinsey & Co.: Capital's Willing Executioners."

Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs !Nick Dearden's Pharmanomics is an essential primer on how the pharmaceutical industry works, taking a tour across the globe to explain clearly why Big Pharma's profits come at the expense of public health. Dearden, an investigative journalist and director of Global Justice Now, destroys the argument that high drug prices are necessary in order to maintain innovation. He shows how the pharmaceutical industry has pushed drugs that don't work, buried harmful side effects, experimented on the Global South, and extorted the public to line its pockets. He explains why scientific research needs to be under public, rather than private control, and offers a vision for a healthcare system that actually takes care of people's health. Dearden shows how the infamous Martin Shkreli, who became notorious for hiking drug prices, was not a mere bad apple, but following standard operating procedure in the world of "pharmanomics."

Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs !Allison Lirish Dean is a journalist and urban planner in North Carolina. She is the author of a recent piece for the Current Affairs print edition (and now available online) critiquing the "Strong Towns" organization. Strong Towns is highly critical of suburban sprawl and many of its suggestions for improving our cities and towns are sensible. But Allison argues that in its disdain for "government" and its rejection of important progressive notions of fairness, Strong Towns ultimately aims up pushing an approach to planning that will maintain existing unjust inequalities. Allison's critique has implications beyond this particular organization, though. It also illuminates the different possible approaches to thinking about how to make better places, and Allison articulates a clear progressive agenda for planning. If, like me, you’re a progressive and distressed about the state of our cities, you will like a lot of what Strong Towns has to say. But its approach is ultimately undergirded by a right-wing ideology that does little to alter the political status quo and further naturalizes austerity and infrastructure inequality: communities get what they deserve based on their ability to build wealth through entrepreneurship, not what they need from a system that prioritizes human rights and the delivery of universal public goods. — Allison Lirish Dean

Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs !Philip Ewell is a professor of music theory and the author of the new book On Music Theory, and Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone (University of Michigan Press). Ewell is one of the most "controversial" music theorists in the country, having sparked a major controversy in his field by criticizing the "white racial frame" that dominates in music theory. Ewell argued that much of mainstream music theory has been build around unstated assumptions about which kinds of music are sophisticated/interesting/worthy of academic study. Today he joins to explain how the idea of white supremacy translated into normative conceptions about music, why it's a mistake to think he's trying to "cancel Bach," and how music theory can be made, in the words of his title, more welcoming for everyone, meaning that it will break free of its narrow focus on a tiny group of European composers. A great YouTube video by Adam Neely featuring Ewell, discussing the themes of this conversation, is here. A comprehensive Current Affairs article on the controversy around race and music theory is here. Nathan's article on Charles Murray, including Murray's theories about music, is here. The main problem I have noticed as music theory faces its racial past is in how we confront what we see in the mirror as we look at ourselves. Understanding the exclusionist nature of the field is not difficult, and it is also easy to add to the music theory mix a few composers of color and think that this represents a solution to our racial dilemma. However, as Baldwin says in the epigraph to this chapter, all we ever see in that mirror is lies, whether we acknowledge that or not. The lie we are told by music theory, the lie that awaits in the mirror to be seen by the field if it is strong enough to glance, is that the dark secrets of our past are exceptional to our field, and that, by and large, our history has been one of social justice and decency. Of course, this is largely untrue of American music theory, since this is largely untrue of the United States as a country. — Philip Ewell, On Music Theory

Gary Younge spent three decades as a reporter and columnist for The Guardian, where he became one of the publication's most incisive and widely-read contributors. His new book, Dispatches from the Diaspora, collects some of the best of Gary's reporting and commentary. It is a unique collection of snapshots from the African diaspora, from Barbados to London to Ferguson to South Africa. Gary recounts meetings with Maya Angelou, Angela Davis, Desmond Tutu, and other greats, as well as highlighting lesser-known stories like the life of Claudette Colvin. Gary recounts historic moments he witnessed and reported on, such as being in South Africa when Nelson Mandela ascended to the presidency and seeing the reaction to Barack Obama's election on Chicago's South Side. Today Gary joins to discuss some of the events and people he covers in his book, and to expand on some of his unique opinion pieces (such as his "defense of Uncle Tom" and his case for tearing down all statues).“I sign off from this column at a dispiriting time, with racism, cynicism and intolerance on the rise, wages stagnant and faith that progressive change is possible declining even as resistance grows. Things look bleak. The propensity to despair is strong but should not be indulged. Sing yourself up. Imagine a world in which you might thrive, for which there is no evidence. And then fight for it.” — Gary Younge, in his final Guardian column

Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs !Originally aired 9/19/2023Dozens of protesters in Atlanta have recently been hit with serious charges, including domestic terrorism and racketeering, stemming from protest activity over "Cop City," a proposed police training center in the forest outside the city. The Defend the Atlanta Forest movement has been occupying parts of the forest and clashing with police and construction companies, and prosecutors have now come down hard on the protests. In Current Affairs, Nathan recently wrote that the indictment is both preposterous and terrifying. Preposterous because it criminalizes behavior that should obviously not be prosecuted (like buying a tarp, or being an anarchist). And terrifying because it will encourage prosecutors around the country to aggressively pursue dissidents. We are joined today by one of the leading legal experts on the case, Christopher Bruce of the Georgia ACLU. Christopher explains the background, the risks, and shows why all Americans should be deeply troubled by this outrageous prosecutorial overreach.

Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs !Kristen Ghodsee is Professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of books like Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism and, most recently, Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life. Today she joins to explain why she believes utopian thinking, and studying the utopian experiments that people have engaged in across history, can help us figure out what life ought to be like and how to change the world for the better. From Charles Fourier to Star Trek, Ghodsee takes us on a fascinating tour of attempts to dream up and build mini-paradises. We discuss where utopias go right and where they go wrong.The Liza Featherstone review of Ghodsee's book in Jacobin is here. The angry Wall Street Journal review is here."Imagination is more important than knowledge,” said Albert Einstein in 1931. “For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.” We stand on the cusp of a new age, with many of us striving toward a more positive vision of the future like the one Roddenberry once provided, where human beings find a way to build a better world for subsequent generations of humanity. Our old ideas about patrilineality and patrilocality are no longer fit for that purpose. We need new ideas, new dreams, and the courage to imagine alternative futures. Now is the moment to “think different.” If we can imagine them first in a galaxy far, far away, it’s only a matter of time before we boldly go and begin figuring out how to translate these inspired visions into our own everyday utopias. — Kristen Ghodsee

Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs !David Detmer is the author of the book Zinnophobia: The Battle Over History in Education, Politics, and Scholarship. David's book was published five years ago, after former Indiana governor Mitch Daniels became the president of Purdue University and immediately tried to ban Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Detmer, a Purdue professor and former student of Zinn, set out to understand the remarkable hostility ("Zinnophobia") that Howard Zinn's work has been met with, not just among Republican politicans but also among some of Zinn's historian colleagues. Were they right that People's History is a bad work of history?Today, Detmer joins to discuss Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States, and the criticisms that have been made of Zinn. We talk about Zinn's life and work and what made it so distinct from previous histories. Detmer explains Zinn's theory of what the role of a historian was. We discuss the backlash and go through some of the criticisms of Zinn. Detmer explains why he finds the criticisms to be so flimsy, and the way in which critics misunderstand what Zinn was doing. The fights over how American history should be taught are still ongoing, as we know, so it's a good moment to take stock of the most famous radical revisionist take on U.S. history. The quote at the beginning is, of course, from Good Will Hunting. Zinn's work lives on at the excellent Zinn Education Project. Highly recommended is Voices of a People's History, a companion volume to the original book that Zinn co-edited with Anthony Arnove. A 21st century sequel to Voices was recently released by Arnove and Haley Pessin. The original People's History has also been adapted into a beautifully-illustrated graphic edition."Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, a perennial bestseller, offers a version of American history that differs substantially from previous accounts. Instead of the standard story, in which the wise and heroic deeds of presidents, Supreme Court justices, military and business leaders, and various other wealthy and powerful elites are celebrated, Zinn makes the case that, whenever progressive change has occurred, it has resulted from the struggles of ordinary people—those who have participated in popular movements agitating for peace, for racial and sexual equality, for improved working conditions, and for environmental protection, among other similar causes. And in opposition to the triumphalist bias of the more orthodox histories, in which the misdeeds of the powerful are either sanitized or erased altogether, Zinn shines a spotlight on official acts of enslaving Africans, slaughtering Indians, lying, breaking promises, violating treaties, trashing the Constitution, exploiting workers, bombing or massacring civilians, assassinating foreign leaders, sabotaging elections, and propping up brutal puppet dictators, among other transgressions.”“As the continuing success of the book testifies (it was first published in 1980 and remains a bestseller 37 years later) many readers warmly welcome Zinn’s work... But the reaction of many other readers (and non-readers who know of Zinn’s book only by reputation) has been one of loathing. Such has been the typical response of political conservatives, the wealthy and powerful, many mainstream historians, and everyone else whose sense of “patriotism” engenders a commitment to the idea that our nation’s leaders, traditions, and institutions are uniquely great and moral.”“What I found, over and over again, is that Zinn’s harsh critics...produce incompetent work—work that, while it occasionally scores an isolated minor point or two against Zinn, nonetheless can be fairly characterized, on the whole, as uncomprehending, larded with errors, and not up to the quality standards one would expect in a term paper submitted for credit by a college freshman for an introductory level course." — David Detmer

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 justification for our inaction. Desmond, a leading sociologist whose work has won the Pulitzer Prize and the MacArthur Fellowship, tries to understand what makes poverty so persistent and what it would take to "abolish" it forever. Today he joins to give a brief explanation of his ideas.“Lift the floor by rebalancing our social safety net; empower the poor by reining in exploitation; and invest in broad prosperity by turning away from segregation. That’s how we end poverty in America.” — Matthew Desmond“How many artists and poets has poverty denied us? How many diplomats and visionaries? How many political and spiritual leaders? How many nurses and engineers and scientists? Think of how many more of us would be empowered to thrive if we tore down the walls, how much more vibrant and forward-moving our country would be.” — Matthew Desmond“Poverty will be abolished in America only when a mass movement demands it so. And today, such a movement stirs. American labor is once again on the move, growing more boisterous and feistier by the day, organizing workplaces once thought untouchable. A renewed movement for housing justice is gaining steam. In a resurgence of tenant power, renters have formed eviction blockades and chained themselves to the entrances of housing court, meeting the violence of displacement with a force of their own. The Poor People’s Campaign has elevated the voices of low-income Americans around the country, voices challenging “the lie of scarcity in the midst of abundance” and mobilizing for things like educational equity and a reinvestment in public housing.They march under different banners—workers’ unions and tenants’ unions; movements for racial justice and economic justice—but they share a commitment to ending poverty in America.” — Matthew DesmondThe piece by Matthew Yglesias that Desmond is responding to is here. A short version of the argument was published in the New York Times Magazine. Note that Desmond's audio skips briefing in the middle of a sentence toward the end, due to a faulty internet connection.

"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 MengGrace 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 joins today to discuss the problem of period poverty and what it would take to solve it. A transcript is available here. "When I’m talking about this issue, most people—men or women—do not necessarily prioritize this issue, and many are even surprised to learn about it." — Grace Meng

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 to give a clear assessment of how much progress we've made so far and how much is left to go. It's a crucial conversation for understanding where we're at in the fight against the climate catastrophe, and you may be surprised to hear that there is actually some good news. We discuss such topics as: Why Vivek Ramaswamy is full of crap when he says that continued fossil fuel use is essential for human prosperityWhy Vivek Ramaswamy is also full of crap when he suggests that fossil fuel energy can simply be used to cancel out the damage caused by climate changeWhy many other things said about fossil fuels and climate change are also false or misleadingHow far we've come in improving the cost effectiveness of renewable energy sourcesWhether nuclear power has a necessary role in a green transitionWhether the Inflation Reduction Act is really the boon for climate solutions that it's touted as, and how much it will actually doWhat kinds of fake techno-solutions to climate change we need to be on the lookout forWhat the fossil fuel industry does in the places where its extraction is based, with Lorne discussing his observations in the Permian BasinRead Lorne's writings for Oil Change International here. A recent article Nathan wrote on the latest phase in climate denial is here. This podcast pairs well with our recent conversation with Current Affairs contributor Jag Bhalla. "It is abundantly clear that the production and consumption of fossil gas must decline immediately, even if methane reduction goals are met. No amount of wishful thinking about upstream emissions reduction, carbon capture and storage (CCS), gas-based “blue” hydrogen, or whatever the latest magical techno-fix the industry imagines will save it can change this fact." — Lorne Stockman

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 consumption. Read his articles here:‘Climate Optimism’ Is Dangerous and IrrationalWe Can’t Have Climate Justice Without Ending Computational ColonialismThe 1% Are Many Times Worse Than The Rainforest WreckersWhite-Collar War Crimes and For-Profit Famines Taming the Greedocracy Today Jag joins to explain some of the core ideas underpinning his work in Current Affairs, showing how the assumption that the Global South doesn't matter is buried in U.S. climate discourse and explaining some of the bad math that allows for the rationalization of heinous injustices. Climate change is not just going to be “apocalyptic,” it’s already apocalyptic. It’s just that the apocalypse is not something that happens to the entire world at once. Instead, the apocalyptic events are experienced mostly by the world’s poorest people (who, incidentally, have contributed the least to creating the problem). Who, witnessing the scale of flooding in Pakistan last year, could possibly say that the climate crisis is not “apocalyptic,” unless you regard Pakistanis as unpeople whose well-being simply doesn’t factor into the equation? 33 million people were displaced, and millions of homes destroyed. When white Western elites publish books with titles like It’s Not The End of The World or Apocalypse Never or False Alarm, what they mean is “it’s not the end of the world for people like me,” “apocalyptic conditions will never be experienced by my sector of society,” and “those of us who are among the world’s richest do not need to be alarmed.” Of course, even these are false comforts—the mansions of Malibu are flammable, after all.

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 Democrats are more "electable," the most progressive Democrats are in fact scoring the most important political victories and inspiring voters. In Alex's second article, "Moderates, Not Leftists, Have Created the Crises in Democratic Cities," he looks at the right-wing narrative that "leftism" has caused crises of homelessness and disorder in American cities. Is the conservative storytelling on American cities the product of ignorance, malice, or both? I couldn’t tell you—but the reason it’s irresistibly appealing to conservatives of both Democratic and Republican stripes is quite clear. For Republicans, leftist-induced urban malaise is a seemingly concrete, visceral argument for their policy agendas of “backing the blue” and being “tough on crime.” And, for conservative Democrats, it allows them to ignore the fact that, for decades, they’ve held political power in America’s largest cities—and have left behind only long legacies of failed policy. The present crises faced by the communities they’re responsible for are transformed, in their telling, into new and unique beasts brought about by a radical fringe, rather than outcomes decades in the making. And, most conveniently, this false narrative pins the blame for said crises upon burgeoning progressive movements, forcing them to answer for problems they bear no responsibility for. — Alex Bronzini-VenderThe article "Eric Adams' Moral Panics," mentioned by Alex, is here. The podcast with Mo Mitchell is here. The interview with Robert Peters is here. The story about Adams' fake photo is here. The thumbnail photo is an official homeless encampment that the San Francisco city government installed in front of city hall during the COVID-19 pandemic instead of giving people housing.

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 to the biases of judges to the obstacles to getting a wrongful conviction overturned. Bryan Stevenson calls it "an urgently needed analysis of our collective failure to confront and overcome racial bias and bigotry, the abuse of power, and the multiple ways in which the death penalty's profound unfairness requires its abolition." The authors are leading experts on the system, and Prof. Bright has successfully argued Supreme Court cases challenging racial discrimination in jury selection. (Listeners might remember Prof. Bright from his previous appearance on the program, which specifically focused on the right to counsel.) “Excessive punishment is one of the most important problems facing our country today, causing misery for people subject to it and their families, wasting vast resources, and making it harder for millions of people to contribute to society...A just criminal legal system is one that considers people charged with crimes as “uniquely individual human beings” subject to “the diverse frailties of humankind,” as demanded by Justice Potter Stewart in the 1976 Supreme Court ruling that rejected laws making the death penalty mandatory. It takes into account the many factors that may make a person more likely to commit a crime—poverty, racism, neglect, abuse, witnessing violence, post-traumatic stress disorder, serious mental disorders, and so on—and the inability of prosecutors, judges, or juries to predict who that person will be in the future. A just system responds to a crime both with sanctions that fairly reflect the moral culpability of the person who committed it and with measures that help him become a positive contributor to his community. In an adversary system, justice demands that people accused of crimes be represented by skilled, zealous lawyers with the time, resources, and information necessary to fairly defend their clients, and that cases be heard by judges motivated solely by upholding the law and achieving a just outcome. And justice demands that both courts and governments actively work to redress the systemic racial discrimination that plagues the criminal legal system.” — Stephen Bright and James Kwak Nathan mentions Prof. Kwak's excellent book Economism, which debunks the misuses of economic reasoning.

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 the largesse of the bourgeoisie, who have far too much damned money. But Amy Schiller, in The Price of Humanity, goes beyond this critique, and argues that we can engineer a better concept of philanthropy. First, she argues that we need a social democratic welfare state, so that the meeting of basic needs is not the domain of philanthropy (no more GoFundMes for medical care). But then we also need to go beyond a basic living wage to instead have a "giving wage," meaning we should all earn enough to be able to give some of it away. The things we support through giving should be special projects that aren't funded by the state but nevertheless enrich life. Schiller joins today to discuss her ideas for a better kind of philanthropy. She explains why she thinks the effective altruists have everything backwards and why the "roses" in "bread and roses" should not be considered optional. Listeners might also enjoy our conversation with Prof. Linsey McGoey, author of No Such Thing As A Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy."The project of philanthropy is to make the earth more of a home, and to encourage inhabitants of the spaces and institutions it provides to feel at home in the world. Ours is a world for humans. It should serve all of us, not the few who can exploit the many for maximum profit. The money we use to build the common world communicates our belief in that world, and in all who inhabit it. It affirms the value of humanity beyond price." - Amy Schiller, The Price of Humanity

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 a vision of what it would mean to have an actual democracy. He counsels against pessimism, though he is conscious of the ways in which the present American system is rigged and undemocratic. Today he joins to explain what the study of history can teach us about the possibilities for our future."The more unequal a society becomes, the more difficult it is to maintain a functioning democracy, as we've seen in the United States in the years since the Supreme Court legalized political bribery, and as a result, Congress changed the rules of capitalism and taxation to favor the morbidly rich. While democracy may be the resting state of the human race, [its force] is like gravity: Although it's eventually irresistible, it can be defied for long periods of time. If democracy is to survive in America, it's going to require a considerable reallocation of political and financial power in the wake of the Supreme Court's disastrous decisions that have handed our nation's political system over to America's oligarchs." — Thom HartmannThom's previous appearance on the program can be heard here.

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 contemporary Instagram influencers and reality television stars, Tara looks at those who have carefully manufactured the picture of themselves that they show to the rest of the world. Today she joins to discuss whether, in becoming free to "self-make," we have in fact truly been liberated, and what unseen forces shape people's ideas of the selves they ought to become.“[T]he seemingly liberatory promise that we can create ourselves has, as often as not, been warped into an excuse to create, implicitly or explicitly, two classes of people: those who are capable of shaping their destinies (and who thereby deserve their success) and those who are not (and who deserve nothing). This classification invariably places those who do not fit the dominant physical or cultural mold—women, people of color, the poor, the disabled—in the second category.That is not to say that it would be preferable to reinstate the image of a divine creator-monarch, Thomas Aquinas’s vision of a universe where the laws of the natural world and of the social world are inextricable from one another, where the right of kings to rule is as ingrained in the functioning of our earth as the propensity of heavenly bodies to fall. But we must all ask ourselves what it means—politically, ethically, socially—to live up to Stewart Brand’s predictions that we are as gods, that the world is nothing but what we make of it, and that our choices, our desires, our wanting to be or to have, are the only things that make us human, that make us us. We must, too, ask ourselves how often our desires are stoked by those with a financial interest in making us think that we both can and should shape ourselves, whether they’re selling us self-help manuals or Snake Oil skin cream." — Tara Isabella BurtonAlbrecht Dürer's Christlike self-portrait can be seen here. Tara's Current Affairs article "The Making of the Self-Made Man," which previewed some of the ideas discussed in the book, can be read here. Listen to Tara's previous appearance on the podcast, discussing her book Strange Rites, here.

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 fans of our magazine and podcast will enjoy it!The News Briefing's chief researcher and writer is Stephen Prager, who joins Nathan on the podcast to discuss the question: What's wrong with the US news media? We talk about the lack of foreign coverage, the endless trivia and fluff, the failure to pay attention to things that majorly affect people's lives, and what the media's priorities ought to be. Then we discuss our own approach to trying to remedy some of this through the news briefing. This new project is still young, so we welcome your suggestions and tips at [email protected]. What do you wish for from your news media that you don't currently get?

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 addictive chemicals, and the hideous consequences of the war on drugs. For a leftist, drugs pose a certain conundrum: On the one hand, we believe in full legalization and an end to the horror of the drug war. However, we also don't take a fully libertarian "drug use as an expression of individual preference" approach, and recognize that drug use can be (1) a response to desperate conditions and (2) pushed by private actors who profit off misery. Legalization alone will surely produce more destructive industries like the cigarette industry, which profits from slowly killing its customers (and constantly addicting new ones). What, then, is the progressive approach to drug use? Quick Fixes offers a nuanced and fascinating look at the intersection of capitalism and chemical dependency. "Misguided and destructive as the War on Drugs has been, the key proposals of liberal drug reformism don't inspire much confidence in an alternative. Legalization has, for one, long been the principled position of the libertarian right: from Ludwig von Mises to Milton Friedman, free marketeers have loved pointing to the example of illegal drugs to prove their belief that markets solve everything. Place the drug trade in the stable hands of legal profiteers, they say, and away go the absurd profit margins, the government corruption, the distortion of local economies, the crime, the enforcement budgets, and the drug contamination... Unfortunately for their elegant argument, it's the legal drugs—cigarettes and alcohol—that are most hazardous to Americans. Letting profit-hungry corporations sell psychoactive drugs virtually assures abuses detrimental to public health... Illegal drug dealers can be dangerous sociopaths, but they are nothing compared to CEOs." — Benjamin FongThe chapter of the book on cigarettes actually began as a Current Affairs piece, which can be read here. The 2018 Current Affairs article "Death and the Drug War" may also be of interest.

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"/"Jews," and the very nature of nationalism. Prof. Shlaim is known as a "British-Israeli" historian, but as his memoir explains, he was actually born into a cultural world that has long since vanished: the Baghdad of the "Arab Jews," whose culture and language was Arabic but whose faith was Judaism. Shlaim's memoir tries to recapture this cosmopolitan existence, where Muslims and Jews lived in relative peace side-by-side. For families like Shlaim's, the birth of the state of Israel was something of a tragedy, because it shattered their world, creating new animus between Iraqi Jews and Iraqi Muslims. Prof. Shlaim's discussion of the early days of Zionism, and the effects it had on the Jews of Baghdad, shows that Israel's claim to operate in the interest of the world's Jewish population is highly questionable. Prof. Shlaim even claims that he has uncovered evidence that the Zionist movement was willing to resort to violence against Jews in Baghdad in order to build the Jewish state. His memoir, despite being tragic in many ways, is ultimately hopeful, because Prof. Shlaim still believes in the possibility of a country where ethno-religious binaries break down and different peoples can live side by side in a hybrid culture. “Time and again we are told that there is a clash of cultures, an unbridgeable gulf between Muslims and Jews. The ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis has become entrenched, supplying ammunition for rejectionists on both sides of the Arab–Israeli divide.The story of my family in Iraq – and that of many forgotten families like mine – points to a dramatically different picture. It harks back to an era of a more pluralist Middle East with greater religious tolerance and a political culture of mutual respect and cooperation between different ethnic minorities. My family’s story is a powerful reminder of once thriving Middle Eastern identities that have been discouraged and even suppressed to suit nationalist political agendas. My own story reveals the roots of my disenchantment with Zionism.” — Avi Shlaim

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 against public university professors for their political beliefs in his capacity as a trustee of New College of Florida. His new book, America's Cultural Revolution: How The Radical Left Conquered Everything argues that 60s radicals have successfully staged a "long march through the institutions" and exhorts conservatives to stage a "counter-revolution." You can read the review that Nathan and Matt McManus wrote of that book here.The quotation "Has the goal of the left, for a century, been the destruction of every Western institution?" is from the book's official publicity page. Nathan's essay debunking Michael Shellenberger's climate lies is here. For more on the subjects covered in today's episode, read Nathan's article "Why Critical Race Theory Should Be Taught In Schools" and Responding to the Right: Brief Replies to 25 Conservative Arguments. Christopher Rufo: No, no, no, the United States was not founded on racism. I think that that is a total misunderstanding of history.Nathan Robinson: How many Founding Fathers were Black?Christopher Rufo: How many people in the Chinese Politburo are European? I mean, it's like the representation fact. Look, hold on...Nathan Robinson: There's not a big class of European slaves in China. But if there was, it would be a racist state.Christopher Rufo: That's true. But look, if you say "What was the United States founded on?" it's a very specific question, and I'll answer the question for you. The United States was founded on a vision of human nature, of natural rights, of equality and liberty.Nathan Robinson: That excluded Black people.This edited has been very lightly edited to fix cross-talk. (In the original, much of what was said was unintelligible because both Rufo and Robinson were talking at once.) A directionless several-minute tangent about the nature of artistic talent has also been excised. In the interest of avoiding any allegations of selective editing, that outtake can be heard here. Otherwise, the interview is presented in its entirety.

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 style but devastatingly critical of an industry where the people who make the clothes are mercilessly exploited and millions of dollars are spent trying to make consumers feel like they're not cool unless they keep buying new clothes. We discuss "microseasons," the lack of ethical standards in fashion journalism, and the radical turn of Teen Vogue, for which Alyssa has worked. “It pains me to say it, but so much of this industry, including the jobs that I dreamed about having for so long, is bullshit. When I was in high school, I had a cover of Teen Vogue taped to the inside of my locker so that every day I remembered exactly what I wanted to do with my life. It’s all I ever wanted and that’s why I want it to be better—I didn’t dream of pushing people toward clothing on Amazon that I wouldn’t even buy myself because the magazine gets 3 percent of the sale. It’s also why I want to empower you to make choices that feel good and to arm yourself with knowledge about how this whole thing works.” — Alyssa Hardy Our previous podcast about Vogue editor Anna Wintour's MasterClass is here. Our conversation with Sam Miller McDonald about menswear is here.

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 their funding, but should broaden our imaginations and look to historic (and contemporary) examples of schools that truly care about preparing students to be empowered members of a democratic society.We discuss a Democratic education secretary's comment that meeting industry demands for a workforce should be a major purpose of education, the right's belief that children should go work instead of school, the attacks on public education, and why leftists should run for school boards and even found their own schools. We discuss the Summerhill school, the Ferrer schools, the Brooklyn Free School, and more radical alternatives to traditional education. And we discuss why kids' love of dinosaurs should be indulged and encouraged. "There is good reason, therefore, for leftists to start now to take back the American school system—not through programs like Teach for America, which sics largely untrained, prestige-hungry Ivy League grads on school districts, but in the old-fashioned ways: by becoming tutors and teachers, joining school boards, advocating for greater federal oversight of education. And—where the political environment is hostile to critical pedagogy—perhaps even taking matters into the Left’s hands and founding alternative schools." — Lauren Fadiman An article Nathan co-wrote on the purposes of education is here. The Financial Times article "Why Do Kids Love Dinosaurs?" is here. A response to the pro child labor arguments on the right can be found in Nathan's Responding to the Right.

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 culture to flourish in a way that succeeding social networks haven't. This was in part because the network was created by people who liked and appreciated music, which raises interesting questions about how a social media network can be built to either facilitate or inhibit the development of certain kinds of cultural forms. Tedder's book encourages us to ask questions like: What would a good social network look like? What parts of ourselves would it bring out? What bad tendencies would it discourage? While perhaps not as nostalgic for MySpace as Michael is, Nathan agrees that it had some quirky qualities that are sorely missed today. We talk about what it would mean to have an internet for the people, a crucial conversation at a time when much of the internet seems to be dying a depressing death. Alas, MySpace itself was killed after being bought by Rupert Murdoch, a part of the story that shows how ruthless profit-seeking capitalism can snuff out things that are valuable. The story illustrates why who owns social networks is so crucial, and the values of owners are reflected in user experiences. (Elon Musk's Twitter, for instance, is saturated with his personal stupidity and bigotry, while Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook is as bland as he is.)Nathan's article "Toward the Wiki Society" is here, and his article on Rupert Murdoch is here. Our interview with Cory Doctorow about the early promise of the internet is also relevant.

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 haven't actually gotten contracts, because the companies are ruthless at the negotiating table (and ruthless about staying away from the negotiating table). So what happens then? What do workers do in Phase II, where they need to actually get a contract? Jane McAlevey and Abby Lawlor join us today to give us some answers. Their book, Rules to Win By: Power and Participation in Union Negotiations (Oxford University Press) follows on from McAlevey's earlier work on how to organize a union in the first place (see her previous interview with Current Affairs). They discuss how to extract concessions from intransigent employers and why the workers themselves (not an aloof, unresponsive team of professional negotiators) need to be at the heart of any negotiation. The lessons they offer are not just useful for unions, but as they explain, are practical for many other social movements who are trying to take on the powerful. "The labor movement presents some of the best insights for other social movements into how to negotiate effectively, because negotiations are a regular feature of union life. Sadly, very few social movements ever build enough power to pull up to serious negotiations—the kind that result in a written, enforceable agreement. Social movements, when they do win, often fail to secure good enforcement language. To this day, most provisions of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, achieved some fifty years ago, have never been implemented. Not only can social movements learn from strong unions what it takes to build strong enforcement into an agreement, but also what it means to keep your organization strong enough to hold the inevitable opposition in check. This is true any time there are real stakes to a settlement, whatever the field." — Jane McAlevey and Abby Lawlor

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 Constance Maud's neglected novel about the suffragette movement. Today, the Rickards join to talk about why they see the struggles of a century ago as so enduringly relevant. They have spent years adapting these novels for today, and the results are beautiful, colorful, funny, and moving. These two adaptations are some of the contemporary left's most accomplished and dazzling contributions to the graphic novel medium. But what is it that makes the original books so compelling? What can Robert Tressell and Constance Maud still offer us, so long after their deaths? Listen to the Rickards explain their project.

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 from Thoreau's cabin to John Cage's music to Japanese rock gardens to the sculptures of Donald Judd. Today Kyle joins to talk about why there have been periodic movements stressing the importance of having "less." We talk about how contemporary Instagrammable minimalism can actually be quite expensive. We ask whether Jesus was a minimalist. We probe the mystery of why Agnes Martin's minimalist paintings are so mesmerizing. Nathan is on the record as being a proud "maximalist" who loves ornamentation and chaos (he has even written an article called "Death To Minimalism") while Kyle is sympathetic to the minimalist instinct, even if he highlights some of its more absurd manifestations (such as the glass walls in the Apple headquarters that were so "minimalist" you couldn't see them, leading employees to constantly bonk their faces on them). But the important questions are: what leads us to want to reject the very things that supposedly make our consumer society so "abundant" and fulfilling? What's behind the Thoreau-like instinct to chuck it all away and do without luxury or adornment? Is the minimalist instinct the right response to a civilization of wasteful excess? If it is, however, how do we determine what is "enough"? “Maybe the longing for less is the constant shadow of humanity’s self-doubt: What if we were better off without everything we’ve gained in modern society? If the trappings of civilization leave us so dissatisfied, then maybe their absence is preferable, and we should abandon them in order to seek some deeper truth....Minimalism is a communal invention and the blank slate that it offers an illusion, especially given its history. It is popular around the world, I think, because it reacts against a condition that is now everywhere: a state of social crisis mixed with a terminal dissatisfaction with the material culture around us that seems to have delivered us to this point, though the fault is our own. When I see the austere kitchens and bare shelves and elegant cement walls, the dim vague colors and the skeletal furniture, the monochrome devices, the white t-shirts, the empty walls, the wide-open windows looking out onto nothing in particular—when I see minimalism as a meme on Instagram, as a self-help book commandment, and as an encouragement to get rid of as much as possible in the name of imminently buying more—I see both an anxiety of nothingness and a desire to capitulate to it, like the French phrase for the subconscious flash of desire to jump off a ledge, l’appel du vide, the call of the void...The popular minimalist aesthetic is more a symptom of that anxiety, having less as a way of feeling a little more stable in precarious times, than a solution to it.” — Kyle Chayka

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 suffering, but of a left which he sees as irrationally committed to goals and strategies that won't work. Studebaker's book is quite pessimistic, because he sees the existing system as incapable of satisfying people's needs, but also deeply resistant to being changed. He raises challenging questions for those of us who want to see that kind of change, foremost of which is: how do we expect to make it happen? Today Benjamin joins for a lively discussion with Nathan about his theory of American democracy. Nathan, who is of a sunny and hopeful disposition, rejects some of Benjamin's analysis, but admits it's important to wrestle with. Nathan puts his disagreements and queries to Benjamin, who offers his responses. (You might remember that a few years ago, Studebaker joined for an argument on whether a Joe Biden or Donald Trump presidency was actually worse for the left.)"[P]olitical professionals and their followers become politically estranged from the rest of society. What, then, becomes of everyone else?...Every political path these Americans might take is blocked. They cannot reform the global economic system, and they cannot overcome it by revolutionary means. The political professionals do not represent them. Their interests continue to be ignored, and politics continues to disappoint them. They have nowhere to turn, and there is nothing they can do. And yet, these Americans must go on living. They must continue to do the best they can to pay their bills, to pay down their debts, to keep their businesses open. What becomes of them?" — Benjamin Studebaker

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 of new culture, expressing itself through art and music, sometimes in subtle ways. There is also a sense of waiting, as movement participants try to hang on until the historical moment is ready for them to act again. She looks, for instance, at Reconstruction, where a nascent multiracial democracy was destroyed before it could be secured, and the AIDS crisis, where activists went through long years of bleak hopelessness.Today's activists suffer plenty of disappointments of their own, and as they sigh and try to figure out how to move forward, Marcus encourages them to look backward, to see how things looked to previous generations who were trying to change the world and usually not succeeding. Ironically, by learning how to be disappointed we may help ourselves become more optimistic and determined."Attending to the ways those we accept as forebears lingered with loss and found new forms and practices to accommodate, process, and transform their disappointment, we, too, can seek forms and practices suitable to our time, working in coalition with the dead as well as the living." — Sara MarcusListeners may also be interested in Sam Allison-Natale's essay "Keeping The Faith: Socialism In The Waiting Place," which discusses related issues.

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 Plunder of Public Goods Transformed America and How We Can Fight Back (co-written with Allen Mikaelian). Cohen, the founder and executive director of In The Public Interest, joins today to take us through case studies of privatization in action, like Chicago's disastrous deal to sell its parking meters. Cohen shows us that when we privatize, we are turning our own assets over to someone else who will sell them back to us and pocket our money. He explains why privatization is a bad deal and why public goods and services should remain in public hands. There is a right-wing effort to stigmatize public services as Big Government (calling public schools "government schools" for instance), and Cohen makes the case for why we need a pro-public culture that unashamedly demand that what belongs to the people stays in the hands of the people. "Understanding privatization means understanding that it is first and foremost a political strategy. It was born this way, and so it remains, but it has also become a grab for billions of dollars in contracts and fees. In the years since it sprang from the mind of Milton Friedman as a way to undercut government “monopoly,” it has also become a way for profiteers to tap into the $7 trillion of public revenue (which swelled to $9 trillion during the COVID crisis) spent by local, state, and federal government agencies each year and carve out a piece (sometimes a very big piece) for themselves. Privatization has also in recent history become remarkably bipartisan—Democratic president Bill Clinton arguably did more for the privatization project than did his Republican predecessor Ronald Reagan. And it has become surprisingly pervasive, to the point where there are now 2.6 times as many federal government contractors as there are government employees, and there is literally no public good that is not at risk of being privatized." — from "The Privatization of Everything"

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 and how Benjamin found that by getting to a different place in his life and learning critical thinking skills he became more able to see through some of Peterson's sophistry.An article about this conversation by Nathan can be found here. Peterson himself has reacted to this interview by insisting that he does not care at all. The clip about religion is from the Matt Dillahunty vs. Jordan Peterson Debate. The "clean your room" video is here."He’s also able to weave in a lot of different topics together, where he’s got the self-help, he’s got religion, he’s got psychology, and then the politics…If you listen to one of his lectures where he’s in this lecture hall talking for an hour, two hours, he’ll go across all these different topics and weave them, like he’s trying to give the impression that they’re all unified together. But it’s this hodgepodge of different things that maybe aren’t related. It gives this feeling of “Wow, this guy knows about everything, and he’s just so knowledgeable, and he’s giving this profound insight that other people just don’t have. I think there is definitely an impression that you’re getting genius insights from this person. I think that’s what leads to over-trusting of his information, because if he’s a genius, then why look into anything he says? He must just be correct." — Benjamin Howard

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 endless accumulation, how they rationalize their privileges, and how they rig the system to make sure they never lose any of their dubiously-acquired gains. “Rarely have our collective wealth fantasy and public attitudes toward affluence been more worthy of examination than the present—a time of staggering economic inequality, political divisions, racial reckoning, and a global plague that has rendered undeniable the truth that America’s economic game is rigged...It is rigged so powerfully, and in so many ways, that if it were an actual game nobody would bother to play—a game in which the winner is preordained, and the more you have, the more you receive. In which capital is crucial but few can obtain it. In which white men receive favorable treatment, while other groups are forced to play by alternative rules that leave them at a disadvantage. It is a game in which nearly all of the spoils flow to the top one-fifth of players, and the four hundred biggest winners end up with more than the 150 million biggest losers. We have reached the point at which our republic, founded upon egalitarian ideals (if not behavior), is so starkly divided into haves and have-nots, winners and losers, that some 0.1 percenters feel compelled to bribe and cheat their children’s way into our nation’s top colleges. Such is the fear of our progeny winding up on the wrong side of the wealth equation.” — Michael MechanicListeners may enjoy reading Rob Larson's Current Affairs article on the Wall Street Journal's "Mansion" section and Nathan's article about billionaire memoirs.

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 blast and you should buy it! Today, Danny joins to discuss how he explains socialism in a way that ordinary people who aren't socialists can understand. We talk about misconceptions around Marxism, why we still need the word "socialism" and can't just "rebrand," how we can bring joy to the struggle, how you can talk to people who disagree with you, and why it's annoying when leftists pretend they're not surprised by anything. “The most essential ingredient of socialism isn’t its analysis of capitalism but its passion to fight on the side of the people. The theory only matters to the extent that it helps this fight (which it very much does). So before someone decides whether she is a socialist, she has to ask herself the more basic question: which side am I on?” – Danny Katch

Asa Winstanley of The Electronic Intifada is the author of the new book Weaponising Anti-Semitism, a bombshell exposé of how the burgeoning socialist movement in the British Labour Party was destroyed by false accusations of anti-Semitism, amplified in the British press. The book is an important contribution to our understanding of why, after such a promising take-off, Jeremy Corbyn's party leadership came to a calamitous end. Asa joins us today to explain the history of what happened and the lessons we can take from it. Asa argues that we need to understand how pro-Israel forces, and centrists more broadly, wield these accusations cynically so that we can fight back against them. "The British media’s attitude to Jeremy Corbyn was one of implacable opposition from the outset...The media, conservative and liberal alike, did everything they could to stop Corbyn becoming leader. When they failed in that, they tried to overturn the election result. When that too was unsuccessful, they did everything they could to stop him being elected prime minister—and that succeeded. British journalists, editors, and politicians showed extreme dedication to reversing the Labour membership’s democratic selection of the party’s most left-wing leader since it was founded." — Asa Winstanley Read Gautam Bhatia's tribute to Corbyn here. James Schneider's interview about Corbyn, with its different take on the factors that led to his political demise, is here. Nathan's personal account of his experience with false anti-Semitism accusations is here.

Terri Friedline is an associate professor of Social Work at the University of Michigan. She's also a contributor to Current Affairs, where she published one of our most unusual pieces ever: a piece of speculative utopian fiction about the end of Wells Fargo. Terri is also the author of the excellent book Banking on a Revolution: Why Financial Technology Won't Save a Broken System. Today, Terri joins to explain why Wells Fargo is so pernicious that she wrote a story imagining its obliteration. She explains how ordinary people are hurt by a financial system that concentrates so much power in a few giant mega-banks, and what the practical alternative to a world of Wells Fargos and JP Morgan Chases is. We talk about public banking projects and their prospects. We also talk about the way that "financial literacy education" perniciously tries to get people to accept responsibility for personal financial difficulties that are the result of systemic injustices, and what liberatory financial education (of the kind Friedline herself teaches) looks like."Eighteen years ago, a bank closure wouldn’t have gotten this kind of attention. Fortunately, things changed. People were radicalized by an onslaught of environmental and economic catastrophes, bank scandals (especially scandals involving Wells Fargo), and a creative use of financial education that, collectively, brought banks’ power into sharp focus. Banks spent millions of dollars each year telling people to take responsibility for their finances and budget their way out of poverty. Organizers and academic researchers like myself started to leverage the financial education that banks had financed. We didn’t just teach people how to contest their overdraft fees or fix errors on their credit reports. We taught popular education and built political power. We explained how private banks make money off of dubious account fees and how proprietary credit scoring algorithms surveil and discriminate. So, many people were ready to celebrate the closure of a bank that had once been deemed 'too big to fail.'" — Terri Friedline Listeners may also be interested in our recent conversation with the New York Times' Emily Flitter, who covers racism in the banking sector.

Emily Hund is the author of The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media. Today she joins to discuss how "influencing" turned from something bloggers did, organically, to a giant industry where powerful commercial interests try to manufacture authenticity. Influencers are a paradox, because they have to work very hard in order to appear real, and if they ever stop seeming real they stop being paid. Hund takes us behind the curtain to try to sort out what's real and what's artificial in the frequently dystopian world of social media influence."What began as a belief, perhaps naive in retrospect, about the "realness" of early bloggers and digital content creators has, through the influencer industry's development, been transmuted into a particular aesthetic, textual vocabulary, and technological infrastructure leveraged by a wide range of people and groups for financial and ideological gain. Authenticity among influencers is not necessarily spontaneous, if it ever was; it is inextricable from the commercialism that now ensconces digital interactions." — Emily Hund

Today Norman Solomon returns to the program to discuss his new book War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine. Norman is one of the country's leading progressive media critics. In this book, he talks about how the media helps construct a mental wall between the people of the United States and the victims of U.S. foreign policy. He talks about how the reality of violence is kept from view and how heroic whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning and Daniel Hale are punished when they try to put cracks in the "wall" and show people the reality of their country's crimes abroad. Read the report from Brown University's Costs of War Project on the human toll of the global War on Terror here. A full discussion of the Iraq war by Noam Chomsky and Nathan J. Robinson is available here. The militarism that propels nonstop U.S. warfare is systemic, but the topic of systemic militarism gets little public attention. Ballooning Pentagon budgets are sacrosanct. While there can be heated disagreement about how, where, and when the United States should engage in war, the prerogative of military intervention is scarcely questioned in the mass media. Even when conventional wisdom ends up concluding that a war was unwise, the consequences for journalists who pro- moted it are essentially nil. Reporters and pundits who enthusiastically supported the Iraq invasion were not impeded in their careers as a result. Many advanced professionally. — Norman Solomon

Mark Paul is an economist who argues that there can be no meaningful freedom without economic freedom—by which he does not mean the libertarian idea of the freedom to exploit others. Mark's book The Ends of Freedom: Reclaiming America's Lost Promise of Economic Rights explains how having a functional and free country will require establishing new rights: the right to employment, the right to housing, the right to healthcare, the right to a clean environment, etc. Today he joins us to explain how we can create a true "land of liberty." "While an economic bill of rights is indeed about material security—making sure all are able to put food on the table and a roof over their heads—it's also about advancing a new social contract, one that truly honors people's inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It's about rooting out the deep power imbalances that warp America's economy and society. It's about building a sustainable economy and world that works for current and future generations alike. It's about freedom." — Mark PaulListeners interested in the topic should also check out our conversation with Alan Minsky and Harvey Kaye, who discussed FDR's proposals and what an economic bill of rights would look like today.

Samuel Miller McDonald is a regular contributor to Current Affairs, where he has written about such disparate subjects as collectivism, the food system, Game of Thrones, cultural atrophy, ecofascism, His Dark Materials, the term "development," the history of oil, the fiction of Kim Stanley Robinson, the future of cities, and the forests of Madagascar. In our latest issue, Sam takes on one of his most challenging subjects yet: menswear. Sam is unapologetic about enjoying clothes, and showcases outfits on his "Mr. Clothes" account. But some on the left see men who like menswear as bourgeois, indulgent, even unethical. Must socialists wear overalls and Leninesque mariner's caps to be aesthetically authentic? Today we discuss Sam's argument, made eloquently in his print article, that clothes matter and there's nothing wrong with making yourself feel good by wearing nice clothes that you think look good. We discuss Twitter's "menswear guy," who has become infamous for savagely critiquing the attire of famous men (often right-wing men who think they look fantastic). We talk about the ethical questions that face all of us when we buy clothes: is it a luxurious indulgence to buy expensive clothes, or is it worse to purchase the cheapest clothes made under exploitative labor conditions? We talk about how, far from being the provenance of the bourgeoisie, style has often been a weapon of the marginalized to assert their dignity, from sapeurs to zoot suiters to working class mods and rockers. Nathan explains what he's trying to do by wearing the clothes he wears, and Sam offers tips for being a menswear guy while staying committed to left principles.

Today on the podcast, we dive into the question of what kinds of musical borrowing constitute "influence" versus "plagiarism." In the news at the moment is a lawsuit against pop singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran, who is accused of lifting parts of Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On" for his song "Thinking Out Loud." We're going to listen to both songs, and you can decide what you think. But we're also going to go on a tour through musical history and see how supposed "original" artists are often blatant plagiarists. We're also going to discuss the history of the exploitation of Black music by white artists and the question of who should owe what to whom when someone gets rich off a song based in part on someone else's song. This audio essay is adapted from Nathan's recent Current Affairs article "The Ed Sheeran Copyright Lawsuit Exposes The Absurdity of Music Ownership." A playlist of songs played in the episode (plus a few more involved in plagiarism cases) is available on Spotify.

Today we hear a little-told story, the story of how idealistic socialists around the world, starting around 1890, took over city governments. Prof. Sheldon Stromquist is the author of the book Claiming the City: A Global History of Workers' Fight for Municipal Socialism (Verso), which looks at how leftists in places from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to a small mining town in the Australian outback tried to implement socialist ideals in their cities and towns. In Sweden, in Britain, in Austria's "Red Vienna," these often colorful figures fought for public housing, public utilities, the 8-hour day, clean water, public schools, and much more. Today, Prof. Stromquist argues, we take for granted many things that the socialists of the late 19th and early 20th century had to fight to attain. In this conversation, Stromquist introduces us to some of the neglected stories of these men and women, who were inspired by the Paris Commune to try radical political experiments the local level. They can, he argues, offer important lessons to those of us today who want to continue their work. We talk about not only what they accomplish, but what they failed to accomplish—and why."I argue that the promise of a truly 'public city' that would meet the needs of its citizens in collective and humane ways—the legacy in many ways of the Paris Commune, Red Vienna, and countless other municipal socialist experiments—has remained a dream worthy of realization." — Shelton Stromquist

Julie Suk is a professor of law at Fordham University. Her new book After Misogyny: How the Law Fails Women and What to Do about It is about why the law has not succeeded at eliminating patriarchy despite advances in formal gender equality. Suk acknowledges that legal feminists like Ruth Bader Ginsburg helped bring about equal protection under law, but shows that, just as "colorblind" racial policies leave existing hierarchies untouched, "equal treatment" fails to alter gender imbalances of power. Suk also explains that, just as racism doesn't have to involve "hatred," misogyny shouldn't necessarily be defined as hating women. Rather, she draws our attention to concepts she calls overempowerment and overentitlement; that is, misogyny is men's excessive power over women and excessive sense of entitlement to women's labor. In this conversation, Prof. Suk explains her new framework for understanding gender inequality under the law. We talk about unpaid care work, abortion, and Prof. Suk even gives an interesting revisionist take on Prohibition, which many women saw as a way to curtail alcohol-fueled domestic abuse. Suk also explains how other countries around the world have tried to create real gender equality rather than just equality on paper, and gives her take on whether the Equal Rights Amendment would create meaningful equality or just more "on paper" equality.

Sophie Lewis is a radical critic of the family. In Lewis's books, Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family and Abolish The Family, she argues that families are expected to take on functions that should be the responsibility of society as a whole, and that the results are disastrous. Families "privatize care." People have to depend on their families to fund their schooling or to take care of them in old age, which means that those who don't having loving and supportive families will simply end up not being cared for.Lewis argues that seemingly neutral pro-family rhetoric is actually pernicious, because we should be trying to create ways to care for people that do not depend on everyone being supported by family. At the core of Lewis' work is the idea that care is a basic right, that we all deserve to be cared for. In this conversation, we talk about how organizing society around the unit of the family reproduces inequality. We discuss why people should be able to live fulfilled and happy lives without having to depend on family, and why we'll be better off when we have a society in which family matters less rather than more. Lewis' work is challenging and openly utopian, but forces us to interrogate some of our most seemingly uncontroversial ideas (in this case, "families are good").Sophie's Patreon is here. Some of Yasmin Nair's critiques of gay marriage can be found here and here. An article about "family abolition" by Current Affairs managing editor Lily Sánchez, who cites Lewis' work, can be found here. Lily also cites the quote Nathan reads from the 1976 Republican platform, which reads as follows:“Families must continue to be the foundation of our nation. Families—not government programs—are the best way to make sure our children are properly nurtured, our elderly are cared for, our cultural and spiritual heritages are perpetuated, our laws are observed and our values are preserved. … [I]t is imperative that our government’s programs, actions, officials, and social welfare institutions must never be allowed to jeopardize the family. We fear the government may be powerful enough to destroy our families; we know that it is not powerful enough to replace them.”

Lily Sánchez is the managing editor of Current Affairs, and also a physician. In a new article for the magazine, Lily draws on her experiences practicing medicine to discuss different conceptions of what health justice requires. She reviews an acclaimed book called The People's Hospital by Ricardo Nuila, which covers a public hospital that Lily also worked at. Nuila sees this hospital as a model for fairness in healthcare. Sánchez, by contrast, sees it as a place that can't help but be unfair, because it's part of a healthcare system that is unjust to its core. The differences between the perspectives of Nuila and Sánchez help us to think about what it would mean to care for people "fairly." For Nuila, we don't need Medicare For All. For Sánchez, Medicare For All is only a start. In this episode, Lily and Nathan talk about the hospital that she and Nuila both worked at, what Lily saw in medicine, and what she thinks the limits of liberal healthcare reform are. Our episode with Mark Vonnegut can be found here. Listeners may also be interested in our old interview with Timothy Faust, the author of Health Justice Now. Lily's article on "zombie" medicine is here."We need radical change and a healthcare system in which for-profit health insurance is rendered irrelevant. Healthcare must be more than a commodity, something we aim to get a fair deal on. Our priority should be to build a healthy and sustainable society, prevent disease as much as possible (and treat it effectively when it arises), and give everyone the care they need when they need it, free at the point of use. This will require nothing short of a political movement as well as the willingness to challenge the market logic that is pervasive in healthcare." — Lily Sánchez

Today we are joined by political philosopher Matt McManus of the University of Michigan. Matt has contributed to Current Affairs and collaborated with Nathan on articles about Douglas Murray and the right-wing disdain for college. At the time of this recording, Matt was reading Ron DeSantis' autobiography, which he has now written about for Jacobin. Matt has also written for CA about conservative faux-"populism", the right's long string of anti-"intellectual" intellectuals, and the American democratic socialist tradition. Nobody has a better command of the core literature in right-wing thought than Matt McManus.This conversation goes through some of the ways in which right-wing "thinkers" have tried to articulate a clear and consistent conservative philosophy. In the United States, these attempts tend to be muddled, because reactionary thinkers simultaneously believe in natural social hierarchies and have a disdain for "elites." European reactionaries are often much more open in their contempt for the people in and their belief in monarchical rule, but in the U.S., with its widespread belief in democratic self-rule, it's not really possible to come out against democracy openly (although some still do). Hence the "elitist anti-elitism" of people like DeSantis, who loathe democracy and are happy to impose the policy preferences of rich right-wing Christians on a reluctant populace, but do so by claiming to act on behalf of the People against the Elite. "The vulgarity of conservative populism à la Trump or De Santis is hardly some monstrous abnormality. While earlier figures like Buckley or Reagan may have argued for vicious policies in a more genteel manner, despotism delivered with a thesaurus is still despotism." — Matt McManus

Jono Shaffer is a legendary labor organizer who was instrumental in the Justice for Janitors campaign. J4J successfully unionized Los Angeles janitorial workers under unbelievably difficult conditions—the janitors were undocumented and worked for contractors rather than buildings themselves, so they were easily fired. J4J built a movement that successfully pressured building owners to respect the rights of cleaning staff. Today Jono joins to explain how they did it and what the lessons are for the labor movement today. It's an important conversation in part because Jono's take on what makes for successful organizing is a little different than conventional wisdom. He's skeptical of unionizing via NLRB elections, because even when you win, companies stall and won't negotiate a contract (this is happening at Amazon and Starbucks even when elections have been won). Jono thinks it can be a mistake to follow a predictable, orderly legal process. J4J took a different approach, working on building public pressure against building owners and figuring out what owners wanted, then finding ways to prevent them from getting it. They used disruptive and sometimes theatrical protest actions that meant it took longer to actually unionize, but which built worker power nonetheless. In this conversation, Jono discusses how power works and how those who want to force employers to capitulate can do it. He talks about the importance of building social movements that are bigger than just unionization campaigns around a single workplace. It's a conversation full of the wisdom that comes from a lifetime of experience doing crucial work in the labor movement. "Justice for Janitors unquestionably provides critical lessons for future organizing: As Wall Street and the finance industry increasingly take control over the global economy, we have to look up the economic food chain and target the real culprits. We have to bring as many stakeholders to the fight as possible, and creatively and aggressively organize to disrupt business as usual for those in control — that can mean strikes, civil disobedience, engaging shareholders, or directly challenging other business, social, and political interests and their exploitative practices and schemes. Workers’ lives have been disrupted enough. It’s time to turn the tables." — Stephen Lerner and Jono Shaffer, "25 Years Later: Lessons from the Justice For Janitors Campaign" Harold Meyerson's American Prospect article about Shaffer is here. Thank you to Leo Shaffer for arranging this conversation.

Ben Clarkson is an illustrator and animator who has produced work for some of the best magazines in the country, including our own Current Affairs. Matt Bors is a leading political cartoonist and founder of The Nib. They have now teamed up to produce one of the wildest satirical comic books of all time, Justice Warriors. Set in a horrifying dystopia called Bubble City, where the rich live in a bubble dome and mutants inhabit a wasteland outside, the comic chronicles the times and crimes of the police, the mayor, and urban terrorists. The book satirizes everything from policing to influencer culture to cryptocurrency. It's like The Wire, but with a mutant poop emoji as the protagonist.Today, Ben and Matt join to explain the world of Justice Warriors and how they created this bizarre and wonderful (but bleak) caricature of our times. We talk about the comic's influences, what they're trying to say with it, whether the world they depict is entirely hopeless, and what the power of politically sharp comics can be (including the "we should improve society somewhat" cartoon that Matt became famous for)."Readers are hungry for sincere and intelligent fiction in a landscape of reassuring fairy tales, to be able to bite into something meaty that doesn't beat you over the head with easy mythological lullabies." — Ben Clarkson

Naomi Oreskes is a historian of science at Harvard University. Erik M. Conway works as the historian at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Together they have just published The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market. We've talked a lot on this program about that failures of neoclassical economics and the myth of the pristine free market whose great Invisible Hand delivers justice to all. But Oreskes and Conway are historians of science rather than economists, so they are interested in where these damaging ideas came from. How did the "neoliberal consensus" actually form and why? How was the belief in New Deal principles destroyed over time? Oreskes and Conway showcase the formidable power of propaganda in changing the course of history. In this episode, we discuss both the origins of the "big myth" and somewhat more theoretical questions about how we can actually measure the effects of particular historical propaganda efforts. Oreskes and Conway are also the authors of the excellent book Merchants of Doubt, which shows how industry scientists obscured the truth about tobacco use and global warming. Our conversation with Oreskes and Conway pairs well with our recent interview with Jennifer Jacquet about the corporate playbook for obscuring scientific findings that could harm profits. "Five hundred thousand dead from opioids, over a million dead from Covid-19, massive inequality, rampant anxiety and unhappiness, and the well-being of us all threatened by climate change: these are the true costs of the 'free' market." — Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of." — Edward Bernays, Propaganda

Mehdi Hasan, who hosts The Mehdi Hasan Show on MSNBC, is known as one of the most formidable interviewers in journalism. He has tangled with Blackwater's Erik Prince, John Bolton, Richard Dawkins, Paul Bremer, and many others. A video of a powerful speech he gave defending Islam at Oxford University has received 10 million views. He has now written a book on his methods, Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking, showing how to effectively confront and expose toxic beliefs. In this high energy conversation, he joins to discuss such questions as: Is debate "worth it"? Can it actually accomplish anything?What beliefs are not worth debating? How do you decide what to "legitimize"?Should Mehdi have Marjorie Taylor Greene on his program? (Nathan thinks so. Mehdi very much does not.)Are "ad hominem" attacks illegitimate? Or are they legitimate? When is it fair to use "rhetoric" over "reason"?“Philosophically, I consider argument and debate to be the lifeblood of democracy, as well as the only surefire way to establish the truth. Arguments can help us solve problems, uncover ideas we would’ve never considered, and hurry our disagreements toward (even begrudging) understanding. There are also patent practical benefits to knowing how to argue and speak in public. These are vital soft skills that allow you to advance in your career and improve your lot in life. There are very few things you cannot achieve when you have the skill and ability to change people’s minds.” — Mehdi Hasan Listen to Mehdi Hasan's previous appearance on the Current Affairs podcast here.