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" a...
Apr 03, 2024•45 min•Ep. 278
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,...
Apr 01, 2024•34 min•Ep. 277
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 progressi...
Mar 29, 2024•43 min•Ep. 276
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 as...
Mar 27, 2024•44 min•Ep. 275
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 highlightin...
Mar 25, 2024•37 min•Ep. 274
Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Originally aired 9/19/2023 Dozens 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 pr...
Mar 22, 2024•25 min•Ep. 273
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...
Mar 20, 2024•42 min•Ep. 272
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 ("Zinnophob...
Mar 19, 2024•59 min•Ep. 271
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 Mac...
Mar 15, 2024•21 min•Ep. 270
"I’m pretty sure that some of my colleagues have signed on to my bill because they wanted me to stop talking about periods on the floor of the House." — Grace Meng Grace Meng represents the 6th District of New York in the United States Congress. She recently reintroduced her Menstrual Equity for All Act , which aims to dramatically expand free access to menstrual products across the country. She joins today to discuss the problem of period poverty and what it would take to solve it. A transcript...
Mar 13, 2024•16 min•Ep. 269
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 ...
Mar 11, 2024•45 min•Ep. 268
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 Irrational We Can’t Have Climate ...
Mar 08, 2024•43 min•Ep. 267
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 importa...
Mar 06, 2024•39 min•Ep. 266
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 Stevenso...
Mar 04, 2024•36 min•Ep. 265
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...
Feb 28, 2024•39 min•Ep. 264
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 h...
Feb 26, 2024•41 min•Ep. 263
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 careful...
Feb 23, 2024•36 min•Ep. 262
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 Step...
Feb 21, 2024•33 min•Ep. 261
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 certa...
Feb 19, 2024•38 min•Ep. 260
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...
Feb 16, 2024•47 min•Ep. 259
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 Col...
Feb 14, 2024•52 min•Ep. 258
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...
Feb 12, 2024•37 min•Ep. 257
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...
Feb 09, 2024•44 min•Ep. 256
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 n...
Feb 07, 2024•37 min•Ep. 255
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 ru...
Feb 05, 2024•37 min•Ep. 254
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 wh...
Feb 02, 2024•38 min•Ep. 253
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....
Jan 31, 2024•41 min•Ep. 252
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 wor...
Jan 29, 2024•59 min•Ep. 251
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 se...
Jan 26, 2024•35 min•Ep. 250
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)...
Jan 24, 2024•35 min•Ep. 249
