This episode originally aired on February 1, 2025. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Today we are joined by Flint Dibble , who last year attempted the ambitious task of explaining science and critical thinking to Joe Rogan . Rogan has been a promoter of the pseudo-archaeology of a man named Graham Hancock, who argues that mainstream archaeologists are covering up the evidence of a lost advanced civilization in the Ice Age that could have been the real-life Atlantis. Dibble w...
Feb 27, 2025•53 min•Ep. 370
This episode originally aired on January 15, 2025. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/currentaffairs ! We are joined today by Dr. Adam Gaffney, the former head of Physicians For a National Health Program, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, and the author of the book To Heal Humankind: The Right to Health in History. Adam is one of the most articulate and effective champions of Medicare For All, having once fought five Fox Business Channel commentators at once . Today he joins t...
Feb 22, 2025•53 min•Ep. 369
This episode originally aired on January 7, 2025. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Today, Nathan is joined by Malaika Jabali as co-host along with Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix, authors of the book Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a Dangerous Idea. They join us in the wake of the killing of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson. The alleged killer's manifesto said that he was motivated over the hideously unfair practices of the insurance industry, and polling sho...
Feb 12, 2025•42 min•Ep. 368
This episode originally aired on December 30, 2024. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Adam McKay is a writer and film director who has made some of the most successful comedy films of our century, including Anchorman (No. 6 on Time Out's top 100 comedy films of all time), Talladega Nights, Step Brothers, and The Other Guys . In the last decade, his more dramatic and political films like Vice and The Big Short have attracted critical acclaim and been nominated for multiple Ac...
Feb 08, 2025•53 min•Ep. 367
This episode originally aired on December 12, 2024. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Musa al-Gharbi is a sociologist with a unique, albeit controversial, take on the idea of "wokeness," laid out in his new book We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite . Essentially al-Gharbi argues that among elites, a kind of social justice language has come to be important for maintaining and enhancing their status, but has little to do with meaningfully advanci...
Feb 04, 2025•54 min•Ep. 366
This episode originally aired on December 10, 2024. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Thomas Frank, historian, journalist, and author of What’s the Matter with Kansas? and Listen, Liberal, joins us to dissect how Democrats abandoned populism, the rise of Trump’s faux-populism, and why the party refuses to embrace the working class. He also explores the path forward for authentic left-wing populism in the face of neoliberal failures. Video version of this podcast is here. “Th...
Jan 31, 2025•57 min•Ep. 365
This episode originally aired on December 4, 2024. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Zohran Mamdani represents the 36th District in the New York State Assembly. A member of the Democratic Socialists of America, he is currently running for mayor of New York City, hoping to unseat the controversial Eric Adams, who is facing federal corruption charges. Mamdani is running on a platform of lowering the cost of living for New Yorkers. He joins today to discuss his city and his cam...
Jan 27, 2025•29 min•Ep. 364
This episode originally aired on November 26, 2024. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Brian Kateman is the head of the Reduceitarian Foundation and the author of the book Meat Me Halfway: How Changing the Way We Eat Can Improve Our Lives and Save Our Planet , which has an accompanying documentary . Brian has thought a lot about how to persuade people to help improve animal welfare in ways that actually get them on board and don't alienate them. Today he joins to discuss what...
Jan 24, 2025•42 min•Ep. 363
This episode originally aired on November 18, 2024. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Garrison Lovely wrote the cover story for Jacobin magazine's special issue on AI , which explained how leftists should think about the risks posed by the new technologies. He also recently wrote for the New York Times about AI safety, and has written for Current Affairs about psychedelic drugs and McKinsey . Garrison joins today to discuss what the real harms that AI could do are, why Big T...
Jan 22, 2025•41 min•Ep. 362
This episode originally aired on November 15, 2024. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Is our “child welfare” system successfully helping protect kids from neglect and abuse? Or is it inflicting widespread trauma through unnecessary, unjustifiable family separation? Dorothy Roberts, professor of law and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, has long been one of the country’s most deeply-informed critics of “child protective services,” which she argues systematically ta...
Dec 17, 2024•40 min•Ep. 361
This episode originally aired on November 4, 2024. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Dr. Feroze Sidhwa is a trauma surgeon who has served in conflict zones around the world. He authored a recent New York Times op-ed that surveyed dozens of medical professionals who had served in Gaza about their observations, including the targeting of children. He is also the organizer of the Gaza Healthcare Letters to the Biden administration. He joins today to discuss the level of harm th...
Dec 06, 2024•55 min•Ep. 360
This episode originally aired on October 29, 2024. Get new podcasts early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairsRight ! Richard Seymour is one of the most learned and provocative leftist writers in the world. He has written books on subjects ranging from social media ( The Twittering Machine ) to British Labour politics ( Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics ) to liberal apologists for imperialism ( The Liberal Defense of Murder ) to the career of Christopher Hitchens ( Unhitched ). On whateve...
Nov 14, 2024•45 min•Ep. 358
This episode originally aired on October 22, 2024. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Carolyn Dupont, a professor of history at Eastern Kentucky University, is one of the country's leading experts on the Electoral College. She is the author of the book Distorting Democracy The Forgotten History of the Electoral College—and Why It Matters Today , which debunks defenses of the Electoral College and shows why it's harmful to democracy. She joins us today to help us better unders...
Nov 11, 2024•36 min•Ep. 357
This episode originally aired on October 10, 2024. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Osamah Khalil of Syracuse University is the author of A World of Enemies: America’s Wars at Home and Abroad from Kennedy to Biden , a vital history of the wars of the last 50 years. Prof. Khalil shows how, from the Vietnam war to the present day, American leaders (and American pop culture) conjured a "world of enemies" in which force was preferable to diplomacy. A cast of rotating villains (...
Nov 08, 2024•48 min•Ep. 356
This episode originally aired on October 2, 2024. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Recently, New York Times columnist Pamela Paul made an argument for aggressively policing subway fare evasion. To explain why a major new crackdown is necessary, she cited "broken windows theory," which she said that progressives refuse to admit "works." She explained that allowing minor crimes "invites graver forms of crime," which is why we need to make sure laws against seemingly minor cri...
Nov 06, 2024•46 min•Ep. 355
This episode originally aired on September 26, 2024. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Donald Trump and J.D. Vance have recently been pushing vicious racist fake news about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, claiming they are stealing and eating people's pets and destroying the town. But why are there Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio in the first place? What role has U.S. foreign policy played in driving Haitians from Haiti? Today, we are joined by Jonathan Katz...
Nov 04, 2024•35 min•Ep. 354
Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! This week The Myth of American Idealism: How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers The World was finally released! The book, co-written by Noam Chomsky and Current Affairs editor in chief Nathan J. Robinson. Today, Nathan joins managing editor Lily Sánchez and associate editor Alex Skopic to discuss the book and introduce Prof. Chomsky's views on U.S. foreign policy, explaining why he finds Chomsky's warnings so important for our time. An article Na...
Oct 25, 2024•51 min•Ep. 353
This episode originally aired on September 20, 2024. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Today on Current Affairs , it's our second-ever musical episode! We're joined today by Danny Bradley , who has written many songs for Current Affairs. Today, we listen to a few of those and Danny plays us some other favorites of his live on the air, including his new tune about a manosphere-influenced "Hopeless Romantic." Danny and Nathan also discuss what makes for good musical satire, wh...
Oct 25, 2024•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 351
This episode originally aired on September 17, 2024. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Today on the program, Malaika Jabali returns to discuss the issues that were left out of the first presidential debate, and why Democrats should not embrace right-wing framings of issues even if they think doing so is electorally pragmatic. Malaika is the author of It's Not You, It's Capitalism . Nathan's recent piece " What Doesn't Get Said " also addresses many of these issues. This epis...
Oct 14, 2024•56 min•Ep. 350
This episode originally aired on September 13, 2024. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Jordan Chariton of Status Coup News is a leading investigative journalist and the author of We The Poisoned: Exposing the Flint Water Crisis Cover-Up and the Poisoning of 100,000 Americans , a major expose of one of the most outrageous scandals of our time, the Flint water crisis. Chariton has spent extensive time on the ground in Flint even as the mainstream media lost interest and moved ...
Oct 14, 2024•37 min•Ep. 349
This episode originally aired on September 10, 2024. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Today Kat Abugazaleh of Mother Jones and Zeteo News returns to the program to tell us what the DNC in Chicago was like. How did the Harris campaign try to court influencers and creators? How were the influencers treated differently than the press, and what responsibility does a "creator" have, given that they're not journalists but are also not formally with the campaign? How did the Harri...
Oct 01, 2024•37 min•Ep. 348
This episode originally aired on September 8, 2024. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Jamie Peck is a writer, podcaster, and activist who has been involved with the " Stop Cop City " movement. Her recent presentation about the movement can be seen here . In it she explains what the "Cop City" plan in Atlanta is, how a movement to resist it came together, and the vast, alarming repression that that movement has been met with. Today, Jamie joins to tell us why the fight over C...
Sep 25, 2024•34 min•Ep. 347
This episode originally aired on September 2, 2024. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Mouin Rabbani of the Middle East Council on Global Affairs is one of the most sober-minded, thoughtful, and morally clear analysts of the Israel-Palestine conflict. You may have seen him in action on the debate he participated in a few months back on the Lex Fridman program. Today, Mouin joins to answer questions about the Israel-Palestine conflict. What is Israel's "endgame"? Does it want ...
Sep 18, 2024•48 min•Ep. 346
This episode originally aired on August 22, 2024. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Bev Stohl ran Noam Chomsky's office for over two decades. In her wonderful book Chomsky and Me (OR Books) she discusses the sometimes chaotic, never boring inside of Chomsky-world, with thousands of correspondents and visitors from around the world descending on a cramped MIT office laden with books and papers. She joins today to talk about her decades working with the most-cited living intel...
Sep 09, 2024•44 min•Ep. 345
This episode originally aired on August 20, 2024. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! It's long been recognized that the U.S. criminal punishment system is aberrational, cruel, and broken. Our prison population is outrageously large. But how do we actually begin to dismantle the system? Premal Dharia, James Forman Jr., and Maria Hawilo have edited a vital guide to this question, showing that it's more difficult than it sounds, because so many different institutions (legislatur...
Sep 06, 2024•46 min•Ep. 344
This episode originally aired on August 15, 2024. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Gideon levy is one of Israel's leading dissident journalists. His new book The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe is perhaps the harshest condemnation of Israel's war on Gaza from any Israeli. Levy joins us to explain why he believes his fellow Israelis are brainwashed into thinking Palestinians are terroristic and inhuman, and the hideous consequences of that ideology. He also explain...
Sep 04, 2024•46 min•Ep. 343
This episode originally aired August 7, 2024. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Keir Starmer took the place of Jeremy Corbyn as the leader of the UK Labour Party, and recently became the UK Prime Minister after Labour resoundingly defeated the Conservatives. Does this mean that Starmer has a mandate from the British public? What does Starmer stand for, anyway? How will he govern? How did he rise so fast in British politics? How did he manage to crush the left wing of the Lab...
Aug 30, 2024•40 min•Ep. 342
This episode originally aired on August 2, 2024. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! David Livingstone Smith is one of the leading scholars of dehumanization in the world, the author of books like Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others , On Inhumanity: Dehumanization and How to Resist It , and Making Monsters: The Uncanny Power of Dehumanization . He joins us today to discuss how the dehumanization process works and why it's so dangerous when we start ...
Aug 28, 2024•52 min•Ep. 341
Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! In popular American stereotypes, Islam is a religion of submission, with right-wing politicians demagoguing about the supposed authoritarianism and repressiveness of Islam. But scholar Mohamed Abdou argues in Islam and Anarchism that, in fact, there is a great deal of overlap between Islamic religious teachings and anarchist philosophy, and that by melding the two of them we can produce a philosophy that offers guidance for principled anti-a...
Aug 26, 2024•31 min•Ep. 340
Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs ! Today on the Current Affairs podcast, we're joined by two filmmakers, one of whom will be well known to longtime podcast listeners. Pete Davis founded the Current Affairs podcast and served as its original host. Pete and his sister Rebecca Davis have made a new documentary called Join or Die , which looks at the decline of civic life in America, focusing on the work of Bowling Alone author Robert Putnam. The film dives into history to show h...
Aug 23, 2024•48 min•Ep. 339
