Current Affairs

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 intellectual and keeping his life organized. She addresses the question so many have wondered: how did he manage to answer everyone's emails, in addition to publishing over 100 books and giving thousands of lectures?My mind's eye lit up with images of Noam’s body hunching, hands hammering out thesis drafts, editorial letters, articles, statements of solidarity, petitions, lectures, professional correspondence, recommendation letters, arguments, and email. For decades. On countless keyboards. On manual and electric typewriters, then word processors, then progressively streamlined and ergonomically correct wireless keyboards, all the way to the smaller keys of his compact laptop, none of which cramped his fingers or hurt his wrists. His body, unlike mine, seemed to be built for endless typing. - Bev Stohl, Chomsky and Me

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 (legislatures, courts, prosecutors' offices, police, public defense), each play a role in creating the outcome. In Dismantling Mass Incarceration, they go through each part of the system to discuss how it works, how it contributes to the problem, and paths we can take to fix it. The book features contributors from Angela Davis to our own Nathan J. Robinson, with the essay "Can Prison Abolition Ever Be Pragmatic?" Today, the editors join us to explain what's so wrong with criminal punishment, abolitionist vs. reformist approaches to thinking about it, and how we move forward. 

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 explains that the U.S. could have stopped the war, and is therefore culpable for everything that has happened to Gaza.How dare Israelis speak about a moral difference, or the moral values of the Israeli army, when this is the outcome? How can you say the Israeli army is doing anything possible to prevent it, when you know that the majority of victims in this war—there are no questions—are innocent people? Even Israel admits it. It’s not like a Hamas claim. There’s no doubt about it. No doubt about it that in no other war were 250 journalists killed. In no other war were over 500 medical teams killed. So many figures which leave this argument so hollow. - Gideon Levy

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 Labour Party?We are joined today by one of the UK's leading experts on Starmer's life and career, Oliver Eagleton, the author of The Starmer Project: A Journey to the Right. Eagleton tells us everything we need to know about the UK's new prime minister.For more, read Alex Skopic's recent Current Affairs article "Keir Starmer Is A Disgrace To The British Labour Party."“Starmer has not presented a unified, consistent ideology, hence the confusion over what he ‘stands for’. But he does have a project – a vision, of sorts – and a coherent strategy to achieve it, which is yet to be analysed in detail... We must rather uncover the more durable aspects of his thought-world and assess their relevance to the present conjuncture... “What kind of politician is he? Why was he perceived by many former Corbyn supporters as the optimal candidate to take the helm, yet subsequently unable – or unwilling – to fulfil the hopes he inspired? How can we explain his success in remaking the party along with his struggle to command public confidence? To what extent does he represent a meaningful alternative to the Conservatives?" - Oliver Eagleton, The Starmer Project

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 to use dehumanizing language, which we can do without noticing it. Prof. Smith warns that while the point seems obvious, many of the worst atrocities are committed by those who are fully convinced they are on the side of the good and righteous, and any of us can become a dehumanizer. We discuss examples from the treatment of Palestinians as animals to the worst historical genocides to parts of the American right treating leftists as "unhuman" enemies of civilization. Prof. Smith explains how the process works and how we can resist it.Read Nathan's article on the Unhumans book here. Israeli journalist Gideon Levy tells us more about the dehumanization of Palestinians here.

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 Anarchismthat, 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-authoritarian struggle. Today Prof. Abdou joins to debunk popular misunderstandings of Islam and to explain why he thinks the reconciling of anarchist and Islamic teachings offers us a new liberatory philosophy.“Anarcha-Islām can help diasporic Muslims under Euro-American assimilation as well as Muslims in predominantly conservative societies such as Egypt to begin again the transnational radical recreation and re-imagination of their subjectivities and social justice orientations in a way that is conducive to Islām’s post-9/11’s confrontations with a Euro-American 'Age of Terror.'" - Mohamed Abdou, Islam and Anarchism

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 how, in days before our present epidemic of loneliness and atomization, Americans joined tons of local clubs, ranging from choirs to bowling leagues to the Elks. Putnam argues that these organizations are foundational to having a functional democracy.In today's episode, we discuss why bowling leagues can have political importance. We also discuss the late, great Jane McAlevey, who makes a powerful appearance in the film (one of her last public appearances) to make the case that unions are exactly the kind of civic organization that is good for both its members and the society at large.In keeping with the spirit of Join or Die, you can host your own screening of the film in your town and invite people to come watch and discuss it!

Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs!Jeremiah Moss (pseudonym of Griffin Hansbury) is the author of two books, Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul and Feral City: On Finding Liberation in Lockdown New York. Jeremiah's blog Vanishing New York has documented the disappearance of precious city institutions from delis to newsstands to theaters. Jeremiah's photography has previously appeared in Current Affairs. The New York Times, in its review of Moss' first book, says that "He begins no thought with 'on the other hand.' For Moss there is only one hand, and it is the hand of menacing greed and self-interest." You can see why he's our kind of guy. (The Times thought he was too hard on the rich, writing that "There is a case to be made that the enormously high price of living in New York (and Boston, and San Francisco) has had a positive ripple effect.")Today Moss joins to explain what gives a city a soul and why he believes New York has lost a large piece of its own soul. He discusses what neoliberalism has done to culture and the effects of gentrification on beloved institutions. We discuss why "nostalgia" is actually healthy, why old, broken-down things can be good, and why people with money shouldn't be able to buy their way out of the inconvenience of living in a place with other people.There is nothing nostalgic about fighting to preserve the economic and cultural diversity of a city. It has more to do with the present and future than it does with the past. Right now people are being evicted from their homes and businesses. Right now the city is choking on chain stores. Do we really want a future New York with nothing but Starbucks, banks, and luxury towers, where no one but the most affluent can afford to live? It's not regressive nostalgia to worry about that. It's forward-thinking anxiety. ...  I am absolutely nostalgic about the lost city—and why not? Pete Hamill called nostalgia "far and away the most powerful of all New York feelings." But those feelings don't invalidate the facts about hyper-gentrification and its part in the long history of Elites trying to strangle the wild and progressive city. Those feelings don't change the fact that New York is being systematically reconstructed to embrace a small segment of humanity and exclude the rest.

Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs!Dennis Fritz is the author of the new book Deadly Betrayal: The Truth About Why the United States Invaded Iraq(OR Books), which dives into the historical record to understand the Bush administration's motivations for launching one of the most disastrous criminal wars of our era. It's well-known by now that the stated justifications (the search for weapons of mass destruction) were lies, because Bush officials misrepresented the available intelligence and misled the public about what the evidence said.But that raises the question: Why did they launch the war? Was it a war for oil? A war to secure our position in the Middle East? A sincere attempt to fulfill the dream of spreading democracy across the world? A war to punish Saddam Hussein's defiance? Fritz, who worked in the Pentagon during these years, has written "a detailed insider account of how a Pentagon cabal strategized to manipulate intelligence, pressure the United Nations, force a Congressional authorization for the use of force through political threats, and scare the American people after 9/11 into supporting an attack on Iraq." Ben Cohen describes the book as "a gutsy tell-all story about the bald-faced lies that led us to the disastrous invasion of Iraq.” Fritz joins us today to explain how the public was convinced to support a war of aggression, giving us lessons that are vital to learn if we are to avoid being drawn into future wars.Dennis Fritz heads the Eisenhower Media Network, an organization of ex-military officials who offer critical commentary and analysis on the military-industrial complex.

Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs!Richard Beck is a senior writer for N+1 magazine and the author of the forthcoming book Homeland: The War on Terror in American Life. His recent article "Bidenism Abroad" in the New Left Review is a vitally useful analysis of Joe Biden's record internationally. He discusses the continuities and breaks from Trump's foreign policy. He joins today to discuss what Biden and his administration have thought they were trying to do, and what they have actually done."American hegemony certainly lives on for now in Europe, where compliant nato allies continue to fall over one another in their rush to hollow out social services and buy American arms. And the us may be able to retain economic dominance in a relative sense even if it never manages to reverse the slowdown in global growth, so long as its own economic power weakens less than that of its rivals. But after Gaza, America can no longer credibly claim global ‘hegemony’ ... Biden’s support for Israel, motivated both by strategic considerations and what appears to be a real inability on his part to see Palestinians as fully human, flies in the face of both American and global public opinion. Europe may hold on to America’s coattails for a while yet, but in the rest of the world, continued American supremacy will be based primarily on coercion." - Richard Beck

Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs!Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the most influential philosophers of all time. Interestingly, thinkers on both the right and left have found inspiration in Nietzsche, and his ideas show up everywhere from the anti-democratic elitism of H.L. Mencken to the liberatory politics of the Black Panther Party. There is an ongoing debate over whether Nietzsche is best categorized as a reactionary or a champion of personal liberation. Today we are joined by Daniel Tutt, whose book How To Read Like a Parasite: Why The Left Got High on Nietzsche offers a stinging critique of Nietzsche's core philosophical ideas, while arguing that we still ought to read and engage with them. Tutt explains why people of all political stripes have been so captivated by Nietzsche, what's valuable in his philosophy, and how we should read philosophers whose social and political visions we deplore. Warning: this episode is somewhat dense with philosophical terminology and social theory, though we try to keep it as light as we can.“Nietzsche’s thought must be read as giving ideological support to a social order where both joyful affirmation and anarchic celebration are experienced at the same time as a cruel and brutal defense of rank order. This makes Nietzsche’s thought a Janus face which must be understood in its highs and lows. But we will argue that if Nietzsche’s reactionary thought is brushed over, ignored, or de-emphasized, then he performs a certain victory over the left that can and often does compromise any socialist or Marxist approach to changing the world. Moreover, his philosophy must be read as a comprehensive and esoteric strategy of reaction that has at its very center a political agenda. ” - Daniel Tutt

Get new episodes at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs!Kat Abughazaleh has watched a lot of Fox News. As an analyst for Media Matters, her job was to monitor the Fox primetime shows, producing videos documenting some of the most deranged stories to appear on the network. Somebody has to keep track of what's going on in the right's media ecosystem, and we're glad that Kat performs this valuable public service. Examples of her work include videos about Mike Huckabee's indoctrination program, the "right-wing Amazon", Tucker Carlson's post-Fox career,Conservapedia, and her weekly Fox roundups. We can laugh at the right's media, but its effects are alarming. Introducing Fox News to a market turns people more conservative and many people have disturbing stories of how their relatives have had their minds poisoned by the stream of hatred and paranoia that Fox transmits into their brains. See our Current Affairs profile of Rupert Murdoch for more.Today Kat joins to talk about how right-wing propaganda works. What is the typical story? Why is it effective? How can we fight this stuff? How is the right trying to ensure that its messages go unchallenged? Kat tells you everything you didn't know about the right's media apparatus and gives us some practical advice for how we can combat it.

Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs!Jeffrey Sachs is an economist at Columbia University and the author of the book A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism, which argues that both Democratic and Republican presidents are worsening global instability. He joins today to explain his critique of American foreign policy. First, we ask Prof. Sachs how he went from being seen as an exemplar of the U.S. intellectual establishment (the neoliberal "Dr. Shock") to one of the foremost critics of that establishment. Sachs rejects the characterization and argues that he has been consistent in applying a vision for social democracy across his career. We then turn to some of the most pressing dilemmas in the world today from the war in Ukraine to tensions with China and Prof. Sachs explains why he believes U.S. policy is worsening the prospects for global peace.Prof. Sachs' previous appearance on the program can be listened to here.Washington seems of a single mind these days: more funding for wars in Ukraine and Gaza, more armaments for Taiwan. We slouch ever closer to Armageddon. Polls show the American people overwhelmingly disapprove of U.S. foreign policy, but their opinion counts for very little. We need to shout for peace from every hilltop. The survival of our children and grandchildren depends on it. - Jeffrey Sachs

Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs!Aaron Reichlin-Melnick is the Policy Director of the American Immigration Council and a leading expert on U.S. immigration law. He has testified before Congress several times and frequently appears as a public commentator on immigration issues including recently on the Chris Hayes podcast. He joins today to explain exactly how U.S. immigration law works at its most basic level, what makes our system so cruel and dysfunctional, and what changes to enforcement by both the Trump and Biden administrations have meant for those seeking to enter the United States."As legal immigration has become increasingly inaccessible, and our asylum system increasingly backlogged, people around the world are getting the message that the only realistic way they will ever be able to come to the United States is through the southern border. Yet despite this challenge, policymakers continue to focus only on the U.S.-Mexico border itself, rather than addressing the broader problems with plague both our legal immigration system and our humanitarian protection systems. Policymakers of both parties have focused the majority of their attention on finding news way to crack down at the border, rather than making the broader fixes necessary to avoid yet another failed crackdown that may temporarily reduce arrivals but fail to solve the underlying problems." - Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, testimony to Congress

Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs!Max (just Max) is the host of Unfucking the Republic (UNFTR), one of our favorite podcasts. UNFTR publishes intensively-researched deep dives into some of the most important issues in the world. One of their most recent investigations is into Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs), an insidious cartel that has wormed its way deep into the basic structure of the American healthcare system. Today Max joins to explain what PBMs are, why they're hurting small pharmacies, and what needs to happen to curtail their influence. Nathan discusses the case of a family-owned pharmacy in his own hometown, Davidson Drugs in Siesta Key, Florida, which shut down after 65 years and blamed PBMs in part for making it impossible to continue operating.The video version of UNFTR's report is here. A written version is here. The NYT ran an article on the subject a couple of days ago as well."Most people probably haven’t heard of the term Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM). But in the healthcare industry, PBM has become a four letter word, unless, of course, you are one. In which case, you’re killing it right now. And you have been for about 20 years. PBMs aren’t anything new. In fact, they’ve been around since the 1960s. But over the last two decades, these administrative organizations have become so big and unwieldy that they drive hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue each year. Just how big have PBMs gotten in the past few years? Big enough that the three largest ones are all in the top 15 largest companies in the United States." - "Pharmacy Benefit Managers, The American Drug Cartel," UNFTR

Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs!Kyla Scanlon is a leading online economics commentator and Bloomberg contributor, who regularly publishes TikTok explainers helping people understand the economy. Her new book In This Economy?is meant to help laypeople understand the economic forces around them that are so determinative in the outcomes of our lives.Scanlon is the one who coined the term "vibecession" to describe the disjunction between certain "objective" economic indicators and people's "subjective" feelings about the economy. Some people have theorized that the public is simply being misled by negative media coverage into thinking the economy is worse than it actually is. But as she explains in this conversation, it's not so simple to disentangle the "subjective" from the "objective" in economics, and just because the "vibes" don't match the standard predictions, doesn't mean they're illegitimate or unfounded.The year 2008 was very impactful for everyone. A lot of kids (myself included) saw their caregivers battle against uncontrollable economic forces. There were job losses, home foreclosures, a decimation of household wealth; almost no one was left unscathed (except the bankers who had caused the crisis). The younger generations were furious as they witnessed a system fail in a way they couldn’t comprehend. Economic stability, job stability, financial stability—all of those were big question marks. An image of parents holding their heads in their hands at the dining room table as they tried to figure out how to pay the mortgage is seared into the minds of many. It was a systemic failure that resulted in economic inequality and social disparities, and it didn’t seem as though the consequences were there for those who had caused it. The Golden Age of Grift had begun, and the first rug had been pulled. It was a world of fraud and deceit. Around this same time, social media started to pop up. For the first time ever, everything was broadcasted to the world, and feelings became assets that could be traded for likes and retweets. - Kyla Scanlon, "In This Economy?"

Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs! Nuclear weapons are always lurking there in the background, out in remote places where we don't have to think about them, but ready to be fired at any time. Journalist Sarah Scoles was interested to find out more about the people who maintain the system of nuclear weapons. What do they do and how do they explain it to themselves? In a very real sense, they have to spend their days preparing to commit the worst imaginable genocide, should the need arise. It's eerie and disturbing to realize how quickly an unprecedented horror could take place, and how much depends on having sane and competent world leaders.Today Sarah joins to discuss her book Countdown: The Blinding Future of Nuclear Weapons and what she learned about nuclear war and the systems that make it a terrifyingly real possibility.For more on this topic, see these Current Affairs articles:Taking World War III SeriouslyWhy It's So Hard to Face the Threat Posed By Nuclear WeaponsPretending It Isn't ThereSarah's book was reviewed here in the New York Times.

Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs!Teresa Ghilarducci is an economist at the New School for Social Research and the author of Work, Retire, Repeat, which shows how the possibilities for having a comfortable and dignified retirement are slipping away.We begin with a news story about a 90-year-old veteran who was pushing shopping carts in the Louisiana heat to make ends meet. Prof. Gilarducci explains how it can be that in the richest country in he world, a person that age can still be having to work. She shows how the pension system disappeared, why Social Security isn't enough, and explains how even the concept of retirement is beginning to disappear, with many arguing that work is good for you, people should do it for longer. Prof. Ghilarducci also explains how things could be different, advocating a "Gray New Deal" to help older Americans experience the comfort and stability they deserve after decades in the labor force."Working longer is not the solution to bad retirement policy. In fact, working longer is causing an insidious problem, eroding both the quantity and the quality of older people’s years. Not only is retirement—which is precious time before death—slipping away, but also retirement time is becoming more unequal,, .The nation should not depend on people working longer to make up for inadequate retirement-income security. Doing so only exacerbates inequalities in wealth, health, well-being, and retirement time." - Teresa Ghilarducci

Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs!Radley Balko is one of America's leading journalists on policing and criminal punishment. His book The Rise of the Warrior Cop is a remarkable expose of the militarization of local police forces around the country. Recently, Radley has produced several excellent essays on the authoritarian promises of Donald Trump and those in his circles.Radley's pieces compile frightening evidence of what a 2nd Trump presidency might look like. In "Lines in the Sand," he discusses some of the possibilities like invoking the Insurrection Act, arresting or deporting critical journalists, purging the civil service of anyone who opposes him, etc. In "Trump's deportation army" he looks specifically at immigration, and what it would actually involve to fulfill Trump's stated ambition of deporting all undocumented immigrants. Whether or not this nightmare will actually come true, it is what Trump is pledging, and we should take Radley's warnings very seriously indeed. The scale of this threat is one reason why we at Current Affairs insist that no leftist could want a Trump presidency, and Trump should be taken seriously when he vows to build vast new deportation camps.Radley has also recently produced a valuable three-part series (I, II, III) that responds to those on the right who excuse the killing of George Floyd."How we react to what Trump and Miller are promising will speak volumes about who we are and how we see ourselves. Will we see the kids — the kids they want to pry from the arms of parents and stash in an abandoned warehouse or crumbling shopping mall under armed guard — as our own kids, or as someone else’s? When they rouse parents and grandparents from their homes at gunpoint, herd them onto military planes, fly them to the border, then pen them behind barbed wire, outdoors, in 110-degree heat, will we see that as an assault on our own parents, grandparents, and ancestors, or as someone else’s problem? We can’t allow these things to happen, then later pretend we didn’t know. Because they’ve told us. There are no surprises here." — Radley Balko

Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs!John Ghazvinian is the leading historian of U.S.-Iranian relations, the author of the indispensable study America and Iran: A History, 1720 to the Present. His book shows how opportunities for positive relations between the U.S. and the Iranian people have been repeatedly squandered. From installing and propping up one of the world's most abusive dictators (the Shah) to ignoring overtures from Iranian leaders interested in reducing tensions, the opportunity to be a partner rather than an adversary to Iran has been overlooked. Unfortunately, hostility is met with hostility, and Ghazvinian does not know whether the U.S. and Iran can pull themselves out of the downward spiral of relations. Ghazvinian does not defend the current Iranian regime, and is fair in criticizing Iranian failures as well as those of the U.S., but his book presents Americans with crucial facts about their government's policies (from U.S. support for Saddam Hussein's chemical attacks on Iran to the rebuffing of Iranian attempts to cooperate) that should unsettle anyone who sees Iran simplistically as an irrational rogue state, or part of an "axis of evil."“This myopic understanding of Iran carries over into the foreign policy arena as well. Today, every time Iran refuses to be dictated to, or attempts to protect its national interests, a chorus of U.S. congressmen, media pundits, and ideological opponents of the Islamic Republic portray it as “defiant.” Every time Iran shows flexibility or a willingness to compromise, it is accused of “stalling tactics” or “trying to divide the international community.” And anyone who tries to point out that Iran might have legitimate security concerns, or that it is behaving as a rational state actor, is smeared as an “apologist” for the Islamic Republic and is excluded from a say in decision-making. This points to a larger problem: the United States in recent years has painted itself into a corner in which the only acceptable response from Iran, ever, is complete and unconditional capitulation." - John Ghazvinian, America and Iran