Current Affairs

🦩 This episode originally aired on February 26, 2025. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs!

Sam Seder and Emma Vigeland of The Majority Report have spent years tracking the rise of the far right, the decay of liberal institutions, and the Democratic Party's refusal to meet the moment. They join Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson to talk about what Trump and the conservative movement are really planning, why most Democrats still don’t understand the threat, and how the left can actually fight back.

“If you're looking for fraud and waste, everyone knows you start where the most fraud and waste is already on record—and that’s the Defense Department, which has failed seven, maybe eight audits over the past few decades. It has the biggest budget by far. If this were a genuine attempt to root out fraud and waste, you’d start there." —Sam Seder

🦩 This episode originally aired on March 18, 2025. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs!

Peter Beinart is one of the most important Jewish intellectuals writing about Israel today. A professor, journalist, and former liberal Zionist, Beinart has undergone a profound personal and political transformation over the course of his career. In this episode, he joins Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson to discuss his new book Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning. Together, they explore the religious, political, and moral narratives that have shaped Jewish identity in relation to Zionism, and why Beinart now believes that Jewish safety cannot be built on Palestinian dispossession.

“There’s a fundamental flaw in thinking that you can make yourself safe by making the people who live next door to you radically unsafe.” —Peter Beinart

🦩 This episode originally aired on March 5, 2025. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs!

Dr. Cornel West is one of the most electric and morally serious voices in American public life. A philosopher, theologian, activist, and jazzman of the intellect, West fuses the prophetic traditions of Black Christianity with a ferocious critique of capitalism, empire, and nihilism. His books—from Race Matters to Democracy Matters to The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought—confront the spiritual decay of our age with love, courage, and uncompromising honesty. Dr. West joins Current Affairs to reflect on the collapse of civic virtue in the American empire, the nihilistic impulse at the core of Trumpism, and the moral cowardice of our ruling elites. He challenges us to resist both neofascism and neoliberalism not with smugness or cynicism, but with a blues-soaked spirituality rooted in historical memory and genuine care for the most vulnerable.

“The blues is about wrestling with catastrophe but never allowing catastrophe to have the last word, because we have a love and a courage and a joy inside of us that can never be taken away.” —Dr. Cornel West

🦩 This episode originally aired on March 14, 2025. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs!

Francesca Fiorentini is a comedian, journalist, and host of The Bitchuation Room. She joins Nathan to discuss her viral showdowns on Piers Morgan Uncensored, why compromising with the right is a losing strategy, and why the left-wing resistance should be bold and aggressive—but also fun.

0:00–12:32 Piers Morgan

12:32-22:27 Why we can't meet the right halfway

22:27-25:57 James Carville and the liberal resistance

25:57-29:19 Luigi Mangione

29:19-35:31 The class war is on

35:31-38:22 Does the Democratic Party have what it takes?

38:22-41:16 We have to get money out of politics

41:16-44:24 The resistance should be fun

This episode originally aired on February 10, 2025. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs!

Eric Blanc is the author of We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big, which covers the recent wave of unionization drives in America and summarizes the lessons we can learn from them. Eric shows that today's new unions have succeeded against incredible odds through bottom-up organizing: the workers themselves decide to organize a union, rather than existing large unions launching campaigns. Eric argues that we can learn from what baristas and Amazon workers and media workers have been doing, and that there is a substantial possibility of reversing the ongoing decline in unionization rates. His book is a vital toolkit for those seeking to transform their workplaces and the world, and he joins to day to give us clear, concrete lessons that he gleaned from hundreds of interviews with union members around America.

"Courageous shop-floor organizers have dared to take on corporate behemoths, from Amazon to Starbucks to Volkswagen. Waves of unionization have begun to spread across multiple industries, including higher education, journalism, food service, auto, social services, retail, tech, and museums, as well as nonprofits. And not only are workers fighting back—they’re winning. Despite widespread assumptions among labor leaders and pundits that lightly-staffed organizing can’t compel employers to collectively bargain, workers have won first contracts in a wide range of industries and companies, including at deep-pocketed chains like Apple. Grassroots workplace fightbacks have also wrested major concessions for millions more workers. No less importantly, these struggles have empowered and transformed their protagonists. In a society where people are conditioned to quietly obey bosses—and at a moment in history marked by pervasive hopelessness—joining together with your coworkers to fight back can be an ecstatic, liberating experience." — Eric Blanc, We Are The Union

This episode originally aired on February 6, 2025. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs!

Dr. Genevieve Guenther, the founding director of End Climate Silence, thinks a lot about one of the most important questions of our time: How we can combat climate change denial and actually bring about the transformations to our energy systems that will halt runaway climate catastrophe. She has written a book, The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It, that looks at how climate change is discussed in the media and how we can talk about it more effectively in ways that actually show people what the problem is and give them actionable solutions to fight for. She stresses the importance of avoiding "doomerism" and maintaining hope through action. She joins us today for a NON-doomerist conversation on the present state of the climate movement and what we should be doing right now.

"It's so hard to think about the future in America right now, and that's in part because the future is going to be a future with climate change in it. And either the future is going to involve resolving the climate crisis and creating a new system and a new form of human flourishing, or it's going to be death by a thousand cuts. [So] when you start thinking about this stuff, if you start to have feelings of grief or terror or depression or hopelessness, just know that that comes with the territory. It's normal. You're not the only one. But it doesn't mean that it's hopeless. You're taking on these feelings because you have courage. It's a sign of your bravery. But don't think about the stuff you can't control. Don't think about the scientific impacts that feel overwhelming or somehow too scary and depressing to deal with. Take your attention and focus it on the people who are preventing us from halting the climate crisis." — Genevieve Guenther

This episode originally aired on February 3, 2025. Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs!

Rob Larson is Current Affairs' In-House Economist. He is also the author of Mastering the Universe: The Obscene Wealth of the Ruling Class, What They Do with Their Money, and Why You Should Hate Them Even More. Rob covers the grotesque contrast between the lives of the rich and poor in this country, and the outsized power that the super-rich have over our lives. He shows how our country's wealth is squandered and outlines strategies for ending the plutocracy.

Rob and Nathan's article on the Wall Street Journal's Mansion section is here. This interview pairs well with Michael Mechanic's episode about his book Jackpot.

This book is not just for ogling the velvet lives of the ruling class, although there’s plenty of room for that. It’s about taking the rich out of the cockpit of society and putting a democratic system in their place. Because beyond their multiple gigantic homes and private jet miles, the control of the ruling class over the rest of us is pretty stunning, not to mention utterly grossly undeserved... To achieve anything, important labor and environmental movements require a good understanding of what’s going on—including the shifting strategies of the owning class and their corporate property. The point of this book is not just to study the rich, but to learn their vulnerabilities, and to help build the growing movements that could put some limits back on the power of the ruling class that owns our economy and runs the government. — Rob Larson, Mastering the Universe

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 went on The Joe Rogan Experience to debate Hancock and show why Atlantis isn't real. He may not have succeeded in convincing either Rogan or Hancock to accept the findings of mainstream archaeology, but he did very effectively present the case for real science over crankery.

Today, Flint Dibble joins to explain how ordinary people can avoid being taken in by pseudo-experts and why real science is so much more interesting and powerful than pseudoscience. He situates the war over Atlantis within the greater context of the doubt that people like Rogan have that mainstream expertise on a subject can ever be trusted, which leads to the embracing of many beliefs that are dangerous and faulty. But in a world filled with charlatans, how do you know who is telling the truth? Flint tells us what archaeologists really do so that we can think critically when confronted with wild claims by people who insist that all of the experts are covering up the truth.

Nathan's article on Joe Rogan and Atlantis is here.

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 to discuss why Medicare For All is still the #1 best way we can improve people's healthcare. He responds to common objections, and Nathan challenges him with quotes from the author of the book The False Promise of Single-Payer Healthcare. Adam shows why the objections are silly and we need to build a consensus around the necessity of a single-payer plan.