Current Affairs
A podcast of politics and culture, from the editors of Current Affairs magazine.
- Update frequency
- every 3 days
- Average duration
- 42 minutes
- Episodes
- 600
- Years Active
- 2018 - 2025
A McKinsey Whistleblower on Life Inside The Secretive Consulting Firm
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…
How Big Pharma Makes a Killing From Letting People Die (w/ Nick Dearden)
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Nick Dearden's Pharmanomics is an essential primer on how the pharmaceutical industry works, taking a tour across the globe to explain clearly wh…
What Makes For a "Strong Town"? (w/ Allison Lirish Dean)
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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 editio…
How White Supremacist Ideology Made Its Way Into Music Theory (w/ Philip Ewell)
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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 (Univers…
Gary Younge's 30-Year Panorama of the African Diaspora
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 Di…
Why The Cop City Indictment Threatens Everyone's Freedom (w/ Christopher Bruce)
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Originally aired 9/19/2023
Dozens of protesters in Atlanta have recently been hit with serious charges, including domestic terrorism and racketeer…
Why We Need Utopias (w/ Kristen Ghodsee)
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Kristen Ghodsee is Professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of books like Why Women Have B…
ZINNOPHOBIA - Why So Many Still Fear "A People's History of the United States" (w/ David Detmer)
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David Detmer is the author of the book Zinnophobia: The Battle Over History in Education, Politics, and Scholarship. David's book was published f…
Why Do We Have Any Poverty In America When It's Such a Solvable Problem? (w/ Matt Desmond)
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Matthew Desmond's bestselling book Poverty, By America poses a straightforward question: Why is there any poverty at all in such a wealthy countr…
Mini-Cast: Ending Period Poverty Through the "Menstrual Equity for All" Act (w/ Grace Meng)
"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 Distri…
There Is No Alternative to Ending Fossil Fuel Use (w/ Lorne Stockman)
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Lorne Stockman is the research co-director at Oil Change International, which is dedicated to exposing the harms caused by fossil fuel use and ad…
Why "Climate Optimism" Is Irrational and What Global Climate Justice Requires (w/ Jag Bhalla)
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Jag Bhalla is a contributor to Current Affairs who has also written for Scientific American and Big Think. His pieces for our magazine have frequ…
Is Being "Moderate" Actually How Democrats Win? (w/ Alex Bronzini-Vender)
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Alex Bronzini-Vender has contributed several articles to Current Affairs, about progressive politics in the U.S. today. In his first, "Progressiv…
The Many Layers of Injustice in American Criminal Punishment (w/ Stephen Bright & James Kwak)
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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 o…
Can The Concept of "Philanthropy" Be Saved? (w/ Amy Schiller)
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 cr…
What Would It Take To Have a Democracy? (w/ Thom Hartmann)
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…
How Did the Idea of Being "Self-Made" Come About? (w/ Tara Isabella Burton)
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. …
Our Plan to Make It Actually Enjoyable to Read The News
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 thr…
The Role of Drugs in American Life (w/ Benjamin Fong)
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 Cen…
The History of Arab-Jews Can Change Our Understanding of The World (w/ Avi Shlaim)
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 Isra…