“It’s not that hard to let yourself be led by something that doesn’t match up with your morals, when you’re desperate.” — Jennifer DinesJennifer Dines is a Boston-based schoolteacher, poet, and essayist who has written an article for Current Affairs called "The Quit-Lit Pseudoscience and Faulty Feminism of Women’s Sobriety Memoirs," which critiques the bestselling books targeted at women recovering from alcoholism. In her piece, Dines shows how these books often try to sell women on expensive courses so they can "buy their way to health," disparaging free alternatives like Alcoholics Anonymous in favor of unrealistically expensive lifestyle changes (e.g. yoga retreats).Dines also discusses how these books use the language of social justice to try to convince readers that their own self-care (and their purchase of the authors' products) advances broader feminist goals. In this conversation, we discuss how difficult it is to get accurate information and receive quality healthcare, and how hard it is for desperate people to tell quacks like Dr. Oz from those who truly have their best interests at heart."[T]op-selling books are not rigorously fact checked (a serious problem in the world of nonfiction books), and authors often mix discussions of legitimate science with quackery or unproven practices, which is outright dangerous for the non-discerning reader. Authors in this genre also tend to appropriate the language of social justice (rallying against capitalism, patriarchy, and so forth) to make readers think that tackling their alcohol problems (or doing self-care) equates to a larger project of social change. These writers cleverly create a trail of breadcrumbs that leads vulnerable readers to programs such as expensive online courses and coaching services and related products and services, many of which are offered by the authors themselves. Aspirational big-money lifestyles are highlighted while effective programs like Alcoholics Anonymous are trashed. Most dangerous of all, this consumptive approach to alcohol dependency treatment makes products a substitute for healthcare from a qualified mental health professional." — Jennifer DinesThe books Jennifer does recommend are The Recovering by Leslie Jamison and How to Murder Your Life by Cat Marnell. Lily refers to an article by Nathan about COVID-19, which can be found here. Lily’s own writing about bad healthcare is here.Subscribe to Current Affairs on Patreon to unlock all of our bonus episodes and get early access to new releases.

Thomas Geoghegan is a labor lawyer and writer whose latest book is The History of Democracy Has Yet To Be Written: How We Have to Learn to Govern All Over Again. MSNBC's Chris Hayes says of the book: "This book made me laugh out loud and also gave me glimpses of an entire horizon of possibility I hadn't seen before.” Indeed, while Tom's book examines the hopeless dysfunction of our political system (including amusingly describing his own effort to run for Congress), it's also a look at how we could make a much, much better system of government if we were committed to getting rid of the filibuster, making voting mandatory, restructuring congress, and passing the PRO Act. Even though we often assume that we stand on the cusp of an authoritarian end to democracy, we actually have within our grasp the possibility of making it far more stable and having a Congress that actually represents the people of the country. Today, Tom joins to discuss his book, telling us what it's like to run for Congress in Chicago in a freezing winter (not fun) and why democracy depends on making the labor movement flourish again."The labor movement is necessary to pull people into the political process. If it's the right kind of labor movement, it's going to have the goal of all true republican government: to help people govern themselves, to increase people's capacity to be citizens, to increase people's capacity to rule and take responsibility for all aspects of their lives." — Tom GeogheganSubscribe to Current Affairs on Patreon to unlock all of our bonus episodes and get early access to new releases.

“There’s an old adage ‘He who forgets history is condemned to repeat it.’ But what’s missing in that phrase is that there are the people who are in charge of keeping your history. And they can make you forget it. They can keep it from you. And then you’re doomed to repeat something that they want you to repeat.” — Samuel JamesSamuel James is a musician and storyteller from Portland, Maine, who specializes in blues and roots music. Samuel has a deep knowledge of American musical history and recently wrote a column in the Mainer magazine about the origins of the phrase “stay woke,” first heard on a Lead Belly record about the Scottsboro Boys. He shows that when we see attacks on “wokeness” like Ron DeSantis’ “Stop WOKE Act,” we should remember that it’s “an old, Black phrase being weaponized against the very people who created it.”Today, Samuel joins to explain how listening to the words of early 20th century Black songs provides critical context for understanding America today. From commentary on the prison system in the words of “Midnight Special” to Mississippi John Hurt’s unique twist on the “John Henry” legend, Samuel James offers a course in how to listen closely to appreciate both the rich diversity of the music lumped together as folk blues, and how to hear the warnings that the early singers passed down to Black Americans today. It’s a very special hour featuring some of the greatest music ever written, played live by one of its most talented contemporary interpreters.Nathan’s article on Charles Murray is here, and one on Joe Rogan is here. A Current Affairs article about John Henry songs is here. Beyond Mississippi John Hurt and Lead Belly, artists mentioned by Samuel James include Gus Cannon, the Mississippi Sheiks, Charley Patton, Skip James, and Furry Lewis. More information about the St. Louis chemical spraying is here. Follow Samuel James on Twitter here. His 99 Years podcast is here. Nathan mentions the “Voyager Golden Record” that went into space, which did in fact include a classic blues song.“This is the hammer that killed John HenryBut it won't kill me, but it won't kill me, but it won't kill me”— Mississippi John HurtNOTE: The n-word is heard several times in this episode, spoken by Samuel James, and in recordings by Lead Belly and Ice Cube.Subscribe to Current Affairs on Patreon to unlock all of our bonus episodes and get early access to new releases.

One of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, FTX, recently imploded spectacularly. Its CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, had been called "the next Warren Buffett" and was a Democratic megadonor as well as a major funder of the "Effective Altruism" movement. Overnight, Bankman-Fried saw his fortune and his company wiped out, and he is now under criminal investigation. To explain what happened, and why we keep seeing spectacular frauds in the crypto industry, we are joined today by Stephen Diehl, a longtime critic of crypto who has been warning for years that crypto assets can suddenly implode and that unregulated crypto exchanges like FTX are a terrible place to keep your money. Diehl is the co-author of the new book Popping the Crypto Bubble, an accessible explanation of how cryptocurrency works and why it's a terrible idea. He and his co-authors show how the history of financial bubbles and manias helps us understand crypto-hype today. In this episode, Stephen discusses the credulity that allows con artists like Bankman-Fried to flourish in the crypto industry, and that dupes supposedly savvy investors into believing in the digital equivalent of magic beans. We also discuss the complicity of financial journalists in promoting con artists as altruistic geniuses who can be entrusted with one's retirement savings. "To anyone who does due diligence, this thing [FTX] is papered in red flags. It’s a Bahamanian shell company set up in the least regulated environment on the planet, with no board of directors, no governance, completely opaque financials set up by a 28-year-old and apparently staffed by 17 kids all living in a frat house in the Bahamas. But the investors in this thing were some of the most sophisticated funds on the planet! … Apparently none of them did any due diligence on this thing." — Stephen DiehlThe FTX Super Bowl commercial with Larry David is here. The Bloomberg interview in which Bankman-Fried seemingly admits he is “in the Ponzi business” is here. For more on the subject, read our interviews with Molly White and Nicholas Weaver, or read "Why Cryptocurrency is a Giant Fraud." A delightful 1901 illustration of financial speculators being tormented in Hell can be viewed here.

Shon Faye is the author of the book The Transgender Issue: Trans Justice is Justice For All, available from Verso. The title of the book is meant slightly ironically, because part of Faye's argument is directed against talking about a "transgender issue" in the first place. Faye's book is a manifesto for a specifically socialist form of trans liberation, which she contrasts with the politics of liberal inclusion, which is often "inclusion within deeply unequal at best and at worse quite oppressive systems." Faye argues that the things that make trans people's lives difficult (lack of housing and healthcare, incarceration) often oppress others as well and that we do not just need representation/diversity at the top but a caring society in which everyone has what they need. Faye prefers the language of "liberation" over "rights" and "equality" (though rights and equality are important), and argues that "the liberation of trans people would benefit the lives of everyone in our society." In this conversation, we discuss Faye's ideas as well as the difference between US and UK feminism's approaches to trans issues, how the right has tried to push a moral panic around one of the most marginalized groups of people, and what it really means to live in a "cisnormative society." We also discuss the British tabloid press, the BBC, the limits of debate, and "the Harry Potter Lady." “You tell people at JP Morgan to put ‘nonbinary’ on the job application form. Sure, that’s great. Who is applying for jobs at JP Morgan? College graduates who are white, middle-class, rich. This idea of liberal trans inclusion favors a certain kind of trans person on the grounds of class, ethnicity, citizenship. So for me it’s not a liberation movement if it’s only including really small echelons of an already-tiny community.” — Shon FayeThe Current Affairs article "Inclusion in the Atrocious" offers further discussion of the point about inclusion within inherently unjust institutions. We also have articles about both Matt Walsh and the "Harry Potter Lady." The U.S. politicians Shon mentions are Sarah McBride and Danica Roem. The internal clash in the Guardian can be seen here. 

Lyle Jeremy Rubin is a veteran of the U.S. Marines who served in Afghanistan. He is the author of the new memoir Pain is Weakness Leaving the Body: A Marine’s Unbecoming, which documents his evolution from a Young Republican patriot into a socialist critic of U.S. empire through direct exposure to the front-line realities of the U.S. “war on terror.” He shows how the “politics of overcompensation” convinces young men who want to feel secure and masculine to submit to oppressive hierarchical systems and is astute in showing the connection between toxic masculinity and U.S. foreign policy.“At the time I told myself there were purely rational intellectual reasons for why I was being drawn to these certain types of politics but in retrospect I think it’s clear that there was a deeper need to no longer feel defenseless, to feel strong, to feel secure … While I was talking to my friends and family members and others about this kind of neoconservative vision of humanitarian intervention, it was clear when I was being honest with myself that I wasn’t all that dissimilar to a lot of my comrades-in-arms who just wanted to see action and feel like a man.” — Lyle Jeremy RubinShorter writings from Lyle on some of the subjects discussed in the book can be found in The Guardian and The Nation. (He has also written for Current Affairs.) The books Lyle mentions are Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America by Kathleen Belew and Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump by Spencer Ackerman. The song is, of course, the Bush-era classic “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue” by Toby Keith.This interview pairs well with our recent interviews with W.D. Ehrhart (about Vietnam), Yasmin Nair (about Western views of Afghanistan), Craig Whitlock (about the Afghanistan war), and Chris Hedges (about war in general).“If you’re an occupying power, there’s no way you can really win the hearts and minds of the people. You are by definition a force of domination, an oppressive force. You’re an outsider force that is doing things without the express permission of the people there and the people themselves in one way or another have to submit to whatever your whim at any given moment is. ... The counterinsurgency ideal itself is an impossible ideal. This quickly becomes clear to front line troops. … Violence is guaranteed and required to ensure the maintenance of an occupying regime no matter how culturally sensitive it is.” — Lyle Jeremy Rubin

Nomi Prins is one of the country's leading financial journalists, who has gone from working on Wall Street to exposing the inner workings of the economy and how it is rigged in favor of the powerful. Her books include Other People's Money: The Corporate Mugging of America, Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World, and most recently Permanent Distortion: How Financial Markets Abandoned the Real Economy Forever. Today Nomi joins Nathan to explain how the financial markets and the "real economy" became so disconnected and why the actions of central banks make such a difference to our lives. She also talks about the real causes of inflation and what we need to do to avoid a future of unending economic and political crises. Last week we only released one episode instead of two, so this week we're putting out three to make up for it. 

McKinsey & Co. is the world's leading consulting company. But it also does a lot of work that's, well, pretty downright sinister, and it's very secretive about that work. But in the new book When McKinsey Comes To Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm,Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe of the New York Times expose the hidden hand of McKinsey across the world. McKinsey has assisted opioid manufacturers, tobacco companies, fossil fuel companies, ICE, and authoritarian governments, and in each case has covered up its footprints. Bogdanich and Forsythe show that the firm often advises both the companies that create problems and the governments that are trying to solve them, "playing both sides" and making a tidy sum in the process. In this episode we discuss how McKinsey recruits young elites with promises of doing socially useful work but then tells them that their job is "execution, not policy," meaning that they aren't to question the underlying values of the institutions they're consulting for. This has helped them justify working for the shadiest of shady clients. And even when McKinsey consults for companies that aren't wrecking the earth or killing their customers, it often advises them on how to maximize profits in ways that do real harm. Again and again, McKinsey has come to town and left people worse off. Bogdanich and Forsythe show that many of the worst problems we face today have had McKinsey's hand in them—but of course, McKinsey stands to profit handsomely from advising governments on how to fix those problems. A Current Affairs article about McKinsey by a former McKinsey consultant is here. The New York Times reporting on the hospital that McKinsey advised to juice profits by stealing from sick poor people is here, and was written up in Current Affairs here. An article that partly discusses McKinsey’s role in the opioid crisis appears in the September-October print issue of Current Affairs. Nathan's article about famous ex-McKinseyite Pete Buttigieg is here and some speculation about what Pete did at the firm is here. “They advise almost all of the pharmaceutical companies around the world, making tens of millions of dollars in profits, at the same time as they also advise the Food and Drug Administration that is supposed to be regulating them.” — Walt Bogdanich “Yes, they do a lot of laughable things and silly PowerPoint slides that don’t really tell you anything, but they also do things that really make a difference, and sometimes a very malign difference." — Michael Forsythe

The editorial team of Current Affairs is fascinated by the online learning platform MasterClass, on which A-list celebrities offer “classes” that are sometimes very cool but frequently of dubious educational value. We have previously taken and discussed the MasterClasses of Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton. (We have not yet mustered the fortitude to sit through the Leadership Lessons From George W. Bush MasterClass.) Today we take and discuss the class offered by longtime Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, who offers an introduction to the fashion world and lessons on "How To Be A Boss." We talk about the economic structure of the fashion industry, how fashion is made into something exclusive rather than universal, and the mountain of cruelty (to both people and animals) that sustain this bizarre self-contained world. We are particularly interested in the inner workings of Vogue because it’s a such an entirely different part of the magazine industry to the world of Current Affairs. So enjoy as Yasmin, Lily, and Nathan discuss how you, too, can become a famous fashion mogul.Read “The Socialist Case for Fashion” in Current Affairs here. The documentary about Wintour and Vogue, The September Issue, can be watched here. The “cerulean” scene of The Devil Wears Prada is here.

Chris Hedges, who appeared on this program a few months back after the publication of his book Our Class, returns to discuss his powerful new book The Greatest Evil is War, which shows the true face of war and exposes the propagandistic narratives that help to sustain and escalate wars. Hedges, a veteran war correspondent, shows us the people who actually do the fighting and the dying, from those maimed and traumatized for life to those who must collect the corpses from the battlefield. He shows how every war is presented by each side as a battle of the forces of light against the forces of darkness, and why the real story is almost always much more complicated. He shows how the darkest facts of war are kept from public view, and instead the population is presented with an image of war as something heroic and exciting. He shows how war memorials and the media get us to "admire the despicable beauty of weapons systems without seeing what they do to human bodies," and explains how those who benefit from continued conflict contribute to sustaining it. Hedges warns that history shows us that those who think they can keep wars from spiraling out of control are often deluding themselves, and policy-makers who think themselves rational have often led their countries into catastrophic and suicidally destructive conflicts. Hedges' TomDispatch piece about writing on war is here. Tomas Young's letter can be read here. Hedges refers to Johnny Got His Gun and the preface to Edward Said's Orientalism. Nathan's review of The Greatest Evil is War is here. The news story about the Congressional Progressive Caucus' letter is here. Apologies for the delayed release of this episode. CA staff are busy trying to finish up the new print issue, which will be out within days! Also Nathan still isn't quite over COVID.