Current Affairs

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and the author of many bestselling nonfiction books. He began his career as a war correspondent, and was a reporter for the New York Times for fifteen years, reporting from over 50 countries. He has written books on religion, culture, poverty, and war. For the last ten years, Hedges has been teaching a class in a New Jersey state prison. His latest book, Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in An American Prison, is about his experiences as an educator among the incarcerated. It is a searing indictment of the way the humanity of prisoners is denied, but it is also a moving testament to the way that culture and curiosity can flourish even in conditions of extreme deprivation. Hedges' class, all of whom were serious offenders, studied drama and wrote a play together. His book chronicles the development of that play, Caged, which was eventually performed to sold-out audiences in Trenton. In this episode, we discuss both Hedges' time reporting on war and his experiences as an educator in prisons. There are connections here: both the battlefield and the prisons are places of terrible human deprivation and suffering—suffering that is imposed by violent institutions based on stories about why it is justified and necessary. Hedges has dedicated his journalistic career to going to the places that most people prefer not to go, seeing the things we prefer not to see, and forcing us to confront them. We talk about:- The petty cruelties of prison officials and the thirst for knowledge among the incarcerated- How evil institutions are created by perfectly normal people who think they are doing good- How those we think of as killers and criminals, whether in battle or in the criminal punishment system, are often more similar to ourselves than we might like to admit- How even in a seemingly morally simple case, World War II (the "good war"), America' s actions were more morally ambiguous than it is comfortable to think about- How the realities of violence and suffering are kept carefully hidden from a population that  would rather not question simple stories about who the world's evildoers areOur Class is available from Simon & Schuster. War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning is available from PublicAffairs. Caged is available from Haymarket Books. 

Megan Tobias Neely is a sociologist whose book Hedged Out: Inequality and Insecurity on Wall Street takes a deep look inside the world of hedge funds, those small boutique investment banks that play with a sizable chunk of the world's wealth. Neely's book draws on her observations from time working in a hedge fund as well as from dozens of interviews with professionals in the industry. In this conversation, we discuss:- How hedge fund managers justify their value to society and why there are reasons to doubt them- The internal culture of firms and how they resemble feudal kingdoms- Popular myths, such as the idea that the "only thing that matters is whether you make money for investors" and "the firm is horizontal and non-hierarchical" - How people with degrees in astrophysics and artificial intelligence find themselves using their skills to make money for rich people rather than doing what they love- How super-wealthy men convince themselves that their decisions are based on objective reason when they are often based in stereotypes and prejudice- How a savvy actor with access to capital can actually take advantage of these blind spots through "perception arbitrage"The Bloomberg article by Matt Levine that Nathan cites is here. The review of Ray Dalio's Principles is here. 

Phil Torres is a scholar of "global catastrophic risk," meaning that he studies the various ways in which terrible things could happen to humanity: nuclear war, global warming, asteroids, killer robots, pandemics, etc. His books include The End: What Science and Religion Tell Us About the Apocalypse and Morality, Foresight, and Human Flourishing: An Introduction to Existential Risks. Both are available free on his website. His upcoming book is Human Extinction: A History of Thinking About the End of the World.On today's episode, Phil joins to talk about how we can think rationally about the risks we face as a species, and figure out what to prioritize. Over the last decade or so, many more scholars have turned to thinking seriously about global catastrophic risks, trying to determine what threats we need to address. As Phil discusses, it's in many ways a good thing that more people are taking catastrophe seriously. As we can see from the COVID-19 pandemic, often we overlook these things until it's too late, and failures of preparation lead to millions of avoidable deaths.But Phil has also become critical of some of the popular ways of thinking about "existential risk." Institutions like the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford and the Center for the Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge have sprung up, and and many in Silicon Valley have started taking an interest in these questions. Certain tendencies associated with the "rationalist" or "effective altruist" movements claim to be interested in "existential risk," but Phil argues that they end up drifting into a kind of techno-utopianism rather than thinking seriously about how to stop the real harms that we face in the near future. Phil has argued, including in an article for Current Affairs, that while you may often hear people like Elon Musk talking about "existential risks to humanity" and about our "long term future," when you closely examine what they mean by this, it turns out to be a bizarre and dangerous secular theology. Phil, who was previously aligned with the effective altruist and rationalist movements himself, has become stingingly critical of those he sees as misusing rationalism and thereby taking the study of catastrophe in a deeply concerning direction. (He wrote a popular article last year for Salon about the New Atheists, in which he documented the ways in which many of them present right-wing prejudices as mere "reason.")In this conversation, Phil explains why he became interested in "global catastrophic risk," how he came to reject some of the mainstream approaches to studying it, and what he thinks the most important threats facing humanity are. There could not be a more important subject, and Phil Torres is one of its most serious and reflective scholars.The song at the beginning is "I Wish We'd All Been Ready" from the 1972 Evangelical Christian horror film A Thief In The Night (about which you can read a Current Affairs article here.) Edited by Tim Gray. 

George Monbiot has been working on issues of climate and environmental justice for three decades. A columnist for The Guardian, George's books include Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning, Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis and How Did We Get into This Mess? Politics, Equality, Nature. His latest essay collection This Can't Be Happening "calls on humanity to stop averting its gaze from the destruction of the living planet, and wake up to the greatest predicament we have ever faced." As a public communicator on climate change, George has experienced deep frustration in trying to convey the urgency of the crisis to a media and and political establishment that refuse to confront reality or accept the need for drastic changes to the status quo. That frustration was captured well, he says, by the recent Netflix satire Don't Look Up, which is about scientists who are unable to convey the importance of stopping a planet-destroying comet from crashing into Earth. In fact, the film is such an accurate allegory for the climate crisis that one scene in directly parallels a recent incident in his own life: the scientist played by Jennifer Lawrence, trying to get the hosts of a celebrity-obsessed TV morning show to take the problem seriously, breaks down in frustration. George has been on a very similar morning show himself to discuss climate change, with very similar results. Watching Don't Look Up, George writes in a column for The Guardian, "made me see my whole life of campaigning flash before me." On today's episode, George joins Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson for a discussion of why it's so difficult for climate scientists and activists to get their message across, and what we need to face up to when it comes to the climate crisis. George's work is not hopeless or apocalyptic, and is built around solutions and the determination to work for a better world. But to reach that world, we need to first look up, and start talking and behaving differently, demanding a political response that is proportionate to the magnitude of the problem. We can deal with this crisis but it requires willpower and focus. 

We live in an age where economic success can depend a lot more on hype and branding than offering actual useful things that help people. Occasionally, we see extreme examples of fakers and frauds, like Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos and Billy McFarland of the Fyre Festival. But those are the few that have seen their lies exposed and their careers come crashing down. There are others, like Tesla's Elon Musk, WeWork's Adam Neumann, and America's Donald Trump, who have reaped riches beyond comprehension by bullshitting and betraying people. Today on the podcast, journalist and attorney Gabrielle Bluestone joins to discuss how con artists get away with it, and the way scammers succeed in getting people to believe in images that depart completely from reality. Gabrielle is the author of Hype: How Scammers, Grifters, and Con Artists Are Taking Over The Internet and Why We're Following. She also produced the Netflix documentary FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened. Gabrielle's work exposes the ways that con artists take advantage of people's desire for status and fulfillment, in particular the pernicious and fictitious content produced by social media "influencers." In this interview we discuss:- How much of what appears on social media is fake or secretly being paid for by someone- How little meaningful accountability there is for those who rip others off, how Americans are oddly unsympathetic to the victims of scammers and sometimes even seem to root for the grifter- The empty lives of full-time influencers, who must constantly be striving to sell their personal brands and maintain their followings- How the world of cryptocurrency and "NFTs" has taken all of this to new extremes- Why we could all stand to become a little more cynical and think more critically about the ways we might be being taken advantage of. If a product has 5-star reviews, are they real? If someone posts a picture of themselves on a private jet, are they really on one, or are they in a rented photo studio designed to look like the inside of a private jet? Gabrielle reminds us that online, almost nothing can be trusted to be what it seems.

Maureen Farrell is a business reporter with the New York Times and co-author of the book The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion, which documents one of the most bizarre stories in 21st century capitalism: the staggering rise (and subsequent collapse) of WeWork, an office space rental company that presented itself as a game-changing "technology company" that was going to revolutionize the world and change the way humans interacted with each other. Led by a strangely charismatic founder, Adam Neumann, who had sought his fortune in the baby clothes industry before pivoting to real estate, the company ascended to stunning heights, attracting investment from some of the most sophisticated capitalists in the world. Neumann successfully convinced legions of followers that WeWork was offering more than just co-working spaces, and developed what Farrell and co-author Eliot Brown call "the cult of We," infusing  the company's culture with quasi-religious belief in a destiny to change the world and earn a trillion dollars.But it was a house of cards, and it eventually came tumbling down. When WeWork attempted to go public, it came under heavy scrutiny and Neumann's grandiose claims and messianic vision were widely mocked. And yet: Neumann himself came out of the situation rather well, showing that in the 21st century U.S. economy, failure can be incredibly lucrative.In this lively conversation about a fascinating story, Farrell and Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson discuss:- How Neumann, despite being manifestly full of shit, managed to charm seemingly everyone who met him (and got them to ignore such personal idiosyncrasies as his habit of being drunk at work) - How WeWork successfully branded itself as a "technology company" when it was, in fact, quite obviously a real estate company- How the company evaded scrutiny and managed to hoodwink so many supposedly smart investors for so long- Why Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos is going to prison while Adam Neumann, who in many ways was similarly misleading, is still a multi-millionaire who is now going back into the very industry he failed in- How the WeWork story illuminates broader trends in contemporary capitalism, namely the ability to pass off grandiose and delusional visions as viable companies - How the stories of Adam Neumann and Donald Trump both show that there is no justice in the worldFor more on WeWork, check out Current Affairs editor-at-large Yasmin Nair's article on it.  

The International Criminal Court in the Hague is the place where war criminals are supposed to be tried and punished. It embodies a vision of global justice in which war crimes are universally forbidden, intended to carry forward humanitarian principles. But so far, the court has only completed a handful of trials, and it has been heavily criticized for focusing on crimes committed in Africa while ignoring Western atrocities. Yet the court has only existed since 2002, and many hold hope that it can someday be an institution that ensures victims of atrocities around the world receive justice. To better understand the court's operations, we are joined by ICC expert Richard Gaskins, Professor of Law and Social Welfare at Brandeis University and author of the book The Congo Trials in The International Criminal Court, available from Cambridge University Press.  Having closely watched and studied the ICC's first complete trials, Prof. Gaskins speaks to Current Affairs editor in chief Nathan J. Robinson about what the court has managed to accomplish so far, what its limitations are, and how close it is to achieving its mission of being a place where war criminals from around the world are held to account. Incidentally, reviews of the ICC on Google are decidedly mixed:

Michael Hiltzik is a Pulitzer Prize-winning business columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He has recently attracted a lot of (almost entirely negative) attention for a column and tweets arguing that mocking the deaths of anti-vaxxers is "necessary." Hiltzik joins to defend and explain his position to Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson, who believes that Hiltzik's stance is cruel and unhelpful. Michael argues that his argument is more nuanced than it is being characterized as. Nathan suggests that as the one who intentionally tweeted an offensive provocation, Michael is responsible for that characterization. Michael argues that dark humor is an important weapon, citing the Current Affairs article "The Necessity of Political Vulgarity." Nathan argues that while incivility can be tactically useful, directing it against people who have died of COVID does nothing to create more productive discourse on vaccines. But what about people in positions of power who use that power to spread damaging misinformation? Are they fair game? Should we "never speak ill of the dead"? With whom must we empathize? Are some people beyond empathy? Are we to show respect for the lives of those who do not respect the lives of others? These questions are hotly debated. Discussion of Michael's controversial column begins around 6:00. The "How to Talk to a Science Denier" interview is here. 

Judge Judy Sheindlin has long been one of the highest-paid TV stars, earning a staggering $47 million per year for her show, Judge Judy. She is universally known and loved nationwide for her acerbic, "take no BS" style of dispute resolution. "Who doesn't love Judge Judy?" asked Barack Obama. Current Affairs editor-at-large Yasmin Nair does not love Judge Judy. In a new article for In These Times magazine, Nair reviews Sheindlin's new show for Amazon Studios, Judy Justice, and argues that Judge Judy's judgments are full of implicit disdain for the poor, contempt for dysfunctional and broken people, and "bootstraps" ideology.While many of the cases Judy judges are amusing and trivial disputes over the custody of adorable little dogs, others illustrate the tragedy of American financial struggles at the bottom of the class ladder. And the spectacle of an extremely wealthy person snapping commands at those with very little can come to feel grotesque. Nair writes:"Nearly all of the people who end up on the show are poor or close to indigency. [...] In exchange for their appearance, participants agree to be humiliated and berated for the supposed choices that landed them there. They are screamed at by a woman who only works five days a month and who, after the shooting is don, hops on her private jet to fly to her 23-acre home in Naples, Fla., to enjoy a daily lunch with her husband at the Ritz-Carlton."In this episode, Yasmin and Current Affairs editor in chief Nathan J. Robinson dive into the problems with Judge Judy. We discuss:- Typical Judge Judy cases and the strange way that the show pretends it's trying to sincerely resolve legal problems- The dubious ethics of the show's recruitment process and of pretending to be a judge - The ideology underlying Sheindlin's strict belief in Manners, Decorum, and Respect for Authority- Sheindlin's racism, including her despicable treatment of long-serving bailiff Petri Hawkins-Byrd - Her support for Michael Bloomberg and attack on Bernie Sanders, because of course Judge Judy loves Bloomberg and hates Sanders. (Judy: "[America] is the most perfect country in the world and those people that are trying to change it and revolutionize it, don’t have a chance, because I’ll fight them to the death.”)- Why, for all Judge Judy's repellent flaws, the actual American court system is even worse and more cruel Subscribe to In These Times today. Yasmin's article can also be read online at the In These Times website.Edited by Tim Gray.       

Sheryll Cashin is the author of White Space, Black Hood: Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality. She has been called "one of the most important civil rights scholars of our time." Her book "exposes the ways in which American policy decisions, from the early twentieth century to the present, have constructed a ‘residential caste system’ resulting in the entrapment of Black people in high-poverty neighborhoods while ‘overinvesting in affluent white space.’" In this rich conversation she talks to Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson about how racial segregation was created and why it persists. We dive deep into the mechanisms by which inequality reproduces itself from generation to generation.