Podcast Episodes

Your Money or Your Life: A Physician on the Miseries of Medical Debt

Episode 284

Get new episodes early at patreon.com/currentaffairs !

Dr. Luke Messac is an emergency physician and historian whose new book is Your Money or Your Life: Debt Collection in American Medicine (Oxford U…

Published on 1 year, 8 months ago

How Four Billionaires Are Creating A Horrible Future For All of Us (w/ Jonathan Taplin)

Episode 283

Jonathan Taplin has had a fascinating career, from being a tour manager for Bob Dylan and the Band to a film producer for Martin Scorsese to running the Innovation Lab at the University of Southern C…

Published on 1 year, 8 months ago

The Rise and Fall of Crypto Lunacy (w/ Zeke Faux)

Episode 282

Zeke Faux of Bloomberg News is the author of a fascinating and hilarious new book about the crypto world and the collapse of the Sam Bankman-Fried empire, Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and …

Published on 1 year, 8 months ago

How The Occupation Shapes Everything (w/ Nathan Thrall)

Episode 281

Nathan Thrall, the former Director of the Arab-Israeli Project at the International Crisis Group, is the author of two books on Israel and Palestine: The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compro…

Published on 1 year, 8 months ago

The Current Israel-Palestine Crisis Was Entirely Avoidable (w/ Jerome Slater)

Episode 280

Political scientist Jerome Slater is the author of one of the best one-volume summaries of the background of the Israel-Palestine conflict, Mythologies Without End: The US, Israel, and the Arab-Israe…

Published on 1 year, 8 months ago

Why Wars Happen (w/ Michael Mann)

Episode 279

Michael Mann is a sociologist who has spent his life trying to understand how power works. His latest book, On Wars, surveys the entire history of warfare between human societies to try to understand…

Published on 1 year, 8 months ago

A McKinsey Whistleblower on Life Inside The Secretive Consulting Firm

Episode 278

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…

Published on 1 year, 8 months ago

How Big Pharma Makes a Killing From Letting People Die (w/ Nick Dearden)

Episode 277

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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…

Published on 1 year, 8 months ago

What Makes For a "Strong Town"? (w/ Allison Lirish Dean)

Episode 276

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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…

Published on 1 year, 8 months ago

How White Supremacist Ideology Made Its Way Into Music Theory (w/ Philip Ewell)

Episode 275

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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…

Published on 1 year, 9 months ago