blog

The Banal Horror of Jimmy Fallon

Jon Greenaway — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 22:22:19 GMT

There is a distinctive, deeply uncanny horror to the way Jimmy Fallon laughs. Look it up—there are literally hundreds of videos showing him breaking out into laughter at the slightest provocation. It is not a reaction (he sometimes won’t even wait for his guest to get to their carefully scripted punchline). Rather, it is a performance, a sudden, corporeal convulsion.

How to Avoid a Cold War

Current Affairs — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 21:27:41 GMT

Daniel bessner is an Assistant Professor in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington, the co-host of the American Prestige podcast, and a nonresident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. In an essay last year for the Ideas Letter, Bessner reviewed recent scholarly literature on the Cold War, concluding "that responsibility for the Cold War lies, in the final analysis, with the United States." He is the co-editor of the new book Cold War Liberalism: Power in a Time of Emergency, available from Cambridge University Press. Prof. Bessner joined Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson to discuss why it is so vital in our own time to examine and learn the lessons of the Cold War.

How Oklahoma Musicians Continue a Legacy of Resistance to Fascism

Emma Lucía Llano — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 22:35:37 GMT

Justice is the one thing you should always find/ You gotta saddle up your boys/ You gotta draw a hard line/ When the gun smoke settles we'll sing a victory tune.

Steven Pinker Doesn’t Know Anything About Marxism

Ben Burgis & Matt McManus — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 22:29:16 GMT

Some things are eternal (Marxists would say “transhistorical”) truths. A will always equal A. (That remains true even if it doesn’t require cutting the top income tax rate, as Ayn Rand oddly seemed to think.) The Toronto Maple Leafs will never win the Stanley Cup. And center right commentators will criticize Karl Marx in weird ways without engaging with the substance of his work.

Meanwhile, Zohran Is Just Getting Things Done

Nathan J. Robinson — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 18:35:26 GMT

“I’ve thought a lot about scaffolding,” New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani says in a new video posted on social media, announcing regulatory changes aimed at reducing the length of time that scaffolding overstays its welcome over city sidewalks. So-called “sidewalk sheds” are everywhere in New York, many hanging around for years, long after the construction work is done. Mamdani’s video explains how these sheds unnecessarily blight the city and inconvenience people, and lays out his proposed fixes (reducing size requirements for the structures, imposing new fines for sheds left up for too long, changing the building inspection schedule).

The Militant Coal Miners Who Still Haunt Pennsylvania

Alex Skopic — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 16:40:23 GMT

According to his biographers, Nathaniel Hawthorne once discovered that he had an ancestor, a man named John Hathorne, who had been a judge in the Salem Witch Trials. Draconian even by the standards of the 1690s, Hathorne was known for berating innocent women on the stand until they confessed to so-called “Satanic” transgressions, which quickly led to their execution by hanging. Unlike some of the Salem judges, he never showed remorse. Horrified by the blood on his great-great-grandfather’s hands, the novelist changed his surname, adding the extra “w” to distance himself, and he made Hathorne the template for his villains in works like “Young Goodman Brown” and The House of the Seven Gables. By all accounts, the knowledge haunted him throughout his life.

Amy Goodman on Telling the Stories Power Wants Buried

Current Affairs — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 21:10:06 GMT

Amy Goodman has long followed a simple mission to “go where the silence is.” Since co-foundingDemocracy Now!in 1991, she has reported from the front lines of some of the country’s most defining crises, long before mainstream outlets paid attention—traveling to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina to confront authorities over their abandonment of residents, facing down riot police at the 2008 Republican National Convention, and even becoming the subject of an arrest warrant for covering protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota.

The Death of Book World and Why Criticism Still Matters

Current Affairs — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 21:41:18 GMT

When The Washington Post gutted its book section in February 2026—laying off critics and shuttering one of the last spaces of its kind in a major newspaper—Becca Rothfeld was among those pushed out. Her abrupt layoff was part of a push by owner Jeff Bezos to slash the paper's staff by 30 percent, as he continues to scrap stories that don't sufficiently bend to the will of the ultra-wealthy.

Notes of an Economist on Food Stamps

Justin Adekanbi-Coger — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 19:39:33 GMT

Part I: Where I’m From

America Has Long Targeted Muslims, But Today’s Hatred is Different

Ryan Suto, Heba Mohammad — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 22:36:01 GMT

Within the past month alone in New York City, a muggertargeted a Muslim woman on the subway, calling her a “terrorist” and saying that Mayor Zohran Mamdani “can’t help you now”; a man smeared feceson a mosque after tearing pages from the Quran on the doorstep; and a member of a pro-Israel terror group was exposed for planning to assassinate a Palestinian-American woman and movement leader.