Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I'm the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs

magazine today on the program. Samuel Miller MacDonald returns to speak with us. He is a regular

contributor to current affairs, the author of an upcoming book on

progress, human progress, which he is opposed to or somewhat critical of, and he is the

author, importantly for our purposes today, of a new article in our 41st print issue. The article is called Being Mr. Clothes. It is about

menswear in which both Samuel Miller McDonald and I have a keen interest, Samuel Miller

McDonald. Thank you so much for joining us on current affairs.

Thanks so much, Nathan. Yeah. Happy to be talking to you. Let me begin by just reading to our listeners,

the opening of your wonderful piece. And I put, as the editor, I sort of put a subhead in here, and in the form of a question, and the

question I put was, can the love of menswear be justified in a time of global crisis?

It is addressed over the course of your piece, but here's how it opens.

The various tubes and vessels that everyone slides their body parts into every day. Loads are broadly considered to be

at best at the domain of the frivolous and unsirious. At worst, they're the preoccupation of the

narcissist. But even a passing reflection on the facts reveals this popular notion to be

absurd. Loads have enabled human beings who colonize virtually all of the

earth. Homo sapiens would have remained an exclusively tropical species had it not figured out

how to clad its heat-dissippating skin in the heat-trapping skins and furs of other animals

or the fibers of plants. Those of us who live in a cold and wet climate,

clothes are a survival necessity. Clothes also represent a non-trivial part of most people's annual

budget, and more importantly, daily life, whether they admit it or not, given that we're all

surrounded by them in the most literal way possible. More consequently, textile production and

distribution are major sources of waste and pollution. Clothes manufacturer contributes to widespread labor abuse is all over

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