Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is David Robinson. I'm the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs Magazine, a very special program for our listeners today because we are joined by my fellow members of the Current Affairs editorial staff.

I am here with Current Affairs associate editor Alex Scobic.

Alex, hello.

Hello.

And current affairs associate editor, Emily Topping.

Hello, Emily.

Hello, thank you for having me.

Now, look, I want to talk about it.

So what I wanted us to discuss today was I hope we could talk about recent articles.

Two of you have written for current affairs.

Emily, you've just written your first two articles for current affairs.

Alex, you've written, I've lost count of the number of articles you've now written for current affairs on many eclectic topics.

But we're going to try and limit it to a couple of recent ones that you wrote that pair well

with ones Emily wrote. So I think, Emily, why don't we start with your first article?

Because people should, first off, people should check it out.

It's called how we stopped caring about selling out.

And you begin, just to read the opening line here, you say, I know deep down in my heart that

Matthew McConaughey is not my friend.

Now, why is Matthew McConaughey not your friend?

Well, I think like a lot of us, I have had a tendency to, I wouldn't say go have full on parisocial relationships, but I do love Matthew McConaughey,

as do many Americans. I'm charmed by him. I actually read his memoir. It's ridiculous. That

should be an article in and of itself.

...