How Other Countries Solved What America Won’t (w/Natasha Hakimi Zapata)

Current Affairs

Comedy, Government, News, Culture, Politics

4.4 • 645 Ratings

🗓️ 16 May 2025

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

America is in crisis, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Around the world, other countries have already solved many of the problems we’re told are unsolvable here: from unaffordable healthcare to lack of parental leave, crumbling infrastructure, climate disaster, and more. So why can’t the U.S. do what other nations have already done?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I'm the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs Magazine.
0:15.8	I am joined today by the journalist and lecturer, Natasha Hakimizapata.
0:23.9	She is the author of the book Another World Is Possible.
0:30.0	Lessons for America from around the globe.
0:34.1	Available from the new press, Natasha Hakimisipata, welcome to current affairs.
0:39.5	Hi, Nathan. Thanks so much for having me.
0:41.7	Well, I'm so excited to talk to you because I genuinely think this is one of, and if you need
0:48.8	a quote, this is the quote, I think this is one of the most important books of our time.
0:53.2	And the reason I think this is one of the most important books of our time is that what you have done is you've written a book that I've wished for a long time existed,
1:02.6	which is a book that essentially you took something that someone needed to do, but nobody had done.
1:13.8	And that is to go around the world. And, you know, we talk a lot, we on the left, about how America is a broken country,
1:22.7	many of our institutions, from healthcare to criminal punishment, to old age, I mean, retirement, the retirement
1:32.4	system. You know, there are many ways in which this country does not serve its people well.
1:38.1	And we also, in the United States, are a very inward-looking country. We're not taught very much about the rest of the
1:45.5	world, what goes on there. We are raised in ignorance, as we know, from whenever an America
1:50.6	disaster place countries on a map. We can't even do that. We don't know what's going on elsewhere
1:55.4	the world. So, what you do in this book is you around the world, and you say, how have other
2:00.2	countries solve problems that we have? That's my description of what you do in this book is you around the world, and you say, how have other countries solve problems that we have?
2:02.6	That's my description of what you do in this book, but what's your description?
2:06.5	No, that's a really great description.
2:09.1	Honestly, when I started writing this book, so I've been a journalist for about 15 plus years now in Progressive Empia,
2:16.2	and I have also been living abroad during a lot of, if not most
	...

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