Hello, current affairs listeners. This is Lily Sanchez. I'm the managing editor of current affairs,

and I'm here to welcome you to a slightly different show today. I'm going to be interviewing

editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson about his forthcoming book, responding to the right, brief replies to

25 conservative arguments. The book is coming out on February 14th. The book is actually

the perfect gift if you find yourself in a situation where you're dating a reactionary or somebody

that has such a political tendency. So this book will have all the answers that you need to finally

put all your arguments to rest for good. So welcome to the show, Nathan. Hi.

Hi, it's nice to be with you here, Lily Sanchez.

So the first thing I want to ask you is not about the book specifically, but just a related point.

So when or how did you decide to become a person that was going to specialize in responding to the

right?

Gosh, gosh.

Well, you know, it's been part of current affairs kind of since the beginning.

In fact, I think the very first article that I did for current affairs was a debunking of some talking points from David French of the

National Review on guns. And it was like why every conservative gun control talking point is bad.

So clearly I had decided at the moment that the magazine, like by that point,

this tendency was pretty well established.

There was no conscious moment where I said,

I am going to be a specialist in reading conservatives and writing long responses to their talking point.

But I think the reason that it happened is that I had been frustrated

consistently with the fact that I saw all of these terrible right-way books selling millions of

copies, and I didn't see a place where you could go

...