Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I am the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs magazine. My guest today is Michael Hiltzik. He is a business columnist

at the Los Angeles Times. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1999, and his latest book is Iron

Empires, Rubber Barron's, Railroads, and the Making of Modern America. Michael, nice to be with you. Thanks. It's good to be on with

you. You are a business columnist, but you've written a lot about COVID. And before we get to

the column that I wanted to ask you most about, which is causing a lot of controversy on social

media, I want to first ask you this. You know, which is causing a lot of controversy on social media.

I want to first ask you this.

You know, we know that the media over the course of the COVID pandemic has been full of nonsense, that the public discourse is really frustrating in many ways.

And people believe a lot of things that aren't true.

And we wish for a more sane national conversation about this virus and its effect on society.

So I want to start by asking you, what do you think are the main ways in which,

the main things that you want to convey with your writing that are important for the

public to understand?

And what would a more sane and reasonable discourse about COVID look like?

Yeah, that's a good question.

And I think this sort of fits into a phenomenon that I've observed over the years

whenever I've written about or covered complex situations,

complex circumstances, complex policies, what have you.

And that is that unfortunately, a lot of my fellow journalists

don't really see the need to put in the effort that's necessary

to educate themselves to the maximum

possible about these policies, programs, what have you. And I've written a lot about

...