Hello, current affairs listeners. This is your host, Pete Davis here. I am here with Astra Taylor.

Astra is, in my view, one of the brigadier generals of the left in the sense that she's been there for all of it,

churning out amazing work and being one of the leaders and moral voices of our movement over many, many years.

She's an essayist. She has writings in the nation and N-plus-1 and dissent. She's a book writer.

She's wrote The People's Platform, Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age,

and she's coming out with, democracy may not exist, but we'll miss it when

it's gone soon.

She was a big part of Occupy, helping create the Occupy magazine.

Possibly what you most know her for is she is a filmmaker.

She made Jezeck examined life, which I'm going to talk about later in the episode, was like me and my

17-year-old friends, like mind-blowing movie.

And now the reason we have her on today is because she's coming out and just came out

with a new movie, What Is Democracy?

And so I wanted to have you on, Astra, because, you know, you were born in 79, so you're a bit of a bridge between the Gen X left and the millennial left. You know, you've seen what I might call the 1999 Seattle left, then the anti-war left, then the post-occupy left, then what we're now in, which might be called the post-Bernie left.

And you've seen it all, Astra. And so I'd love to talk to you today about your whirlwind tour

of your life on the left. Is that okay with you, Astra? Welcome to current affairs.

Such a kind introduction. And you'll see that I have some ambivalence about leadership, you know,

in this new project about democracy, but yet I was flattered by that term at the beginning.

So thank you for that. And yeah, it's true. My 27-year-old sister always tells me that I'm

generationally confused. I'm glad we picked up on that and we'll be sure to deconstruct the

intro. The younger generation is bringing so many issues

and a kind of politics to the forefront that I've been waiting for, you know, that I was ready for

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