In the Standard Model of particle physics, the axial current is not conserved, due both to fermion masses and to the axial anomaly. In the late 1980s it was proposed that the axial anomaly could help understand the results of the EMC measurements that led to the nucleon spin crisis. Recent work has taken a fresh look at the role of the axial anomaly in polarized deep-inelastic scattering and also extended the discussion to deep-virtual Compton scattering (DVCS). Important aspects of those works include the apparent connection between the U(1) problem and `anomaly poles', as well as the dependence of pertinent perturbative results on the infrared regulator. I will discuss these and related topics, and our understanding of the current status of the field.