Know Your Enemy
166 episodes - English - Latest episode: 3 days ago - ★★★★★ - 1.7K ratingsA leftist's guide to the conservative movement, one podcast episode at a time, with co-hosts Matthew Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell.
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Episodes
The Death of Pope Benedict XVI (w/ Michael O'Loughlin)
January 08, 2023 17:47 - 2 minutes - 2.14 MBOn Dec. 31, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI died at the age of 95. During his long career as a towering figure in the Catholic Church in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond—especially his decades helming the Vatican's powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then as Pope and Pope Emeritus—Benedict was involved in nearly all of the Church's crises and controversies. He cracked down on liberation theologians, held a reactionary line on homosexuality at the height of the ...
Jesus and Bob Dylan (w/ the Jokermen)
December 26, 2022 18:26 - 1 hour - 76.5 MBMerry Christmas! Here's a little bonus content to tide you over until 2023. In April, Matt and Sam appeared on the excellent Jokermen podcast to discuss Bob Dylan's Christian rock records. And now we're sharing it with you. Lots to chew on in here for fans of KYE, Dylan, Jesus, and rock n' roll. Enjoy.
J. Edgar Hoover, G-Man (w/ Beverly Gage)
December 19, 2022 22:34 - 1 hour - 79.7 MBFor forty-eight years, American presidents came and went, but J. Edgar Hoover remained as the powerful director of the FBI. In her authoritative new biography, G-Man, Yale historian Beverly Gage brings Hoover to life, uncovering the all-too-human man who played such an outsized role in twentieth-century U.S. political history. Gage's decade of research provides fascinating insights into the troubles that impinged on Hoover's childhood; his formative time in a white supremacist, Southern frat...
TEASER: More Mail, More Bag
December 07, 2022 16:32 - 2 minutes - 2.69 MBSubscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy Matt and Sam pick up where they left off in their recent mailbag episode and keep answering listener questions. Topics include: KYE merchandise, the existence of Hell, Francis Fukuyama, Mormonism, gun violence, and more. Sources: David Bentley Hart, That All Shall Be Saved (Yale University Press, 2019) John G. Turner, Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet...
You Have Questions, We Have Answers (Mailbag episode)
December 01, 2022 00:28 - 1 hour - 64.5 MBAs the end of the year approaches, Matt and Sam are once again answering questions from you, their beloved listeners. Like previous mailbag episodes, there was an abundance of excellent questions that were submitted. Topics include: the possibilities for the religious left, white Christian nationalism, your hosts' literary habits and favorite novels, conspiracy theories—and more. For those who especially enjoy this type of episode, check out the next KYE bonus episode on Patreon, which will ...
How Fetterman Won (w/ Joe Calvello)
November 11, 2022 21:54 - 40 minutes - 37 MBThis is episode is a little different. Listeners know that Matt and Sam have been following John Fetterman's Senate campaign in Pennsylvania from the start, doing their first episode about him after his primary win in May. After his victory over Dr. Oz earlier this week in the general election, they talked to the Fetterman campaign's Director of Communications, Joe Calvello, for a behind-the-scenes look at how they did it. Topics discussed: Fetterman's strategy of defining Oz early (and, yes...
TEASER: The Red Ripple (Midterm Debrief)
November 10, 2022 00:26 - 3 minutes - 3.42 MBSubscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy Matt and Sam recap and analyze the 2022 midterms — as we know them so far. Why did Dems do so much better than we thought? Why did the GOP underperform? How cucked were the polls? How happy is Matt that John Fetterman beat Dr. Oz? (Very) What about Blake Masters in Arizona? Was this a bad night for Trump? Was it a good night for DeSantis? How worried...
Nixon Agonistes
November 06, 2022 17:01 - 1 hour - 83.6 MB"What is best and weakest in America goes out to reciprocating strength and deficiencies in Richard Nixon." It's difficult to think of a more electric meeting of author and subject than Garry Wills and Richard Nixon, a meeting that produced what might be the best book ever written about American politics, Wills's Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man. What begins as reporting from the campaign trail during the 1968 presidential contest—where Wills introduces us to Nixon, George Wa...
TEASER: State of the States (w/ Aaron Kleinman)
October 31, 2022 16:56 - 2 minutes - 2.26 MBSubscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy With the midterms a week away, Sam talked to Aaron Kleinman of The States Project (aka @BobbyBigWheel) about the battle to defend American democracy at the state level — where Trumpist state legislators continue to deny the 2020 election and lay the groundwork for ignoring the will of the majority in the future. How did the conservative movement manage...
Why Conservatives Love Baseball (w/ David Roth)
October 17, 2022 18:31 - 1 hour - 67.6 MBAt long last, an episode about baseball—America's national pastime, and a sport that conservatives in the United States seem to especially love. To understand baseball's appeal, both to conservatives and the rest of us, Matt and Sam are joined by David Roth of Defector Media, a brilliant, funny writer who also is a long suffering Mets fan. Topics include: the start of the MLB playoffs, baseball's interesting place in American history, varieties of conservative baseball fans, and more! Sourc...
TEASER: Giorgia Meloni's Neo-Fascism (w/ David Broder)
October 06, 2022 14:33 - 3 minutes - 2.81 MBSubscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy Sam is joined by David Broder — the Europe editor of Jacobin Magazine and author of First They Took Rome: How the Populist Right Conquered Italy and the forthcoming book, Mussolini's Grandchildren: Fascism in Contemporary Italy — to discuss the recent victory of Giorgia Meloni in Italian general elections. Meloni's Brothers for Italy party descends dir...
TEASER: I Taught the Sheriff (w/ John Ganz)
September 24, 2022 16:28 - 3 minutes - 2.83 MBSubscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy KYE super guest John Ganz joins Matt and Sam for a characteristically spirited discussion of The Claremont Institute's "Sheriff Fellowship," which invites county sheriffs from across the country to California for a weekend of West Coast Straussian ideological programing. Drawing on the history of "posse comitatus" movements and recent reports on the ...
After the Theocons (w/ Damon Linker)
September 20, 2022 15:29 - 1 hour - 80.9 MBDamon Linker is an idiosyncratic figure among political writers—trained by Straussians as a political philosopher, he's a former editor of First Things, the flagship publication for intellectual religious conservatives, who broke with that publication over the Iraq War (among other things) and is now a self-described centrist. He's also a longtime friend of the podcast, who recently started his own attempt to grapple with what's happening in the GOP and among conservatives, a Substack newsle...
On Barbara Ehrenreich (w/ Alex Press & Gabriel Winant)
September 12, 2022 18:29 - 1 hour - 87.1 MBThis episode was unplanned, but when Barbara Ehrenreich died on September 1, 2022, we felt an urge to honor her memory and the profound influence she has had on the American left, socialism, feminism, and our collective thinking about class struggle. From her work in the women's health movement of the 1960s, to her theorizing (with ex-husband John Ehrenreich) of the "professional-managerial class" in the 1970s, to her explorations of Reagan-era yuppie pathologies, and her renowned exposé of...
A Low, Dishonest Decade: The Right in the 1990s (w/ Nicole Hemmer)
August 31, 2022 19:07 - 1 hour - 65.8 MBIn this episode, historian Nicole Hemmer returns to the show to discuss her new book, Partisans, about the ascendancy of an angrier, more radical strain of conservatism in the Republican Party in the 1990s—a backlash driven by the right's dissatisfaction with the genial, popularity-seeking Ronald Reagan. As the Cold War ended, many conservatives stopped genuflecting to democracy and freedom and used new forms of media—talk radio and cable news especially—to spread their grievances. Topics in...
TEASER: Blake Masters + Claremont
August 18, 2022 13:13 - 3 minutes - 2.8 MBSubscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy Matt and Sam bring you the latest from the “caesarist” wing of the conservative movement, discussing two recent and related articles in the New York Times. The first: Sam’s profile of Arizona GOP senate nominee Blake Masters, who, like J.D. Vance, is bankrolled by his former employer and mentor, the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel. And second...
Christopher Lasch's Critique of Progress (w/ Chris Lehmann)
August 11, 2022 17:01 - 1 hour - 85.1 MBChristopher Lasch, the late historian and social critic, can be difficult to pin down. Despite writing with startling clarity and verve, Lasch frustrates his readers' longing for clean partisan taxonomies and explicit programmatic statements. Taken up in recent years by Steve Bannon and post-liberal populists, he was, in life, a man of the left who never ceased interrogating his own side’s pathologies and historical blindspots — often using Marxism, psychoanalysis, and a rich, idiosyncrati...
TEASER: Far-Right Vanguard (w/ John S. Huntington)
July 30, 2022 17:47 - 2 minutes - 1.7 MBMatt is joined by John Huntington, author of Far-Right Vanguard, which chronicles the history of what he calls the "ultraconservative" movement, its national network, its influence on Republican Party politics, and its centrality to America's rightward turn during the second half of the twentieth century. John is a history professor at Houston Community College. Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/kn...
Up From Straussianism (w/ Matt McManus & Victor Bruzzone)
July 17, 2022 17:36 - 1 hour - 91.7 MBHere's something fun and a little different: your beloved cohost Matt Sitman was recently interviewed by Victor Bruzzone and Matt McManus on their podcast, Plastic Pills, and the ensuing conversation — about Matt's own history, the right-wing intellectual pipeline, and the enduring and contested influence of Leo Strauss on the conservative movement and its minds — is just fascinating. So we're sharing it with you, dear listeners. I do want to acknowledge the elephant in the room: we're in ...
How They Did It, Pt. 3: The End of the Beginning
June 30, 2022 00:15 - 1 hour - 98.5 MBIn the third and final episode in their series on the overturning of Roe v. Wade—recorded on the day it happened—Matt and Sam pick up with 1990s, the George W. Bush administration, and eventually take listeners up to the present. They focus especially on way conservative, mostly Christian intellectuals, many of them connected to the religious journal First Things, brought Catholics and evangelicals together to fight against abortion rights, with figures like Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Robert ...
The State of the American Right (w/ Daniel Denvir)
June 22, 2022 01:04 - 2 hours - 132 MBToday we're sharing a special "Dig Your Enemy" crossover event, as Daniel Denvir of Jacobin magazine's The Dig podcast puts Matt and Sam in the hot seat. We answer all of Dan's excellent questions about the state of the American right, including: the return of isolationism, the New Right, Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin, Blake Masters, Doug Mastriano, the prospects for a multi-racial conservative majority, the "groomer" panic, masculinity and gender politics, MAGA, authoritarianism, NYC's new rea...
How They Did It, Pt. 2: The Christian Right and Roe
June 16, 2022 23:01 - 1 hour - 81 MBAt long last, Matt and Sam dive into the origins of the Christian right—a complicated tale often flattened by contemporary debates. What was the history of Christian anti-abortion activism before Roe, and how soon after the landmark Supreme Court decision did conservative Christians coalesce around the abortion—and other issues—to become the political force we know today? What did it take to get Catholics and evangelicals to join forces, and what were the barriers to them coming together, es...
How They Did It: Overturning Roe, Pt. 1 (w/ the 5-4 podcast)
May 28, 2022 18:49 - 1 hour - 190 MBOn May 5, Politico published a leaked draft of the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, written by Justice Samuel Alito, that would overturn Roe v. Wade. How did we get here? In the first of three episodes dedicated to answering that question, Matt and Sam talk to Peter, Rhiannon, and Michael of the 5-4 Podcast about the conservative legal movement's role and the right's use of the courts in achieving their aims. What were the main arguments in the leaded Dobbs decision, and ...
UNLOCKED: A New Pink Tide? (w/ Thea Riofrancos & David Adler)
May 25, 2022 23:57 - 1 hour - 192 MBA conversation with David Adler and Thea Riofrancos about the return of the Latin American left — unlocked from Patreon in advance of hugely consequential elections in Colombia this weekend!! (Originally published May 15, 2022.) Hope for the American left is at a fairly low ebb, at the moment, but our counterparts in Latin America are on the march and succeeding at beating back repressive right wing governments across the region. What can we learn from them? And given extremely volatile glo...
TEASER: Yinzer Country
May 21, 2022 00:25 - 3 minutes - 8.07 MBIn this bonus episode, Matt takes Sam on a tour of his native state, Pennsylvania, where a number of key primaries were held this week. The results brought some hopeful news: Lt. Gov. John Fetterman handily defeated State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta and (even better) Manchin-backed moderate Rep. Conor Lamb in the contest for the Democratic senate nomination. But it also revealed the madness that continues to grip the GOP: State Sen. Doug Mastriano, a January 6 marcher and election-fraud true belie...
TEASER: A New Pink Tide? (w/ Thea Riofrancos & David Adler)
May 15, 2022 18:27 - 1 minute - 3.37 MBHope for the American left is at a fairly low ebb, at the moment, but our counterparts in Latin America are on the march and succeeding at beating back repressive right wing governments across the region. What can we learn from them? And given extremely volatile global conditions — and the continued role of the US in defending the interests of capital in the region — what can these new left-wing governments hope to accomplish? Sam is joined by political scientist Thea Riofrancos and David A...
The Conservative and the Convict (w/ Sarah Weinman)
May 09, 2022 16:53 - 1 hour - 201 MBSarah Weinman's new book—Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts to Set Him Free—is a gripping true crime story, and perhaps the tale of an ill-fated love triangle. It also is a story about William F. Buckley, Jr., who defied expectations to show mercy to a death-row prisoner, Edgar Smith, after finding out that he supposedly read National Review. In this episode, Weinman joins Matt and Sam to talk about this fasc...
The Right Kind of Worker (w/ Gabriel Winant)
April 30, 2022 18:20 - 1 hour - 209 MBSince Donald Trump was elected president — partially on the strength of white working class support in the Rust Belt — we've heard that the GOP is a working class party; that liberals sold out American labor to globalized capital; and that American workers are too socially and culturally conservative to remain within the increasingly progressive Democratic tent. According to the populist right, the culture war is itself a class war, waged on behalf of real workers against a secular, libertin...
Macron vs. Le Pen (w/ Cole Stangler)
April 22, 2022 19:53 - 2 minutes - 1.99 MBDid this week's one-on-one debate between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen change the race in any significant ways? Why is Le Pen drawing notably more support this time around than she did in 2017? How much is Macron's strategy of pivoting to the right on issues of culture and identity to blame for her rise? What about Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leftwing politician who nearly made it to the runoff? And why did the far-right candidate Éric Zemmour fade? Listen for the answers to these questions...
The Other Side of the Story (w/ Michael Kazin)
April 13, 2022 17:22 - 1 hour - 58.7 MBMatt and Sam are joined by Georgetown University historian and co-editor emeritus of Dissent, Michael Kazin, to discuss his new book, What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party. They discuss the origins of the Democratic Party, the alliance between its urban North and segregationist South, the party's turn toward using government to help ordinary people, and the eventual crack-up of the New Deal coalition—and the rise of the right, and the Republican Party, that followed. Why did...
TEASER: Compact with the Devil? (w/ John Ganz)
April 09, 2022 20:16 - 1 minute - 1.53 MBMatt and Sam are joined by KYE all-star John Ganz to discuss Compact: A Radical American Journal, a new publication founded by Sohrab Ahmari, Matthew Schmitz, and Edward Aponte. It's launch coincided with a profile in the New York Times—and a party that Sam attended. What are the ideas behind Compact? How should the left approach the perspective it offers? Your hosts answer these questions, and more, drawing on Ganz's excellent Substack post on these topics, "Compact Magazine's Unholy Allian...
Red Diaper Baby (w/ Ari Brostoff)
March 30, 2022 18:53 - 1 hour - 83.1 MBMatt and Sam are joined by Ari Brostoff, author of Missing Time: Essays, to explore David Horowitz's 1996 memoir, Radical Son. Like a number of prominent conservatives, Horowitz is a convert from the left. But he's younger than most of the first neocons, and his journey to the right went through Berkeley and the New Left more than the alcoves of City College. Radical Son is his account of that journey—an evocative, angry, revealing text that takes the reader from his red-diaper baby childho...
The Anti-Trans Agenda (w/ Gillian Branstetter)
March 20, 2022 17:49 - 1 hour - 78.2 MBMatt and Sam talk to Gillian Branstetter, press secretary for the National Women’s Law Center, about the spate of anti-trans laws sweeping the country: What do these interventions do? Who is pushing them? And why? The American right has long been invested in policing gender boundaries, but its fixation on trans people — and trans children, in particular — has become more acute in recent years. Over 100 anti-trans state-level measures have been passed this legislative session alone, inclu...
TEASER: Disinformation, Peter Thiel, and the Vibe Shift (w/ Joe Bernstein)
March 11, 2022 19:42 - 3 minutes - 2.78 MBIn the first half of this conversation with Buzzfeed’s Joe Bernstein, Sam asks: What is “disinformation?” Who gets to decide? And does it explain what's wrong with our politics? And in the second half: why is Trump’s favorite venture capitalist, Peter Thiel, funding New York City’s downtown arts scene? And what are the political stakes of "anti-woke" art? This was a fun conversation with one of our favorite journalists! Enjoy. Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bon...
A Second Civil War? (w/ Jamelle Bouie)
March 07, 2022 21:33 - 1 hour - 67.8 MBThe past few months have seen much talk of a "second Civil War" in the United States or a "national divorce" between red states and blue states. New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie joins Matt and Sam to discuss why the analogy to the Civil War fails, what such rhetoric does for those who deploy it, and what the challenges really are to a better politics in America. Listening: Check out Jamelle's podcast, co-hosted with fellow KYE guest John Ganz, Unclear and Present Danger! Reading: Ja...
Mothers of Conservatism (w/ Michelle Nickerson)
February 27, 2022 00:08 - 1 hour - 65.6 MBMatt and Sam talk to Michelle Nickerson about her brilliant book, Mothers of Conservatism, which explores the lives and political activism of conservative women in the Los Angeles area in the 1940s and 50s. Unlike many other conversations on the show, this one is less about intellectuals and ideas than social history—a description of how, as Nickerson puts it, housewife activists worked to "protect the nation from aliens, internationalism, and power-hungry bureaucrats in Washington." Topics ...
TEASER: How To Be Normal (w/ Phil Christman)
February 17, 2022 15:56 - 2 minutes - 2.19 MBMatt talks to writer Phil Christman about his new essay collection, How To Be Normal. They talk about the meaning of "normal" (especially in these pandemic times), religious fundamentalism, Christian conspiracy theories about rock music, Mark Fisher, love, and much more. Sources: Phil Christman, How To Be Normal (Belt Publishing, 2022) "Turning Nothings Into Somethings," Commonweal, Dec 3, 2020 "What Is It Like To Be a Man?" H...
School Wars (w/ Jennifer Berkshire)
January 28, 2022 22:29 - 1 hour - 56.3 MBIt seems almost every big culture-war battle of the moment—from "Critical Race Theory" to COVID mandates—is being fought in America's schools. Meanwhile, Democrats, anxious about a midterm rout driven by angry Republican parents, too often are conceding these battles to the right, adopting their rhetoric and their terms of debate, and have been for a long time—despite supposedly being the party of teachers' unions. Does it have to be this way? We put that question, and many more, to our ...
TEASER: Cancel Jay Caspian Kang (w/ Jay Caspian Kang)
January 21, 2022 14:00 - 1 minute - 1.82 MBAuthor, podcaster, and New York Times Magazine staff writer Jay Caspian Kang joins Matt and Sam for a spirited discussion of some treacherous topics: identity politics, critical race theory, and cancel culture (oh my!). Jay is our charming, intrepid guide to these touchy subjects, those that liberals and leftists are sometimes loath to engage, offering his idiosyncratic (though not contrarian!) takes on each — and inspiring some of our own. Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen ...
Joan Didion, Conservative (w/ Sam Tanenhaus)
January 13, 2022 20:11 - 1 hour - 91.5 MBWhen Joan Didion died at the age of 87 in December, her early conservatism figured into a number of obituaries and commentaries, but was rarely discussed in detail. Matt and Sam turned to Sam Tanenhaus, William F. Buckley, Jr.'s biographer and knower of all things National Review, to discuss Didion's early writing for the magazine, her roots in California conservatism, and how her politics changed—and didn't—over the course of her long career. Along the way, they discuss why she loved Barr...
UNLOCKED: Freud and Politics (w/ Pat Blanchfield)
January 04, 2022 20:55 - 1 hour - 90.5 MBUnlocked by popular demand: Psychoanalytic writer and teacher Pat Blanchfield joins Sam for a discussion of Freud and politics. Together we ask: how can psychoanalytic tools help us make sense of our irrational political moment, our desires and attachments, as well as conservatism, liberalism, fascism, Donald Trump, and even Thanksgiving? If we've done our job right, you'll derive many blistering insights from this discussion whether or not you've read a single page of Sigmund Freud — or r...
Hindsight is 2021
December 22, 2021 21:58 - 1 hour - 98.5 MBWith another year of the podcast, the pandemic, and American decline in the rearview, we turn to Know Your Enemy's absurdly brilliant listeners for guidance and intellectual stimulation. That's right, folks, it's a mailbag episode! And thanks to you, our cups runneth over with fascinating questions. Along the way, we discuss the intellectual legacy of one-time National Review wunderkind Garry Wills; why Bill Buckley never wrote a great book; right-wing half-wit propagandists like Ben Shapiro...
Young, Radical, and on the Right (w/ Nate Hochman)
December 15, 2021 22:45 - 1 hour - 87.9 MBFinally, another enemy! This time Matt and Sam are joined by Nate Hochman, a rising star on the intellectual Right and one of the subjects of Sam's recent New Republic article about today's young, populist conservatives. They discuss Michael Oakeshott, friendship and politics, where the Right and Left might agree, and, especially, where they don't. Further Reading: Sam Adler-Bell, "The Radical Young Intellectuals Who Want to Take Over the American Right," New Republic, Dec 2, 2021 Nate Ho...
TEASER: Freud and Politics (w/ Pat Blanchfield)
December 01, 2021 23:52 - 1 minute - 1.44 MBPsychoanalytic writer and teacher Pat Blanchfield joins Sam for the long-awaited KYE "Freud Pod," in which we discuss how psychoanalytic tools can help us make sense of our irrational political moment, our desires and attachments, as well as conservatism, liberalism, fascism, Donald Trump, and even Thanksgiving. Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy
Retvrn of the National Conservatives
November 25, 2021 03:31 - 1 hour - 77.2 MBIt's rare for nearly all the inhabitants of the KYE podcast universe to gather in one place, but it happened earlier this month in—as you might guess—Florida, where the National Conservatism 2 conference was held. The proceedings were littered with extraordinary claims of a "totalitarian cult" (liberals and the left) deliberately trying to destroy the United States, with the help of Big Tech, China, and...university professors. The conference seemed to mark the ascendency of national conserv...
TEASER: I Am The GooseKing (w/ Ben Firke)
November 15, 2021 20:10 - 3 minutes - 3.51 MBMatt talks with playwright Ben Firke about I Am The GooseKing, which just finished its debut run at The Tank theater in New York City. Here's a description of the play: Jane Vazquez is a journalist on assignment for a tech blog. She travels to New Hampshire to interview a young conspiracy theorist and YouTuber named Phil, who has thousands of followers who embrace his elaborate "vegetable conspiracy," first outlined by the mysterious GooseKing. As Jane goes deeper and deeper into the rabbit...
Frank Meyer: Father of Fusionism
November 10, 2021 19:39 - 1 hour - 83.1 MBMatt and Sam dedicate an entire episode to an under appreciated but indispensable figure in the founding of post-war conservatism: Frank Meyer, the father of "fusionism." Meyer was a man of contradictions: an ex-communist ideologue who longed for consensus; a cantankerous, unyielding debater who kept his friends and rivals close; a bohemian, individualist Jew who argued vociferously for freedom and against repressive orthodoxies, but who converted to Catholicism on his death bed. In this ...
TEASER: Reporting for Duty (w/ Dave Weigel)
October 29, 2021 15:27 - 2 minutes - 2.45 MBSubscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy
The American Right's Hungary Hearts (w/ Lauren Stokes and John Ganz)
October 25, 2021 13:25 - 1 hour - 90.1 MBMatt and Sam are joined by historian Lauren Stokes and writer John Ganz to unpack the American Right's ongoing embrace of Viktor Orbán's Hungary, from Rod Dreher's springtime junket there to Tucker Carlson broadcasting from the country to the adoring attention it receives from an assortment of "postliberal" intellectuals What gives? Your hosts and their esteemed guests break it down, including: what the American Right gets from Orbán, and what he gets from them; the 20th century history of ...
God, Death, and the Pandemic (w/ Sarah Jones)
October 16, 2021 17:12 - 50 minutes - 46.3 MBMatt is joined by Know Your Enemy favorite Sarah Jones to discuss her recent New York Magazine essay, "An Atheist Reconsiders God in the Pandemic." They discuss their shared religious upbringing and college years among fundamentalist and evangelical Christians, why Sarah became an atheist (and Matt didn't), and the reasons she reopened the question of God's existence during the pandemic—and what she did and didn't find along the way. Other topics include: C.S. Lewis, the nature of rituals, h...