Here's something a little creepy. In a bonus episode from August 2022, Matt and Sam were discussing Sam's profile of Arizona Senate hopeful and Peter Thiel-protégé Blake Masters when we found ourselves imagining how a future union of MAGA nationalism and Silicon Valley libertarianism might try to run the government. A listener flagged it for us, noting that the description — which we call "exit from within" — sounds remarkably similar to what we are now experiencing with Trump, Musk, DOGE, and t...
Mar 05, 2025•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy Just over a month into Trump's second term, Matt and Sam offer their thoughts on where we're at—and, to be blunt, the assessment is fairly depressing. They take stock of the troubling truth that Pete Hegseth's confirmation reveals about Trump's hold over the Republican Party, new FBI director Kash Patel's conspiratorial children's books, the state of the conservative legal movement, the right's relatively rece...
Feb 24, 2025•4 min•Transcript available on Metacast We're all anxious, and none of us can pay attention. We don't read long books anymore; our kids don't read at all. When we watch TV, we scroll at the same time. And we absolutely cannot be alone with ourselves. These are the symptoms of a modern malaise that is everywhere diagnosed but rarely treated with the dire seriousness it deserves: an epochal sickness that is fundamentally changing the way we relate to each other and to our own minds. What would it take to reclaim control? Chris Hayes — j...
Feb 18, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Ep 110•Transcript available on Metacast Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy The first three weeks of Donald Trump's second administration have seen a flurry of vicious executive orders aimed at the federal workforce, trans people, government agencies, and others—all while Elon Musk and his deranged band of young sociopaths, otherwise known as the "Department of Government Efficiency," have been set loose on the Treasury's payment system and other key functions of the state. In this ep...
Feb 08, 2025•2 min•Transcript available on Metacast An atheist, a radical for capitalism, a caricature of a greedy libertarian, a best-selling novelist, a difficult partner and passionate lover, and the self-proclaimed greatest philosopher since Aristotle: Ayn Rand was many things, and we talk about almost all of them in this epic episode. To do so, we called upon historian Jennifer Burns , whose intellectual biography, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right , is enormously helpful in trying to understand an idiosyncratic writer w...
Feb 03, 2025•2 hr 1 min•Ep 109•Transcript available on Metacast Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy A stock rhetorical trope on the right is to invoke ancient Rome when talking about American decline—often making direct comparisons between the Goth invaders and contemporary immigrants, obsessing over homosexuality and Rome's fall, and more. If their understanding of history isn't very serious, what should we make of these appeals? And are there any "lessons" we should learn from Roman history? There's no bet...
Jan 28, 2025•3 min•Transcript available on Metacast This is a fascinating episode that takes up thinkers that the podcast has covered before—the Koch brothers, Austrian economists like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, and others—but from a different angle: that of the entrepreneurial work ethic. Historian Erik Baker's superb book on the topic, Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America , offers a genuinely absorbing tour of this most American of ideologies, one that has emerged again and again, in various guises ...
Jan 21, 2025•2 hr 36 min•Ep 108•Transcript available on Metacast A bunch of you requested that we un-paywall this recent bonus episode, which features some highly practical insights for organizers, volunteers, and public servants. So we have! (All the other bonus episodes are good too; please subscribe .) — Right wing movements thrive by cultivating fears of disorder. Conservatives depict blue cities as sites of rampant crime, chaos, and iniquity. And often enough, it is progressives — with their overdeveloped empathy and concern for the poor and criminalized...
Jan 10, 2025•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy Right wing movements thrive by cultivating fears of disorder. Conservatives depict blue cities as sites of rampant crime, chaos, and iniquity. And often enough, it is progressives — with their overdeveloped empathy and concern for the poor and criminalized — who take the blame. Recently, a rising chorus of voices on the center-left, including figures like Ezra Klein , have embraced the thesis that perceptions ...
Jan 05, 2025•4 min•Transcript available on Metacast Back in October, before the 2024 election, we had on our friend—and brilliant screenwriter and playwright—Dorothy Fortenberry to talk about gender and the presidential campaign. Amid all the postmortems and Democratic soul searching, we wanted to have Dorothy back on to revisit some of those questions, starting with the difficulties women face in running as "outsiders" or against "The System"—an especially relevant consideration given the prevailing anti-incumbent, burn-it-down sentiment among v...
Dec 27, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Ep 107•Transcript available on Metacast It's been a while since we've had our friends from the 5-4 podcast on KYE, and we thought there was no better time to do so than the weeks before Donald Trump is inaugurated, again, as president. As listeners might guess, we wanted to talk to them about what opportunities Trump might have during his second term to reshape the federal judiciary—and if he can secure the confirmations of Kash Patel at the FBI and Pam Bondi as Attorney General, perhaps a lot more than that. Topics include: President...
Dec 17, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Ep 106•Transcript available on Metacast Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy We wanted to offer something of a palette cleanser for our subscribers, so we decided to watch the recent movie, Reagan , with our intrepid producer, Jesse Brenneman. Even better, it's based on the 2006 book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism , by Paul Kengor—who just happens to have been Matt's close mentor as an undergraduate student. Reagan clocks in at over two hours and twenty minutes,...
Dec 06, 2024•4 min•Transcript available on Metacast This is a conversation we've wanted to have for a while, and it seemed like there was no better time than now, as many people on the broad center-left are asking tough questions about Donald Trump's strength in rural America—according to one post-election analysis , he won 62 percent of rural voters. To unpack what's happening in these parts of the country, we talked to Luke Mayville of Reclaim Idaho , a grassroots organization that, among other things, helped win a ballot referendum that expand...
Nov 27, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Ep 105•Transcript available on Metacast The second Trump administration hasn't started, but it's already proving chaotic, disturbing, and downright bewildering. (Not unlike the first!) Trump's picks for key staff and cabinet positions display a discordant, if not altogether surprising, mix of ideologies, experience, and scandalous baggage. (Indeed, one of his picks, Matt Gaetz for Attorney General, withdrew from consideration between the time we recorded our interview and when we recorded the intro.) For this episode, we're focused on...
Nov 21, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Ep 104•Transcript available on Metacast Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy ! In our first episode after the 2024 elections, we briefly considered what the results revealed about how Donald Trump won, and why Kamala Harris lost, before discussing what Trump's first picks for his White House staff and Cabinet meant for his second terms as president. This conversation is different—a proper "post-mortem" of the results and a bit of a group therapy, mixed with wide-ranging reflections on ...
Nov 16, 2024•3 min•Transcript available on Metacast As the reality of Donald Trump's decisive victory sets in, we wanted to talk to Politico 's Ian Ward , who's done some of the very best reporting on post-liberal intellectuals, JD Vance, and MAGA-world, in addition to spending time on the campaign trail this fall. After breaking down the results of the presidential election, we discuss Vance's role in the campaign, his standing with Trump, and friendship with Don Jr.; how the Trump transition is taking shape and who's likely to influence his dec...
Nov 08, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Ep 103•Transcript available on Metacast If you're on the left and you've spent time on the internet in the past few weeks, you've probably observe or participated in debates about the strategic value and moral status of voting in the 2024 election: Is it okay to vote for Kamala Harris even though her administration is complicit in a genocide? Is voting an exercise in signaling one's moral convincetions and identity? Or merely a tactical decision calculated to create better or worse terrain on which to organize in the future? Or is it ...
Nov 01, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy If you're on the left and you've spent time on the internet in the past few weeks, you've probably observe or participated in debates about the strategic value and moral status of voting in the 2024 election: Is it okay to vote for Kamala Harris even though her administration is complicit in a genocide? Is voting an exercise in signaling one's moral convincetions and identity? Or merely a tactical decision cal...
Oct 29, 2024•4 min•Transcript available on Metacast The author of several excellent books about the history of American conservatism, including The Invisible Bridge , Nixonland , and Reaganland , Rick Perlstein makes his triumphant return to Know Your Enemy . Drawing on Rick's wealth of historical knowledge, as well as his American Prospect column — entitled " The Infernal Triangle " — we explore the failures of American media elites and the Democratic Party to reckon with Donald Trump and his antecedents on the far right. What are the habits and...
Oct 25, 2024•1 hr•Ep 102•Transcript available on Metacast Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy In this episode, Matt is joined by journalist Talia Lavin to discuss her new book, Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America , one of the most fascinating and unique books published on the Christian right during the Trump-era. Lavin takes her subjects seriously, but not uncritically, and especially focuses on the wrecked and ruined lives left in the wake of conservative evangelicalism's more c...
Oct 18, 2024•5 min•Transcript available on Metacast Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy Historian Timothy Shenk joins us for a conversation about his new book, Left Adrift: What Happened to Liberal Politics , a timely look at political strategy on the liberal-left as the New Deal Consensus cracked up in the late 1960s and 1970s through Bill Clinton's presidency and beyond. He tells the story of how Democrats responded to class dealignment through the careers of two consultants, Stan Greenberg and...
Oct 11, 2024•3 min•Transcript available on Metacast This conversation is a little different. We thought that exploring the life of, say, Russell Kirk might not be the best way to spend the weeks before such a consequential election, so this is the first of a few episodes that won't be about a text or a life, but about the 2024 elections—hopefully digging a little deeper than most, and with a special concern for the themes and topics of Know Your Enemy. To help us get started, we had on a great friend of the podcast, playwright and screenwriter Do...
Oct 03, 2024•1 hr 23 min•Ep 101•Transcript available on Metacast Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy Matt and Sam continue the 100th episode extravaganza by answering more truly excellent listener questions and hear from more friends of the show. Topics include: leftwing politics and orthodox Christianity, how to maintain hope (especially on the socialist left), learning to love Freud, complicated family politics, and more! Plus: Dissent co-editor Tash Lewis sings "Happy Birthday" to Matt in Welsh. Sources: C...
Sep 26, 2024•5 min•Transcript available on Metacast To celebrate the 100th episode of Know Your Enemy, Matt and Sam decided to open up the mailbag and field listener questions—which, as always, proved to be incredibly intelligent and interesting, with topics ranging from what they've learned along the way to the politics of guns. Plus, past guests from the podcast stop by to offer their commentary on this auspicious occasion. Sources: John Lukacs, The Hitler of History (1997) — Confessions of an Original Sinner (1989) — A New History of the Cold ...
Sep 19, 2024•1 hr 21 min•Ep 100•Transcript available on Metacast Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy Your intrepid hosts watched the first, and possibly only, presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump so you didn't have to—and then stayed up late to talk about it. After a somewhat wobbly start, Harris seized the momentum with a visceral, deeply affecting answer about the consequences of the GOP's assault on abortion rights, then baited Trump into a rambling rant about the size of his crowds. ...
Sep 12, 2024•4 min•Transcript available on Metacast Matt and Sam interview Waleed Shahid and Abbas Alawieh, two organizers of the Uncommitted Movement, about their experiences in the months following October 7 as well as before, during, and after the Democratic National Convention. As an Arab-American from Michigan and one of the state's two Uncommitted delegates to the DNC, what has Abbas heard from the people in his community, and what has he heard from his party? Why try to work within the Democratic Party to change its approach to Israel-Pale...
Sep 09, 2024•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy Matt and Sam interview Waleed Shahid and Abbas Alawieh, two organizers of the Uncommitted Movement, about their experiences in the months following October 7 as well as before, during, and after the Democratic National Convention. As an Arab-American from Michigan and one of the state's two Uncommitted delegates to the DNC, what has Abbas heard from the people in his community, and what has he heard from his p...
Sep 06, 2024•3 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today, we're joined by one of our favorite writers and thinkers, Vinson Cunningham , to discuss his excellent debut novel, Great Expectations , which tells the story of brilliant-but-unmoored young black man, David Hammond, who finds himself recruited — by fluke, folly, or fate — onto a historic presidential campaign for a certain charismatic Illinois senator. A staff writer at the New Yorker, Vinson also worked for Obama's 2008 campaign in his early twenties. (He bears at least some resemblance...
Aug 31, 2024•1 hr 9 min•Ep 99•Transcript available on Metacast Four days in Chicago, dozens of speeches by Democratic luminaries and backbenchers, and a spotlight on Kamala Harris, who reintroduced herself to America — your favorite podcast co-hosts endured watching the Democratic National Convention and are here to report on what they saw. It was, in many ways, a highly successful convention: massive crowds, palpable energy for the Harris-Walz ticket, and orations met with pundits' plaudits. But the Democrats' refusal to feature a speaker from the Uncommit...
Aug 23, 2024•6 min•Transcript available on Metacast Why are American political parties so ineffectual? Why do they seem, simultaneously, so frantically active and so incapable of achieving specific objectives? Why have the Democrats tended to seem listless, uncertain of their own ideological identity; while the Republicans are increasingly dominated by a radical, lunatic fringe more interested in becoming famous on television, radio, and social media than in governing? Why, in other words, are the political parties seemingly "everywhere and nowhe...
Aug 16, 2024•1 hr 12 min•Ep 98•Transcript available on Metacast 
