Know Your Enemy

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 a...

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 Mat...

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 Id...

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 th...

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 prop...

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 fri...

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...

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 votin...

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 Democr...

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 especia...

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...

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 En...

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 politi...

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,...

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...

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 hea...

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...

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, Vin...

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 or...

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 med...

In this episode, your co-hosts take a harrowing journey into the life, mind, and times of J.D. Vance, the Republican senator from Ohio and current vice-presidential pick of Donald Trump. You probably were introduced to Vance as the author of Hillbilly Elegy , his 2016 memoir that attempts to explain the plight of the "white working class" in places like Kentucky and Ohio, and now know him as the d...

An extra episode for you: Sam went on Slate 's What Next  podcast (hosted by Mary Harris) to discuss the rise and fall of the Heritage Foundation's Trump transition project — Project 2025.  Is it dead? Why did Trump's campaign resent it so much? And how much influence would its architects have in a second Trump administration? We'll back to your regular programming (the J.D. Vance episode!) later...

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy In the week-and-a-half since we last offered you, our beloved subscribers, the highest quality election punditry around, a lot  has happened: on the Democratic side of the ledger, "The Podcasters' Coup" succeeded and Joe Biden has stepped down as the party's presidential candidate; at least for now, the nominati...

Last week, as Israel continued to prosecute its eliminationist war against Palestinians in Gaza, an eclectic group of right-wing bigwigs gathered in Washington, DC for the fourth iteration of the National Conservatism conference — convened by Yarom Hazony, an Israeli-born writer, activist, and former speechwriter for  Benjamin Netanyahu. As our guest, historian Suzanne Schneider , explains, Hazony...

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy Just about two weeks ago, we gave a nearly real-time reaction to Joe Biden's catastrophically inept performance in his first presidential debate against Donald Trump. The fallout has been swift but not certain—a flood of stories in the press were unleashed, giving the impression that Biden has been worse, for lo...