Know Your Enemy

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...

We took the holiday week off,  so we're sharing an episode from behind the paywall. Coming soon: new episodes on The Biden Problem, SCOTUS, and Israeli illiberalism as an inspiration for the global right.  *** In this episode, from January 2024, writer Osita Nwanevu joins for a rip-roaring conversation about legendary prose stylist, "new journalist," and novelist Tom Wolfe. Reviewing a new documen...

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this premium episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy  We watched it, and you probably did too. Here is our analysis of the incredibly depressing, even shocking first presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. While the topic of this episode is self-explanatory, it's worth making a few comments ab...

We're joined by two experts on European politics to explain the EU parliamentary election results: David Adler , general coordinator of the Progressive International, and David Broder , historian of Italy and Europe editor at Jacobin . What do the results say about the strength of the far right in Europe? And why has Emmanuel Macron of France called snap parliamentary elections in response? Is Mac...

Something happened to America — and to American conservatism — in the early 1990s: an unspooling, a coarsening, a turn from substance to symbol and from narrative to fragment; prevailing political myths ceased to make sense or have purchase, and nothing sufficiently capacious or legible emerged to replace them, leaving only a dank, foggy climate of conspiracy, bellicosity, and despair. Victorious...

In this special Pride Month episode of Know Your Enemy, Matt and Sam talk to historian Neil J. Young about his new book, Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right . His absorbing account picks up in after World War II, when neither party made for a good political home for gay people, which helped make a libertarian approach to sexual politics—getting the government out of their private liv...

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this premium episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy  Matt and Sam break down the Trump guilty verdict—what happened during the trial, why the jury might have reached the decision they did, how Republicans and the right reacted, and the ways it all could matter, or not, for the 2024 presidential election. It'...

Historian Tim Barker and editor/organizer Ben Mabie join to discuss a thrilling episode in the history of American labor. Barker and Mabie are two co-hosts of Fragile Juggernaut , a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (or CIO). Along with  co-hosts Alex Press, Gabriel Winant, Andrew Elrod, and Emma Teitelman...

Historian David Austin Walsh joins to discuss his excellent new book Taking America Back: The Conservative Movement and the Far Right — a fascinating re-description of the relationship between the far right and the American conservative movement from the 1930s to the end of the Cold War.   How did figures like William F. Buckley, Jr. relate to figures on the further right fringes of right-wing pol...