Matt 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, how we hold our beliefs, and more!Sources:Sarah Jones, "An Atheist Reconsiders God in the Pandemic," New York Magazine, October 11, 2021Andre Dubus, "A Father's Story," from Selected Stories (Vintage)T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding," from Four Quartets (1943)C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (HarperOne)...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes.

Know Your Enemy

God, Death, and the Pandemic (w/ Sarah Jones)

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy

TEASER: The Texas Bounty Hunter Bill (w/ 5-4's Rhiannon)

TEASER: Coup, Covid, Congress

It's impossible to comprehend the state of conservative politics — or American politics in general — without looking closely at the wars we've been waging for the past two decades. The story we've been telling about American conservatism has been incomplete without a deep-dive on the so-called Global War on Terror. Luckily, Spencer Ackerman has written the perfect book to occasion such a dialogue. In Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump, Ackerman provides a richly detailed (and acutely frustrating) account of the perversions of justice, liberalism, humanity, and the constitution wrought by the forever wars. Our discussion with Ackerman goes from the Oklahoma City Bombing to the cancellation of Susan Sontag to the battles among neocons and paleocons to define the post-9/11 era. We also touch on the CIA's torture program, nation-building in Afghanistan, and the hypocrisies of the Trump-era Resistance. In typical KYE fashion, it's a complex and wide-ranging conversation you won't find elsewhere. Further Reading:Susan Sontag et al. "Tuesday, and After: New Yorker writers respond to 9/11." The New Yorker, Sept 16, 2001.Bernard Lewis, "The Revolt of Islam," The New Yorker, Nov 11, 2001.Jake Tapper, "Pat Buchanan: America First," Salon, Dec 4, 2001.Spencer Ackerman, "The CIA’s Outsourced Torture Is Lost To History," Forever Wars, Aug 6, 2021.Sam Adler-Bell, "How the War on Terror Fuels Trump," Jacobin, Aug 13, 2016....and don't forget to subscribe on Patreon to hear all of our bonus episodes!

Twenty Years of Terror (w/ Spencer Ackerman)

This is a slightly different kind of Know Your Enemy episode—a conversation about hope and despair as the effects of climate change bear down upon us. At the center of that conversation is a brilliant new book, Daniel Sherrell's Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of the World, that focuses not on the facts of climate change or how to stop it, but what it feels like to imagine and live into the future in the knowledge of its existence. Matt and Sam are joined by Sherrell and Dorothy Fortenberry, a playwright and television writer currently working on Extrapolations, an upcoming limited series for Apple TV+ that focuses on climate change. Sources and Further Reading:Daniel Sherrell, Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World (Penguin, 2021)Pope Francis, Laudato si' ("On Care for Our Common Home"), May 2015Dorothy Fortenberry, "Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore: What Donald Trump Understands about Politics Today," Commonweal, November 5, 2020Sam Adler-Bell, "Beautiful Losers: The Left Should Resist the Comforts of Defeat," Commonweal, March 11, 2020...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Living at the End of Our World (w/ Daniel Sherrell & Dorothy Fortenberry)

TEASER: Where's the Rest of Him?

Finally, a deep-dive on William F. Buckley, Jr.! Matt and Sam are joined by Buckley's biographer, Sam Tanenhaus, to talk about WFB's 1965 campaign for mayor of New York City. Topics include: how Buckley's campaign made him the most famous conservative in America; the importance of his candidacy to the conservative movement's rise; the hardline positions he took on policing and his inflammatory views on race; and more. Along the way, Tanenhaus offers countless details that only Buckley's biographer would know, from WFB dropping LSD with James Burnham to the debate that changed Buckley forever.Sources and Further Reading:Sam Tanenhaus, Whittaker Chambers: A Biography (Random House, 1997)Sam Tanenhaus, "The Buckley Effect," New York Times Magazine, October 2, 2005Carl T. Bogus, Buckley: William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism (Bloomsbury, 2011)Matthew Sitman, "There Will Be No Buckley Revival," Commonweal, July 28, 2015...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Buckley for Mayor (w/ Sam Tanenhaus)

For those who want to learn more about the 5-4 podcast, you can visit their website here!

KYE Presents: 5-4 on Connick v. Thompson

TEASER: Woke Capital

In this episode, Matt and Sam are joined by political theorist and conservative intellectual Samuel Goldman—a very sensible and polite "enemy"—to discuss his brilliant new book, After Nationalism. Topics include: Goldman's punk-rocker past; the influence of Leo Strauss on his thinking; historical attempts to provide Americans with a coherent, enduring symbol of national identity; why these symbols have failed; what all this means for debates about teaching U.S. history; and what alternatives to nationalism its critics can offer.  Sources:Samuel Goldman, After Nationalism: Being American in an Age of Division (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021)James Ceaser, Nature and History in American Political Development (Harvard University Press, 2008)

After Nationalism (w/ Samuel Goldman)

It's been over seven months since pro-Trump protestors breached the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The meaning of the event remains contested. Was it a genuine coup attempt by an extra-parliamentary faction of the Trump movement? Or was it a  disorganized and pathetic act of desperation by Fox News-poisoned rubes? Were the protestors inside the Capitol more like tourists or like terrorists? Was the siege an expression of dangerous anti-democratic forces? Or should we be more worried  about the security state's  overreaction to January 6th than about the event itself?  Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, we try to contextualize the events of January 6th in terms of a longer trajectory of right-wing mobilization in 2020. Conservatives have variously downplayed, ignored, and defended the insurrectionists. Trump and others have begun to treat Ashli Babbitt — killed by a police officer during the riot — as a martyr for the cause. Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson  insists the siege was an inside job, planned and executed by the FBI — an implausible theory gaining popularity among conservatives hoping to absolve themselves of culpability.  Still other factions of the right (e.g. our old friends at the Claremont Institute) dream about a version of 1/6 that would actually have succeeded. Further Reading: Video: Day of Rage: An In-Depth Look at How a Mob Stormed the Capitol, New York Times, June 30, 2021. Paige Williams, "Kyle Rittenhouse, American Vigilante" The New Yorker. June 28, 2021.Ben Burgis & Daniel Bessner, "Trump Is a Threat to Democracy. But That Doesn’t Mean He’s Winning." Jacobin. Jan 15, 2021. Micah Loewinger, The Road to Insurrection, WNYC, July 2, 2021. Michael Anton & Curtis Yarvin, "The Stakes: The American Monarchy?," The American Mind. May 31, 2021.Joshua Hochschild "Once Upon a Presidency," The American Mind. Feb 19, 2021.Andrew Egger, "The New January 6 Scapegoats," The Dispatch, Jun 18, 2021.John Ganz "Feb 6 1934/Jan 6 2021," Unpopular Front. Jul 15, 2021....and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for all of our bonus episodes! 

The Afterlife of January 6th

In this unlocked bonus episode, Matt is joined by historian Eric Rauchway for a deep-dive into his new book, Why the New Deal Matters. It's Rauchway's latest effort to recover Franklin Delano Roosevelt as an anti-fascist political leader who sought to expand the meaning and practice of American democracy—that in a robust democracy, people don't just need enough to live on, but something to live for. Topics include: Herbert Hoover's and FDR's different responses to the Bonus Army's march on Washington; why Hoover is the true founding father of modern conservatism; how FDR understood the New Deal as more than just a pragmatic series of experiments; the importance to the New Deal of public art and projects like building libraries and theaters; why, despite its compromises with white supremacists in the Democratic Party, the New Deal continues to inspire; and more! Further Reading:Eric Rauchway, Why the New Deal Matters (Yale University Press, 2021)Eric Rauchway, Winter War: Hoover, Roosevelt, and the First Clash Over the New Deal (Basic  Books, 2018)Jamelle Bouie, "F.D.R. Didn't Just Save the Economy," New York Times, April 16, 2021...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

UNLOCKED: Why the New Deal Matters (w/ Eric Rauchway)

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemyMatt and Sam are back in the same room — Matt's  study — enjoying brown liquor, each other's company, and a surprisingly coherent discussion of the right's latest fixations: our "rainbow regime" and "critical race theory." Listen to find out how Matt's mother feels about his porn-stache, if Sam feels bad about boosting the career of Robin DiAngelo, whether the term "white fragility" has any utility, and why queer community is a metaphysical conundrum for Christian post-liberals. It's fun!

TEASER: How (Not) to Talk About Racism

In this episode Matt and Sam discuss Ravelstein, Saul Bellow's roman à clef about the Straussian political philosopher Allan Bloom, who achieved late-in-life wealth and fame after publishing his controversial bestseller, The Closing of the American Mind. Along the way they consider the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought, eros and the intellectual life, love and friendship, Bellow and Bloom's shared Jewishness, and much, much more.Sources and Further Reading:Saul Bellow, Ravelstein (Penguin, 2000)Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (Simon & Schuster, 1987)                              Giants and Dwarfs (Simon & Schuster, 1990)                              Love and Friendship (Simon & Schuster, 1993)Michel de Montaigne, "Of Friendship," from The Complete Works (trans. Donald Frame)D.T. Max, "With Friends Like Saul Bellow," New York Times Magazine, April 16, 2000Christopher Hitchens, "The Egg-Head's Egger-On," London Review of Books, April 27, 2000Patrick Deneen, "Who Closed the American Mind? Allan Bloom, Edmund Burke, & Multiculturalism," The Imaginative Conservative, May 29, 2013PLUS: Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Unraveling Allan Bloom and Saul Bellow

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemyEvery June it happens: conservatives get all hot and bothered by Pride celebrations, and this year has been no different. Why do banal corporate expressions of support for LGBTQ+ rights drive them so mad? How does religion factor into their opposition to basic protections for LGBTQ+ people? What part do these culture war flareups play in their broader political strategy? In this bonus episode, Matt and Sam offer a survey of hyperbolic rightwing reactions to the start of Pride month and break it all down. 

TEASER: Hot and Bothered

A leftist's guide to the conservative movement, one podcast episode at a time, with co-hosts Matthew Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell.

hubhopper

Know Your Enemy

hubhopper