Know Your Enemy: Against Despair, with Christian Wiman
Matt and Sam talk to the poet Christian Wiman about his recent book, Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair.
Matt and Sam talk to the poet Christian Wiman about his recent book, Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair.
Matt and Sam are joined by historian Ronnie Grinberg to discuss her book Write Like a Man: Jewish Masculinity and the New York Intellectuals.
Matt and Sam talk to B.D. McClay about the right’s freakout over Taylor Swift—and what she can tell us about American fame, fortune, and fear.
Matt and Sam talk to Jacob Heilbrunn about his new book, America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators.
Matt and Sam welcome back John Ganz to discuss René Girard, the Stanford polymath whose theory has inspired a devoted following—including Peter Thiel, Girard’s former student.
Matt and Sam explore how movement conservatives—and their think tanks—are preparing for a second Trump administration.
Matt and Sam are joined by historian Kim Phillips-Fein to discuss historical scholarship on American conservatism. How has the study of the right changed since 2016? And how should the field orient itself to 2024?
Matt and Sam welcome historian Erik Baker onto the podcast to discuss Garry Wills’s blistering critique of the national security state and unaccountable presidential power in his 2010 book, Bomb Power.
Matt and Sam interview historian Jennifer Burns about her new biography of Nobel Prize–winning economist and libertarian intellectual Milton Friedman.
A discussion of Garry Wills’s 1982 book on the Kennedy family.
In the annual mailbag episode, Matt and Sam answer listener questions about topics ranging from the influence of post-liberal intellectuals on the right to their favorite Willie Nelson albums.
John Ganz returns to discuss William F. Buckley Jr.’s 1992 book In Search of Anti-Semitism.
Editors and writers from Jewish Currents stop by for a discussion on the contradictory history of the Anti-Defamation League—and how to make sense of its recent showdown with Elon Musk.
Samuel Moyn returns to the podcast to discuss his new book Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times.
Nate Hochman was fired from Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign after producing a video containing a Nazi symbol. Matt and Sam reflect on why they invited him on the show in 2021—and on what his trajectory tells us about the young right today.