Know Your Enemy: Trump’s Big, Beautiful Ballroom
A conversation with Kate Wagner about Trump’s White House ballroom project and the politics of architecture.
Winter 2026
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Know Your Enemy: One Podcast After Another
Matt and Sam are joined by Know Your Enemy’s intrepid producer, Jesse Brenneman, to discuss the recent film One Battle After Another.
Know Your Enemy: TV Writing Today, with Dorothy Fortenberry and Will Arbery
Matt and Sam talk to writers on Succession and Extrapolations about the WGA strike and how they approach political topics and themes on their shows.
The Economy of Influence
A conversation with Emily Hund, the author of The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media.
[March 10] Class-Conscious Cinema
A Discussion on Lapsis, with Boots Riley and Noah Hutton.
The Myth of the Cosa Nostra
Marco Bellocchio’s The Traitor is a smashing movie about the informant whose revelations led to the Maxi Trial of the 1980s, which decimated the Italian mob.
Happy Birthday, Pauline
Pauline Kael was one of the great voices of American freedom. The road she opened for critics is simultaneously the most rewarding and the most difficult to follow.
Duck Unchained
Equal parts muckraking journalism and biting satire, the print-only, century-old French newspaper Le Canard enchaîné represents one of the most remarkable stories in modern journalism.
Harlem Is Everywhere
As the old neighborhood gentrifies, its transatlantic spirit lives on as the influence of black culture grows—from Lagos to London, from Havana to Atlanta.
The Culture of Democracy 
Toward Democracy: The Struggle for Self-Rule in European and American Thought by James T. Kloppenberg Oxford University Press, 2016, 912 pp. A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley by Jane Kamensky W.W. Norton, 2017, 544 pp. We …
The Many Dimensions of Black Panther
The Marvel blockbuster refuses to flatten its characters into simple heroes or villains—and that’s exactly what makes it so refreshing.
The Apocalyptic Baldwin
I Am Not Your Negro shows how James Baldwin became disillusioned about the possibility of any peaceful resolution to racism, but underplays the force of his internationalist and anti-capitalist perspective.
How the Slants Reclaimed Their Name
Simon Tam, frontman of the Asian-American dance-rock band, says the recent Supreme Court ruling allowing the group to keep their name affirms that “ultimately communities should be able to determine what’s best for themselves.”
Artistic Differences
“He Will Not Divide Us” posited that we could all get along—but instead became a petri dish of American division.
Indecent Exposures
Oliver Stone’s Hollywood retelling of the Snowden saga ends up depicting surveillance as little more than an inconvenience that might threaten our sex lives.
