Christopher Lasch, the late historian and social critic, can be difficult to pin down. Despite writing with startling clarity and verve, Lasch frustrates his readers' longing for clean partisan taxonomies and explicit programmatic statements. Taken up in recent years by Steve Bannon and &nb...
2022-08-11 17:21:43 +0000 UTC View Post
Matt is joined by John Huntington, author of Far-Right Vanguard, which chronicles the history of what he...
2022-07-30 17:19:53 +0000 UTC View Post
Here's something fun and a little different: your beloved cohost Matt Sitman was interviewed by Victor Bruzzone and Matt McManus on their podcast, Plastic Pills, and the ensuing conversation — about Matt's own history, th...
2022-07-17 17:48:44 +0000 UTC View Post
In the third and final episode in their series on the overturning of Roe v. Wade—recorded on the day it happened—Matt and Sam pick up with 1990s, the George W. Bush administration, and eventually take listeners up to the present. They focus especially on way conservative, mostly Chri...
2022-06-30 01:14:55 +0000 UTC View Post
Today we're sharing a special "Dig Your Enemy" crossover event, as Daniel Denvir of Jacobin magazine's The Dig podcast puts Matt and Sam in the hot seat. We answer all of Dan's excellent questions about the state of the American right, including: the return of isolationism, the New Right, Peter T...
2022-06-23 15:44:02 +0000 UTC View Post
At long last, Matt and Sam dive into the origins of the Christian right—a complicated tale often flattened by contemporary debates. What was the history of Christian anti-abortion activism before Roe, and how soon after the landmark Supreme Court decision did conservative Christians co...
2022-06-17 14:33:05 +0000 UTC View Post
On May 5, Politico published a leaked draft of the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, written by Justice Samuel Alito, that would over...
2022-05-28 19:12:05 +0000 UTC View Post
In this bonus episode, Matt takes Sam on a tour of his native state, Pennsylvania, where a number of key primaries were held this week. The results brought some hopeful news: Lt. Gov. John Fetterman handily defeated State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta and (even better) Manchin-backed moderate Rep. Conor ...
2022-05-20 23:30:32 +0000 UTC View Post
Hope for the American left is at a fairly low ebb, at the moment, but our counterparts in Latin America are on the march and succeeding at beating back repressive right wing governments across the region. What can we learn from them? And given extremely volatile global conditions — and the cont...
2022-05-15 16:56:31 +0000 UTC View Post
Sarah Weinman's new book—Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts to Set Him Free—is a gripping true crime story, and perhaps the tale of an ill-fated love triangle. It also is a story about William F. Buckley,...
2022-05-09 17:19:46 +0000 UTC View Post
Since Donald Trump was elected president — partially on the strength of white working class support in the Rust Belt — we've heard that the GOP is a working class party; that liberals sold out American labor to globalized capital; and that American workers are too socially and culturally cons...
2022-05-01 17:16:38 +0000 UTC View Post
Matt and Sam talk to KYE Paris correspondent Cole Stangler (@colestangler) about the French presidential election. Did this week's one-on-one debate between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen change the race in any significant ways? Why is Le Pen drawing notably more support this time around than ...
2022-04-22 13:42:14 +0000 UTC View Post
Matt and Sam are joined by Georgetown University historian and co-editor emeritus of Dissent, Michael Kazin, to discuss his new book, What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Part...
2022-04-13 17:23:16 +0000 UTC View Post
Matt and Sam are joined by KYE all-star John Ganz to discuss Compact: A Radical American Journal, a new publication founded by Sohrab Ahmari, Matthew Schmitz, and Edward Aponte. It's launch coincided with a profile in the New York Times—and a party that Sam attended. What are ...
2022-04-09 19:51:34 +0000 UTC View Post
Matt and Sam are joined by Ari Brostoff, author of Missing Time: Essays, to explore David Horowitz's 1996 memoir, Radical Son. Like a number of prominent conservati...
2022-03-30 21:41:13 +0000 UTC View Post
Matt and Sam talk to Gillian Branstetter, press secretary for the National Women’s Law Center, about the spate of anti-trans laws sweeping the country: What do these interventions do? Who is pushing them? ...
2022-03-20 17:50:01 +0000 UTC View Post
In the first half of this conversation with Buzzfeed’s Joe Bernstein, Sam asks: What is “disinformation?” Who gets to decide? And does it explain what's wrong with our politics? And in the second half: why is Trump’s favorite venture capitalist, Peter Thiel, funding New York City...
2022-03-11 19:26:41 +0000 UTC View Post
The past few months have seen much talk of a "second Civil War" in the United States or a "national divorce" between red states and blue states. New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie joins Matt and Sam to discuss why the analogy to the Civil War fails, what such rhetoric does for those ...
2022-03-07 22:16:26 +0000 UTC View Post
Matt and Sam talk to Michelle Nickerson about her brilliant book, Mothers of Conservatism, which explores the lives and polit...
2022-02-27 00:31:27 +0000 UTC View Post
Matt talks to writer Phil Christman about his new essay collection, How To Be Normal. They talk about the meaning of "normal" (especially in these pandemic times), religious fundamentalism, Christian conspiracy theories about rock music, Mark Fisher, love, and much more.
So...
2022-02-15 22:51:54 +0000 UTC View PostIt seems almost every big culture-war battle of the moment—from "Critical Race Theory" to COVID mandates—is being fought in America's schools. Meanwhile, Democrats, anxious about a midterm rout driven by angry Republican parents, too often are conceding these battles to the right, adopt...
2022-01-29 01:52:11 +0000 UTC View Post
Author, podcaster, and New York Times Magazine staff writer Jay Caspian Kang joins Matt and Sam for a spirited discussion of some treacherous topics: identity politics, critical race theory, and cancel culture (oh my!). Jay is our charming, intrepid guide to these touchy subjects, those ...
2022-01-20 15:27:47 +0000 UTC View Post
When Joan Didion died at the age of 87 in December, her early conservatism figured into a number of obituaries and commentaries, but was rarely discussed in detail. Matt and Sam turned to Sam Tanenhaus, William F. Buckley, Jr.'s biographer and knower of all things National Review, to dis...
2022-01-13 21:43:44 +0000 UTC View PostAs the new year begins, we're revising our higher-end subscribers tiers ($25-50/mo) — mostly to make sure we can fulfill them and that you're getting your money's worth. We're also offering annual subscriptions at a discount rate (more on that below!).
YAF tier ($5/month): <...
2022-01-03 19:19:58 +0000 UTC View Post
With another year of the podcast, the pandemic, and American decline in the rearview, we turn to Know Your Enemy's absurdly brilliant listeners for guidance and intellectual stimulation. That's right, folks, it's a mailbag episode! And thanks to you, our cups runneth over with f...
2021-12-23 19:18:24 +0000 UTC View Post
Finally, another enemy! This time Matt and Sam are joined by Nate Hochman, a rising star on the intellectual Right and one of the subjects of Sam's recent New Republic article about today's young, populist conservatives. They discuss Michael Oakeshott, friendship and politics, where the ...
2021-12-15 23:05:14 +0000 UTC View PostWe're working on a year-in-review / mailbag episode, and we'd love to hear from you, our loyal Patreon subscribers. (In appropriately Reaganite fashion, we'll try to prioritize Straussians and Young Americans for Freedom over the freeloaders!)
Part of what we're tryi...
2021-12-14 18:34:45 +0000 UTC View Post
Psychoanalytic writer and teacher Pat Blanchfield joins Sam for the long-awaited KYE "Freud Pod," in which we discuss how psychoanalytic tools can help us make sense of our irrational political moment, our desires and a...
2021-12-01 23:52:22 +0000 UTC View Post
It's rare for nearly all the inhabitants of the KYE podcast universe to gather in one place, but it happened earlier this month in—as you might guess—Florida, where the National Conservatism 2 conference was held. The proceedings were littered with extraordinary claims of a "totalitarian cult...
2021-11-25 04:16:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Matt talks with playwright Ben Firke about I Am The Gooseking, which just finished its debut run at The Tank theater in New York City. Here's a description of the play:
Jane Vazquez is a journalist on assignment for a tech blog. She travels to New Hampshire to interview a ... 2021-11-15 00:00:18 +0000 UTC View Post