Know Your Enemy4 Touko 2023

"Succession," "Extrapolations," and TV Writing Today (w/ Dorothy Fortenberry and Will Arbery)

With the Writers Guild of America strike underway, the plight of television writers—especially their treatment in the age of streaming and artificial intelligence—is garnering new, and overdue, attention. Matt and Sam are joined by two friends of the podcast, Will Arbery and Dorothy Fortenberry, who write for major television shows: Will is a writer for HBO's Succession, and Dorothy for Apple TV+'s Extrapolations. They discuss how they write about political topics and themes, such as rightwing political candidates or the effects of climate change, in these fraught times, when the demands of good art can seem in tension with a simplistic and moralistic culture. Also discussed: parents, children, and families, now and in the coming climate crisis; how and whether people can change; and, of course, the WGA strike and why it matters.

Sources Cited:

Michael Schulman, "Why Are TV Writers So Miserable," The New Yorker, Apr 29, 2023

Alex Press, "TV Writers Say They’re Striking to Stop the Destruction of Their Profession," Jacobin, May 3, 2023.

Sam Adler-Bell, "Succession's Repetition Compulsion," The Nation, Nov 10, 2021.

Pope Francis, Laudato si’ (“On Care for Our Common Home”), May 2015

Listen to previous Know Your Enemy episodes with these guests:

"We Can Be Heroes" (w/ Will Arbery), November 11, 2019

"Suburban Woman" (w/ Dorothy Fortenberry), October 29, 2020

"Living at the End of Our World" (w/ Daniel Sherrell & Dorothy Fortenberry), September 2, 2021

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(266)

Zohran, the Jews, and Reckoning with Gaza (w/ Peter Beinart)

This episode isn't focused on a single topic or text, but rather just wanting to have a wide-ranging conversation with our guest, Peter Beinart, editor-at-large of Jewish Currents and author of the re...

11 Marras 20251h 14min

Break Glass in Case of Emergency

This is a different kind of episode than is typical; there's no book, no central text, not even a single, central event that guides the conversation. Instead, we begin with a few recent news items—spe...

3 Marras 20251h 31min

Command + F + Hitler [Teaser]

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.The theme of this rank punditry episode is Getting in Trouble on the Internet, and we begin with the frankly unsu...

24 Loka 20253min

How Charles Murray (Almost) Predicted the Trump Era

This episode is the second in our occasional series on important, controversial, or unusually relevant conservative texts from the recent past. Here we take up Charles Murray's 2012 book, Coming Apart...

15 Loka 20251h 32min

How To Give A Damn [Teaser]

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.Before embarking on a spirited bout of rank punditry, we take a step back and talk about the Staple Singers, Hann...

6 Loka 20253min

Death, Power, and the Charlie Kirk Memorial (w/ Pat Blanchfield)

To try to understand both the power and strangeness of the Charlie Kirk memorial—one part evangelical worship service, one part MAGA rally—we turned, of course, to our friend Pat Blanchfield. All thre...

29 Syys 20251h 26min

The Assassination of Charlie Kirk [Teaser]

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.The assassination of Turning Points USA founder Charlie Kirk on September 10, 2025, seemed to change the landscap...

19 Syys 20253min

The Case for Democracy (w/ Osita Nwanevu)

Since the start of the Trump Era over a decade ago, few words have been deployed as often as "democracy": how it's become imperiled, who threatens it, and what to do to defend it. In The Right of the ...

12 Syys 20251h 20min