Know Your Enemy28 Tammi 2025

How Republics End (w/ Mike Duncan) [TEASER]

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A stock rhetorical trope on the right is to invoke ancient Rome when talking about American decline—often making direct comparisons between the Goth invaders and contemporary immigrants, obsessing over homosexuality and Rome's fall, and more. If their understanding of history isn't very serious, what should we make of these appeals? And are there any "lessons" we should learn from Roman history?

There's no better time to take up such matters than while Matt is in Rome, and there was no one better for him to talk with about them than Mike Duncan, the prolific and brilliant history podcaster; he currently hosts the Revolutions podcast and, especially relevant for the purposes of this conversation, hosted the History of Rome podcast from 2007-2012, a project that led him to write The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic (2017). Matt and Mike discuss the use and abuse of history, how "norms" do and do not matter, the relationship between imperialist foreign policy and domestic politics, the perils of vast income inequality, then and now, and more.

Sources:

For quotes from conservatives about Roman decline: Reagan, Nixon, Buchanan, Vance (and Pete Navarro & Michael Anton)

Mike Duncan, The Storm Before the Storm(2017)

— Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution (2021)

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Jaksot(266)

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

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30 Syys 20211min

TEASER: Coup, Covid, Congress

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25 Syys 20212min

Twenty Years of Terror (w/ Spencer Ackerman)

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 bee...

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

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...

2 Syys 20211h 30min

TEASER: Where's the Rest of Him?

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30 Elo 20211min

Buckley for Mayor (w/ Sam Tanenhaus)

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 Buckl...

23 Elo 20211h 27min