What's Wrong With Men?

In this much anticipated crossover event, Matt and Sam take aim at the conservative legal movement with Rhiannon, Michael, and Peter—the brilliant and funny team behind the 5-4 podcast, a Know Your Enemy favorite. For those who are not yet fans of the show, it's "a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks" that offers "a progressive and occasionally profane take on the ideological battles at the heart of the Court’s most important landmark cases, and an irreverent tour of all the ways in which the law is shaped by politics." Topics discussed in this conversation include the origins of originalism, the founding of the Federalist Society, Robert Bork's disastrous confirmation hearings, the way the media covers the Supreme Court, and how the Left can fight back. Know Your Enemy listeners can check out 5-4 here.  Follow @fivefourpod on Twitter for their latest episodes, along with hosts @AywaRhiannon, @_FleerUltra, and @The_Law_Boy. Special thanks to podcast guru Leon Neyfakh (@leoncrawl) for helping make this happen.Listeners, especially new ones, might want to revisit Know Your Enemy episode eight, "Koch'd Out," for a deep dive into some of the foundations and institutions mentioned in this conversation....and don't forget to support KYE on Patreon to listen to all of our bonus episodes!

21 Dec 20201h 26min

Subscribe at https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy to hear this and all our bonus content.An excerpt from our latest bonus episode on "the limits of realignment" with Aaron Sibarium of The Washington Free Beacon.

6 Dec 20204min

Who is Donald Trump? The great David Roth, co-owner of Defector Media and a columnist at the New Republic, joins Matt and Sam to answer that harrowing question. From Trump's odd lies about his baseball talents to creepy White House Christmas decorations, this conversation was the perfect opportunity to unpack the neuroses, self-protective measures, cruelty, humor, and sheer weirdness of a terrible president on his way out of office. Also: Sam finally gets to do his Melania "impression"!Sources Cited:Leander Schaerlaeckens, "Was Donald Trump Good at Baseball?" Slate, May 5, 2020David Roth, "I Made Up a Fake Donald Trump Quote, and He Retweeted It," SBNation, June 10, 2014 David Roth, "A Unified Theory of Trump's Creepy Aesthetic," New Republic, December 19, 2019David Roth, "The Littlest Prince," New Republic, November 17, 2020For more of David's writing on Trump, check out his author archives at the New Republic...and don't forget to support Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to our extensive catalogue of bonus episodes!

28 Nov 20201h 24min

Subscribe at https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy to hear this and all our bonus content!An excerpt from our election recap bonus episode with New York magazine's Eric Levitz and Daniel Sherrell, director of the the #VoteTrumpOut campaign.

14 Nov 20201min

Matt and Sam are joined by Dorothy Fortenberry for a wide-ranging conversation about women and politics. Topics include growing up in Washington, D.C; her experiences writing women characters in Hollywood;  why the left should take over existing institutions; the complicated Catholic motherhood of Amy Coney Barrett; and much, much more. For those not familiar with her work, Fortenberry is a writer and producer on Hulu’s award-winning adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, and her plays include Species Native, Partners, Mommune, and Good Egg. She's a regular contributor to Commonweal, among other publications, though for her latest political takes you should follow her on Twitter (@Dorothy410berry).READ: Dorothy Fortenberry, "One of Those Serious Women: Andrea Dworkin's Radical Feminism," Commonweal , April 29, 2019Dorothy Fortenberry, "A Plea to My Fellow Warren Moms," Commonweal, March 6, 2020Dorothy Fortenberry, "Why I Stay," Commonweal, November 18, 2018LISTEN:Highwomen, "Highwomen"Highwomen, "Redesigning Women"Dar Williams, "The Pointless, Yet Poignant, Crisis of a Co-Ed" ...and don't forget to support Know Your Enemy on Patreon to hear all Matt and Sam's bonus episodes.

29 Okt 20201h 26min

Matt and Sam talk to two esteemed guests, Rick Perlstein and Leon Neyfakh, about why U.S. politics took a right turn in the 1970s. “We organize discontent,” as one New Right activist put it—and they did. Fierce battles over desegregation, gay rights, abortion, and the meaning of America itself all paved the way for Ronald Reagan's smashing victory in 1980.Over four books and two decades, historian Rick Perlstein has chronicled the rise of movement conservatism in America, starting with its renegade beginnings in the 1950s and '60s. Now, with Reaganland  (2020), his extraordinary tetralogy is complete—taking readers on a journey through Jimmy Carter's doomed administration,  the culture wars of the 1970s, and Ronald Reagan's campaign for the presidency. Perlstein's sweeping narrative is paired in this episode with the brilliant work of journalist Leon Neyfakh, who just finished the third season of his podcast Fiasco. It's a deep-dive into the battle over integration in Boston public schools during the 1970s (colloquially but inaccurately known as the Boston "busing crisis")—a vivid and compulsively listenable portrait of a pivotal episode in recent American history.In this conversation, Rick and Leon  disinter forgotten figures from a decade crucial to the rise of conservatism—the 1970s—while discussing how they tell stories we know the ending to, the problem of contingency and political agency, and issues such as American innocence, white backlash, right-wing rhetoric, and more. Don't miss this one!Further Reading: Rick Perlstein, "I Thought I Understood the American Right. Trump Proved Me Wrong," NYTimes,  April 11, 2017Richard Sennett & Jonathan Cobb, The Hidden Injuries of Class, (1972)Jesse Curtis, "'Will the Jungle Take Over?' National Review and the Defense of Western Civilization in the Era of Civil Rights and African Decolonization,"  Journal of American Studies, November 2019Jefferson Cowie, "Is Freedom White?" Boston Review, Sept 23, 2020 Tom Wicker, One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream (1995) ... and don't forget to support Know Your Enemy on Patreon to hear all of Matt and Sam's bonus episodes!

21 Okt 20201h 18min

We released this bonus episode on depression and politics in July, and it quickly became a favorite of our Patreon subscribers. A number of them asked us to make it available in front of the paywall so they could share it with friends and family who have experienced depression and other mental-health issues—so that's what we decided to do. Topics discussed include: Matt's review of George Scialabba's memoir about depression; how left and right understand moral desert; and the struggle to build a society based on human frailty, our vulnerability to bad luck and bad breaks, and how much we need each other. Further Reading:Matthew Sitman, "Muddling Through: A Depression Memoir Like No Other," Commonweal, July 14, 2020.Johanna Hedva, "Sick Woman Theory," Mask Magazine, January 2016.Gabriel Winant, "Coronavirus and Chronopolitics," n + 1, Spring 2020And Listening:Steve Earle, "My Old Friend the Blues" (1986)

12 Okt 20201h 7min

From the never-ending culture war over the New York Times's 1619 Project to arguments about the Black Lives Matter protests to President Trump's promise to Make American Great Again, today's political conflicts reflect, to an extraordinary degree, disagreements over the meaning of American history. Jamelle Bouie's New York Times column is one of the places where these lively debates are most effectively narrated and clarified. Bouie joins Matt and Sam to help make sense of how history, historiography, and politics relate to each other—or at least, how they should. Along the way, the conversation takes up slavery and capitalism, Afro-pessimism and Marxism, and (a frequent preoccupation of the podcast) what left-wing patriotism might look like.  Further Reading:Jamelle Bouie, "Beyond White Fragility," NY Times, June 26, 2020.Jamelle Bouie, "Why Juneteenth Matters," NY Times, June  18, 2020.Sam Adler-Bell, "The Remnant and the Restless Crowd," Commonweal, Aug 1, 2018.Vinson Cunningham, "The Argument of Afropessimism," New Yorker, July 20, 2020Nikole Hannah-Jones, “Our Democracy’s Founding Ideals Were False When They Were Written. Black Americans Have Fought to Make Them True.” New York Times, Aug 14, 2019. Sean Wilentz, "A Matter of Facts," The Atlantic, Jan 22, 2020.John Clegg, "How Slavery Shaped American Capitalism," Jacobin, Aug 28, 2019.Tom Mackaman, "An interview with historian James Oakes on the New York Times’ 1619 Project," World Socialist Website, Nov 18, 2019PLUS: Check out Jamelle's newsletter, which recently featured a huge list of books on the American Revolution and the early republic, and don't forget to support Know Your Enemy on Patreon for bonus episodes!

14 Sep 20201h 6min