Know Your Enemy
A leftist's guide to the conservative movement, one podcast episode at a time, with co-hosts Matthew Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell.
Episodes
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 three of us stewed in the event's footage, which runs to over four and a half hours, then convened to discuss it. After laying out for listeners what happened at State Farm Stadium in Arizona just over a week ago, replete with clips, we tr...
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 landscape of American politics in an instant, inspiring a startlingly unanimous battlecry of vengeance from the conservative movement, the GOP, and the Trump White House. In this episode, Matt and Sam respond to this ominous moment, analyzing ...
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 People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding, Osita Nwanevu sets out to understand the true meaning of democracy and defend it from its critics, not just on the right but those liberals who doubt the capacity of ordinary ...
Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.
Roman Polanski's 2019 film about the Dreyfus affair, An Officer and a Spy, only recently made it's U.S. "premier," running for a few weeks in August at Film Forum in New York City. When it originally was released, it couldn't find an American distributor (and likewise was shunned by streaming services), a consequence of the MeToo moment meeting P...
Devoted Know Your Enemy listeners will recall that, in November 2021, we released a fairly dense, theory-driven episode on Frank Meyer, the Communist from New Jersey whose exploits on behalf of the Party in the UK got him kicked out of the country and back to the United States, where he eventually turned right and became a key figure in the post-war U.S. conservative movement, both as an editor at National Review and an architect o...
This episode was first published in October 2024, and has been un-paywalled following the death this week, on August 21, of Focus on the Family founder and influential figure on the religious right, James Dobson, at age 89. Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to hear more episodes just for subscribers.
In this episode, Matt is joined by journalist Talia Lavin to discuss her book, Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Ove...
A major topic following Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 presidential election has been his gains with racial and ethnic minorities, a trend that's scrambled many people's assumptions about American politics, not least those of anti-racist liberals. Why have minority voters drifted toward Trump, despite his many comments and campaign pledges that demonize or disparage them? To try to understand this phenomenon, we talked to Danie...
Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.
Our mailbag runneth over! Unsurprisingly, we received so many excellent questions from subscribers for our most recent episode that we decided to answer even more of them. Once again religion seemed to be on the minds of listeners, and we take up charismatic Christians and the evolution of both the religious right and the Republican Party, as wel...
It's been nearly a year since we asked our subscribers to send us questions for a mailbag episode—which they did, with remarkable thoughtfulness and intelligence, for our 100th episode back in September 2024. A lot has happened since then (to say the least), so we wanted to once again open up the mailbag and find out what was on the minds of Know Your Enemy listeners, who sent too many excellent questions for just one episode—so, i...
Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.
Over July 4th weekend, the Department of Justice and FBI put out a memo essentially declaring "case closed" on the matter of Jeffrey Epstein, the well-connected sex criminal and pedophile who died (apparently) by suicide in federal custody in 2019. No more files. No more questions. He killed himself and that's that. This was quite the reversal fr...
This episode from January 2025 has been un-paywalled for your summer enjoyment...
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 "...
Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.
We don't do too many New York City-focused episodes on Know Your Enemy, but Zohran Mamdani's decisive win in the Democratic mayoral primary last month certainly warrants this one. The thirty-three year old democratic socialist, state assemblyman, and Muslim of Indian descent born in Uganda, ended up running away with it, defeating the runner-up, ...
This episode is one that Matt and Sam have been anticipating for years: after two-and-a-half decades of research and writing, Sam Tanehaus's authoritative biography of William F. Buckley, Jr.—youthful booster of America First, enfant terrible at Yale, CIA agent, founder of National Review, best-selling author, brilliant television host, and more—has blessedly arrived. Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America stretc...
Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.
Donald Trump's rise in U.S. politics over the past decade has been inextricable from his "America First" foreign policy and withering criticisms of the Iraq War, nation building, and both the neoconservatism that led the Republican Party to disaster during George W. Bush's presidency and the Washington establishment that still thought America cou...
Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.
Journalist Tammy Kim joins the pod to talk about the anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles — and the raids that precipitated them.
Further Reading:
E Tammy Kim, "Immigration Protests Threaten to Boil Over in Los Angeles," The New Yorker, June 9, 2025.
— "Inside the Activist Groups Resisting ICE," The New Yorker, Jun 13, 2025.
As the world falls apart — and we prep for our Buckley mega-episode with Sam Tanenhaus — we're unlocking this fun episode from late last year. Subscribe at Patreon.com/knowyourenemy to never miss an episode like this one. And please listen to Jesse's insane, hilarious, freakishly prescient (and fake) podcast Tech Talk.
A palette cleanser for subscribers: we watched Reagan (2024), with our intrepid producer, Jesse Brenneman. Even be...
Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.
If you pay any attention at all to political news, it's been hard to avoid Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's recent bombshell of a book, Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, which offers behind-the-scenes reporting from the White House, halls of Congress, the campaign trail, and beyond about...
Attentive listeners will notice that this episode is about a book but isn't an author interview. That's because it's the first in a new occasional series of episodes that will be dedicated to books by conservative writers that we think are important — whether because a book articulates the right's approach to an issue or problem in an especially revealing way, influenced or galvanized the conservative movement when it was published...
Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.
In a recent New Yorker essay, our guest, UC Davis anthropologist Manvir Singh, argues, "The Trumpian mystique echoes a dynamic that has occurred for centuries and across cultures. Its core ingredients—an alleged league of pedophiles, a godlike miracle worker, promises of an Edenic restoration—resemble archetypes that have long occupied humanity’s...
Among the many factors credited for Donald Trump's victory over Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race was one that, naturally, the hosts of Know Your Enemy took an interest in: podcasts. More specifically, "bro" podcasts—think Joe Rogan or Theo Von—seemed to be one reason why Trump continued, as he did in 2016 and 2020, to perform so well with male voters, especially gaining ground with younger, Black, and Latino men. An epis...
Popular Podcasts
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
The heart was always off-limits to surgeons. Cutting into it spelled instant death for the patient. That is, until a ragtag group of doctors scattered across the Midwest and Texas decided to throw out the rule book. Working in makeshift laboratories and home garages, using medical devices made from scavenged machine parts and beer tubes, these men and women invented the field of open heart surgery. Odds are, someone you know is alive because of them. So why has history left them behind? Presented by Chris Pine, CARDIAC COWBOYS tells the gripping true story behind the birth of heart surgery, and the young, Greatest Generation doctors who made it happen. For years, they competed and feuded, racing to be the first, the best, and the most prolific. Some appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, operated on kings and advised presidents. Others ended up disgraced, penniless, and convicted of felonies. Together, they ignited a revolution in medicine, and changed the world.
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.