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"Exit From Within" (August 2022)
Here's something a little creepy. In a bonus episode from August 2022, Matt and Sam were discussing Sam's profile of Arizona Senate hopeful and Peter Thiel-protégé Blake Masters when we found ourselves imagining how a future union of MAGA nationalism and Silicon Valley libertarianism might try to run the government. A listener flagged it for us, noting that the description — which we call "exit from within" — sounds remarkably similar to what we are now experiencing with Trump, Musk, DOGE, and the tech right. We had totally forgotten about this, and thought the rest of you might like to hear it. We'll be back to our regular programming, with the Elon Musk episode, next week. The full episode, "Masters of War," is on Patreon. Readings: Sam Adler-Bell, "The Violent Fantasies of Blake Masters," NYTimes, Aug 3, 2022. Albert O. Hirschman, "Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States," (1970) ...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to all of our premium episodes!
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20:42
How Bad Is It? [TEASER]
Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemyJust over a month into Trump's second term, Matt and Sam offer their thoughts on where we're at—and, to be blunt, the assessment is fairly depressing. They take stock of the troubling truth that Pete Hegseth's confirmation reveals about Trump's hold over the Republican Party, new FBI director Kash Patel's conspiratorial children's books, the state of the conservative legal movement, the right's relatively recent embrace of unbounded executive power, what the Democrats can do to fight back, and more.Sources:Pope Francis, "Letter of the Holy Father Francis to the Bishops of the United States of America," Feb 10, 2025Jonathan Swan & Maggie Haberman, "Power, Intimidation and the Resurrection of Trump’s Support for Hegseth," New York Times, Dec 12, 2024Gabriel Sherman, "'They’re Scared Shitless': The Threat of Political Violence Informing Trump’s Grip on Congress," Vanity Fair, Feb 19, 2025Jude Joffe-Block, et al, "How Kash Patel has Used Children's Books and Podcasts to Promote Conspiracy Theories," NPR, Dec 10, 2024Heidi Przybyla, "Leonard Leo Used Federalist Society Contact to Obtain $1.6B Donation," Politico, May 2, 2023James Burnham, Congress and the American Tradition(1959)
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4:27
Pay Attention! (w/ Chris Hayes)
We're all anxious, and none of us can pay attention. We don't read long books anymore; our kids don't read at all. When we watch TV, we scroll at the same time. And we absolutely cannot be alone with ourselves. These are the symptoms of a modern malaise that is everywhere diagnosed but rarely treated with the dire seriousness it deserves: an epochal sickness that is fundamentally changing the way we relate to each other and to our own minds. What would it take to reclaim control? Chris Hayes — journalist, author, and host of MSNBC's All In — joins to discuss his new book The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource. Together, Chris and the boys theorize how attention replaced information as the defining commodity of modern life. Along the way, we discuss our own struggles with social media addiction, prayer as an ancient technology for organizing attention, the evolutionary origins of attention-seeking, Donald Trump as the "public figure par excellence" of the attention age, and how to fight back against the corporate takeover of our minds. Toward the end, Chris explains how he's navigating hosting his cable show amid another bewildering Trump era, which seems designed to divide and fragment our attention.Further Reading: Chris Hayes, The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource, (2025)Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, (1952)Adam Phillips, Attention Seeking, (2022)Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, (1844)Kyle Chayka, FIlterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture, (2024)Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, (2019)Daniel Immerwahr, "What if the Attention Crisis Is All a Distraction?" The New Yorker, Jan 20, 2025....and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to all of our premium episodes!
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1:01:37
MAGA x DOGE, So Far (w/ John Ganz) [TEASER]
Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemyThe first three weeks of Donald Trump's second administration have seen a flurry of vicious executive orders aimed at the federal workforce, trans people, government agencies, and others—all while Elon Musk and his deranged band of young sociopaths, otherwise known as the "Department of Government Efficiency," have been set loose on the Treasury's payment system and other key functions of the state. In this episode, we talk with John Ganz to try to make sense of it all: how to avoid getting sucked into the political quicksand of debating conservatives about line items in a budget, what Trump and Musk really want, how "presidential" political systems break down, and, generally, how to think about What's Happening Now.Sources:James Burnham, The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom (1943)— The Managerial Revolution: What Is Happening in the World (1941)George Orwell, "Second Thoughts on James Burnham," Polemic, May 1946John Ganz, "What Happened Here," Unpopular Front, Feb 4, 2024Nathan Tankus, "Elon Musk Wants to Get Operational Control of the Treasury’s Payment System," Notes on the Crises, Feb 3, 2024Karen Yourish, et al, "All of the Trump Administration’s Major Moves in the First 17 Days," New York Times, Feb 6, 2024Yoni Applebaum, "America's Fragile Constitution," The Atlantic, Oct 2015Eric Rauchway, Why the New Deal Matters (2021)
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2:11
Ayn Rand Against the World (w/ Jennifer Burns)
An atheist, a radical for capitalism, a caricature of a greedy libertarian, a best-selling novelist, a difficult partner and passionate lover, and the self-proclaimed greatest philosopher since Aristotle: Ayn Rand was many things, and we talk about almost all of them in this epic episode. To do so, we called upon historian Jennifer Burns, whose intellectual biography, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right , is enormously helpful in trying to understand an idiosyncratic writer who, both then and now, fits ambiguously into the "fusionist" post-war conservative movement. Rand remains a controversial figure whose ideas permeate our culture and continue to inspire some of the most consequential (and least appealing) political figures in the United States. To understand Rand and her influence, we examine her family's experiences during and after the Russian Revolution, her journey to the U.S. and early success in Hollywood, the arduous path she trod to become a writer, Rand's involvement in anti-New Deal politics in the 1930s and 40s, her ideas, philosophy, and scandalous personal life, and much more.Sources:Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (1943)— Atlas Shrugged (1957)— We the Living (1936)Jennifer Burns, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (2009)— Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative (2023)Whittaker Chambers, "Big Sister Is Watching You," National Review, Dec 28, 1957Murray Rothbard, "The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult," (1972)Mary Gaitskill, Two Girls, Fat and Thin (1991)Lisa Duggan, Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed, (2019)— "Ayn Rand and the Cruel Heart of Neoliberalism," Dissent, May 20, 2019.Adam Curtis, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, (2011)Listen again:"Milton Friedman and the Making of Our Times," Dec 3, 2023...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to all of our premium episodes!
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