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The Meaning of Pope Francis
The passing of Pope Francis on April 21, 2025 marked not just the end of a papacy but the end of an era in global politics. The moment in which Francis spoke before Congress a decade ago and identified Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, and Martin Luther King as models of Christian moral witness feels like another universe — far from the cruel, cramped, suspicious, and selfish world we are living in. What was the Francis era? Where did he come from, and how did he become pope? And what are we losing — besides a pretty good pope — with his passing from the mortal realm? Matt and Sam discuss the passing of Pope Francis and what his papacy meant (to us and to the world), why he scandalized the Catholic right, and why his message feels so necessary and yet so far away. Further Reading: Vinson Cunningham, "Many and One," Commonweal, Dec 14, 2020. Dorothy Fortenberry, "The climate apocalypse is also a religious crisis," Vox, April 12, 2023.Abeer Salman and Oren Liebermann, "The pope called them every night until his final hours. Now, Gaza’s Christians cling to the hope he left behind," CNN, April 23, 2025. Matthew Sitman, "No, Pope Francis is Nothing Like Donald Trump," Commonweal, Feb. 26, 2016.— "Pope Francis and Civil Unions: We Need Clarity, Not a Media Blackout," Commonweal, Oct. 27, 2020.Pope Francis, Laudato si’ (“On Care for Our Common Home”), May 2015.Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti, Oct. 3, 2020.Ross Douthat, "Francis and the End of the Imperial Papacy," New York Times, April 21, 2025....and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!
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1:24:24
The Madness of Trump’s Tariffs (w/ John Ganz) [TEASER]
Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemySpeaking in the Rose Garden on April 2, or as he called it, "Liberation Day," President Trump unveiled his plans to impose a new minimum tariff on nearly every country in the world, along with country-specific "reciprocal" tariffs for those nations Trump deemed to be engaging in unfair trade practices. He called it "one of the most important days in American history" and claimed it was "our declaration of economic independence." But rather than liberation, Trump's tariffs have unleashed chaos in the stock market and thrown the role of the United States in the world economy into doubt, not least because of the administration's ever shifting justifications for their actions and the constantly changing details of the tariffs themselves. To make sense of the ongoing fallout, we yet again turn to our friend John Ganz — who just finished reading and reviewing Trump's first three books for The Nation — to understand the deeper motivations (if they can be found) behind Trump's trade war. It's a good conversation, ranging from the bond markets to the bizarre psycho-sexual fantasies about tariffs on the right to "mimetic" competition with China, and beyond!Sources:John Ganz, "Dog Eat Dog: The Books of Donald Trump," The Nation, April 7, 2025— "Apocalypse Delayed? What Happened in the Bond Markets and What's Next," Unpopular Front, April 10, 2025Paul Blumenthal, "Trump's Rationales for His Tariffs Are Incoherent and Contradict Each Other," Huffington Post, April 7, 2025
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UNLOCKED: How the Pandemic Changed Everything (w/ David Wallace-Wells)
In response to several requests from our (wonderful) Patreon subscribers, we're unlocking this episode from behind the paywall. Consider subscribing at Patreon.com/KnowYourEnemy to never miss an episode. March 2025 marked five years since the formal start of the pandemic in the United States, when the federal government declared the arrival and spread of the novel coronavirus to be a national emergency. The official Covid death toll in the United States now stands at over 1.2 million; globally it surpasses 20 million people. Tens of millions of others were hospitalized, and many who survived infection are facing long Covid or related health complications. Our lives were upended, whether by sheltering-in-place, working from home, and barely leaving our home or apartment, or, for others, by endangering themselves by continuing to show up to work in hospitals, making deliveries, or staffing essential businesses. And yet, as David Wallace-Wells recently argued in the New York Times, "We tell ourselves we’ve moved on and hardly talk about the disease or all the people who died or the way the trauma and tumult have transformed us. But Covid changed everything around us."We wanted to have a conversation with David about that reality: why, collectively, we resist acknowledging what Covid really cost us, and the ways it continues to shape our lives. The discussion begins by revisiting the first weeks and months of the pandemic, the fear we felt, and the remarkable displays of solidarity that occurred in blue states as well as red states. From there we explore the different "phases" of the pandemic, how public-health measures became culture-war fodder, the impact of the vaccine on how both the public and elected officials perceived the risks of Covid, the pandemic's profound influence on our politics, the fallout from school closures, the Lab Leak Theory, and more.Listen again: "How to Survive a Pandemic" (w/ Peter Staley), Feb 21, 2021Sources:David Wallace-Wells, "How Covid Remade America," New York Times, Mar 4, 2025— "The Covid Alarmists Were Closer to the Truth Than Anyone Else," New York Times, Feb 26, 2025— "We’ve Been Talking About the Lab-Leak Hypothesis All Wrong," New York Times, Feb 28, 2023— "Dr. Fauci Looks Back: ‘Something Clearly Went Wrong'," New York Times, April 24, 2023David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth (2019)Nicholson Baker, "The Lab-Leak Hypothesis," New York Magazine, Jan 4, 2021Zeynep Tufekci, "We Were Badly Misled About the Event That Changed Our Lives," NYTimes, Mar 16, 2025.Sam Adler-Bell, "Doctor Do-Little: The Case Against Anthony Fauci," The Drift, Jan 24, 2021— "David Leonhardt: The Pandemic Interpreter," NYMag, Feb 24, 2022.Jacqueline Rose, "To Die One’s Own Death," LRB, Nov 19, 2020.
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1:49:58
How the Pandemic Changed Everything (w/ David Wallace-Wells) [TEASER]
Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemyThis month marked five years since the formal start of the pandemic in the United States in March 2020, when the federal government declared the arrival and spread of the novel coronavirus to be a national emergency. The official Covid death toll in the United States now stands at over 1.2 million; globally it surpasses 20 million people. Tens of millions of others were hospitalized, and many who survived infection are facing long Covid or related health complications. Our lives were upended, whether by sheltering-in-place, working from home, and barely leaving our home or apartment, or, for others, by endangering themselves by continuing to show up to work in hospitals, making deliveries, or staffing essential businesses. And yet, as David Wallace-Wells recently argued in the New York Times, "We tell ourselves we’ve moved on and hardly talk about the disease or all the people who died or the way the trauma and tumult have transformed us. But Covid changed everything around us."We wanted to have a conversation with David about that reality: why, collectively, we resist acknowledging what Covid really cost us, and the ways it continues to shape our lives. The discussion begins by revisiting the first weeks and months of the pandemic, the fear we felt, and the remarkable displays of solidarity that occurred in blue states as well as red states. From there we explore the different "phases" of the pandemic, how public-health measures became culture-war fodder, the impact of the vaccine on how both the public and elected officials perceived the risks of Covid, the pandemic's profound influence on our politics, the fallout from school closures, the Lab Leak Theory, and more.Listen again: "How to Survive a Pandemic" (w/ Peter Staley), Feb 21, 2021Sources:David Wallace-Wells, "How Covid Remade America," New York Times, Mar 4, 2025— "The Covid Alarmists Were Closer to the Truth Than Anyone Else," New York Times, Feb 26, 2025— "We’ve Been Talking About the Lab-Leak Hypothesis All Wrong," New York Times, Feb 28, 2023— "Dr. Fauci Looks Back: ‘Something Clearly Went Wrong'," New York Times, April 24, 2023David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth (2019)Nicholson Baker, "The Lab-Leak Hypothesis," New York Magazine, Jan 4, 2021Zeynep Tufekci, "We Were Badly Misled About the Event That Changed Our Lives," NYTimes, Mar 16, 2025.Sam Adler-Bell, "Doctor Do-Little: The Case Against Anthony Fauci," The Drift, Jan 24, 2021— "David Leonhardt: The Pandemic Interpreter," NYMag, Feb 24, 2022.Jacqueline Rose, "To Die One’s Own Death," LRB, Nov 19, 2020.
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4:55
Becoming Elon Musk, Part Two
If there's ever been a Know Your Enemy subject worthy of two episodes, it is Elon Musk—currently the world's richest man, CEO and leader of several pathbreaking companies, ringleader of the Department of Government Efficiency, and (for now) Donald Trump's co-president. In other words, to understand what's happening in the United States during the second Trump administration, it's essential to understand Musk: what shaped him, his enduring preoccupations and personality traits, how he made his vast fortune, and why, in unprecedented ways, he decided to go all in on Trump.In this second of two episodes on Musk, Matt and Sam bring his story up to the present. After offering a few concluding details on Musk's various romantic and familial entanglements, they chart the course of his political derangement, especially focusing on his seeming addiction to Twitter—the social media platform he eventually bought and renamed "X," which also is the name he gave one of his young sons. Musk's purchase of Twitter is treated as a case study in how the billionaire now tends to operate, from his penchant for making wild claims and impulsive decisions, to the way he manages people, tasks, and money. The discussion concludes with a theory of why Trump made such a show of buying a Tesla at the White House, and how to understand what Musk is up to with his erratic, ignorant work at DOGE, with plenty of eyebrow-raising details along the way.As mentioned: Join Matt and Sam and Jamelle Bouie at Dissent magazine’s fundraiser on April 8 in New York!Listen again: "Becoming Elon Musk, Part One"Sources:Kate Conger & Ryan Mac, Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter (2024)Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk (2023)Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (2015)Ella Yurman, "Vivian Jenna Wilson on Being Elon Musk’s Estranged Daughter, Protecting Trans Youth and Taking on the Right Online," Mar 20, 2025Kylie Cheung, "World’s Richest Man Allegedly Refuses to Pay Appropriate Child Support," Jezebel, Mar 21, 2025Faiz Siddiqui, "Elon Musk is worth $270 billion. He’d buy Twitter with an IOU," WaPo, April 22, 2022Theodore Schleifer & Maggie Haberman "Elon Musk Seeks to Put $100 Million Into Trump Political Operation," NYTimes, Mar 11, 20225.Eric Lipton, "Musk Is Positioned to Profit Off Billions in New Government Contracts," NYTimes, Mar 23, 2025.Jessie Blaeser, "DOGE shared its receipts — and some of them don’t match," Politico, Feb 22, 2025. Hadas Gold, "Trump says he’ll buy a Tesla to support Elon Musk, whose companies are struggling," CNN, Mar 11, 2025.Sam Adler-Bell, "Capital without Borders," Commonweal, Feb 8, 2017. ...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to access to all of our bonus episodes!
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