The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg

We here at The Remnant tend to evaluate statesmen according to the Lincoln-Wilson spectrum: The good ones are more like Abraham Lincoln, and the bad ones are more like Woodrow Wilson. But because Jonah Goldberg loves a good argument, we’ve invited friend-of-the-show Professor Steven Smith of Yale University to throw a few wrenches in our statesmanship formula. Listen in as Steven and Jonah discuss the difference between statesmanship and leadership, national education, stateless statesmen, crisis, noble ambition, Charles de Gaulle, Claremonsters, illiberalism, the boringness of leftist ideology, and demagoguery. 

Show Notes:

—Steven Smith: On Statesmanship

—Previous Smith Remnant

—Laura Field: Furious Minds

—Laura Field Remnant

The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠.

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Let’s be honest: If you’re not getting canceled every couple of days, are you even living? We don’t think so. We’re T minus 10 days until the midterms, and Jonah Goldberg is raring to kick grass and take names on some of the discourse’s most cantankerous issues. Listen in as he tackles the podcastsphere, his preferred midterm losers, Abdul El-Sayed and Islamophobia, Vivek Ramaswamy and the Amy Acton ad, Trump’s egoism, The Social Reckoning, Trump’s fruity comments, the Christian right, gay MAGA, and religious hypocrisy. 

Show Notes:

—EconTalk Podcast

—Napoleon III Remnant

—Friday’s DisPod

—Jonathan Martin in Politico: “Vivek Ramaswamy’s Trump Act Could Be His Undoing”

—Vanity Fair: “The Art of the Deal: Jared Kushner’s Hacked Phone Revealed His Secret Negotiations—Including More Than $700 Million in Transfers”

—Wednesday G-File

The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. 

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It may disappoint frequent Remnant listeners to learn that most episodes are not recorded in a speakeasy. In fact, recording a Remnant is one of the few occasions that can draw Jonah Goldberg away from such establishments. Nonetheless, listeners will be pleased that on this occasion Jonah is joined in a speakeasy by none other than economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin. They talk about GDP, inflation, federal stakes in private companies, Friedrich Hayek, the knowledge problem, Social Security, the federal budget, K-12 education, one-party governance, political transparency, business leadership, The Wealth of Nations, and the microcosm/macrocosm distinction. 

Show Notes:

—Marco Rubio in the Washington Post: “Why I believe in industrial policy — done right”

—Douglas Holtz-Eakin’s homepage

—The Argument

The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. 

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Conventional wisdom will tell you to be well rested and sober before an interview to ensure peak performance. Jonah Goldberg, however, discovered long ago that he’s at his best on three minutes of sleep, a couple shots of Fireball, and a fistful of Alka-Seltzer tablets. Today, Jonah has prepared himself accordingly because he wants to be in shipshape for The Remnant’s favorite soft Marxist, Tyler Austin Harper. Join Jonah and Tyler as they dive deep into unfettered capitalism, underwater basket weaving, spoiled DSA kids, socialism, New Deal liberalism, the working class, Democratic Party capture, new ideas, civil society, hobby inflation, administrative bloat, and the technocratization of the humanities. 

Show Notes:

—Austin Harper in The Atlantic - “Why Do Rich Kids Love Socialism?”

—Jonah’s response G-File

—Daniel Bell - The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism 

—Tyler Austin Harper’s April Remnant appearance

—Bhaskar Sunkara, Ben Burgis, and Mike Beggs - The Blueprint: How Socialism Can Work in the Real World

—Joseph A. Schumpeter - Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy

The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠.

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Dear listener: There are few places Jonah Goldberg hates more than O’Hare International Airport. Yet, in a sad irony, he has spent a significant percentage of his life sitting in a Chicago terminal waiting on a plane. Though Jonah is not generally inclined to process his life through song, today’s Ruminant kicks off with a slow, mournful dirge memorializing his travel nightmares. But fret not; Jonah quickly recovers himself and holds forth admirably on all manner of subjects, including the Vladimir Putin diesel deal, Ukraine and the West, Cornell, Ilhan Omar, politicians and the media, silos, James Talarico, NatCons, J.D. Vance, Katie Zacharia, bad socialist policy, and governing like a grown-up.

Show Notes:

—Friday’s DisPod

—G-File: “High-Minded Words for a Low Form of Politics”

—Andy McCarthy in National Review: “What to Make of the Trump DOJ’s Investigation of Ilhan Omar”

—Wednesday’s G-File

—Jonah’s LA Times column

—Jesse Singal in The Dispatch: “Fractured Realities”

—Dissent Magazine: “Know Your Enemy: The Post-MAGA Midterms?”

—Last week’s Ruminant 

The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. 

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Old men griping about the new generation is an old, venerable tradition, and Jonah Goldberg can grouse with the best of them. Unlike the other old men, however, Jonah gets to talk to one of the few people who can actually answer the question, “What’s wrong with the kids these days?” and back it up with data. The American Enterprise Institute’s Daniel Cox joins The Remnant to take us on a whirlwind tour of the gender divide, cultural expectations, parenting, LinkedIn, generational change, attention infidelity, TV, dating, sexting, teenagehood, social media, surveillance culture, porn, OnlyFans, incels, the manosphere, social malaise, third places, chivalry, class, and preaching what you practice. 

Show Notes:

—Generation Uncoupled: America's New Gender Divide and the Crisis of Human Connection

—GQ - “The Laptop Boyfriends Can’t Stop Watching YouTube in Bed”

—Rob Henderson Remnant

—Jonah’s G-File: “I Think We’re Turning Japanese … I Really Think So”

—Wired - “I Went Undercover as a Secret OnlyFans Chatter. It Wasn’t Pretty”

—Jonah’s most recent book, Suicide of the West

—Sarah Isgur’s dating Remnant

The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠.

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While The Remnant has played host to many remarkable historians over the years, few have taken us on a more incredible ride than Simon Sebag Montefiore. As such, we’re proud to bestow on Simon our newly formed, not-really-endowed chair of Middle Eastern history. Tune in to hear Simon and Jonah Goldberg rove across time and space, covering Iran, Saudi Arabia, the 1979 revolution, the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Israel, antisemitism, moral hysteria, Western obsession with Jerusalem, colonialism, nationalism, ethnicity, modernization, Islam, historical perspective, and, most importantly of all, the proper pronunciation of Turkey. 

Show Notes:

—Simon Sebag Montefiore - The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East

—Jerusalem: The Biography

—Jonah’s last book, Suicide of the West

—James Scott - Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

—Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn: The Intelligent American’s Guide to Europe

The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. 

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Happy Saddam Saturday! Just kidding, we don’t do that kinda thing around here. But you know who does? That’s right, Jack Posobiec and his fellow alt-right goons. And while today’s Ruminant features more than enough of such nonsense, Jonah Goldberg doesn’t leave the high-minded among you hanging. Tune in to hear about nationalism, the Middle East, the French Revolution, Yoram Hazony’s Israeli NatCon, socialism, J.D. Vance, Trump’s short hand, the death penalty, abortion, slavery, and Hegseth’s firing-squad spectacle. 

Show Notes:

—Simon Sebag Montefiore - The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East

—Jonah’s America 250 essay for The Dispatch

—Jonah’s book, Liberal Fascism 

—Jonah’s book, Suicide of the West

—John Podhoretz on Yoram Hazony’s scheme

—Jonah’s death-penalty column

—Hannah Arendt Remnant

The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. 

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Notorious misanthrope Jonah Goldberg is skeptical of the power of friendship in politics. Winning him over will be no easy task, but if anyone is up to the job, it’s friend of the Remnant and Hannah Arendt scholar Roger Berkowitz. Listen in as Roger and Jonah duke it out over friends, enemies, Zionism, the Nazis, fear of the people, facts, truth in politics, Alexis de Tocqueville, Madisonianism, local governance, the distribution of power, and much more. 

Show Notes:

—A World We Share: Hannah Arendt and the Power of Friendship in a Broken World

—Who was Hannah Arendt Remnant

—Jonah’s last book, Suicide of the West

The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠.

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While AEI is filled with a lot of smart nerds, a select few have earned the Jonah Goldberg title of “great sage.” Nick Eberstadt is one of these sages, and he joins today for a banger of a Remnant on poverty, misery, social science, the economics of the family, Hungary’s pro-natal policy, the fertility crash, phones, generational stereotypes, technological adaptation, the entitlement problem, and North Korea. Put down the Tik Tok and listen up, kids. 

Show Notes:

—Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution

—Men Without Work

The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. 

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