Best Matthew Sitman Podcasts (2025)

1
One Podcast After Another (w/ Jesse Brenneman) 1:04:43

Play Pause

1d ago1:04:43

1:04:43

Given the not-terribly-uplifting streak of episodes we've had lately, we thought it was time for a Know Your Enemy movie night, and were joined by the podcast's intrepid producer, Jesse Brenneman, for a conversation about Paul Thomas Anderson's 2025 film, One Battle After Another. Its tagline—"When their evil enemy resurfaces after 16 years, a grou…

1
The waiting soul gives: hope-filled resistance to tyranny 0:37

5d ago0:37

0:37

Note from the editor:Due to unforeseen circumstances, the Messy Jesus Business podcast and blog schedule have been switched around this month. Check back the next two weeks for our final podcast episodes, with many more blog posts to follow! Modern Christians often fail to discuss that the Christian Church was established during a time of widesprea…

1
On Friendship (w/ Andy Elrick) 1:30

8d ago1:30

1:30

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy. Should you try to improve your friends or leave them be? Do friendship and politics mix? Is friendship about virtue or delight? In 2023, we were interviewed by Andrew Elrick, now a professor at Marist University, for a documentary podcast he was making about men…

1
The Furious Minds of MAGA (w/ Laura Field) 1:09:36

15d ago1:09:36

1:09:36

Laura K. Field's Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right, published earlier this month, is a book we simply had to discuss. Listeners to this podcast will recognize its cast of characters—conservative intellectuals like Patrick Deneen, Michael Anton, John Eastman, Adrian Vermeule, and Harry Jaffa, among others—whose ideas and influence Fiel…

1
timone davis: peace and paradox 47:13

19d ago47:13

47:13

Episode 98 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh.In this episode of Messy Jesus Business podcast, Sister Julia Walsh, FSPA talks with timone davis. They explore naming what you see in people, the military, Christ's peace, inner paradoxes, asking the deeper questions, and much more.Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: …

1
Trump's Big, Beautiful Ballroom (w/ Kate Wagner) [Teaser] 4:27

22d ago4:27

4:27

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy. If there's a Trump-era topic that manages to fascinate without being entirely depressing, it's probably the ongoing arguments about architecture that his ascension has occasioned. Proponents of a RETVRN to the architectural ideals of ancient Greece and Rome are …

1
Zohran, the Jews, and Reckoning with Gaza (w/ Peter Beinart) 1:14:27

28d ago1:14:27

1:14:27

This episode isn't focused on a single topic or text, but rather just wanting to have a wide-ranging conversation with our guest, Peter Beinart, editor-at-large of Jewish Currents and author of the recent book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning. We start by discussing the appalling wave of Islamophobic attacks against Zohran M…

1
Vincent Noth: food and kinship 44:17

1M ago44:17

44:17

Episode 97 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh. In this episode of Messy Jesus Business podcast, Sister Julia Walsh, FSPA talks with Vincent Noth, executive director of the Kinship Community Food Center in Milwaukee. They explore faith, segregation, inequality, systemic racialized poverty, mystical experience, food as entry poi…

1
Break Glass in Case of Emergency 1:31:51

1M ago1:31:51

1:31:51

This is a different kind of episode than is typical; there's no book, no central text, not even a single, central event that guides the conversation. Instead, we begin with a few recent news items—speculation about Trump 2028, Speaker Mike Johnson's refusal to swear in a Democratic congresswoman, the stunning abdication of Congress as the shutdown …

1
Command + F + Hitler [Teaser] 3:53

2M ago3:53

3:53

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy. The theme of this rank punditry episode is Getting in Trouble on the Internet, and we begin with the frankly unsurprising story of the Young Republican Hitler group chats, then move on to a longer discussion about Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Main…

1
Michele Dunne, OFS: kinship and conversion 40:35

2M ago40:35

40:35

Episode 96 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh. In this episode of Messy Jesus Business podcast, Sister Julia Walsh, FSPA talks with Michele Duane, OFS, executive director of the Franciscan Action Network (FAN). They explore secular Franciscanism, activism, the interests of government vs. the interests of gospel, Franciscan dis…

1
How Charles Murray (Almost) Predicted the Trump Era 1:32:56

2M ago1:32:56

1:32:56

This episode is the second in our occasional series on important, controversial, or unusually relevant conservative texts from the recent past. Here we take up Charles Murray's 2012 book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. With its focus on the ascendence of a new "cognitive elite," cultural divides, and the pathologies afflicting…

1
Matthew Sitman: Ideology and Mercy 54:32

2M ago54:32

54:32

Episode 95 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh. In this episode of Messy Jesus Business podcast, Sister Julia Walsh, FSPA talks with author and podcast host Matthew Sitman. They explore conversion to Catholicism, the breadth and universality of the Catholic Church, humility and openness, cancel culture, Pope Francis, mercy, ide…

1
How To Give A Damn [Teaser] 3:56

2M ago3:56

3:56

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy. Before embarking on a spirited bout of rank punditry, we take a step back and talk about the Staple Singers, Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism, Tocqueville's Democracy in America, Zohran, and giving a damn about both your "fellow man" and democracy. The…

1
Death, Power, and the Charlie Kirk Memorial (w/ Pat Blanchfield) 1:26:21

2M ago1:26:21

1:26:21

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 happ…

1
Cole Arthur Riley: embodiment and memory 50:21

3M ago50:21

50:21

Episode 94 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh.In this episode of Messy Jesus Business podcast, Sister Julia Walsh, FSPA talks with author and poet Cole Arthur Riley. They explore embodiment, resisting meritocracy, story, collective memory, letter writing, resistance, the tension between practice and belief, interiority, and mu…

1
The Assassination of Charlie Kirk [Teaser] 3:37

3M ago3:37

3:37

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…

1
The Case for Democracy (w/ Osita Nwanevu) 1:20:27

3M ago1:20:27

1:20:27

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 …

1
An Officer and a Spy (w/ John Ganz) [Teaser] 3:48

3M ago3:48

3:48

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 li…

1
Frank Meyer, Inventor of Conservatism (w/ Daniel J. Flynn) 1:45:13

3M ago1:45:13

1:45:13

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-wa…

1
The Christian Right's "Wild Faith" (w/ Talia Lavin) [Unlocked] 1:00:48

4M ago1:00:48

1:00:48

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 journal…

1
The Minority Voters Moving Right (w/ Daniel Martinez HoSang) 1:27:05

4M ago1:27:05

1:27:05

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…

1
From Armageddon to Zionism — More Listener Questions [Teaser] 4:59

4M ago4:59

4:59

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 Chr…

1
Has Trump 2.0 Been a Success So Far? — And Other Questions 1:10:29

4M ago1:10:29

1:10:29

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 Y…

1
Trump's Epstein Problem [Teaser] 4:27

4M ago4:27

4:27

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…

1
How Republics End (w/ Mike Duncan) [Unlocked] 1:15:39

5M ago1:15:39

1:15:39

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…

1
Zohran! (w/ Waleed Shahid) [Teaser] 3:48

5M ago3:48

3:48

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 I…

1
A Complicated Man: William F. Buckley, Jr. (w/ Sam Tanenhaus) 1:52:33

5M ago1:52:33

1:52:33

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—ha…

1
MAGA's War Over the War with Iran (w/ Curt Mills) [Teaser] 3:30

6M ago3:30

3:30

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 Georg…

1
Immigration Showdown in LA (w/ E. Tammy Kim) [TEASER] 5:37

6M ago5:37

5:37

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 A…

1
Reagan, the Movie (w/ Jesse Brenneman) [UNLOCKED] 1:22:18

6M ago1:22:18

1:22:18

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 subscr…

1
Joe Biden's Betrayal [TEASER] 3:23

6M ago3:23

3:23

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 r…

1
Christopher Caldwell's Case Against Civil Rights 1:28:24

6M ago1:28:24

1:28:24

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 re…

1
Trump as Messianic Prophet (w/ Manvir Singh) [TEASER] 2:10

7M ago2:10

2:10

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, pr…

1
Did Podcasters Make Trump President? (w/ Andrew Marantz) 1:22:19

7M ago1:22:19

1:22:19

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 wit…

1
Mary Kay McDermott: The Spirit and Song and Dance 41:30

7M ago41:30

41:30

Episode 93 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh.Thanks for listening to Messy Jesus Business! We're taking our summer break after this episode. Look for new interviews in your podcast feed starting in late September 2025.In this episode of Messy Jesus Business podcast, Sister Julia Walsh, FSPA talks with Mary Kay McDermott about…

1
Conclave (2024) (w/ Brandon Taylor) [TEASER] 3:10

7M ago3:10

3:10

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy. With the papal conclave convening in Rome to pick Pope Francis's successor, Matt and Sam are joined by novelist Brandon Taylor to discuss the 2024 film Conclave, directed by Edward Berger and starring Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, and Isabella Ross…

1
The Life & Crimes of Roy Cohn (w/ In Bed with the Right) 53:17

7M ago53:17

53:17

Recently Matt joined Moira Donegan and Adrian Daub of the excellent In Bed with the Right podcast to record what turned out to be two episodes about Roy Cohn—the "lawyer, closet case and ratfucker extraordinaire," as they describe him. These days Cohn is perhaps most infamous for being Donald Trump's lawyer and mentor, but this first episode focuse…

1
The Meaning of Pope Francis 1:24:24

8M ago1:24:24

1:24:24

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, s…

1
Sr. Dr. Chero Chuma: Discomfort and Radical Hospitality 40:06

8M ago40:06

40:06

Episode 92 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh.In this episode of Messy Jesus Business podcast, Sister Julia Walsh, FSPA talks with Sr. Dr. Chero Chuma about privilege, racism, surrender, discomfort, mental health and homelessness, human dignity, radical hospitality, burnout, therapy, and messiness.Podcast: Play in new window |…

1
The Madness of Trump’s Tariffs (w/ John Ganz) [TEASER] 4:50

8M ago4:50

4:50

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy Speaking 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 t…

1
Michael Poffenberger: Contemplation and Transformation 45:32

8M ago45:32

45:32

Episode 91 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh.In this episode of Messy Jesus Business podcast, Sister Julia Walsh, FSPA talks with Michael Poffenberger about activism, contemplation, interiority, right relationships and the true self, vulnerability and control, transformation, wholeness, and much more.Podcast: Play in new wind…

1
UNLOCKED: How the Pandemic Changed Everything (w/ David Wallace-Wells) 1:49:58

8M ago1:49:58

1:49:58

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 spr…

1
How the Pandemic Changed Everything (w/ David Wallace-Wells) [TEASER] 4:55

8M ago4:55

4:55

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy This 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 St…

1
Elena Segura: Immigration Reform and the Radicalness of Christianity 35:06

9M ago35:06

35:06

Episode 90 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh.(We had some issues with Elena's microphone during recording, our apologies! -Colin)In this episode of Messy Jesus Business podcast, Sister Julia Walsh, FSPA talks with Elena Segura about Evangelicalism, conversion, social justice, the radicalness of Mass, immigration reform, silen…

1
Becoming Elon Musk, Part Two 2:01:16

9M ago2:01:16

2:01:16

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 s…

1
Mini Interviews from RE Congress 16:29

9M ago16:29

16:29

A Special Episode of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh.Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Email | RSS | MoreAfter chatting with Lisa Hendey at RE Congress, Sister Julia had impromptu short interviews with some Congress attendees who passed by the FSPA booth. We heard a few of these voices last week, and this mini s…

1
Becoming Elon Musk, Part One 1:22:30

9M ago1:22:30

1:22:30

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 s…

1
Lisa M. Hendey Live from RE Congress 41:37

9M ago41:37

41:37

Episode 89 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh.This special episode of Messy Jesus Business podcast was recorded live at RE Congress 2025. In this episode, Sister Julia Walsh, FSPA talks with Lisa M. Hendey about CatholicMom.com, blogging and podcasting, unconditional love, the importance of questions, the Chime Travelers, belo…

1
"Exit From Within" (August 2022) 20:42

9M ago20:42

20:42

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, no…