Episodes

Jonah reaches new heights of self-indulgence on today's Ruminant, explaining why he's a soft Whig and why Romanticism is making everything worse. Devoted listeners will be quick to catch a whiff of Suicide of the West as Jonah veers to discuss the origin of identity politics and the structural resilience of liberal democracies. Have your bingo cards and German dictionaries at the ready. Show Notes: —The Remnant with Allen Guelzo —Jonah: Days of Future Past —Suicide of the West —Orwell's Notes o...

Having endured years of Jonah's targeted bullying campaign, AEI senior fellow Tim Carney joins the pod to celebrate the release of his new book Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture is Making it Harder to Raise Happy, Healthy, and Successful Children. The two discuss why millennials aren’t having kids, why being a father in public is stigmatized, and whether feminism is undoing itself. Show Notes: -Germany’s birth rates are dropping -Rethinking Sex: A Provocation -Wild Problems: A Guide to the Dec...

Jonah invites prolific historian, scholar, and author Allen C. Guelzo, to discuss his new book, Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment, and has plenty of questions: What does Abraham Lincoln tell us about democracy? Why did Lincoln call himself a conservative? What went wrong with the revolutions of the 1840s? What does Lincoln tell us about the rise of post-liberalism? Stay tuned for the usual highfalutin discussions on conservative intellectual history. Show Notes:...

Jonah overcomes his flu-induced hallucinations and ruminates on the current attempt by Congress to force a sale of TikTok and Trump's suspicious flip-flop on the issue. The hallucinations reappearing, Jonah begins to complain about the bots on Twitter making dumb arguments for isolationism and ending Ukraine aid. With whatever sanity he has left he argues against Chuck Schumer's call for new elections in Israel and explains the importance of commitment to allies. Show Notes: —The Dispatch edito...

Dan Senor, author of The Genius of Israel: The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World and host of Call Me Back with Dan Senor, returns to discuss the state of Israel's war against Hamas as the IDF begins to move into Rafah. How is Israeli society holding up? What should we make of growing accusations of genocide? Can Israel achieve its military objectives? What do Israelis think about American politics? And what is does future for Jews in America look like? Show Notes: —...

Chris Stirewalt, the Arby's of punditry and host of The Hill Sunday, was so eager to return to The Remnant that he joined in the midst of another episode. Awkwardness overcome, the two tackle the big questions: Why can't we learn our lesson? Where are Nikki Haley voters going come November? How should we interpret primary turnout? When will the reckoning come? And why can't democrats figure out crime? Chris "Unpledged Delegate" Stirewalt has the answers. Show Notes: —The Hill Sunday —Jonah's LA...

Jonah reassures listeners on today’s Ruminant that this election is not a Flight 93 election and America as we know it will not end come January 2025. He then turns to comment on the Supreme Court ruling that Colorado can’t disqualify Trump from their ballots and the growing treatment of presidents as monarchs. And just as you thought you avoided more State of the Union rank punditry... Show Notes: —G-File: Apocalypse Not —The Dispatch editorial: The American People Should Demand Better —Advis...

The last time Razib Khan—a geneticist and author of the Unsupervised Learning Substack—appeared on The Remnant to discuss genes and behavior, Jonah couldn’t resist focusing their conversation exclusively on canines. Today, Razib is finally back to explore the genetic makeup of the world’s second most important animal, human beings. He and Jonah try to keep the science simple and the nudity tasteful as they explore some highfalutin topics: How has our knowledge of genetics evolved over time? What...

How do habits influence behavior? Significantly, according to returning Remnant favorite Cass Sunstein, Harvard professor and co-author of the new book Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There. In it, he argues that breaking habits and routines can enable us to find greater fulfillment in life. But why did humans evolve to acquire habits in the first place? How do habits desensitize us? And how can we encourage people to adopt healthy habits of the heart? Show Notes: - Cass’ new...

Jonah, used and abused by CNN, is prepared to deliver a level of rank punditry not yet seen in legacy media. He begins today's episode of The Ruminant by eulogizing Mitch McConnell's tenure in the Senate, noting the positive correlation between disdain for McConnell and general unseriousness. Briefly touching on the state of primaries and Biden's low popularity, he then explains his most recent G-File on Aaron Bushnell's suicide and how boredom is (not so slowly) killing us. Stick around for som...

If the American Enterprise Institute were a prison, education policy scholars Rick Hess and Michael McShane would be the leaders of its most feared inmate gang. Today, they join Jonah not simply to pressure him into swearing loyalty, but to discuss their new book, Getting Education Right: A Conservative Vision for Improving Early Childhood, K-12, and College. It’s no secret that America’s education system is struggling, but what can actually be done to reform it? What does it mean to be a conser...

Today’s episode of The Remnant features James Kirchick, the prolific pundit and author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. Recently, James published an essay in Liberties that examined how gay culture has changed in American life since the 1980s. But despite the success of the gay rights movement, LGBTQ issues remain prominent in the culture war. Why is this the case? Where do we go from here? And how would Jonah’s grandpa feel about this episode? Show Notes: —Watch this episo...

Jonah attempts to avoid the straitjacket while The Fair Jessica is away, so he decides to spend an hour talking to himself in a dark basement. He goes through a number of topics to make even the most excitable eggheads nauseated, from the fad of stay-at-home girlfriends (why milk the cow ladies?) to Biden’s irresponsible dog ownership. Jonah regains sanity for a second to talk about the Alabama Supreme Court's IVF ruling before hallucinating about rodents and going gonzo on Tucker's trip to Russ...

Marriage is a fundamental institution, so why is it under attack from both ends of the political spectrum? In his new book, Get Married, Brad Wilcox—a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor at the University of Virginia—makes the case that getting married and starting a family is the best way of leading a prosperous life. But how can law and culture encourage Americans to tie the knot? Why has public interest in marriage declined? And how does marriage mak...

On today’s episode of The Remnant, Jonah’s disdain for the elderly leads him to step into the intellectual octagon with a man nine days his senior: novelist and CNN host Jake Tapper. Jake’s new show, United States of Scandal, takes a darkly comedic look at some of America’s wildest political controversies, and Jonah’s eager to discuss all the sordid details while keeping the nudity as tasteful as possible. Is Washington full of conspiracies? How many chemicals were in Larry King’s hair? And do s...

Having woken up to the Alexei Navalny news, Jonah spends this Ruminant thinking through what the Russian opposition leader’s death might portend. From tzars and (real) settler colonialism to useful idiots a-la Tucker Carlson, the good listener should expect a very Russian episode. Пожалуйста. A more patient listener will also hear Jonah revisiting his conversation with the Lewis brothers, due to somewhat popular demand. Show Notes: -The Lewis brothers on The Remnant -Kevin Kosar on The Remnant...

Once again, Jonah has abandoned his Remnant duties to spend the week nibbling on sponge cake while watching the sun bake. Fortunately, Chris Stirewalt, America’s favorite simple country pundit, is on hand to take control of the program. He’s joined by Ruy Teixiera, author of Where Have All the Democrats Gone? and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, to discuss what the wretched state of our parties could mean for the 2024 election. The GOP has spent the last decade having an ext...

Is there really such a thing as left and right? Scholars Hyrum and Verlan Lewis don’t think so. In their book, The Myth of Left and Right, the brothers argue that this generalization is undermining sophisticated political discourse. And on today’s episode of The Remnant, they join Jonah to explain why, when two tribes go to war, a point really is all you can score. Do terms like conservative and liberal really have any use? Why are we having an election between two wretched candidates? How do in...

Tired and sunburnt, Jonah chimes in from somewhere in the Virgin Islands to share his thoughts (ramblings?) on the little he knows from the news of the past week. But stay tuned for a crossover of his appearance on Kevin Williamson’s podcast, How The World Works. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you’ve never been a resident of the Washington egghead-osphere, you’re probably not familiar with the 20th-century political scientist Edward Banfield. But Kevin Kosar—a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and noted KISS fanatic—thinks that you should be. In 1951, Banfield published Government Project, an account of the U.S. government’s attempt to remake the lives of some of its citizens by establishing a cooperative farm in Arizona during the Great Depression. The project did...

What’s the meaning of life? 42? Pizza? The Remnant? David Bahnsen may or may not have the answer, but he’s at least certain of what makes life satisfying: honest, productive work. In his new book, Full-Time, he explores how work can allow us to find purpose and fulfillment. But is all work equally meaningful? Is the market best placed to determine its value? And does David have a higher net worth than Scrooge McDuck? Show Notes: – David’s webpage – David’s new book, Full-Time: Work and the Mea...

Jonah starts on a cheerful note with lessons from Groundhog Day, but quickly the grim realities of our fallen world drag him back to punditry. If you manage to get past the brooding about Taylor/Kelce, philosophical pragmatism, and the American propensity for conspiracies, then you'll be subjected to passages from Liberal Fascism and, worst of all, notes about anti-NATO Twitter. Good luck. Show Notes: –Jonah: “It’s Nietzsche’s World, You’re Just Living In It” -Jonah: "A Movie for All Time" -The...

Jonah serves up a jumbo slice of rank eggheadery on today’s Remnant to compensate for yesterday’s shockingly (or perhaps mercifully) brief episode. He’s joined for the first time by Peter Berkowitz, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and prolific writer on politics and America’s liberal tradition, to wax Yiddish on topics of both broad and minimal interest. What do academics and philosophers have against the English language? Do ideas actually matter? And what does the nationalist right g...

Has America lost its sense of humor? In Jonah’s view, only a Brit with a distinctly stiff upper lip can answer that question. He’s joined on today’s Remnant by journalist and politician Daniel Hannan, who’s back on the show to explore when and why America began to take a turn for the crazy. Why do recessions lead to populism? Is political apathy actually a good thing? And has the United Kingdom become besotted by its own post-liberal movement? Show Notes: – Daniel’s webpage – Steven Pinker’s ...