Know Your Enemy

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This episode is about Shattered Glass, the 2003 movie portraying former New Republic writer Stephen Glass's fall from the heights of magazine journalism after he was exposed as a serial fabulist who routinely made up quotes, sources, key details, and more in his stories. We've both loved this movie for years, and thought discussing it would serve as a companion of sorts to our interview with Jason Zengerle about Tucker Carlson—and, of course, as a chance for us to geek out about it. After describing the basics of the plot and introducing the main characters, we explore the history of the New Republic under its then-owner and editor in chief Marty Peretz; its string of young, Harvard educated editors during the Peretz Era, who often had short, turbulent stints in that role; fact-checking and the mythos of objective journalism; the relationship between elite magazine writing and celebrity culture during "the end of history"; and more.
Sources:
Shattered Glass (2003)
Buzz Bissinger, "Shattered Glass," Vanity Fair, Sept 1998
Howard Kurtz, "Stranger Than Fiction: The Cautionary Tale of Magazine Writer Stephen Glass," Washington Post, May 12, 1998
Jonathan Last, "Stopping Stephen Glass," Weekly Standard, Oct 30, 2003
Pete Croatto, "Why ‘Shattered Glass’ Endures," Poynter, Jan 24, 2024
Martin Peretz, The Controversialist: Arguments with Everyone, Left Right and Center (2023)
Benjamin Wallace-Wells, "Peretz in Exile," New York, Dec 23, 2010
John Cook, "Why Won't Anyone Tell You That Marty Peretz Is Gay?" Gawker, Jan 25, 2011
David Klion, "Everybody Hates Marty," The Baffler, Sept 13, 2023
Andrew Sullivan, Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality (1996)
— "The Tao of Marty," The Weekly Dish, July 21, 2023
Alex Shultz, "Nobody Wants To Talk About John Fetterman And Buzz Bissinger’s Pricey Memoir Project," Defector, June 23, 2025

Finally, an episode about Tucker Carlson—and at an auspicious time, as his influence on the right seems only to have grown in the first year of Trump's second term. To help us understand him, we turned to journalist Jason Zengerle, who first crossed paths with Tucker in the last, halcyon days of magazine journalism before cable news and the internet, and now has written Hated By All the Right People, a book that tells two intertwined stories: the life of Tucker Carlson, and the changes in the media that he's navigated so deftly (despite some low points along the way). This conversation takes you from his adolescence to his early fame writing for The Weekly Standard and Talk to his recent interview with Nick Fuentes, and all the phases and stages of Tucker's sad trajectory toward anti-semitism and conspiracy-mongering.
Sources:
Jason Zengerle, Hated By All the Right People: Tucker Carlson and the Unraveling of the Conservative Mind (2026)
Andrew Marantz, "The Tucker Carlson Roadshow," New Yorker, Nov 1, 2024
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Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.
The shocking execution of Alex Pretti occurred after we recorded our last episode for subscribers about Minneapolis, and so the city and its people have remained in our thoughts in a special way. To help us understand what's happening on the ground there, we talked to our friend Lydia Polgreen, who grew up in Minneapolis and traveled there to report on the situation for the New York Times. Topics include: how Lydia approached her reporting in Minneapolis; the way the resistance and response to ICE/BP has drawn on networks forged during the George Floyd protests; the ordinary Minnesotans acting with bravery and courage; the "civil war" she glimpsed on the streets of Minneapolis; original sin and democracy; and more.
Previous episodes referenced: "The Donroe Doctrine" (Jan 26, 2026); "The Killing of Renee Good" (Jan 19, 2026)
Sources:
Lydia Polgreen, David French, & Michelle Goldberg, "'Noem Needs to Go': Three Columnists on ICE in Minneapolis," New York Times, Jan 26, 2026
Lydia Polgreen, "In Minneapolis, I Glimpsed a Civil War," New York Times, Jan 19, 2026
— "Trump’s One Small Trick to Destroy American Democracy," New York Times, Jan 9, 2026
Garry Wills, The Second Civil War: Arming for Armageddon (1968)
Emily Witt, "The Battle for Minneapolis," The New Yorker, Jan 25, 2026

Last week, all eyes were on Davos as President Trump unfurled his deranged desire to buy or take Greenland from Denmark—just weeks after the United States kidnapped Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and Trump asserted the so-called "Donroe Doctrine." To help us understand what the Trump administration is doing in the Western hemisphere, we talked to the Progressive International's David Adler and Matt Kirkegaard, who take us from the Monroe Doctrine to what Trump had done both in his first term and in the first year of his second term in Venezuela and other Latin American countries before abducting Maduro. We then try to grasp what the Trump administration is up to with Greenland, all the while trying to offer a better explanation of the forces shaping Trump's foreign policy than the elusive search for a coherent theory of "Trumpism."  
Sources:
Patrick Iber, "The Trump Doctrine," Dissent, Jan 5, 2026
Alexandra Stevenson, "Trump Is Making a Power Play in Latin America. China Is Already There," New York Times, Jan 9, 2026
David Adler, Vanessa Romero Rocha, Michael Galant, "The Fourth Transformation: The political economy of Claudia Sheinbaum’s popularity," Phenomenal World, Apr 3, 2025. 
...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.
Matt and Sam discuss the January 7 killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis by an ICE agent, the promising signs that it is proving deeply unpopular, and the less hopeful indications coming from Trump, Vance, Stephen Miller, and others in the administration and the Republican Party about what it portends.
Sources:
Nancy Cook, "Inside the White House, Stephen Miller is Making His Vision of America Real," Bloomberg, Jan 9, 2026
Peter Hamby, "Support for ICE is Collapsing," Puck, Jan 13, 2026
Greg Sargent & Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, "Transcript: Trump Press Sec Snaps at Media as Polls on ICE Turns Dire," New Republic, Jan 16, 2026
Marilynne Robinson, Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State, and Nuclear Pollution (1989)