Episodes
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There’s a lot on Jonah’s mind this morning. He’s gaslighting himself about being gaslit, lamenting the diminishing standards of acceptable presidential candidate behavior, and waltzing back some of his initial reactions to VP candidate Tim Walz. Critiques of Wednesday’s G-File are addressed (shame on you, Willem Dafoe), noting the death of true cultural criticism in the age of identity politics. Once that whole fiasco is cleared up, Jonah ponders the bigger questions: Is there such a thing as good dogma? What are we worshipping when we worship politics? Will Jonah’s producers and assistant besmirch him for the length of this Ruminant? All will be revealed.
Show Notes:
—Wednesday’s G-File
—“The A(braham) Bomb”
—Dictionary of Voegelinian Terminology
The Remnant is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here.
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The inimitable Walter Russell Mead, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, stops by to enjoy what can only be described as an intellectual smorgasbord. Jonah and Walter evaluate the ongoing war in Israel, diving into the land-for-peace fallacy, questions about what constitutes nationhood and patriotism, and how to orient American foreign policy toward a more peaceful future. The duo then pivots to a more theological realm, discussing the apocalypse, how liberalism and Marxism mirror Abrahamic faiths, and the conflation between political conviction and moral intuition.
Show Notes:
—Mead’s Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How it Changed the World
—Mead’s The Arc of the Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People
—How Team Biden can aid peace in Israel
—Jonah’s Soviet special
—“The A(braham) Bomb”
—Immanentize the what??
The Remnant is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here.
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Set your VCR’s for a one-of-a-kind, super-epic, think tank crossover episode! Brookings Institution senior fellow Jonathan Rauch is the special guest star today, joining Jonah to discuss all things party politics. Topics range from primary reform and the introduction of rank-choice voting to the newly announced Democratic vice presidential pick Tim Walz. Jonathan and Jonah also discuss two unique immunities to partisan diseases: populism on the left and antisemitism on the right.
Show Notes:
—Jonathan’s Brookings page
—The return to the smoke-filled room
The Remnant is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here.
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Sweaty, hot, and unprepared. Jonah is listening to the Cranberries and driving his car over nails on the way to CNN, where they will likely lock him in the studio and force him to pundit until the full moon rises. To distract himself, he ruminates upon social Darwinism, pronunciation, the National Association for Black Journalists, and the stunning lack of seriousness on the Right.
Show Notes:
-AO eviscerates Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
The Remnant is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here.
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When Jonah finds himself in times of trouble, John Podhoretz comes on TheRemnant. The theme for today’s episode is something all pundits enjoy: the blissful embrace of intellectual schadenfreude. Jonah and John make the case for equivocation within the Harris campaign strategy, discuss the definition of weird and the be-clowning of Project 2025, and call out the astounding lack of outrage regarding the Democrats’ antisemitism problem. To close it all out, the duo covers the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the political head of Hamas.
Show Notes:
—Nick Catoggio on flip-flopping
—The O.G. “To Hell with You People”
The Remnant is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here.
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For a much-needed break from the 2024 election news cycle, Jonah visits his Floridian friend, Dr. Will Inboden, who serves as the director of the Alexander Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. Jonah and Will discuss UF’s unique approach to higher-education reform, preach a sermon of Reaganite revival, and project some fears regarding the future of foreign policy.
Show Notes:
—Learn more about the Hamilton Center
—Will’s book: The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink
The Remnant is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here.
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The Ruminant is usually a very indulgent ninety minutes for Jonah, but today’s episode is dark-chocolate-mousse-topped-with-caviar indulgent. It’s only fair, after all; Jonah was right about a lot of things, so we’ll give him this one. The New Right (and the media coverage of the faction) remain the target of Goldbergian ire, Joe Biden’s true character (and, by rule of Remnant law, destiny) is revealed, and progressive shibboleths (and their human incarnations) are critiqued. Jonah speculates on the viability of Mayor Pete’s potential vice presidential bid and experiments with a very grand dark-web hypothesis.
Show Notes:
—Jonah on The Gist with Mike Pesca
—Brand new GLoP episode
—Bret Weinstein’s grand hypothesis
—The Fair Jessica's new piece in The Atlantic
The Remnant is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here.
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It’s been a crazy few weeks, so The Remnant’s editorial czars have allowed Jonah to bring back Dispatch CEO Steve Hayes to engage in some classic punditry. After Steve forces Jonah to make some monocausal arguments about Joe Biden’s withdrawal and Kamala Harris’ ascension, the pair lay out some soft predictions regarding the outcome of the 2024 race, call out some DEI-hire hypocrisy, and consider the pros and cons of flip-flopping politicians.
The Remnant is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here.
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Call her an oracle or consider her a wise observer of Occam’s razor, but Bulwark contributor A.B. Stoddard saw this coming. A.B. returns to The Remnant to discuss her longstanding—and ultimately correct—prediction that Joe Biden wouldn’t be on the presidential ballot in November. Among the questions discussed in this Biden-Harris post-mortem: Is Jill Biden the American Eva Perón? Is Nancy Pelosi a bene gesserit? Jonah and A.B. have the answers, helping ye loyal listeners make sense of Kamala Harris’ coronation and her potential running mates, J.D. Vance’s growing pains, and the causes of conspiracy.
Show Notes:
—A.B. told you so
—A.B. told you so, again
The Remnant is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here.
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Though we all got precious little sleep the past two weeks, we are nothing if not devoted to our listeners. In this belated Ruminant, Jonah looks back at a week that contained years (yet also very little). Is there much to say about J.D. Vance's nomination and RNC speech? Did Trump, having survived an assassination attempt, cross the Hegelian threshold and become a nigh-Napoleonic age spirit? Will Jonah get to sleep in his own bed this weekend? Important questions all.
Show Notes:
-WATCH: Dispatch after hours reacting to The Neverending Trump Speech.
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As Jonah predicted in the outro of yesterday’s Remnant episode, everything is indeed on fire. To help interpret what is perhaps the most chaotic news cycle in recent memory, Jonah is joined by Bulwark contributor Damon Linker.
Tune in for Jonah and Damon’s referendum on newly selected VP candidate J.D. Vance, the state of the GOP at the 2024 convention, and the conversions of conservative think tanks. To close it out, they discuss the great Republican schism and the fallout of the Trump assassination attempt.
Show Notes:
—Damon’s Substack: Notes from the Middle Ground
The Remnant is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here.
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On today’s episode of TheRemnant, Jonah’s guest is none other than Robert Doar, the president of the American Enterprise Institute. The two New Yorkers inevitably spend much of the episode quibbling over New York City. Fortunately for us, they also laud the Eisenhower administration and RFK’s (the first one, not the falcon one) DOJ, discuss the realities of the Jim Crow era and welfare reform, and dive into some top-tier AEI lore. Jonah remains obsessed with the topic of neoconservatism, so to close it all out, he drags Robert into the discourse.
The Remnant is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here.
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This week’s Ruminant is dedicated to the devoted gnostic scholars of “Trumpism,” the Holy Grail of embattled conservative intellectuals and political toadies alike. Jonah also addresses the new elephant in the room: Project 2025 (consider our fact check on the discourse as mandatory reading). Blame the early hour, but Jonah also finds himself regressing to his days of media criticism, and even doubles down with media criticism-criticism. For dessert, he responds to comments on his debate with Niall Ferguson.
The Remnant is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here.
—Eliana Johnson: “Meet the Harvard whiz kid who wants to explain Trumpism”
—The Dispatch fact-checks Project 2025
—Wednesday’s G-File
—Jonah debates Niall Ferguson on The Remnant: Is America a late-stage Soviet country?
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Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to the octagon! The summer of 2024 has been one of epic feuds: Kendrick Lamar vs. Drake, Joe Biden vs. George Clooney, and, most notably, Jonah vs. Hoover Institute fellow and Free Press columnist Niall Ferguson.
Jonah and Niall duke it out over the latter’s controversial claim: that America is the new Soviet Union. Jonah says nyet. Questions fly and accusations abound. Why is U.S. life expectancy declining? Is Jonah in denial? Is Niall just a provocateur? This match-up covers it all: the distinction between excess freedom and excess repression, why fentanyl is different than vodka, what causes deaths of despair, how illiberalism shapes both institutions and social outcomes, and what Cold War II could look like. As for the title-winner? We’ll let you be the judge, comrade.
Show Notes:
—Niall Ferguson: “We’re All Soviets Now”
—Jonah Goldberg: “No, We Are Not Living in ‘Late Soviet America”
—The Twitter Spat
—“The Flight 93 Election”
—“Why Socialism Failed in the United States”
—Joseph Schumpeter: “Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy”
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We’ve heard the English countryside is lovely in July, so The Remnant is taking a vacation. Daniel Hannan, member of the House of Lords of the United Kingdom, stops by to discuss last week’s historic British elections. The Conservatives have taken a beating, a new prime minister takes the helm, and exceptions are acknowledged. Daniel and Jonah bridge the gap between American and British politics, prod at Trumpery and its Farage-ian offshoot, and take a day trip to France to investigate the popular front and the far-right.
Show Notes:
—Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis
The Remnant is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here.
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Independence Day is in the rearview mirror, and the party is over at the Goldberg dojo. On today’s episode, Jonah airs some grievances with the current state of political discourse: the Democratic Party is screwing the pooch, Vice President Kamala Harris is burdened by what has been and more burdened by what can be, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is overrated, etc. Further ruminations cover executive privilege, the mystique of the Serbian Black Hand, and quotations from the book of Coolidge.
Show Notes:
-A Brief History of Executive Privilege
-Coolidge's address
—The super-mega-extravagant episode of Advisory Opinions
—This week’s Dispatch Podcast
The Remnant is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here.
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Luke Burgis, author and professor of business at the Ciocca Center for Principled Entrepreneurship, grants Jonah a well-deserved break from punditry with a crash course in mimetic theory. René Girard takes center stage as Luke and Jonah discuss the roots of human desire; how such desires lead to tribalism, conflict, and violence; and the relationship between mimetic processes and social discord. Scapegoats and gossip abound as Luke schools both high-minded Remnant listeners and theoretical normies on the psychology of nepotism, institutional debacles, and mob mentalities.
Show Notes:
—Luke’s website
—Rob Henderson on luxury beliefs: Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class
The Remnant is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here.
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To repent for his absence and abbreviated Ruminant, Jonah bequeaths listeners a special live episode, featuring American Enterprise Institute all-stars Chris Stirewalt and Yuval Levin. Together, the trio conducts a presidential debate post-mortem. Is it finally time for the Democratic Party to face the music? Have we reached the endgame of a nightmare political era? What is a golf handicap? Topics outside debate-gate include the Supreme Court verdict in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, George Washington’s basement crypt in the Capitol, and the dangers of ultra-transparent governance.
Show Notes:
—Yuval Levin: American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation-and Could Again
—Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address
The Remnant is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here.
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There are days in media that call upon the entire newsroom to fuel up on caffeine and join in camaraderie to produce timely, round-the-clock coverage. Then there are days that leave a producer waiting lonesomely for a Ruminant recording until 11p, while the interns are out drinking, the staff long asleep, and the research assistant returned to the locked basement under the trapdoor where she slumbers and dreams about her vanishing youth and Il Duce's future show notes. But come rain or come shine, this Ruminant will be out, speedrunning through topics including the balmy days of Georgia, the furies of President Biden, and the dehumanizing language of Mr. Goldberg.
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With Jonah still MIA, Chris Stirewalt returns as Remnant guest host extraordinaire, joined by Benn Steil, director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, to discuss Steil’s latest book and determine if the bizarreHenry Wallace was a noble man of the soil, an unsophisticated victim, or vindictive villain. To determine how Wallace changed the course of history, Stirewalt and Steil discuss the Soviet Union’s duping of an Einsteinian genius, the cult of Nicholas Roerich, and why you should never slaughter 6 million pigs.
Show Notes:
— Chris' American Enterprise Institute page
— Benn Steil’s The World that Wasn’t
— Benn Steil’s The Marshall Plan
— Oliver Stone’s The Untold History of the United States
— Benn Steil and Elisabeth Harding’s “The Farm Legacy of Henry Wallace: Regressive Subsidies”
The Remnant is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here
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