The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg

It’s that time again: on this weekend Ruminant, Jonah finds himself dealing with more 2016 déjà vu, as once again the public conversation turns towards the “binary choice” between two men who have been accused of sexual assault. How did we get to a point where our standards stooped so low? Jonah has a few ideas about that, and they have to do with the cop-outs of the intellectual class and the erosion of social capital.

Libertarian guru, wisdom-dispenser, and Jonah’s good friend Ron Bailey, science correspondent for Reason magazine, joins us on The Remnant. Ron guides us through the myriad reasons that the coronavirus pandemic doesn’t justify expanding the government and federal bureaucracies to unprecedented levels, before spending the second half of the podcast enticing Jonah to join him in the strange exotic land of the libertarians. If anyone can pull that off, it’s Ron.

Steve Kornacki, national political correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC, joins Jonah to breakdown the state of the 2020 election, and take a trip through the history of political tribalism. It helps that Steve wrote a whole book, The Red and the Blue, on the subject. Come for Steve's keen knowledge of all things politics, stay for the discussion on weak parties.

On this Ruminant, Jonah finds himself hearing the “binary choice” argument all over again, but this time about Trump vs. Biden. In his response, he also deals with the ways in which people are failing to take the Reade allegation seriously, how we have a political class of perpetual underdogs, and how dishonest arguments have snuck into our partisan debates.

Jonah and National Review’s Charles Cooke podcast with one another from the sunny paradise of Florida on this episode of The Remnant. Why is Florida so weird, really? What is to be made of GOP governors riding the Trump Train before promptly hopping back off? And what are people actually angry about regarding the Reade/Biden allegation? Tune in to witness a disagreement that sheds more light than heat.

Representative Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin makes a return appearance on this, the 200th episode of The Remnant. To celebrate, Jonah and Mike bring back the ever-popular theme of half-baked ideas, mixing many of their own ideas (that still need a bit more time in the oven) with some of our very own listener-submitted thoughts. They revisit their plan to (peacefully!) annex Greenland, Mike prolongs his beef with Rep. Dan Crenshaw, and our intrepid podcasters discover how to implement mortal combat into parliamentary procedure.

Jonah returns to ruminate on a smorgasbord of things this week: injecting bleach to cure COVID-19 (big if true!), an extended meditation on John Rawls’ "veil of ignorance," how the veil is nonsensical from the pro-life position, and the difference between “social justice” and a “just society.”

How does technological innovation actually happen? We were able to speak to Matt Ridley, who has literally written the (upcoming) book on this subject, How Innovation Works. Matt brings up fascinating points, such as whether or not innovation really relies on “great men” miraculously coming up with brilliant ideas, why we are often resistant to new technology, and how we can get out of our current innovation slump, a product of our cultural risk-aversion. And tune in to see where he places on the ranking of Most British People Ever (™).

This episode goes in The Remnant Hall of Fame for a few reasons: it’s both one of the longest episodes we’ve ever done, with one of the New Yorkiest guests we’ve ever had. Vincent Cannato, professor of history at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, proves his New York credentials not just with stories of mayors from years past, but with the most authentic pronunciation of “Giuliani” you’ll ever hear. Stick around for Jonah and Vin reminiscing about AEI, Irving Kristol, and the least impressive Honda Civic in human history.

Another weekend, another Ruminant - this time with Jonah talking about the intellectual backdrop of conservatism, and what early conservative (and progressive) ideologies might have to say about today’s coronavirus response. Join Jonah in a cloud of cigar smoke inside his own car to talk about the New Deal, Trump’s call to LIBERATE [INSERT STATE HERE], and more.

The vox populi has been heard, so we went with a listener-suggested guest on this episode of The Remnant. Kyle Harper is an incredibly knowledgeable historian of the Roman Empire who specializes in the origins of Christianity, but that doesn’t quite do him justice. As Jonah (or, Jonas Magnus) discovers, he’s effectively a polymath who knows about everything from the gnostics to the history of infectious disease - which is, uh, convenient? Watch out for his Oklahoma nationalism, though; he might be trying to annex the rest of the country.

On the new Remnant, Jonah talks with James Pethokoukis, a fellow at AEI, about how markets are reacting to coronavirus and what the recovery might look like. (V-shaped? U-shaped? Nike swoosh-shaped?) As a result of their isolation-based hallucinations, they also get particularly animated in the rank punditry and pop culture portions - so don’t miss out on their hottest Star Trek takes, or Jim’s shocking defense of the finales of Lost and Battlestar Galactica.

Welcome back to Jonah’s Fortress of Solitude on this latest solo episode of The Remnant. On the docket today are topics like subsidiarity in a crisis, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (which Jonah struggles to pronounce), and listener feedback from The Dispatch comments section.

Steven Teles, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University, joins us on the heels of his newly released book, Never Trump. Stop sharpening your pitchforks, everyone! It’s an objective treatment of the Never Trump movement that doesn’t come down one way or the other on it. It also leads into some classic Remnant wonkery, with tangents into the problems with party strength, mediating institutions, and political history, and how these things relate to the tensions within modern conservatism.

Through the magic of the internet, AEI's Lyman Stone joins The Remnant all the way from Hong Kong to talk all things coronavirus: how we got here, the numbers, China's role in the outbreak, and where we go from here.