The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg

Today The Remnant welcomes Harvey Mansfield, longtime Harvard professor and philosophical paragon. Though thoroughly intimidated, Jonah Goldberg plucks up his courage and dives into a brilliantly winding conversation about effectual truth, rationalism, virtues in the modern academy, Straussianism, Christianity’s inheritance from the ancients, law and the state, autonomy, American pragmatism, Marx, postliberalism, John Rawls, Locke’s labor theory of value, and the future of America. Show Notes:—Mansfield: The Rise and Fall of Rational Control—National Affairs article on envy—Remnant: Straussian Summer School 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 access to all of Jonah’s G-File newsletters—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a stunning debut performance, new friend of The Remnant Carl Trueman joins Jonah Goldberg to discuss America’s renewed interest in religion, society’s need for God, the moral questions of technology, the Butlerian Jihad, transhumanism, Nietzsche, antisemitism, sources of meaning, eugenics, and the desecration of man.Show Notes:—Trueman’s book: The Desecration of Man: How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity—Trueman on TRIGGERnometry—Charles Murray on The Remnant—Tom Holland’s book: Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World—Trueman on The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan—Sam Altman's descent into insanity—Friedrich Nietzsche's book: The Gay Science—Russ Roberts’s book: Wild Problems—Jonah’s book: Suicide of the WestThe 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 access to all of Jonah’s G-File newsletters—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Coming at you from Baton Rouge, Jonah Goldberg is ornery and looking to settle some scores. After covering his bases on Iran, the ethics of criticizing the war, and the metrics of success, he moves on to lazy media criticism, ethnic humor, goyslop, and James Fishback. Finally, in a Pulitzer-worthy climax, Jonah definitively dismantles the legacy of Paul Ehrlich and annihilates Steve Hayes’ obsession with the word “junto.” Show Notes:—Wednesday G-File: “An Anti-Manifesto on the Iran War”—The Intelligence from Economist Podcasts+—Eli Lake and Andrew Sullivan Debate the Iran War—Last week’s Ruminant—Charles Hilu: “Florida’s College Republicans and Their Love Affair With James Fishback”—The American Conservative: “Is James Fishback the William F. Buckley of Florida?”—Jonah: “The Lasting Damage of Paul Ehrlich’s Pessimism”—Ben Wattenberg: “The Nonsense Explosion”—Kevin Williamson in The Dispatch on Paul Ehrlich—Jonah’s book: Suicide of the West—The New York Times’ absurd obituary of Paul Ehrlich—Jonah on The Overton Window 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 access to all of Jonah’s G-File newsletters—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Not since the Marquis de Lafayette’s triumphant 1824 tour of the United States has a return been more welcome than Yuval Levin’s to The Remnant. After greeting our patriot hero with laurels and kisses, Jonah Goldberg sets Yuval up for a philosophical tour de force, covering the president’s war powers, cultural and institutional change, education in republicanism, the effects of new technology on our Constitutional order, the Scottish Enlightenment, rationalism vs. reason, Hayek vs. Burke, and the new right in the post-Trump world. Show Notes:—Yuval’s book, American Covenant—AEI’s First Branch Society—Allen Guelzo on The Remnant—Register for LSU’s 2026 John Breaux Symposium 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 access to all of Jonah’s G-File newsletters—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Few men have earned their return ticket to The Remnant with more grace and power than economist, polymath, and notorious Kuyperian David Bahnsen. David and Jonah cover the two Trump economies, the strategic significance of oil, institutional damage on the right, the fight for the term “conservative,” Christian Zionism, Megyn Kelly and the groypers, and the economics of Fred Hirsch. Show Notes:—Jonah’s book: Liberal Fascism—Russell Moore on The Remnant— Brian Mattson in The Dispatch: “Is ‘Christian Zionism’ Really Heretical?”—The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People—Jonah’s book: Suicide of the West—Allen Guelzo on The Remnant 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 access to all of Jonah’s G-File newsletters—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To outside observers, it may appear that Jonah Goldberg is living easy and keeping beach time. Be not deceived! Jonah is as full of intellectual vim as ever, jumping straight into energy markets and the strait of Hormuz, the risks of Trump bailing on the war in Iran, “Jewish” synagogues, the excesses of Epstein demagoguery, the stupidity of idealized class conflict, and—finally—an epic defense of Edmund Burke against his romantiphobic detractors. Show Notes:—Jonah’s visit to an oil rig—WSJ: “Will Trump ‘Fight to Win’ in Iran?”—Washington Post: “How Ro Khanna turned a sex trafficking scandal into a campaign stunt”—Wednesday’s G-File—“Do Democrats Want to Be 'Normal'? Survey Analysis of Today’s Democratic Coalition”—Allen Guelzo on The Remnant—Oakeshott: Rationalism in Politics and other essays—Jonah’s underrated second book 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 access to all of Jonah’s G-File newsletters—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In desperate need of a Remnant guest, Jonah Goldberg puts on his trucker hat, drives out to the sleaziest rural bar you can imagine, and dunks Chris Stirewalt’s head into a horse trough. Listen to Jonah and Chris blow the smoke about irony, gallows humor, Iran, Trump’s fashion failures, ties in restaurants, voter ID, the Ken Paxton-John Cornyn race in Texas, Bill Clinton flirting with Nancy Mace, the stolen 2020 election, and Sen. Markwayne Mullin. Show Notes:—Introduction to Ben Sasse’s podcast, Not Dead Yet—Jedediah Purdy: For Common Things: Irony, Trust, and Commitment in America Today—Revisionist History: Rat vs. Raccoon—Jonah’s G-File on Johnny Bravo 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 access to all of Jonah’s G-File newsletters—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Historian and friend of The Remnant Allen Guelzo has taken a breather from battling for the soul of the West to argue with Jonah Goldberg about the American founding, Edmund Burke, and—horror of horrors—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Join Jonah and Dr. Guelzo as they explore Western civilization, barbarism, tradition, Marxism as romanticism, the Enlightenment, Locke, Lincoln, the great-man theory of history, and the fundamental cause of the Civil War. Show Notes:—The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition Vol. 2—Previous Remnant with Allen Guelzo—John Courtney Murray: “The Return to Tribalism”—Georgios Varouxakis: The West: The History of an Idea—Secretary Marco Rubio delivers remarks to the Munich Security Conference—Jonah’s book: Suicide of the West—Walter Russell Mead: “The Enduring Impact of the Abrahamic Tradition”—The Lost History of Liberalism—Kristol: “The American Revolution as Successful Revolution”—Barbara Tuchman: A Distant Mirror 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 access to all of Jonah’s G-File newsletters—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After one heck of a week, Jonah Goldberg has a lot to unpack. Jonah visits the advantages of having Congress on board for war, the case for attacking Iran sooner rather than later, Marco Rubio’s Israel gaffe, Pete Hegseth’s chest thumping, Kristi Noem’s entrance into the dust bin of history, Trump’s corrupt “industrial policy,” the Anthropic/Pentagon dustup, and primary elections in the Lone Star State. Note: If you’re in the Baton Rouge area, Jonah will be speaking at LSU on March 20 as part of the John Breaux Symposium. The Symposium is free and open to the public (with food provided!), but you need to register in advance. Show Notes:—George Orwell: “Politics and the English Language”—Wednesday’s G-File—Jonah’s LA Times column on regime change—Eli Lake on The Remnant—Marco Rubio Explains Why The US Launched An Attack On Iran—Philip Klein at National Review: “No, Marco Rubio Didn’t Claim That Israel Dragged Trump into War with Iran” 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 access to all of Jonah’s G-File newsletters—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With bombs falling, missiles flying, and the Ayatollah six feet under, there’s only one man Remnant listeners want on the show. Ken Pollack joins Jonah Goldberg to talk about the feasibility of regime change from the air; the precedents of Kosovo, Operation Desert Fox, and Libya; Iranian social cohesion; the risk of Balkanization; the threat Turkey poses; President Donald Trump’s fear of blowback; the administration’s reason for attacking now; and what happens from here. Show Notes:—Previous Remnant with Ken—Jonah’s Los Angeles Times column this week—Rubio’s explanation of the war—Phil Klein at National Review - “No, Marco Rubio Didn’t Claim that Israel Dragged Trump into War with Iran”—Remnant with Eli Lake—George Will on restored American credibility 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 access to all of Jonah’s G-File newsletters—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With Captain Jonah Goldberg three sheets to the wind and capsized upon the Caribbean sands, inveterate scallywag Kevin Williamson has seized the helm of HMS Remnant and plotted a course for the far east. Kevin is joined in his journey by Andrew Collier, a Senior Fellow at Harvard's Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, wherein they discuss China’s bizarre real-estate situation, Xi Jinping’s economic mindset, Beijing's 2020 crackdown on its tech firms, and what it’s like doing business in the People's Republic. Show Notes:—Andrew Collier’s bio—China’s Technology War: Why Beijing Took Down Its Tech Giants—Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology 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 access to all of Jonah’s G-File newsletters—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rum-brained and sunburned, Jonah Goldberg posts up poolside to ruminate on the Caribbean's cruise economy, Woodrow Wilson, how we think about history, Trump’s condo-salesman vanity, the ongoing war in Ukraine, J.D. Vance as the “fraud czar,” and the journalistic ethics of Polymarket. Show Notes:—Wednesday's G-File—AO pod wherein David French acknowledges his intellectual debt to Jonah—Remnant - The Great Cancellation of Woodrow Wilson—Jonah’s book Liberal Fascism— Dan McLaughlin - “The Hater’s Guide to Woodrow Wilson”—Washington Post - “Trump, seeking executive power over elections, is urged to declare emergency”—Last week’s Remnant—Dr. Oz - “Best State of the Union ever”—Ukraine: The Latest on the four-year anniversary of the war—Friday’s Dispatch Podcast—In Living Color- Hey Mon 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 access to all of Jonah’s G-File newsletters—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In need of some good ol’ fashioned conservative inside baseball, Jonah Goldberg turns to the only man he can: Richard Reinsch. Jonah and Richard dive deep into GOP history, examining how the Nixon era serves as a prism through which we can view the MAGA moment, before debunking the recent “white-culture” phenomenon and arguing for a conservatism built on the Declaration of Independence’s immortal words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”Shownotes:—Reinsch in Commentary: “Against Grievance Politics”—Richard M. Reinsch II Civitas Institute profile—Whittaker Chambers: The Spirit of a Counterrevolutionary—Ross Douthat’s arguments about the future of conservatism—Jonah’s G-File response to Douthat—Jonah’s G-File on white culture and right-wing identitarianism—Oren Cass in the New York Times—Kevin Williamson for The Dispatch: “The Not-So-Obvious Price of Trump’s Trade Incoherence”—Kesler - Crisis of the Two Constitutions: The Rise, Decline, and Recovery of American Greatness—Huntington - Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National IdentityThe 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 access to all of Jonah’s G-File newsletters—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today’s episode, Jonah spoils himself by conversing with historian Sophia Rosenfeld about the history of choice, changes in the meaning of freedom, the significance of the mundane, and the American Revolution’s impact on Europe. Shownotes:—The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life—Jerry Muller: The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Western Thought—Moscow On The Hudson Coffee Coffee Coffee—FDR: Second Bill of Rights—Milton Friedman: Free to Choose: A Personal Statement—Irving Kristol: “The American Revolution as a Successful Revolution”—Jonah: “The American Revolution was a Really Big Deal”—Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, & the Great Depression 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 access to all of Jonah’s G-File newsletters—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jonah Goldberg, about to escape the icy north for some sun-soaked R&R, is feeling boisterous. After reveling in his new favorite art form—Donald Trump’s “Truths” set to music—Jonah piles on Jesse Jackson, Iran, the Justice Department, Napoleon III, and Notre Dame, crescendoing with his critique of “white culture” and right-wing identity politics. Shownotes:—Jonah on CNN’s The Arena talking smack about sleazy democrats—Financial Times—“Why Iran is betting on war”—Nick Catoggio's Boiling Frogs on Trump and Iran—Jonah on the Sam Harris podcast—The Remnant with Ken Pollack—The Remnant with Eli Lake—Jonah’s book Liberal Fascism—Jonah’s “white culture” G-File—Bo Winegard's defense of white culture—Jonah’s takedown of Jamelle Bouie in National Review 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 access to all of Jonah’s G-File newsletters—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Remnant is proud to bestow its newly formed, not-really-endowed chair of lexicography upon Scrabble legend and word nerd Stefan Fatsis. For his first act as chair, Stefan joins Jonah Goldberg to talk about the role of professional lexicographers, whether dictionaries should be normative or descriptive, how dictionaries handle controversial words, and the threat that the digital age poses not only to the dictionary, but to knowledge itself. Show Notes:—Unabridged The Thrill of and Threat to the Modern Dictionary—Stefan in Slate: “What Does 'Unabridged' Even Mean Anymore?”—John McWhorter’s most recent Remnant appearance—Fatsis’ book on competitive Scrabble—Mencken - The American Language: An Inquiry Into the Development of English in the United States 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 access to all of Jonah’s G-File newsletters—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The sun comes up, a new day dawns, and Cass Sunstein publishes another book. Today he joins Jonah Goldberg on The Remnant to discuss the six separations of power that undergird our republic, along with unitary executive theory, democracy, and electoral mandates.Shownotes:—Separation of Powers: How to Preserve Liberty in Troubled Times—Yuval Levin’s book: The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left—Jonah in National Review: “The Bluto-Burke Connection Revealed!”—Suicide of the WestThe 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 access to all of Jonah’s G-File newsletters—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fresh off of arguing with Steve Hayes about the different places one can keep a ferret, Jonah Goldberg ruminates on cameras in Congress, choosing between party and principle, Apple News’ First Amendment rights, Kristi Noem’s blanket, the Hayekianism of Burke, Yoram Hazony’s foolishness, and RFK Jr.’s crackpottery. Plus, you should preorder Sarah Isgur’s book. Shownotes:—Friday’s Dispatch Podcast—WSJ piece on Kristi Noem, Corey Lewandowski, and DHS—Cass Sunstein’s book on separation of powers—Wednesday's G-File—The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left—Suicide of the West—Burke: “Birds of Prey” speech—Ruminant touching on Yoram Hazony—James Kirchick in Commentary - “The Chutzpah of Yoram Hazony”—Michael A. Woronoff in Commentary: “Trump the Corporatist” 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 access to all of Jonah’s G-File newsletters—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hyped up on cold medicine and battling delirium, Jonah Goldberg sets off with Elliott Abrams on a globe-trotting adventure in foreign policy covering Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, India, and more. Along the way they discuss the nature of President Donald Trump’s foreign policy, the consequences of American unpredictability, Americans' conceptions of human rights abroad, the utility of the term “neoconservative,” and the lies the U.N. was founded on.Show Notes: —Elliott Abrams profile—"Further Back to the Future: Neo-Royalism, the Trump Administration, and the Emerging International System”—Eli Lake on The Remnant—Honor Among Nations: Intangible Interests and Foreign PolicyThe 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 access to all of Jonah’s G-File newsletters—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Back by popular demand, the great jurist-philosopher and godfather of American conservatism Robby George has returned to The Remnant to set Jonah Goldberg straight about truth, natural law, and the common good. Jonah and Robby talk about the Western tradition, the age of feelings, different kinds of rights, the death penalty, new paganism, and Robby’s desire to fight for the soul of conservatism. Shownotes:—Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth: Law and Morality in Our Cultural Moment—George Varouxakis' The West: The History of an Idea—Martin Luther King Jr.'s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”—What Is Marriage?: Man and Woman: A Defense—Jonah’s first book—Patrick Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed—“The Flight 93 Election”—Populism and Elitism: Politics in the Age of Equality 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 access to all of Jonah’s G-File newsletters—click here. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member by clicking here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices