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