Episode Details

Matthew is a journalist who worked at The Weekly Standard and co-founded The Washington Free Beacon, where he served as editor-in-chief. Currently he’s a contributing editor at National Review, a columnist at Commentary, and a senior fellow and the Patrick and Charlene Neal Chair in American Prosperity at the American Enterprise Institute. We discuss his wonderful book, The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism.

You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or click the dropdown menu to add the Dishcast to your podcast feed). For two clips of my convo with Matthew — on whether the GOP is destroying the Constitution, and debating how conservative was Obama was — pop over to our YouTube page.

A listener looks back to last week’s episode:

I enjoyed your discussion of friendship with Jennifer Senior, particularly your observation that a friend is someone we don’t want to change.  It reminded me of one of my favorite quotes by Friedrich Nietzsche: “Love is blind, friendship closes its eyes.”

And here’s some insight from Jesus on the subject:

Another listener grumbles:

Another woman talking about friendship? How novel. How about finding some guys to talk about it? Because it sure is tough for straight men to find new friendships. The old ones fall apart for much the same reason that women's do, but the straight male psyche seems particularly resistant  to making new ones.  

The Dishcast, in fact, recently aired an episode with Nicholas Christakis that covered quite a bit about the nature of friendship between straight men. Much of it centers on taking the piss out of each other:

Another listener remarks on the part of my convo with Jennifer about the evolving nature of newsrooms — basically that they’re boring now, ensconced in Slack:

I agree about the dead quiet in newsrooms these days. I started out in broadcasting in the early ‘80s, with a stint at NPR in the late ‘80s early ‘90s. People would shout and yell and ask questions on spelling, grammar and facts about previous stories, all while rushing to meet the deadlines.

Then a few years ago, I worked in a major public radio newsroom and it was dead quiet. The editor sitting behind me would type a question to me via top-line message and I’d just turn around and answer him. It was a major sin! So boring!

Thankfully now I work for a small nonprofit newsroom and I’m the head of our tiny audio division. Sadly COVID made our newsroom virtual, but oh how I miss those early, pre-internet newsrooms with people arguing and talking and joking with each other.

Here’s what Jennifer and I have to say:

Another listener wants more:

I just finished last week’s Dishcast with Jennifer Senior. I just wanted you to know how much I enjoyed your conversation. It made me wish I were friends with you both! But at the outset of the show, you said you wanted to talk about her recent essay on Steve Bannon. Unfortunately, the end of the episode came and you’d not broached the topic. I read the piece and it was fascinated, so I wanted to hear more. Please have her back!

We do have repeat offenders on the pod, like David Wallace-Wells and Jamie Kirchick, so stay tuned. After the Continetti convo this week, here are a few requests for more conservative guests:

Sometimes I feel like you’re a friend of mine, since I’ve been reading you for so long — God