Podcast Episodes

The Broligarchy Playbook

Season 1 Episode 11

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit virginiaheffernan.substack.com

You’re listening to What Rough Beast!

We are Virginia Heffernan and Stephen Metcalf, and today we’re talking…

Published on 6 months, 3 weeks ago

Citizen as a Verb

Season 1 Episode 10

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit virginiaheffernan.substack.com

You’re listening to What Rough Beast!

We are Virginia Heffernan and Stephen Metcalf, and today we’re talking…

Published on 7 months ago

The Known Unknowns

Season 1 Episode 9

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit virginiaheffernan.substack.com

“The professors are the enemy,” says J.D. Vance. Are they, really?

This week on What Rough Beast, Stephen Me…

Published on 7 months, 1 week ago

Charisma Is Non-Negotiable

Season 1 Episode 8

What are we all whining about?

On this episode of “What Rough Beast,” the great Turkish journalist Aslı Aydıntaşbaş tells Americans to grow up. To finish of Musk and MAGA, we need to marshal the powe…

Published on 7 months, 3 weeks ago

EXCLUSIVE: What Musk Wants Next

Season 1 Episode 7

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit virginiaheffernan.substack.com

If you’re being neurologically hammered by news from the front of Elon Musk’s coup, you’re probably reading…

Published on 7 months, 3 weeks ago

Reclaiming Your Attention

Season 1 Episode 6

Today on What Rough Beast we talk to the great Miriam Elder, whose NY Times op-ed “Don’t Let Donald Trump Drive You Into Internal Exile,” got Stephen and Virginia dreaming of how to check out and ski…

Published on 8 months ago

The Inauguration Counter-Programming Event

Season 1 Episode 5

In this live-recorded episode, we invite a few guests to distract us from the Inauguration that by all accounts was a Nazi rally. Hear about the new masculinity from Moira Donegan, what the left shou…

Published on 8 months, 1 week ago

First They Come for the Oysters

Season 1 Episode 4

In this interview with Peter Shamshiri (5-4 Pod, If Books Could Kill), we discuss the transformation of the Supreme Court and conservative legal movement in America. We explore how the court has beco…

Published on 8 months, 1 week ago

Disrupting Decorum

Season 1 Episode 3

On our third episode, Elizabeth Weil joins Virginia and Stephen to discuss forms of radicalism as we head into an American regime that might call for it. In her New York Magazine piece, the climate a…

Published on 8 months, 3 weeks ago

Why Plant Bombs?

Season 1 Episode 2

In the second episode of What Rough Beast, we speak with Patrick Radden Keefe, whose nonfiction account of the Irish Republican Army, Say Nothing, was adapted last year into a Hulu series. Virginia H…

Published on 8 months, 4 weeks ago