The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg

Latest Episodes:

Desecration, Not Disenchantment | Interview: Carl Trueman Mar 23, 2026

Show notes

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 West
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.

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Environmentalists Make Great Villains | Ruminant Mar 21, 2026

Show notes

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

Edmund Burke Was Not a Romantic | Interview: Yuval Levin Mar 18, 2026

Show notes

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

Join the Counterinsurgency | Interview: David Bahnsen Mar 16, 2026

Show notes

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

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Government Didn’t Build This | Ruminant Mar 14, 2026

Show notes

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

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‘A Zipper to the Gates of Hell’ | Interview: Chris Stirewalt Mar 11, 2026

Show notes

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

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Handed Down Through the Ages | Interview: Allen Guelzo Mar 09, 2026

Show notes

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

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Indiana Jones and the Shield of the Americas | Ruminant Mar 07, 2026

Show notes

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”

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Who Fills the Power Vacuum? | Interview: Ken Pollack Mar 03, 2026

Show notes

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

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What Should We Want From China? | Interview: Andrew Collier Mar 02, 2026

Show notes

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