All right, listeners. Welcome to episode 59 of Know Your Enemy. I'm Matt Sipman, your podcast co-host, and I'm not here with Sam today.

He's on vacation doing some traveling, getting some much deserved rest and relaxation.

But before he left, we did record this episode about a figure we've been promising to do an episode about, Christopher Lash.

Lash, of course, was the great historian, social critic, who he died in 1994.

But he's been a part of sort of recent debates about the nature of populism, trumpism, as we described early in the episode.

His book Revolta the Elite, which was published posthumously, was one that Steve Bannon was supposedly reading and taking inspiration from.

So for those who know Lash, I'm sure it would be excited. And if you don't know who Lash is, we talk about kind of who he was and his work at the start of this episode.

And we had the perfect guest for Chris Layman, who is a great editor and writer. He's formerly the editor of the Baffler of the New Republic, where I know he edited both me and Sam.

And currently is the editor in chief of the forum. But for our purposes, Chris Layman was also a graduate student of Lash's at the University of Rochester.

So Chris Layman knew Lash, he studied with him, and I think he has a lot of insights into his work and how we should understand his work.

One thing maybe to say about this conversation is in one episode on Lash, we couldn't cover everything we wanted to.

And I think we focus a lot on why he appeals to the kind of populist post-liberal right, also what the left can learn from Lash.

And we don't really offer a catalog of everything Lash said that maybe was cranky or worse.

I think early in this conversation, Chris Layman says, you know, there are parts of Lash's work that he doesn't agree with or might even disown.

And that's not to be too apologetic, but you know, if anyone is expecting just a blistering critique of Lash, this is more I think trying to sift through his enduring insights again how he's kind of figuring into debates we're having today.

And Chris was a very game and very excellent guest who I thought brought a lot to the conversation.

That's all I'll say about that, but just a few housekeeping items before we get to the episode.

As always, we're grateful to our partners at Descent for sponsoring the podcast.

If you subscribe to know your enemy on patreon.com slash know your enemy, you can for $10 a month, not only get all of our bonus episodes, but digital subscription to Descent.

And of course, for $5 a month, you get access to all of our bonus episodes.

Our music, which listeners always ask us about, is by Will Epstein who records under the name Highwater.

So please do check out his music and as always, we're grateful that he lets us use it.

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