All right, welcome listeners to episode 140 of Know Your Enemy. I'm Matt Sitman, your podcast, co-host,

and I'm here as always with my great friend, Sam Edler Bell. Hello, Sam. Hi, Matt. I almost said my

young friend, Sam. Oh, I wish. Me too. I mean, you and me. You wish I was younger and you

wish you were younger.

Yeah, exactly. But age is the topic of this episode, gerontocracy in particular, a subject,

fortunately with no relevance to the current situation in the United States, and that no one has any examples that immediately leap to mind. Of being ruled by the old.

Yeah.

I mean, it's funny, though, I mean, it's something that we talk about all the time.

It became a big topic of conversation this past week because of Lindsay Graham's premature death.

If dying of a cardiac illness at 71 is premature, I guess it is now. That's something we discussed

in this conversation. And also obviously Mitch McConnell's kind of death watch or whatever.

So it's a topic that's in the zeitgeist. But I don't think anybody before our guest,

Samuel Moyne, really took on the topic in a sort of systematic way, which is what he did with this book we're talking about.

Yeah, it was a bracing read, a fun read in some ways, depressing too, but a really great conversation with Sam Moyne, who is the Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale.

And the title of this book, just out last month,

is Gerontocracy in America, How the Old Are Horting Power and Wealth and What to Do About

It. Pretty self-explanatory title in many ways. We don't need to elaborate that much.

But Sam was a great guest, as he always is when he's on the show. Yeah, mixing it up.

Kicking the tires of this thesis a little bit, but ultimately, I think, coming to some really

interesting and even moving places by the end. Yes, I agree. Well, shall we get some housekeeping

items? Yeah. As always, we're grateful to our partners at Desissent. One thing they do for us by sponsoring the podcast

is if you subscribe to Know Your Enemy on our Patreon at patreon.com slash know your enemy

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