Against the Grain
Episodes
Close Encounters with Ross Douthat
20 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Are we living in a secular age? Organized religion has suffered decades of decline. But belief in conspiracies is on the rise, amid UFO disclosures, ...
Norman, Conqueror
01 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Orgies, amphetamines, stabbings, and an even more scandalous turn to the right: Matthew and Julia discuss how Norman Podhoretz survived the sixties an...
Jacob Savage on the Lost Generation
16 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2014, prestige institutions decided they had to become much more diverse—and quickly. They didn’t purge established Boomers. Instead, they did ...
How Hipsterism Led to Trumpism
01 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Millennial Brooklyn may be left-coded, but with its nostalgic masculinism, organic food obsessions, and rural white aesthetics, the hipster era antic...
The Great Helenization
24 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Are women ruining the workplace? Are meme-makers ruining conservative intellectual culture? Is our literature better off without litbros like David Fo...
World War What?
03 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The legacy of World War II seems unsettled as never before. Figures on left and right flirt with fascist iconography, and influencers question who the...
Your Guide to Rightwing Fashion
16 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Fashion is having a conservative moment. The carefree femininity of “barbiecore” is out; power suits are in. Matthew and Julia visit four stores i...
The Transgressive Catholicism of J.-K. Huysmans
01 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1892, the avant-garde novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans shocked secular Paris by converting to Catholicism. In his strange life, brilliant writings, and...
It’s Fight Night in America
17 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On Saturday, September 13, Terence Crawford defeated Saul “Canelo” Alvarez to become the undisputed super-middleweight champion of the world. Mat...
Notes on Camp of the Saints
02 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Controversial and long hard to obtain, Jean Raspail’s novel The Camp of the Saints (1973) has been touted by some as a prescient description of th...
The Right-Coding of Sydney Sweeney (Teaser)
12 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sydney Sweeney’s roles in HBO’s “Euphoria” and “The White Lotus” made her one of the faces of Gen Z. Is the ad campaign about her “great...
NEW: The Epstein Myth
02 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Due to a production error, some listeners have had trouble playing this episode. We are republishing it for their convenience.Jeffrey Epstein was a re...
The Epstein Myth
01 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Jeffrey Epstein was a real man who committed real crimes. But the truth about his case has been obscured by the Epstein myth—a synthesis of conspira...
Ari Aster DESTROYS Lena Dunham (Teaser)
21 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Which is a more realistic portrayal of the way we live now—Ari Aster’s “Eddington” or Lena Dunham’s “Too Much”? Matthew Schmitz and Juli...
The Strange Career of Peter Navarro, the Man Behind Trump's Tariffs
01 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How Peter Navarro, a Democratic congressional candidate and idealistic liberal, survived run-ins with dominatrixes, sex cultists, and Martin Sheen on ...
How American Culture Shifted Right
01 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Matthew and Julia explain the right’s takeover of American culture—how it happened, what it means, and what the future holds. For more like this, ...