Garry Wills and the Real Kennedy Curse
On this episode of The Time of Monsters, talking with Sam Adler-Bell and Matt Sitman about the toxic legacy of a famous family.

The Time of Monsters podcast features Nation national-affairs correspondent Jeet Heer’s signature blend of political culture and cultural politics. Each week, he’ll host in-depth conversations with urgent voices on the most pressing issues of our time.
For this week's episode of The Time of Monsters, I’m doing a joint podcast with the crew from Know York Enemy (Sam Adler-Bell and Matt Sitman) talking about the legacy of the Kennedy family.
Our talk is based on our shared love for Garry Wills’ The Kennedy Imprisonment, a revelatory book about not just the Kennedy family but the nature of 'great man politics.'
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American financier and ambassador Joseph Kennedy (right) sits on a couch with his son, future American President John F. Kennedy in 1938.
(Pictorial Parade / Getty Images)For this week’s episode of The Time of Monsters, I’m doing a joint podcast with the crew from Know Your Enemy (Sam Adler-Bell and Matt Sitman) talking about the legacy of the Kennedy family.
Our talk is based on our shared love for Garry Wills’s The Kennedy Imprisonment, a revelatory book about not just the Kennedy family but also the nature of “great-man politics.”
This is an in-depth discussion that touches on many topics including the mainstreaming of Catholicism in the 1950s, the appeasement policies of the British ruling class in the 1930s, Cold War liberalism’s embrace of elitism, macho culture and misogyny, and mass movements as an alternative to great-man politics.
Know Your Enemy is one of my favorite podcasts. I very much admire its mixture of scholarly knowledge and political urgency. It was a pleasure to join Sam and Matt for this discussion.

The Time of Monsters podcast features Nation national-affairs correspondent Jeet Heer’s signature blend of political culture and cultural politics. Each week, he’ll host in-depth conversations with urgent voices on the most pressing issues of our time.
Writing in Foreign Policy, Matt Duss argues that Donald Trump’s rush to war is both
stupid and illegal. It is also wildly unpopular with the public. But he also observes that
congress has been reluctant to challenge Trump’s policy, although some progressives
have now forced the issue to a vote. Matt is a frequent guest of the show and foreign
policy expert. I talked to him about the dangers of a new war and also the larger
systematic problems of the imperial presidency.
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