Know Your Enemy

Reasons To Believe [Teaser]

Episode Summary

Matt and Sam have a personal, wide-ranging conversation about religious faith in our troubled times.

Episode Notes

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REMINDER: COME SEE KYE x MIKE DUNCAN LIVE IN NYC

Given the string of recent episodes that, in various ways, grappled with religion we wanted to take a step back and offer a rather personal conversation about believing in God, or not, and what difference it might makes. The discussion begins by revisiting when we first met over a decade ago and talked a lot about faith, then ranges widely, including: atheism vs agnosticism, W.H. Auden, why we're not experiencing a religious revival in the United States (but could be soon), and more.

Sources:

Christopher Beha, Why I Am Not an Atheist (2026)

Edward Mendelson, "The Secret Auden," New York Review of Books, March 20, 2014

David Martin, w/ a reply from Edward Mendelson, "Why Auden Married," New York Review of Books, April 24, 2014

Matthew Sitman, "Saving Calvin from Clichés: An Interview with Marilynne Robinson," Commonweal, Oct 5, 2017

Ryan Burge, "Religion Has Become A Luxury Good For The Middle Class, Married College Graduate With Children," Religion Unplugged, July 12, 2023

Daniel Cox, "The Illusion of America's Religious Revival," American Storylines, Nov 13, 2025

Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book (1983)

The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other (1975)

The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard, edited & with an introduction by W.H. Auden (1999)

W.H. Auden, "In Praise of Limestone," in Nones (1951)

"Jill Lepore on Nationalism, Populism, and the State of America," EconTalk, April 15, 2019