Know Your Enemy: Gerontocracy in America
Matt and Sam talk to Sam Moyn about his new book, Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth—and What to Do About It.
Know Your Enemy is a podcast about the American right co-hosted by Matthew Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell. Read more about it here. You can subscribe to, rate, and review the show on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher, and receive bonus content by supporting the podcast on Patreon.
Lindsey Graham’s death last week at seventy-one was as remarkable for the senator’s relative “youth” as for its possible political and electoral consequences, so much so that it actually prompted conspiracy theories about the precise nature of his passing. Meanwhile, eighty-four-year-old Mitch McConnell’s status among the living remains shrouded in mystery, and eighty-three-year-old former president Joe Biden announced that his memoir would be published in November via his cadaver-esque presence in a promotional video.
Everywhere we look the signs of our decline into a sclerotic gerontocracy are present, and perhaps no one has approached this problem as comprehensively as Samuel Moyn in his new book, Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth—and What to Do About It. In this episode we talk with Sam about the historical precedents for our gerontocracy; the nature, extent, and causes of it; why his book is not an attack on the elderly; and the possibilities for creatively rewriting our society’s intergenerational contract.
Sources:
Samuel Moyn, Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth—and What to Do About It (2026)
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison (1789)
James Madison, Federalist 49 (1788)
James Ceaser, The Constitution: Sweet as Honey, First Things (2009)
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835)
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Facts Only
* The podcast features Matt and Sam talking to Sam Moyn about his book, *Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth—and What to Do About It*.
* Lindsey Graham died at seventy-one years old.
* Mitch McConnell is eighty-four years old.
* Joe Biden announced his memoir would be published in November.
* Sources cited include Samuel Moyn's book, Thomas Jefferson's Letter to James Madison (1789), James Madison's Federalist 49 (1788), James Ceaser's *The Constitution: Sweet as Honey, First Things* (2009), and Alexis de Tocqueville's *Democracy in America* (1835).