The Fifth Column

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**The Fifth Column**

Your weekly rhetorical assault on the on the news cycle, the people who make it, and occasionally ourselves. Kmele Foster (Freethink), Michael Moynihan (Vice), and Matt Welch (Reason) talk and laugh and drink their way to at least quasi-sanity in a world gone mad, often with the aid of clean and articulate guests. Weekly Members Only subscription edition often comes with listener mail and professional-quality (if inappropriate) singing. Analysis. Commentary. Sedition.

www.wethefifth.com

Latest Episodes:

#496 - Ich bin ein Disappointed Konspiracy Theorist Mar 19, 2025

Show notes

* Live tweeting history

* The importance of Jack

* The “climate of hate”

* Some of these goofballs are normal

* RIP Manny

* The fake ceasefire

* If only were weren’t a democracy…

* Back to Gaza

* Civil liberties, due process, and magicians

* And a bunch more….

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wethefifth.com/subscribe

Members Only #253 - One-Armed Lithuanians and Mute Latvian Cats Mar 19, 2025

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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.wethefifth.com

* The golden age of Oaktown’s 357 ("I just put Juicy, Got Him Crazy into Chat GPT to determine what it's about and it is definitely a song about...."

* Yes, we briefly talk about forgotten about rappers and their dumb lyrics

* Pumps and the Bump

* Grok has this to say about our Hammer convo: “The casual acceptance of MC Hammer’s Speedo situation is absurdly funny.”

Members Only #252 - On a Sunday, On the Lash (w/ Thomas Chatterton Williams) Mar 17, 2025

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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.wethefifth.com

A rebroadcast of our last subscriber-only Second Sunday episode. Thomas Chatterton Williams stops by. Everyone’s in the same room. Many bottles are emptied. Many offensive jokes told. Many careers destroyed. Enjoy.

#495 - Cranks, Conspiracies, Campuses, and Ceasefires Mar 15, 2025

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* The one Jew she likes

* The amateur crank historian

* The cranks always end at…take a guess

* Kmele isn’t interested in Ms. Macron’s dong

* Show we draw some distinctions?

* Congrats to the Buchananites

* The weirdness of Gavin Newsom’s podcast

* On Bannon

* On Columbia, the first amendment, masks, and dangerous idiots

* The Ukraine non-deal

* And much, much more

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wethefifth.com/subscribe

Members Only #251 – We Got Five Years of Covid Fury Mar 13, 2025

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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.wethefifth.com

I was very moved by friend & past guest Jeff Blehar’s Covid anniversary piece, so … I just read it out loud. And added related commentary for paying subscribers. Some links alluded to therein, in rough order of reference:

* Reason Roundtable Covid look-back

* Related Twitter thread

* “The Great COVID Rupture: Three years after ‘15 days to slow the spread,’…

#494 - State of Delusion Mar 05, 2025

Show notes

* A very long SOTU

* Al Green meets Buju Banton, Tripadvisor objects

* The most beautiful, terrifying word in the English language

* The “deficit” you shouldn’t care about

* The forgotten Foxconn boondoggle

* The hopeless Democrats

* Maybe look at, say, Dean Phillips and ignore the Squad

* Asian finger cuffs

* Two cheers for parliamentary democracy

* Poor lil’ Marco

* Who killed Gene Hackman’s dog?

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wethefifth.com/subscribe

Members Only #250 - Twitter Is Now Real Life Mar 03, 2025

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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.wethefifth.com

There’s some discussion of parenting. A tiny bit about the Oscars. And a bunch about the triumph of conspiracy culture. But this is mostly a subscriber-only episode about the Zelensky debacle and the ongoing U.S. foreign policy realignment. So why bother with bullet points?’

#493 - Fifth Extra: John Bolton on Trump 2.0 Mar 02, 2025

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* Trump’s maturity

* Trump’s deal making

* Trump and NATO

* Trump vs. Europe

* Trump and Taiwan

* A price on Bolton’s head

* Is he a neocon?

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wethefifth.com/subscribe

#492 - How Deep Is Your State Feb 28, 2025

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* The traffickers of the Fifth Column

* The genius of Bill Belichick

* Those Boston boys aren’t so terrible after all

* Nick v. Stewart

* Democracy died in the light!

* The WaPo freakout

* The press pool freakout

* No one believes in anything, part 387

* The “Epstein files” will contain nothing of interest

* A “Roman” salute that no one noticed

* MSNBC is apparently racist

* A live event in NYC!

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wethefifth.com/subscribe

Members Only #249 - Killing Us Softly Feb 25, 2025

Show notes

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.wethefifth.com

* RIP Roberta

* What’s the “woke right?” No idea.

* MAGA Brooklyn

* Reform Party 2000!

* Nadia didn’t pay, so…

* But does it vindicate the collusion narrative?

* Eli Lake’s “Framed and Guilty”

* The Great Negotiator

* The rise of AfD…and the end of Europe?

* Kmele and Kanye (“He’s a NAZI, Kmele, a NAZI…”)

* Moynihan’s memory

* Drinking with Team Uterus

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