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:

Out of Whiskey and Reaching for the Rotgut (Members Only #338) Aug 05, 2026

Show notes

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

Michael Moynihan has returned from his Italian sojourn where he barely escaped arrest…

-Moynihan has the clap or something

-Who exactly is the demographic for this show?

-Moynihan’s European vacation involved bus karaoke, too much drinking, and now the shakes

-Matt went to Cooperstown with Bill Schulz…

-The forgotten insanity of the Peekskill riots

-Paul Robe…

The Admirably Irresponsible Journalist w/ John R. MacArthur (Members Only #337) Jul 31, 2026

Show notes

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

So that’s where these Genius Grants come from…

-Most roads lead back to Prague for Matt Welch

-about that letter…six paragraphs, $5 million in free publicity and Harper’s back in the mainstream

-It was NAFTA, not woke, that elected Trump. Or was it?

-Illegal immigration is a wage issue

-Who still believes free trade is the answer to everything?

-Vietnam made …

The Fifth Gets a Substitute Teacher (w/ Jesse Singal) #568 Jul 29, 2026

Show notes

Jesse Singal of Blocked and Reported and Singal-Minded fills Michael Moynihan’s special diabetic chair to discuss Fauci’s diaries, broken institutions, runaway AI, LeBron and Mamdani Mart.

-Moynihan out, Jesse Singal in

-Bari Weiss hired everyone except Jesse

-The Prince of Science re-enrages everyone (or at least Rand Paul)

-Gell-Mann amnesia and the collapse of institutional trust

-The media needed a COVID daddy

-An OpenAI model escaped the sandbox

-The analogy of the paperclip machine and how it consumed the universe

-Cambridge protected alleged plagiarist Jason Arday

-Midterm Madness, Ohio governor race version

-Kmele feels that LeBron will never love him but he doesn’t want to talk about it

-Three grown men relived their greatest pickup games

-Kmele wanted the gods back in The Odyssey

-Mamdani Mart promised groceries at 30 percent off

-Billy Bob Thornton returns from hell in White Knight (a Kmele Foster joint)

-Nazi dinosaurs stalked Jews through Schindler’s Park

-Jesse discovered second-order effects

-Not every strange obsession with Israel was antisemitism

-Rent stabilization has worked great for millionaires

-No French goodbye for Kmele

Prefer to watch & chat live with other members of the Fifdom? This episode premieres over on our YouTube channel at 12PM EST.

The Fifth Column (A Podcast) is a listener-viewer supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Follow The Fifth Column

YouTube: @wethefifthInstagram: @we.the.fifthX: @wethefifthTikTok: @wethefifthFacebook: @thefifthcolumn

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

The Temple Is Rich. The Monks Are Poor (w/ Frank Dikötter) Members Only #336 Jul 24, 2026

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

Frank Dikötter is a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and one of the foremost historians of modern China. His research in overlooked and restricted Communist Party archives has transformed our understanding of Maoist rule.

-Frank Dikötter is kind of Dutch, but not really

-Writing the definitive history of Maoist horror

-Edgar Snow a…

I Don’t Make Mistakes Anymore. They’re Just Lies (w/ Chris Cuomo) #567 Jul 22, 2026

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We talk about what the media still gets wrong about Trump, what losing CNN did to him, and why he believes more political violence is coming.

-Kmele sizes Chris up and… is this podcast 10% gay?

-From Fox, to ABC, to CNN

-Did the media make Trump president?

-Celebrity, discontent and everything the media missed

-Being right about what’s wrong

-The duopoly is killing us. DSA isn’t helping.

-Cuomo, Cuomo and Cuomo Crime Time

-Scott Jennings, JD Vance and the rewards of picking a side

-The media discovers capital-T Truth and loses its curiosity

-Trump’s corruption and the limits of whataboutism

-Mario Cuomo should have worn a toga

-Voters don’t want the flaws. They want the disruption.

-There will be more political violence

-Matt Lauer crosses the street to express his condolences

-Broadcasting from the basement and losing an identity

-Illegal immigration and its convenient distortions

-Tucker, Fredo and Mike Tyson

-Kmele can take Joe Rogan. Chris has notes.

-AOC gets savvier; Kmele would prefer an accounting

-I don’t make mistakes anymore. They’re just lies

-COVID couldn’t transcend the culture war

-Midterm Madness

-the first presidential candidates that Matt Welch, Chris Cuomo, and Kmele voted for

-Andrew Cuomo and the outsider problem

Prefer to watch & chat live with other members of the Fifdom? This episode premieres over on our YouTube channel at 12PM EST.

The Fifth Column (A Podcast) is a listener-viewer supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Follow The Fifth Column

YouTube: @wethefifthInstagram: @we.the.fifthX: @wethefifthTikTok: @wethefifthFacebook: @thefifthcolumn

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

The Gold-Plated Imperial Presidency (w/ Maggie Haberman) Members Only #335 Jul 21, 2026

Show notes

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

Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, co-written with Jonathan Swan, is out now.

-yes, he superglues the gold fixtures in the Oval Office

-Maggie Haberman and her very irritating competitor Jonathan Swan

-Project 2025 and Stephen Miller’s search for lawyers who would get to “yes”

-what needs to be in the paper as soon as possible… a…

The Denial of Reality Is a Powerful Drug (w/ Bret Stephens) - Members Only #334 Jul 17, 2026

Show notes

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

-Bret Stephens, Mexican?

-Bret’s naked grandmother and the Trotsky/Diego Rivera/Frida Kahlo connection

-The family saga of Stalinists, refugees and Reagan Republicans

-Learning to love America through tap water and cops you don’t have to bribe

-Belgium, a sick little, horrible place

-America, land of late bloomers

-The socialist Sweden Bernie remembers no lon…

There Is No They - #566 Jul 15, 2026

Show notes

-The many sins of fattie John J. Cafaro

-The Moynihan Report will return

-Hand jobs and the intellectual life of West Hollywood

-Release the Welch canceled-songs playlist

-The Iran deal is dead. The war is back.

-Why did Iran blow it up? Why does a dog lick his balls?

-Air power has never toppled a regime

-The anti-globalists discover the Strait of Hormuz

-Israel’s secret Ahmadinejad project

-In partial defense of the late Lindsey Graham

-Politics is gross. Stop loving politicians.

-Fellating is best done behind closed doors

-“There is no they. There is only we. And we usually don’t know what the fuck we’re doing.”

-Midterm Madness comes to Michigan

-Haley Stevens brings a little bit of stick-it-to-’em

-Is this DSA thing real?

-Colorado nominates a man who first killed at seven (he thinks)

-Two fatal ICE shootings in two weeks

-Ann Widdecombe is murdered. Britain shrugs.

-Kmele attempts the Caitlin Clark/data center crossover. It does not land.

Prefer to watch & chat live with other members of the Fifdom? This episode premieres over on our YouTube channel at 12PM EST.

Follow The Fifth Column

YouTube: @wethefifthInstagram: @we.the.fifthX: @wethefifthTikTok: @wethefifthFacebook: @thefifthcolumn

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

Failing "The God Test" (w/ Robert Wright) - Members Only #333 Jul 10, 2026

Show notes

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

Robert Wright’s new book The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning, is out now (Bookshop | Amazon)

•“Conference” = group sex

•21 years of successfully avoiding podcast wealth

•Interviewing the godfather of AI

•A tiger and a rattlesnake

•Matt gets quizzed on LLMs

•The God Test

•The shock of vibe coding

•China and the superintelligence arms race

•Re…

Are We the Baddies? The Graham Platner Reckoning (w/ Kat Rosenfield) - #565 Jul 08, 2026

Show notes

The great Kat Rosenfield joins us to discuss the ongoing fallout from rape allegations against Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner published Monday by Politico.

When you’re a star, they let you mispronounce their name.

•The Fifth Column (whiskey) sells out!

•America’s birthday month

•Loathing Graham Platner before it was cool

•The least weird thing about Platner

•The Times is on it

•A working class hero is something to be

A•bout that beard

•The flaws are a feature, not a bug

•We all know a guy like this

•Christine Blasey Ford enters the chat•Michael Tracey exists

•Kmele expresses skepticism•It’s not consensual, it’s DiGiorno•On second thought, let’s not play the Fuentes clip