The Fifth Column

Latest Episodes:

345 w/ Mary Katharine Ham "The Moronic Inferno b/w Hammer of the Gods" Feb 10, 2022

Show notes

Kmele's on a plane back East, where he shall remain and where the Fifth will increasingly ditch Zoom for in-person recordings. Yay. Filling in for Comrade Foster this week? Journalist, author, inventor, CNN contributor, mother of three, and all around swell gal, Mary Katherine Ham!

The triumph of the stupid
The stupid Washington Post
Hating friends with stupid politics
Mary Katherine, like Switzerland to her ex-friends
The right after Trump
Unharassed by Ailes
When Hammer and Moynihan met
Revisiting MKH’s reporting on the Tea Party town hall madness
More on Hitler’s truckers
Broken risk analysis: MKH on schools, masking, and Covid culture wars
Masked and anonymous
Does Dave Chappelle hate the poor?
Don't influence the normies
The electoral power of hypocrisy
Sports bras, shaming, and misinformation
And so much more!

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344 w/Jacob Mchangama "Speech, Sheep, and a Crying Room" Feb 07, 2022

Show notes

Our favorite Danish intellectual returns! After a three-plus year absence, Jacob Mchangama is back on the Fifth, this time promoting his amazing new book, Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media, which P.J. O'Rourke calls "best history of free speech ever written and the best defense of free speech ever made." We tend to agree. The lads make quick work of a bottle of sake and still manage to blather about...

The state of free speech in Europe
Joe Rogan and the crisis of speech
Many of history's heroes of free speech were kind of shitty on free speech
It always comes back to Nazis
The Weimar fallacy
Hanged for speech. Really, really bad speech
The sheep theory
Jacob brings up Nazis again
Tell the moon about the crying room
The most powerful engine for social change
Free speech is a powerful engine *against* racism
Two islamists realize they were wrong about free speech

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UNLOCKED 🎁Patreon Special Dispatch #104 - Everyone is Dumb 🎁 Feb 02, 2022

Show notes

A freebie for the great unwashed, cheapskate masses. A little...ummm....looser than the free feed pod. And note that Moynihan's car was stuck in the snow just moments before recording, so he's slightly more unhinged than usual. When contacted, he apologized profusely and said "had I known you were releasing this to the freeloaders I wouldn't have said all of those things that I totally believe but make people pay to hear..." -TFC

Snowstorms. People moving. Daughters acting crazy. Fiona Hill. Lots happening in the Fifthdom, but the lads got together this afternoon for a shouty, everyone-is-insane rant fest. The following topics were soberly discussed:

- To save democracy, it must be destroyed

- A left-right synthesis! Let's all abandon principles!

- 16 free speech help lines

- Oprah: The OG Joe

- Jenny from the U of G

- Smooth brown something

- We need to talk about Rogan

- We need to talk about (Ilya) Shapiro

- Welcome to Georgetown...now into the penalty box, you racist!

- A warning label for everything

- A magic word supercut!

- Canadian truck driving Nazis?

- The Thousand Beer Reich: 14 out-of-shape Nazis stand on an Orlando bridge

- Patti for SCOTUS

- And much, much more....

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343 w/ Mike Pesca (ex-Slate, The Gist podcast) "Inexplicable Offense, Boring Exile, Triumphant Return" Jan 20, 2022

Show notes

Almost a year after being run out of Slate for possession of an unpopular opinion, journalist and podcaster Mike Pesca joins the Fifth for his first post-controversy conversation on how it all went down, when banal opinions became "harassment," and what we can expect from the The Gist 2.0.

Is Kmele being prioritized for Covid treatment? Because, ya know...
Mike Pesca gets pushed out of Slate (for referencing, but not saying, a magic word)
Bull Connor's boss, Steve
A "harassment-worthy" opinion
Was anyone brave and did they call bullshit? Ummm...
N-words and Mohammad cartoons
Insert $5 for more podcast
Kmele's Kovid fog
The roughest period of Mike's life, ever
The new, new journalism
Hating Joe Rogan
You don't have the truth, journalists. But you can get there
The Gist's approchal
Moynihan likes The Gist. Except that one episode...
The media is atomized. Or maybe balkanized
Coleman is a good rapper
Don't catastrophize the normal

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342 "Positively Apocalyptic, Momentarily Conspiratorial, Just Keep Doing the Thing" Jan 15, 2022

Show notes

Kmele at Hereticon
Fallibility vs. Fundamentalism
A Time to Choose
In Your Heart You Know He's Racist
Gerrymandering for Good
Credibility, Transparency
Ignoring Alex Jones
Arguing with Alex Jones
The One Thing Americans Agree On...
...It's All Going to Shit
Alex Jones' America
Idiots Wrote This

Recorded: Jan 13th, 2022

Published: Jan 14th, 2022

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341 w/ Matt Rosenberg (NYT) "A Coup'niversary, Domestic Lefty Neocons, Kidz n' Racecraft" Jan 07, 2022

Show notes

He's brilliant. He has a Pulitzer Prize, And he's totally jacked. New York Times reporter Matthew Rosenberg, who was at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and could definitely kick your ass, joins the Fifth to reflect on the riot, coup, insurrection, revolution, putsch, mass hate crime...whatever you want to call it. But hang around after the Rosenberg Coup Hour for a freewheeling postgame meditation on legal crime in New York City, upbraiding Moynihan for his bad parenting skills, and the secret ghostwriters behind Kmele's Twitter account...

*Note: It's someone else's fault, obviously, but allow us to extend a half-hearted apology for the slightly subpar (occasional but not terrible) audio quality on one of our mics. If this was a Patreon episode and you forked over cash--which you really, really should do--our regrets would be far more groveling and effusive. But you skinflints and freeloaders can just deal with it....

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340 "Merry Kovid Kwanzaa, Madden the Death Merchant, the Flatbush Remonstrance" Dec 29, 2021

Show notes

A Covid Christmas
A Merry Kwanzaa
Before you eulogize the dead, I have stupid tweet you should consider
Matt sort of emptywheels Harry Reid
Planes, Trains, and superspreader events
Yes, there are no tests
The usual Covid frustrations
The Webb Hubbell telescope
The Memorial shutdown
The non-historians lecture us on history
Destroy the idols of Americanism
What on Earth is the Flatbush Remonstrance?

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339 w/Rep. Peter Meijer - "The RINOvirus, Insurrection Deflection, DeSantis Claus's Xmas Miracle!" Dec 17, 2021

Show notes

Back for his third (we think?) visit, the scourge of crackpots and charlatans, America's greatest ginger, and our favorite congressman...Rep. Peter Meijer!

Look, it's not a great time for the Republican Party
Unity! Now get the fuck out
What Rep, Meijer wrong about January 6th
Dear Congress: gimme some truth about January 6th
Why Nancy Pelosi wanted impeachment to fail
To get out of an anti-democratic moment, we must have even less democracy
"You voted to impeach and your career has been weird ever since" - Matt Welch
Was that terrorism? Or just a bunch of delusional losers
Is the insurrection investigation the job of congress or...historians?
He's "fucking furious"
Exit question to Rep. Meijer: What say you about Julian Assange?
"Just find out about the UFOs" - Kmele Foster
An hour of post-Meijer postgame
A mask for Dmitrios: remembering Kmele's trip to Greece
Pack the court! / Kmele's insane Elizabeth Warren impression
Unlike most rich people, Elon acts like a rich person
Merry Christmas, wokeness is over (if DeSantis wants it)

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338 "Jussie's Truth, Putin's NATO, China's Games" Dec 10, 2021

Show notes

Jussie Smollett's years-long legal drama careening toward its conclusion. New York City enacts the countries most expansive (and ill-conceived) COVID restrictions. While the Biden Administration sends diplomatic shots at Xi in China and navigates an increasingly tumultuous situation with Putin in Russia.

Kmele's New York State of Mind
Creep Show
Playin' Journalist
Diplomatic Games + Human Rights
Blaming Everything on NATO (and Biden)
Russia Hawks
No Justice for Jussie
Elite Lives Matter
Yoko/Lennon
McLaughlin Psychic Friends Network

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337 w/ Steve Kornacki "Virginia is for Republicans, Dukakis's Carcasses, Waukesha Restraint" Nov 26, 2021

Show notes

Joining us for his third appearance on the Fifth, one of the sexiest men on planet Earth, the man with his own cam, the smartest and least partisan person on cable news...Massachusetts's own Steve Kornacki!

Thank you North Dakota roughnecks
The dust clears in VA and NJ...and Kornacki tells us what it all means
Will the Republican Party divorce Trump?
Voters, crime, and culture wars
Remember when Alan Keyes was MAKING SENSE???
How much power does the progressive caucus *really* have?
Massachusetts Steve is obsessed with Mike Dukakis
Biden, polling, and the Afghanistan debacle
Partisanship and the history of cable news
We know little, but Waukesha already proves so much
Quiet Steve Kornacki....is one of the good ones
And so, so, so much more!

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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

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