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:

207 "Hunter's Laptop, Ordinary Corruption, Darkest Night" Oct 20, 2020

Show notes

Moynihan's Old, New House
COVID... is Fake?
Siri, Do Black Lives Matter?
Dueling Town Halls
Everyone is Awful, Even You, (But Not Really)
The Brief And Highly Overrated Return of Respectability Politics
Politics of Bullshit
Foreign Bodies
The Revolt of the Public
Darkest Totalitarian Hellscape

Recorded Oct 18, 2020

Published Oct 20, 2020

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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

206 w/ Damon Root "Packed Courts, Peaceful Transfers of Power" Oct 03, 2020

Show notes

Guest: Damon Root @ Reason Magazine, Author, "A Glorious Liberty: Frederick Douglass and the Fight for an Antislavery Constitution"

Trump Makes His Pick
How Republicans Will Be Disappointed
Court Packing And Other Shenanigans
Historical Context, Oppressing People of Color
COVID Rumors
Debate Night Dog Whistles
What Trump Really Means
Vote by Mail (But Throw Out the Ballots)
The First and Only Lady

Recorded Oct 1, 2020

Published Oct 3, 2020

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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

205 “If You're Reading This, It's Too Late” Sep 24, 2020

Show notes

NOTE: This dispatch was beleaguered by technical and logistical challenges. The audio actually turned out pretty good (all things considered), but the entire thing was very nearly scrapped. Those challenges contributed to a delayed-release — and because the world has gone quite mad —the news cycle is evolving rapidly.

All the same, still lots of very relevant (even prophetic) stuff in this dispatch, but it was recorded before the Breonna Taylor Grand Jury announcement that inspired a night of protests, riots, and violence.

Home Improvement
Latinx, Things You Must Know About The Cuban
Trust the Process
Debate Preview
RBG
Hypocrisy and Norm Evisceration
Who to Blame
A Loss of Faith, A Looming Election Hellscape
About that TikTok Deal
We Choose Violence
1619 Lies, Bullshit, Stealth Edits, Motivated Reasoning
If The Schools Already Suck, Can 1619 Make Them Worse (or better)
National Patriotism Curriculum
All My Critics Are Racist, Which Is Terribly Convenient for Me

Recorded Sept 20, 2020

Published Sept 24, 2020

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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

204 w/ Steve Kornacki "What's Up With These Polls?" Sep 13, 2020

Show notes

Guest: Steve Kornacki, National Political Corespondent @NBC News / MSNBC

Making TV News During a Pandemic
Doing Your Own Makeup
Last Man in Midtown
We're All You Tubers Now
It'll Be a Blow-Out, Or It'll Be Close
Polls You Can Trust
Black Voters, Impeachment, Collusion
State of the Parties
State of the Union
State of the Media
Paper or Plastic

Recorded Sept 11, 2020

Published Sept 13, 2020

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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

203 w/ Nancy Rommelmann "From Portland to Kenosha to Rochester" Sep 06, 2020

Show notes

Guest: Nancy Romemelmann, journalist and author ofTo the Bridge: A True Story of Motherhood and Murder

Moynihan is back from Kenosha, and Nancy Rommelmann returns for an update on the goings-ons in Portland.

On the ground in Kenosha
On the ground in Portland
Media Malpractice, Self Deception
DC, Rochester, What's Next
Biden v Trump
*Worse Than Useless Facts*
Details That Matter
Going Full MAGA

Recorded Sept 5, 2020

Published Sept 6, 2020

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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

202 w / Tina Nguyen "Trump on Twitch, Jacob Blake, Kyle Rittenhouse" Sep 01, 2020

Show notes

w / Tina Nguyen (White House Reporter @ Politico)

Watching the RNC
Trump's on Twitch
Nasty Emojis
The Fire Next Time (Kenosha Edition)
"What's the big deal? Your insurance will pay for it?"
Total Failure of Political Leadership
Matt Welch: Snowflake?
Marines in Portland?
Libertarian Enough?
Leaping to Conclusions, Outright Lying
Independent Investigations
Jacob Blake: Things We Don't Know
Kyle Rittenhouse: Things We Don't Know

Recorded Aug 31, 2020

Published Sept 1, 2020

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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

201 w / Coleman Hughes "DNC COVID CON, QAnon Don, Canceling Kmele" Aug 23, 2020

Show notes

w / Coleman Hughes

🤫

Recorded Aug 21, 2020

Published Aug 23, 2020

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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

200 w / Andrew Sullivan "Uncancellable Andrew and the Great Media Miasma" Aug 13, 2020

Show notes

We can't believe it. Neither can you. It's our 200th episode!! (Well, not including the thirty-plus, subscriber-only Patreon episodes, which are looser, bawdier, and even more problematic...so stop freeloading and subscribe!). In celebration of this momentous anniversary, we called up our old friend Andrew Sullivan, fresh from his separation with New York magazine and joining from his Provincetown whirlpool, to discuss:

- Daddys, bears, and pervs...oh my!

- Andrew has a conversation with some younger gays

- A generation without tragedy

- BTW: No one actually says LGBTQ+

- And you're not suppose to like being oppressed

- Why did Andrew leave New York magazine and what is the "mysterious miasma"?

- Sully starts his own thing, quickly realizes he was underpaid

- The drunk brilliance of old-school British journalism

- FWIW, Andrew didn't write The Bell Curve

- The anti-Sullivan fatwa issued by a former employer

- Michael Kinsley's two rules of writing

- The future of magazines, the future of media

- Why you should read, listen to, and befriend people with bad ideas

- Kmele, Kamala, and the prostitutes

- Andrew convinces us to...change

Recorded Aug 13, 2020

Published Aug 14, 2020

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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

199 "Nothing to See Here, An Emergency Every Minute" Aug 09, 2020

Show notes

Drugs You Should Try
Heroine, A Black Drug?
Black People Are All The Same
Voter Fraud, by Mail
Selecting A VP
Cognitive Tests (Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV)
Scare Tactics
Suburban Lifestyle Dreams
The State of New York
FBG Duck
New George Floyd Video
The Trouble With China
Facebook vs TikTok
Blazing Saddles

Recorded Aug 6, 2020

Published Aug 9, 2020

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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

198 w/ Nancy Rommelmann "There's a Riot Goin' On" Jul 29, 2020

Show notes

Guest: Nancy Rommelmann, journalist and author ofTo the Bridge: A True Story of Motherhood and Murder

Nancy Rommelmann, friend of the Fifth and former resident of Portland, Amerikkka, returns from the ramparts of the revolution with news, anecdotes, and a glimpse at our glorious future. Alis volat propriis. So we asked our very own Lady John Reed just what the hell is happening in the insurrectionist precincts of the Pacific Northwest...

Nancy doesn't recognize parts of Portland
What everyone is getting wrong about the protests/riots/federal intervention
Wait, where is the Portland PD?
Shares in a homemade body armor business are trading higher today...
Why you're not hearing that amazing, hilarious, enlightening conversation we had about the secret app
(It's because the SD card ran out of space and no one noticed...)
We return after our tech screw up--much, much drunker--to talk history vs. journalism
No one arguing about colonial history knows anything about colonial history
It sort of falls apart around this point...
And by the way: stop telling us what we should care about

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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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