The Fifth Column

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- Steven Pinker on why “common knowledge” is much stranger than it sounds
-The social machinery behind weddings, money, and power
-How a norm starts to die once someone breaks it and gets rewarded
-Trump as the great destroyer of polite restraints
-The institutions that lost the authority to enforce trust
-How new taboos appear without anyone admitting who created them
-T…

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His next book, China Whisperers (out in November), looks at the diplomats, journalists, scholars, and China hands who shaped America’s understanding, and misunderstanding, of its chief geopolitical rival. But we pretty much cover the entire globe in this conversation.
-The experts had it coming
-Federalists, anti-federalists, and America’s oldest argument
…

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-Kmele gets glasses
-The return of Soho legs
-Matt’s movie-theater race science
-Trump sends a letter to Congress saying the war is over, Iran says, “wtf?”
-Little Marco, Fog of War correspondent
-A very leaky White House
-Strange new respect for the anti-war MAGA set
-Little Marco puts the best face on Iran
-Welch discovers gas prices
-The affordability caucus …

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We’re joined by Anthony Scaramucci, founder of SkyBridge Capital, former White House Communications Director, and one of the more memorable casualties of Trump 1.0
-The Mooch reads the stars
-The truth is out there, allegedly
-954,000 seconds in the White House
-The Ryan Lizza thing, briefly
-the reason God made Steve Bannon look like this
-Why Bannon scared …

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…and how raising a black daughter changed the way he sees America.
-David French returns to the Fifth Column
-SCOTUS drops of a few ruling
-Free speech wins 9-0 (First Choice Women’s Resource Centers v. Davenport)
-The Voting Rights Act gets another trim (Louisiana v. Callais)
-Racial gerrymanders vs. political gerrymanders
-Smart racists, dumb racists, and …