PodcastsComedyThe Fifth Column

The Fifth Column

Kmele Foster, Michael Moynihan, and Matt Welch
The Fifth Column
Latest episode

656 episodes

  • The Fifth Column

    When Everyone Stops Pretending w/ Steven Pinker (Episode #557)

    14/05/2026 | 1h 45 mins.
    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

    - 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…
  • The Fifth Column

    Robert D. Kaplan on a World Getting Darker (Members Only #320)

    12/05/2026 | 19 mins.
    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.wethefifth.com

    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
  • The Fifth Column

    Masquerade of Morons (Episode #556)

    07/05/2026 | 1h 24 mins.
    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

    -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 …
  • The Fifth Column

    Premeditated Fingering w/ Anthony Scaramucci (Members Only #319)

    05/05/2026 | 19 mins.
    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.wethefifth.com

    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 …
  • The Fifth Column

    David French on the Supreme Court, Race, and the Miracle That Confirmed His Faith #555

    30/04/2026 | 1h 51 mins.
    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

    …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 …
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About 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
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