The Fifth Column

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
-Barry 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.
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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…

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

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…

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…