Let’s abandon the usual bullet points and instead provide a few relevant links. The lads sit down with Swedish writer and historian Johan Norberg to discuss his forthcoming book The Capitalist Manifesto; his report on Sweden’s Covid response; his almost-a-book The Mirage of Swedish Socialism: The Economic History of a Welfare State; and that time, twenty years ago, when he first came across Moynihan wandering around Stockholm, clutching a book about filthy commies.  

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethefifth.substack.com/subscribe

#419 - In Defense of Capitalism...and Sweden's Covid Response (w/ Johan Norberg)

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. 

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News & Politics

Comedy

* The most serious race controversy of 2024: that lady basketball player *  “I mean, I've been a huge fan of Blackpink for years and I've never heard a single one of their songs.: * Snek and the Supreme Court  * Everyone's wife is Ginny Thoma * The defense rests * Local news and crappy journalists  * In defense of…Marilyn Mosby?  * Israel and the ICC * Enter Sibarium: the UCLA Medical School controversy  

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethefifth.substack.com/subscribe

#456 - Hoops, Sneks, and Very Bad Doctors (w/ Aaron Sibarium)

* At a party  * At Fenway  * Losers (which is apparently already a show) * Jake, Dana, Donald, and Joe * Cui bono?  * How Joe wins * How Donald wins * The NY trial continues… * Mitt Romney would pardon DT * “Attacked our legal system” * The new Noem * Post-Donald, where does the party go? * How goes it in Ukraine? 

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#455 - Debate Me, Joe

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* Italian bootlegs  * Warm Fanta  * Drinking on your European vacation  * The Comfort of Strangers   * Pre-internet travel * Jake Siegel: a moderate dissent…and Fifth reaction * Probability and the feminist bank teller * What happens when people call you bad names in public * 9 times out of 10, they were rapping * Awful media critics  * What would CH do? * Steve Albini * “And the songs that…

Members Only #210 - Odds, Bobs, Feminist Bank Tellers, and the Records That Changed Us

So many of you have written us demanding the return of Jacob Siegel that when word got to us that he was back in New York, we hunted him down and demanded that he submit to a *third* appearance on The Fifth. We discovered that Comrade Siegel, a gravelly voiced veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq and senior writer at Tablet, is hard at work on a book, an expansion of his already expansive essay “A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century.” So we sat back in our chairs, asked a few questions, and basically handed the mic to Jake for an extended peroration on the Disinformation Industrial Complex, Trump’s foreign policy, why we should end American aid to Israel, and whether or not his unified theory of censorship counts as a “conspiracy theory.”  We assume this one will provoke lots of listener mail. So agree or disagree, send it over and perhaps we’ll do a special “Responding to Jake” episode over at Substack. 

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wethefifth.substack.com/subscribe

#454 - A Conspiracy So Vast (w/ Jacob Siegel)

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* Shogun erasure  * Revolutionary accents  * A debate on Israel and a subsequent anti-Moynihan calumny * Alas, anti-Semitism is common in certain parts of the world * Pointing this out seems pretty obvious  * The WAV file  * My melanated baby  * Teaching kids versus raising kids  *  Indoctrinating someone else’s kids into your way of thinking is some serious cult shit  * Torturing …

#419 - In Defense of Capitalism...and Sweden's Covid Response (w/ Johan Norberg)

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