* “Zero-to-insane in the first three minutes” * The terrible 2024 election  * The right’s bizarre infatuation with RFK Jr. * The immigration crisis in NYC * The cruelty isn’t always the point * How the average American thinks about illegal immigration * Eli Lake joins to wish us all a Happy Durham Week * Takeaways from the Durham Report * The “heroes of democracy” are, in fact, the villains of democracy * David Frum’s Atlantic piece * Eli on Robert Kennedy Sr., the cop * Diane Feinstein, John Fetterman, Joe Biden * That insane LA Times piece (that we will talk about more later) 

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

#407 - The Cruelty, the Conspiracist, and the Report (w/ Eli Lake)

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. 

wethefifth.substack.com

News & Politics

Comedy

* 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? 

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

#455 - Debate Me, Joe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wethefifth.substack.com

* 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)

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wethefifth.substack.com

* 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 …

Members Only #209 - Rotten (and Racist) in Denmark

* Children of the revolution * No journalists allowed! * The Italian Gadsden flag * Oh no, Matt Welch…no, no, no * In defense of …Al Sharpton? * Dead soul singers  * The great Baby Huey  * Forgiving student debt is insane  * College is dumb but it makes economic sense…for now  * The New York Times and NPR * Jihad rehab  * Twitter welcomes another sexless fascist  

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

#407 - The Cruelty, the Conspiracist, and the Report (w/ Eli Lake)

Download our free app to listen on your phone