The Fifth Column

We’re joined by Brace Belden, co-host of the TrueAnon podcast.

•They don’t make heroin anymore

•The Taco Bell connection

•King of the libertarians

•Kmele almost dies

•You say Somali, I say Somalian, let’s call the whole thing off

•The people cut out of the Minnesota Somali fraud story

•Does Ben Shapiro think we’re white?

•A Maoist small businessman

•Certain liberties

•Curtis Yarvin discovers YouTube

•Yarvin = Slavoj Žižek of the right?

•Libertarian Escape (the Piña Colada Song)

•The cathedral

•Brace, Citarella, and the new intellectual left

•Mamdani “is fully a Democrat”

•Nationalize Mr. Fruit

•Body count

•War is a force that gives us meaning

•Call of Duty: Median Soldier

•Brace is on the DHS shit list

•Kmele spent more time at Occupy than Brace did

•In China, the trains run on time

•The DSA clappers

•Don’t let’s start on Venezuela

•Wistful for Colin Powell

•Where are the drugs!?

•The Grifters

•The neoneocons

•Thumbing the scale

•Jeffrey Epstein, quintessential striver

•The Chomsky connection

Prefer to watch & chat live with other members of the Fifthdom? This episode premieres over on our YouTube channel at 10am EST.

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Periodically around these parts the audience demand for unpaywalling certain subscribers-only episodes becomes too clamorous to ignore. So it was with Members Only #286, our gripping conversation with celebrated author Sebastian Junger about his harrowing new book, In My Time of Dying.

“Please consider making this a non-members only episode,” wrote beloved subscriber James G. “Ditto,” seconded Daniel Cavelli. “I wanna send this to many people.” Similar beseechings from random_academic, Jake O’Finkelstein, [Dr.] Jeff Singer, Lara Merkel Ross, and Oren, who added: “I have a friend who barely survived a massive heart attack last month. And I can think of many others who will be inspired by this incredible conversation.”

To our longtime paying customers: We hear you! Please share the episode widely, either as a one-off or a come-on!

To our many brand new paying subscribers, brought here by a generous gift, welcome to this weird & wonderful community, and please enjoy full run of the Comments and Chat. And to those seeing/hearing us for the first time, or just flying in the very back of the plane, here is the type of content that can come with a paid subscription. As our dear old D.C. pal Maura Flynn put it, “You make my support increasingly worthwhile and I encourage everyone who can to contribute on the highest possible level. Great stuff, rock on!”

You know what to do.

•You can always start drinking again

•Enough to make ⅔ of these grown men cry

•Sebastian’s (most recent) near-death experience

•Danger in, insight out

•Momento Mori

•There’s nothing so dangerous as a wounded Apache

•Don’t have an aortic rupture in Truro in July

•ICU humor

•Hi dad

•An existential digression

•Better than the one with Will Farrel

•Ideological Duolingo

•Hot tip from an immigration officer

•Old-time antisemitism

•Bestselling author sleeps with chainsaw

•Sarajevo & the Spanish Civil War

•Men’s Journal and the good old days of war reporting

•The folly of Afghanistan and nation-building on the cheap

•Some things are sacred

•Investigating near death experiences

•Don’t test Santa Claus

•Etymology of a curse

•Atheists, physicists, and consciousness

•God of the gaps

•Yes, we are literally talking about quantum physics

•The science of myth

•The reason for the need the idea of heaven

•Restrepo

•Why we all need a tribe

•Things were better when they were bad

•If you’re not sufficiently terrified, you’re not getting it.

•A tribute to dangerous jobs

•Making meaning in a meaningless universe

•A Bostonian goodbye

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Andy Mills joins to discuss his new Longview podcast, The Last Invention

The last invention is…a new species

Humanity’s coming “hinge moment”

Doomers v. Accelerationists v. Scouts

We are the ants

When Elon warned Obama

A digital God in a silicon box

Have AI’s creators created something they don’t understand?

Bubbles

Was DOGE a backdoor to replacing government with AI?

We’re all going to die!!!!

The populist fight against AI

And the populist embrace of AI

Spike Jonze: AI prophet

Moynihan rewatches Good Will Hunting....

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You asked for it, you got it! A session with just Matt, Michael, and Kmele… plus 200 of their closest friends. It’s The Fifth Column recorded LIVE in Burbank (just like Fleetwood Mac) on Sunday, November 23, 2025. Want early access to the next live show (and full access to this episode)? It’s easy: become a paid subscriber!

•The Klonopin Diaries

•Cover Ma…

Check out Jason Leopold’s FOIA Files newsletter, and the new Disclosure podcast•Steve Albini never had to deal with California fires

•Like a baby monitor, but for records

•This is a Fugazi t-shirt

•The trouble with true Norwegian black metal

•All hail Metal Mike

•Jason Leopold, FOIA terrorist

•There’s always work at the post office

•CIA man

•New York financier …

• Not safe at home, mayoral edition

• “The guns were decades old”

• The Trump/Mamdani bromance

• The administration’s historic post-fire response

• “You’re walking down the street, you happen to look Latino, or somebody hears you speak Spanish. A car rushes up in front of you. Masked men jump out with rifles and throw you in the car”

• What does “sanctuary city” actually mean?

• Like, no really, what does it mean?

• “You know, that’s a good question”

• “There’s a number of people who have literally disappeared”

• ICE effect on restaurants: Worse than COVID

* Trump effect on border: Closed

• “The Future of the Democratic Party Is Local”

• You lost me at L.A. being governed worth a damn

• Fire rebuilding? “I understand that people are angry”

• Me, 10 years ago: “Affordable-Housing Problem Lies, in Part, with Government”

• “The insurance industry … has been devastating a lot of homeowners”

• The heavily regulated insurance industry, you mean?

• “The Case for Letting Malibu Burn”

• Why prevent Palisades homeowners from rebuilding duplexes?• “Don’t take your lot and turn it into a five-story apartment building”

• “We want to get affordable housing built in this city, but I think that if you impose it on a neighborhood, then you will have hardcore NIMBYs”

• “I didn’t appreciate that, because they were getting ready to change low-income areas, wipe out the single-family homes, and turned it into massive apartments”

• “I’m protecting them from the predations of private developers”

• She really did almost become vice president

• “I love podcasts…. Maybe I wanted to become a newscaster”

• What Karen Bass learned from Angela Davis

• About those eight trips to Cuba

• “What fascinated me about Cuba is that they provided free health care to their population, and free education”

• The LAUSD’s construction boom for non-existent students

• “We could always put more money in our schools”

• “Judge me by how fewer encampments you see on the street. Judge me by crime decreasing. Judge me by affordable housing units being built”

Prefer to watch & chat live with other members of the Fifthdom? This episode premieres over on our YouTube channel at 10am EST.

Thanks for reading The Fifth Column (A Podcast)! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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* The Doppelgänger

* Where do these Moynihans come from?

* The journalism disease

* You do not want to get a call from the New York Post

* From schadenfreude to envious cruelty

* Covering the powerful

* What is “social proof?”

* The Epstein obsession

* Incompetence defeats the deep state

* Epstein and language inflation

* Representing the Trump voter

* MTG’s difficulty with economics

* Everyone’s difficulty with economics

* Let’s get a Juul and watch Beetlejuice

* She’s young. He’s not. But they both hate the young.

* Lydia loves deportations

* Her billion dollar idea is…sausage?

Prefer to watch & chat live with other members of the Fifthdom? This episode premieres over on our YouTube channel at 10am EST.

Thanks for reading The Fifth Column (A Podcast)! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Follow The Fifth Column

YouTube: @wethefifthInstagram: @we.the.fifthX: @wethefifthTikTok: @wethefifthFacebook: @thefifthcolumn

We are joined by journalist, author, filmmaker, and chainsaw-wielder Sebastian Junger. His latest book In My Time of Dying is a touching reflection on death… and what might follow.

Paid subscribers get access to this and hundreds of other Members Only episodes.

•You can always start drinking again

•Enough to make ⅔ of these grown men cry

•Sebastian’s (most recent) near-de…

* The dog hasn’t barked

* He knew about the girls. But we *knew* that

* So what, if anything, do these emails prove?

* Conspiracies, anomalies, pornography

* That’s a bad, no good, awful Times headline

* Enter Abby Phillip

* The battle of the Caribbean

* We couldn’t afford to fail

* A distinct lack of psychopaths and Holocaust deniers

* I care too much….

* Abby’s Jesse Jackson book

* Abby: Sorry Kmele, racism is real and structural

* TV, before the echo chamber?

* When dehumanization turns into pride

* A French, Swiss, Quebecois goodbye

Prefer to watch & chat live with other members of the Fifthdom? This episode premieres over on our YouTube channel at 10am EST.

Thanks for reading The Fifth Column (A Podcast)! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Follow The Fifth Column

YouTube: @wethefifthInstagram: @we.the.fifthX: @wethefifthTikTok: @wethefifthFacebook: @thefifthcolumn

It’s release day for Shadi Hamid’s new book, The Case For American Power, and we’re excited to have him back on The Fifth. Paying subscribers get access to the full interview in audio & video (plus literally hundreds more), and help us do what we do, so…

In this episode:

* Shadi makes the “case for American power”

* A love letter to America, “despite all its faults”

* Mor…