The Fifth Column

So this one is probably four days old now? But because of the shitty software we use—and the fact that our…ummm….editor is currently on vacation in Italy—it took some serious archeology to salvage the recording. But it sounds fine, it’s a good episode, and Moynihan isn’t at all annoyed about having to upload this from a beach in Forte dei Marmi. The lengths we will go to make you people smarter and happier…So no description. Just listen to the damn thing.

* Matt hasn’t seen Oppenheimer

* Brittany Murphy is dead, probably from myocarditis. Kmele is surprised

* Found that anti-Qaddafi t-shirt

* That stupid interview on Democracy Now

* NHJ is America’s greatest historian

* Was Moynihan crying? (Moynihan responds: This is fake news)

* “But ackshually……..”

* Low key good and not great

* Richard (not Robert) Frank’s brilliant book

* The…

* Kmele and the Dead

* Lia hates God

* RFK and the race virus

* A guilty verdict

* The Dersh and jury nullification

* The often referenced video of Dersh v. the Fink

* A listener retracts his “dickish email”

* An email about Boston and music

* Is Boston a “racist” city?

* Forgetting about bussing

* The Irish vs. the WASPs

* Moynihan unloads on idiot Vice executives

* This is a very summer episode. Soz.

* Moynihan, impanelled

* Implicit bias and your cup of coffee

* Chipotle paranoia

* We interrupt this program for a detailed Welch interregnum of the death of Milan Kundera

* Tracy Chapman is “honored” by Luke Combs’s cover. The Washington Post is alarmed

* Elvis was a hero to most, but he never…

* You didn’t write that song. The “community” did

* De La Soul is not Steely Dan

* Airbrushing music and film history will save the universe

* Actually Tintin in Congo is pretty bad….

* A dumb congressman says something dumb. Ho hum.

* A suggestion for a new Sokal hoax

* Cocaine, crack, and a question never asked of Biden the Younger

* Why Matt once bought $100 worth of crack

* Taking back a “clarification”

* Underhoused. Overhoused. Differently housed.

* Mayor Adams yells at a Holocaust surviving slave master

* Drinking coffee with pictures of dead cops

* Who lost the cocaine?

* Kamala speechwriter video

* The worst person in America is…

* That interesting piece about Kevin Kruze’s not interesting book

* The Fifth Column agrees: the 4th is pretty great…

* Immigration in Europe vs. immigration in the US

* Harvard and affirmative action

* A sick podcast

* Revisiting Coleman and RFK

* Listeners yelling at Moynihan

* Some nice stuff about Moynihan

* A clarification from Moynihan

* (All of this is re: RFK)

* BTW, Sirhan Sirhan was really anti-Semitic

* The conspiratorial mind

* Are Birchers libertarians on meth?

* Taking photos of yourself smoking crack

* Matt tells a story about…something

* Etc, etc, etc

Our old pal Damon Root, author of Overruled: The Long War for Control of the U.S. Supreme Court, stops by to explain why the world is ending and racism won and all new websites will be homophobic and paying your debts is fascism or something.

So yeah, the lads discuss the court, affirmative action, student loans and how to eat your gay website cake. Enjoy.

The great Coleman Hughes sent a pained email. Like many Americans angry about various stupid and sinister government Covid policies, he was now feeling the gravitational pull of a warbly-voiced political outsider from a family of consummate political insiders. He was, of course, starting to fall for Mr. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. To be clear, this wasn’t a full-throated endorsement of Kennedy but, Coleman averred, an understanding where his ever-expanding legion of supporters were coming from. And after all, Kennedy was making some good points, no?

With Matt Welch having left to join the Wagner Group, Moynihan and Kmele sent a flurry of furious messages and extended an invitation. Dear Coleman: be this week’s guest co-host! Because if we acted now, perhaps we could at least slow any potential descent into...no, no, no. We couldn’t sit idly by as another friend joined the Kult of Kennedy. We invited…he accepted. It was time for an intervention…

Another live Zoom for our handsome, brilliant, and generous subscribers (hence all the weird asides responding to a fast-moving live chat). A few topics covered:

* Kmele on Juneteenth

* Rush and nerds and whites and wizards

* RFK and Rogan and debate

* Being brave and calling….

* RIP Cormac McCarthy

* James Randi “platforming” Uri Geller

* Vivek’s Russia stuff

* Yalta and …

Fresh from his campaign stop in front of a Miami courthouse, presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy stops by the Fifth’s Chinatown studio to very politely argue with Welch and Moynihan about a whole bunch of stuff. Including:

* The donor class

* What kind of conservative is Vivek?

* Populism and free trade

* A peace plan for China and Ukraine

* The Trump indictment

* Would Vivek take a position in a Trump

* Vivek leaves, the lads have a tipple

* Not many randos this time

* Matt and Moyn on the Trump indictment

* Wait, did Moynihan just say…free Assange?? (He did!)

* More 2024 nonsense

* Chris Christie is serving his purpose

* Moynihan tries to decode an ever more complex flag