You'll never hear me complain. When I am typing I am neither looking at the screen nor at the keyboard and I change my opinion on what I want to write as I am typing frequently and what makes it on the page is always 9/10s garbage. I clean it up as best I can before I hit send but even after that I need three or four passes just to get the worst of it. I am so fucking glad to have been born after typewriters became obsolete.
Not that I am comparing my modest talents and accomplishments with your own, but I am of the opinion that it is better to perfect your thoughts rather than your presentation. . .If you have to choose between them, that is.
Matt, your post provides an excellent summary — not just for newbies, but for all of us — of what it means to be part of this dom we call Fif. (So much so that I’ll restrain my pedantry and not correct the typos.)
The word “community” gets thrown around a lot these days, often by people who do nothing to actually build one, on- or offline. The Fifth Column, while being a highly entertaining podcast, is also a haven, a hangout — virtual and sometimes real-life — and a hub for contributory, cool, creative, free-thinking types.
Oct 14, 2023·edited Oct 14, 2023Liked by Matt Welch
It says introduce our ourselves if we are new. I am not new but have never introduced myself. Your podcast kept me sane through Covid - I think we became paid subscribers back in 2020 but I believe we were free riders starting in 2018. I am a big Reason fan and that's how I stumbled upon this. My gregarious libertarian leaning son attends Harvard and sometimes feels like you guys are his only 'friends,' up there., especially right now. If he's having a bad day he'll say, I think I am just going to go listen to the latest Fifth Column, that always makes me feel better. It's hard to be a thinking 21 year old in this day and age.
Indeed. The Fifth Column is a dose of sanity and much appreciated humor, like a cleanse from the silliness of modern news outlets and Twitter/Reddit feeds.
I was a big “the Gist” listener before Mike Pesca got cancelled. I knew him to be a genuinely good guy and was enraged by his firing. Katie Herzog was just about the only person defending him online. She published an article in his defense, so I subscribed to Blocked and Reported. I learned of TFC through them. I still listen to BARpod but much prefer TFC and community.
I had just had surgery in 2019 and everything went wrong! I was in bad shape and almost died (I didn’t and it over). I was at home and found it by accident. I was medicated - and it was an episode without Kmele and thought “this Camille sounds Great! I want to hear her!” I also am an Irish new Englander so loved Moynihan. The only book I read that summer was the Patrick Raden Keefe book Moynihan recommended: a little bit each day. And yes, the pod kept me sane during Covid.
I’ve got an old friend I met way back in high school who lives about ~40 minutes away, so once a month we get breakfast at a cafe that’s a 20 minute drive for each of us and talk politics. He recommended the Fifth to me on one of those Saturday mornings. I liked it enough after a few free episodes to upgrade to paid.
I started listening and subscribed to the Patreon in 2020 after having my son and needing something to keep me awake during middle of the night feeds. (For that reason, I always love when the gents talk about being dads.)
I can’t remember which podcast recommended TFC to me. I tried listening to a few episodes but the long running times of the podcasts had deterred me. However, when I was up for an hour or so at a time with a baby in the middle of the night, they were suddenly just what I needed.
I have been a "heterodox person" from probably 10-13 years ago...before there was such a label I think. A lifelong liberal who got progressively more and more fed up with it's silly orthodoxies.
I had had people recommend me me the FC several times, but I think I just got unlucky and first tuned into some bad episodes because the first two times I listened I didn't love it and thought MM in particular sounded like a self assured a-hole who was committing a lot of the same sins he was railing against.
But then sometimes early this year I got a strong recommendation again, hit a series of episodes I loved, and soon subscribed and have been a loyal fan since.
I do still find a lot of my initial negative first impressions aren't necessarily wrong. The boys do tend to sometimes slip into the exact sins they are excoriating. That said 0I have come to really enjoy their perspective/humor and think of them more as ~90% very good + ~10% bad and I think I just happened to bounce off the first couple times when I happened to unluckily catch a bad stretch. Unlike many podcasts I haven't really explored the archive much as this one seems so topically driven most episodes. So maybe they were jsut worse a year ago?
But if anyone has recommendations of great old episodes that are timeless I would love that.
Welcome, newbies - not to hell but to a weird, hilarious, and warm place that smells of booze and weed where...
- Moynihan will regale you with absolutely obscure WWII and Cold War anecdotes while also repeatedly hinting at the fact that he will sleep with you (if you are a woman) or with your wife (if you are a man) or with both of you (he is, after all, just a simple straight guy who prefaces most of his stories with "So yesterday I was at this gay bar again...").
- Kmele (if he shows up) will do his signature stoned-chipmunk-giggle while mocking the downfall of race-baiters, educate you on telescopes and time and space and shit, and laugh at you for being poor while also begging you to join the "Never Fly Coach" tier so he can finally upgrade from first class to private jet.
- Matt pretends to work at Reason; he is the nicest and most reliable one of the three and usually also has the most sensible takes. Whenever he doesn't forget how to turn on his computer or that the internet exists in the first place, he interacts with listeners (in a non-sexual, non-extortionist way - take note, Kmele and Moynihan!). There are also rumours that he lived in Prague for some time, but these are as yet unconfirmed because he is known for never ever talking about this time in his life. He also somehow manages to make baseball sound remotely interesting to us eurotrash who are listening.
Matt, Kmele and Moynihan also have sweet and hilarious kids who sometimes hijack the recordings (including the world's youngest rabbi). For all their faults - which are innumerable - the three lads are amazing dads.
Further selling points: racist accents and Ben fucking Dreyfuss.
When I said the other week that after listening to all the old episodes, I came to the conclusion that Matt is my favorite, you just perfectly explained why
Welcome, newbies! From a truly normie, Never Fly Coach subscriber who has not regretted a single penny. I’m pretty sure I have no clue, and neither would the guys if they knew me, why I am here. I just know this pod makes me feel like I’m not crazy. And it makes me laugh. You will love it here
Thank you for excellent fifth column content this week. I’m far from an expert on military strategy or libertarian values but if anyone wants to chat about what’s happening in Israel and/or what’s going on for Jews around the world right now, please feel free to reach out. Happy to answer any questions. I’m sure Yael wouldn’t mind either!
Also, let me know if you live in SoCal so I can invite for the next fifdom Shabbat!
The nice thing about libertarian values, in my opinion, is that they don’t really require complicated pretextual arguments or circumlocutions to package dense ideas. It’s basically just “leave people alone until they voluntarily decide to interact with you, and treat everyone the same under the law”. Simple, straightforward, and seemingly impossible to grapple with if you’re a partisan or a busybody.
Pretty rich that people are defending BJG’s views on this. I’m not a reactionary, have very “normie” views on a lot of issues-which is why I subscribe and love this channel- but equating “resistance fighting” to a terrorist attack targeting concert-goers and civilians in their homes should be summarily dismissed without a second thought. Fuck off
Hi all! I have been listening since spring but never introduced myself. I found the fifth column through the BARpod community when I asked for recs. I’m a college prof, so I feel proximate responsibility for stoking culture wars and regret not pursuing a more lucrative & impactful career. My saving grace is that I work at no name university in flyover country, so my students aren’t entitled or engaged enough to participate in the most performative progressive activism. No hanglider signs seen posted up around campus this week! My dream is to quit academia and work for FIRE.
I have a (free) newsletter too, the 1000 cities project, which is why I’m posting under my real name despite Magic sounding like a pseudonym! I examine firearm homicide and assault trends in over 1000 cities to push back against false narratives about urban gun violence. I’m one of a handful of heterodox gun violence researchers and align myself with people like Peter Moskos and Rafael Mangual. If you like charts, graphs, & maps, check it out!
I've been following your Substack. It's great work. I had no idea you were a professor; I was actually thinking "why can't there be more researchers like this in academia?"
Thanks! I cannot always post weekly but I’ve got a sizable backlog and try to add new deep dives regularly.
I tell people my name is Maggie to avoid confusion at places like Starbucks, but people who encounter my name professionally before meeting me in person are usually disappointed that I’m not a tall black man. I was born in 1983 and recently watched Winning Time, which reaffirmed my belief that I’m named after *that* Magic (although my mother disputes this)!
Thank you Matt. Long time subscriber but not an active “commentator” . But LOVE the Fifth and found the last Members Only so helpful to process this mad mad world. Love you guys. Stay safe Yael.
I was a listener of the School Sucks Podcast (RIP) and was told that a frequent collaborator of Brett’s. (Thaddeus Russell) was going to appear on a soon-to-be-released podcast called The Fifth Column. The placeholder intro was up, and possibly the first episode, but that’s it.
Thank goodness for Brett Veinotte.
Been a paying member for a while, having joined the Patreon just before the switch to Substack.
Well, Matt encouraged us newbies to introduce ourselves, so it would only be libertarianish of me to obey authority. (That's how that works, right?)
I don’t remember if I found the podcast through Blocked and Reported or if it was the other way around, but for the last few years, the Fifth Column has been my weekly reprieve from the assault of the news content they keep pumping out of the series of tubes. Anyway, I’m a recent subscriber, and for some reason, it took me a while to figure out there was a comment section, but it’s great to be here with you all now.
Sorry for initial typos, BLARF.
The typos are how we know it's really you doing the post
No typos means Matt WALSH sweet-talked wethe5th’s password out of a Substack minion. Again
You'll never hear me complain. When I am typing I am neither looking at the screen nor at the keyboard and I change my opinion on what I want to write as I am typing frequently and what makes it on the page is always 9/10s garbage. I clean it up as best I can before I hit send but even after that I need three or four passes just to get the worst of it. I am so fucking glad to have been born after typewriters became obsolete.
Not that I am comparing my modest talents and accomplishments with your own, but I am of the opinion that it is better to perfect your thoughts rather than your presentation. . .If you have to choose between them, that is.
To typo is human, to forgive is divine.
Matt, your post provides an excellent summary — not just for newbies, but for all of us — of what it means to be part of this dom we call Fif. (So much so that I’ll restrain my pedantry and not correct the typos.)
The word “community” gets thrown around a lot these days, often by people who do nothing to actually build one, on- or offline. The Fifth Column, while being a highly entertaining podcast, is also a haven, a hangout — virtual and sometimes real-life — and a hub for contributory, cool, creative, free-thinking types.
This isn’t a “safe space.” It’s a sane zone.
Welcome, new followers. Thank you, fellow subscribers. Friends! Thank you, lads.
It says introduce our ourselves if we are new. I am not new but have never introduced myself. Your podcast kept me sane through Covid - I think we became paid subscribers back in 2020 but I believe we were free riders starting in 2018. I am a big Reason fan and that's how I stumbled upon this. My gregarious libertarian leaning son attends Harvard and sometimes feels like you guys are his only 'friends,' up there., especially right now. If he's having a bad day he'll say, I think I am just going to go listen to the latest Fifth Column, that always makes me feel better. It's hard to be a thinking 21 year old in this day and age.
Indeed. The Fifth Column is a dose of sanity and much appreciated humor, like a cleanse from the silliness of modern news outlets and Twitter/Reddit feeds.
Hello, Jennifer. Thanks for sharing that. Many of us can relate.
I’d be interested in reading everyone’s “How I Found The Fifth Column” stories.
I was a big “the Gist” listener before Mike Pesca got cancelled. I knew him to be a genuinely good guy and was enraged by his firing. Katie Herzog was just about the only person defending him online. She published an article in his defense, so I subscribed to Blocked and Reported. I learned of TFC through them. I still listen to BARpod but much prefer TFC and community.
I also subscribe to Barpod - learned of them through the Fifth Column. Love 'em both!
I had just had surgery in 2019 and everything went wrong! I was in bad shape and almost died (I didn’t and it over). I was at home and found it by accident. I was medicated - and it was an episode without Kmele and thought “this Camille sounds Great! I want to hear her!” I also am an Irish new Englander so loved Moynihan. The only book I read that summer was the Patrick Raden Keefe book Moynihan recommended: a little bit each day. And yes, the pod kept me sane during Covid.
I’ve got an old friend I met way back in high school who lives about ~40 minutes away, so once a month we get breakfast at a cafe that’s a 20 minute drive for each of us and talk politics. He recommended the Fifth to me on one of those Saturday mornings. I liked it enough after a few free episodes to upgrade to paid.
I started listening and subscribed to the Patreon in 2020 after having my son and needing something to keep me awake during middle of the night feeds. (For that reason, I always love when the gents talk about being dads.)
I can’t remember which podcast recommended TFC to me. I tried listening to a few episodes but the long running times of the podcasts had deterred me. However, when I was up for an hour or so at a time with a baby in the middle of the night, they were suddenly just what I needed.
I have been a "heterodox person" from probably 10-13 years ago...before there was such a label I think. A lifelong liberal who got progressively more and more fed up with it's silly orthodoxies.
I had had people recommend me me the FC several times, but I think I just got unlucky and first tuned into some bad episodes because the first two times I listened I didn't love it and thought MM in particular sounded like a self assured a-hole who was committing a lot of the same sins he was railing against.
But then sometimes early this year I got a strong recommendation again, hit a series of episodes I loved, and soon subscribed and have been a loyal fan since.
I do still find a lot of my initial negative first impressions aren't necessarily wrong. The boys do tend to sometimes slip into the exact sins they are excoriating. That said 0I have come to really enjoy their perspective/humor and think of them more as ~90% very good + ~10% bad and I think I just happened to bounce off the first couple times when I happened to unluckily catch a bad stretch. Unlike many podcasts I haven't really explored the archive much as this one seems so topically driven most episodes. So maybe they were jsut worse a year ago?
But if anyone has recommendations of great old episodes that are timeless I would love that.
Hello, Martin. Thanks for sharing your story.
I recommend the sample episodes listed here, if you haven’t heard them already:
https://wethefifth.substack.com/about?utm_content=learn_more
Your son should join us in the New England Fifdom WhatsApp group: https://chat.whatsapp.com/IGIZPzwYiouIMgG5zSYU4a
Last month we met up at a FIRE event that previewed Greg Lukianoff's latest book, and hopefully we'll meet up again soon!
Thanks so much! I will send him the link!
Welcome, newbies - not to hell but to a weird, hilarious, and warm place that smells of booze and weed where...
- Moynihan will regale you with absolutely obscure WWII and Cold War anecdotes while also repeatedly hinting at the fact that he will sleep with you (if you are a woman) or with your wife (if you are a man) or with both of you (he is, after all, just a simple straight guy who prefaces most of his stories with "So yesterday I was at this gay bar again...").
- Kmele (if he shows up) will do his signature stoned-chipmunk-giggle while mocking the downfall of race-baiters, educate you on telescopes and time and space and shit, and laugh at you for being poor while also begging you to join the "Never Fly Coach" tier so he can finally upgrade from first class to private jet.
- Matt pretends to work at Reason; he is the nicest and most reliable one of the three and usually also has the most sensible takes. Whenever he doesn't forget how to turn on his computer or that the internet exists in the first place, he interacts with listeners (in a non-sexual, non-extortionist way - take note, Kmele and Moynihan!). There are also rumours that he lived in Prague for some time, but these are as yet unconfirmed because he is known for never ever talking about this time in his life. He also somehow manages to make baseball sound remotely interesting to us eurotrash who are listening.
Matt, Kmele and Moynihan also have sweet and hilarious kids who sometimes hijack the recordings (including the world's youngest rabbi). For all their faults - which are innumerable - the three lads are amazing dads.
Further selling points: racist accents and Ben fucking Dreyfuss.
New "About Us" just dropped.
When I said the other week that after listening to all the old episodes, I came to the conclusion that Matt is my favorite, you just perfectly explained why
Brava, Duchesse.
Welcome, newbies! From a truly normie, Never Fly Coach subscriber who has not regretted a single penny. I’m pretty sure I have no clue, and neither would the guys if they knew me, why I am here. I just know this pod makes me feel like I’m not crazy. And it makes me laugh. You will love it here
Thank you for excellent fifth column content this week. I’m far from an expert on military strategy or libertarian values but if anyone wants to chat about what’s happening in Israel and/or what’s going on for Jews around the world right now, please feel free to reach out. Happy to answer any questions. I’m sure Yael wouldn’t mind either!
Also, let me know if you live in SoCal so I can invite for the next fifdom Shabbat!
The nice thing about libertarian values, in my opinion, is that they don’t really require complicated pretextual arguments or circumlocutions to package dense ideas. It’s basically just “leave people alone until they voluntarily decide to interact with you, and treat everyone the same under the law”. Simple, straightforward, and seemingly impossible to grapple with if you’re a partisan or a busybody.
Scotsman is constantly showing up, let’s 👏🏼 go 👏🏼
“Scotsman”? I thought I was very clear on that point.
It’s a nickname 😌 I love you but I’m not gonna type 11 extra characters every time I call you out in a chat
❤️ aww heck. With that attitude, you could even call me “scot”. Or “man”, but that could get confusing.
Lucky me, I happen to know your real name. :) But I call you NaT here.
True.
Pretty rich that people are defending BJG’s views on this. I’m not a reactionary, have very “normie” views on a lot of issues-which is why I subscribe and love this channel- but equating “resistance fighting” to a terrorist attack targeting concert-goers and civilians in their homes should be summarily dismissed without a second thought. Fuck off
BJG has gone full “The Zero Hour”. It’s unbearable.
Hi all! I have been listening since spring but never introduced myself. I found the fifth column through the BARpod community when I asked for recs. I’m a college prof, so I feel proximate responsibility for stoking culture wars and regret not pursuing a more lucrative & impactful career. My saving grace is that I work at no name university in flyover country, so my students aren’t entitled or engaged enough to participate in the most performative progressive activism. No hanglider signs seen posted up around campus this week! My dream is to quit academia and work for FIRE.
I have a (free) newsletter too, the 1000 cities project, which is why I’m posting under my real name despite Magic sounding like a pseudonym! I examine firearm homicide and assault trends in over 1000 cities to push back against false narratives about urban gun violence. I’m one of a handful of heterodox gun violence researchers and align myself with people like Peter Moskos and Rafael Mangual. If you like charts, graphs, & maps, check it out!
I've been following your Substack. It's great work. I had no idea you were a professor; I was actually thinking "why can't there be more researchers like this in academia?"
You’ve got a new subscriber here.
Magic is a great name, if a lot to live up to. Do people ask you to *spell* it? (Sorry.)
Thanks! I cannot always post weekly but I’ve got a sizable backlog and try to add new deep dives regularly.
I tell people my name is Maggie to avoid confusion at places like Starbucks, but people who encounter my name professionally before meeting me in person are usually disappointed that I’m not a tall black man. I was born in 1983 and recently watched Winning Time, which reaffirmed my belief that I’m named after *that* Magic (although my mother disputes this)!
Your mother lies like a rug!
Thank you Matt. Long time subscriber but not an active “commentator” . But LOVE the Fifth and found the last Members Only so helpful to process this mad mad world. Love you guys. Stay safe Yael.
No such thing as over-indexing when it comes to Cold War obscura ... or WW2 ... bring it on!
I’m gonna add an interview with the Fifth’s rabbi, Rabbi David Wolpe, on Michael Shermer’s podcast https://open.spotify.com/episode/7BZA8fqDWkQUWlNqZZtCCb
Welcome newbies! FYI I’m a monster, but that just shows there’s room here for all 👹
I was a listener of the School Sucks Podcast (RIP) and was told that a frequent collaborator of Brett’s. (Thaddeus Russell) was going to appear on a soon-to-be-released podcast called The Fifth Column. The placeholder intro was up, and possibly the first episode, but that’s it.
Thank goodness for Brett Veinotte.
Been a paying member for a while, having joined the Patreon just before the switch to Substack.
Well, Matt encouraged us newbies to introduce ourselves, so it would only be libertarianish of me to obey authority. (That's how that works, right?)
I don’t remember if I found the podcast through Blocked and Reported or if it was the other way around, but for the last few years, the Fifth Column has been my weekly reprieve from the assault of the news content they keep pumping out of the series of tubes. Anyway, I’m a recent subscriber, and for some reason, it took me a while to figure out there was a comment section, but it’s great to be here with you all now.
I wish you hadn't linked that Briahna Joy Gray video. I liked her until 21 minutes ago.