33 Comments

Is the fifth bump a euphemism for the amount of cocaine Michael allegedly used to do?

Expand full comment

No way it was only five. In my amateur days I would have topped that easy.

Expand full comment

I meant to imply it was a fifth of a gram.

Expand full comment

Respectable

Expand full comment

I am the Matt Welch of professors, as I consistently mess up posting assignments lectures and homework solutions to the Google classroom.

Expand full comment
author

I MESS UP NOTHING! It's just, uh, the machines, and the softwares, and the stuff with the deals.

Expand full comment
Aug 29, 2023·edited Aug 29, 2023Liked by Matt Welch

Matt looked a class act on Megan Kelly. I watched when it aired and laughed hard at MK's only fans bit. Not cuz it was particularly inspired, but because my attention went straight to long time crushing on Megyn Kmele. And he delivered with the most brotheriest brother triple octave drop "You prolly could" he'll likely ever utter in public.

Expand full comment
Aug 29, 2023Liked by Matt Welch

I rode in an elevator with Floyd Norman once. He was nice. That’s it. That’s the story.

Expand full comment
Aug 30, 2023Liked by Matt Welch

As expected; Moynihan's expression voices the thought that fills the room!!

Expand full comment

“Fifth bump” omg. 😂 👊

Expand full comment

It sounds like you have been getting some listener complaints about the release schedule of late and that that, in turn, has irked you guys. Might I make a constructive suggestion?

We all know that it is simply not possible for TFC to produce episodes on a regular schedule (for reasons TK I’m sure) but, failing that, could you just find a semi-regular way to let us know what to expect?

My own frustration with the schedule goes hand in hand with my love of the pod - when crazy shit is happening in the world I long to hear you rip the loonies to shreds and remind me that there is fun and sanity left yet in this world. So, as days go by and there is no new episode forthcoming it’s ... a little like those moments in The Wire when everybody’s waiting on the new package. We’re addicts, is what I’m saying.

But this here email goes out nearly every week, so would it be too much to ask that there be a recurring feature in it called “The Fifth Next week” (or whatever) that just tells us what to expect for the week (two pods, one or none, roughly which days)? After all, communication is the cornerstone of all great relationships.

Expand full comment
author

This presupposes a reality that does not alas exist.

Expand full comment

Darn. Oh well, worth a shot. Thanks for the response.

Expand full comment

Well we can only pray that Matt and Kmele follow Michael's lead and lose their day jobs too so we can have the boys all to ourselves.

Expand full comment

100% agree that a centrist or Republican candidate that just dropped all the right wing nonsense and ran on crime/immigration, they would clean up.

It is a very simple message. We will actually enforce crimes including say car jacking, shoplifting and illegal immigration.

Expand full comment

It's been years since I started listening to you guys but only audio and then I get the latest email about Megyn Kelly and OnlyFans and I made the error of watching the video. Damn. The voices of the Fifth are so much better than your actual faces. I need some emojis. Laugh, laugh, it's a joke. :). I thought Matt would look Monyinhan and Matt, Monyinhan. But no. The voice never matches the face. But hey Matt, my man, he is a good looking man. The other 2 guys needs to step up and represent. Matt with the tie, the glasses he brought the game. He made us weird incels look good. Now I need to know Matt's skin care program. What a baby face for a man my age. Reason Mag must have a secret youth program going on. Just look at Gillespie and now it's spreading to Ecuador.

Power on guys. You have a great show.

Expand full comment
author

You are literally the first person in Christendom to wonder positively about my skin care regimen.

Expand full comment
Aug 29, 2023·edited Aug 29, 2023

Totally agree on education and the weird revisionism about history teaching in the US. I grew up in a small rustbelt town in what is now a fairly conservative/purple area.

Our textbooks/teachers in the late 80s/90s, were all about the exact "here is the history you were never told" talking points. A huge emphasis on women and slaves. All reactionary against a story we were never actually given in the first place. Teachers teaching against the teaching they received in the 1950s or whatever.

Now I have heard from others in say Missouri that the teaching was more conservative there. But I was frankly getting the "motte" version of the 1619 project in 1990. The idea that kids were being taught this white centric, "white supremacist" story is just absurd.

Lots of extra biographical cut outs to highlight like George Washington Carver (who is a super interesting dude) but not say Carnegie or Rockefeller.

And history was basically taught as:

Native Exploitation

Revolutionary War

Lead up to Civil War

Civil War

Aftermath of Civil War

Women's Suffrage

Jim Crow

Civil Rights movement

Vietnam & Women's lib

WWI and WWII barely appear. Hell the depression barely appeared. The story was a story of how people had been oppressed and mistreated. I think WWII got less treatment than the Haitian revolution (that isn't a joke).

Which absolutely that is a big part of the history. But it is hardly the only thing.

Expand full comment

It does take a weird kind of cognitive dissonance to believe that the best selling, and one of the most assigned history books in America, still constitutes "forbidden knowledge that they don't want you to know about".

Expand full comment

Yeah Zinn was not something we actively read from in HS, but he absolutely permeated the curriculum and was something the smarter kids who did independent reading were reading.

Expand full comment

I'd watch Megyn Kelly's Only Fans. That's all I'm saying.

Expand full comment

But would you pay for it?

Expand full comment

Just out of curiosity? Probably at least twice.

Expand full comment

If anyone else is a baseball nerd I would recommend Sam Miller’s (and former podcast partner Ben Lindbergh’s) book: The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team https://a.co/d/eRgWGr5

They are a couple baseball blogger/podcasters/stat nerds who were given the keys to an Independent League baseball team and try to moneyball their way to a championship. It isn’t too heavy on the sabermetrics stuff but does a great job of illustrating the conflicts and politics of getting a team to succeed and buy in to their vision.

Expand full comment

There is literally a whole fantasy baseball league called #Fifdom of Dreams, we exist

That's how we know Matt was wearing the dopest of Angels hats when he saw Shohei obliterate the Mets video sign

Expand full comment

We put the angels in the outfield! The dreams in the field!! We put the news (and the bears 😏) in bad news bears!!!!

Expand full comment

Does Megyn always swear this much? I felt like I was watching Deadwood.

Expand full comment

Vivake got her fired up (and fair enough).

Expand full comment

Yes and it somehow makes her hotter.

Expand full comment

Three gravel-voiced Westerbergian cheers for the mellow cello version of “Can’t Hardly Wait” (the walkoff music).

Expand full comment

Honestly not sure the subject is in about half of this message. It’s truly just like the Voynich Manuscript - beautiful but possibly a deliberately inscrutable forgery of meaning...

Expand full comment

That Danzig cover is...everything. And the legs. The leggggggss. Sweet baby Jesus.

Expand full comment