-Welch has a bone to pick with Ben Dreyfuss

-Clip Roulette

-Tucker and the Demon Bomb

-Jason Arday, martyr?

-The Jonah Lehrer comparison

-The Samantha Power mic disaster

-Fuck you Joaquin

-John Mearsheimer, Stephen F. Cohen and the Russian apologists

-Ukraine didn’t go away

-Trump, Kim Jong-un and the South Korea war games

-Midterm Madness / Polymarket, wha happen?

-Median Strategies and the fake poll

-Adam Bonica, Marc Elias and scamming the elderly

-Is Cuba a dictatorship? Apparently a difficult question

-The Padilla Affair / Slobo Googling

-Theft as a “biological need”

-Chocolate City

-Stay tuned for más Moynihan Report

Prefer to watch & chat live with other members of the Fifdom? This episode premieres over on our YouTube channel at 12PM EST.

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Since all work and no play makes Jack wander through the empty halls of the haunted hotel with a butcher knife, we do occasionally step out into the sunshine and (for a change!) enjoy a cocktail or seven. Such, such were the joys of last night’s annual Osprey Blues Festival hosted this Saturday by our partner in crimes, Jonathan Farber. You’d think we woulda snapped some Fif’ pics on this rare public/private outing, but instead we will torture you with horrid listener-created A.I. art.

* As mentioned here previously, at the end of Members Only #339, fired ABC News veteran Terry Moran spilled tea about “the one time I did feel the heavy hand of censorship.” It was spring of 2021, the day that Nightline was scheduled to air his long-gestated piece on the Covid lab-leak hypothesis, and the segment came back with edits rendering it “incomprehensible,” thanks in part (he was told) to some pre-screening by none other than Anthony Fauci:

Unsurprisingly, this revelation attracted notice: In Mediaite, Fox News, the New York Post, Hot Air, ZeroHedge, Newsbreak, Belaaz, Twitchy … hell, even Ground News!

Another Mediaite-attracting clip was this bit on whether ABC News is a liberal institution (“yes”), whether viewpoint diversity is a good thing (“yes”), whether journalism has a bubble problem (“yes”), and whether Terry Moran is himself in it (weellllll….)

Also, on that episode Moynihan briefly mentioned the fired-post-9/11 academic Ward Churchill, who (as many listeners pointed out) promptly died. Not the first time that’s happened….

Finally, several of you pointed out and criticized the do something nature of Moran’s public-policy thots. Well, turns out I wrote a whole-ass cover story about that media tendency back in 2011, with the perhaps-ungenerous headline of “The Simpletons: David Brooks, Thomas L. Friedman, and the banal authoritarianism of do-something punditry.” Snippet:

Do something. Is there a two-word phrase in politics more loaded with disguised ideological content? Embedded within is both an urgent call for powerful government action and an up-front declaration that the policy details don’t matter. The bigger the crisis, the more the urgency, the sparser the detail. On September 30, 2008, in a classic of the do-something genre, Brooks argued that the Troubled Asset Relief Program should be rammed through Congress over public objections because the federal government needed “to give people a sense that somebody was in charge, that something was going to be done.” Did that “something” involve buying up toxic assets? Introducing or relaxing certain banking regulations? Taking over or winding down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Not important. “What we need in this situation,” Brooks declared, “is authority.”

American discourse is saddled with a large and influential do-something school of political punditry, a cadre of pragmatists from Meet the Press to your local editorial board who are forever seeking to solve the country’s problems by transcending ideology, demanding collective citizen sacrifice, and—always—empowering authority. In their new book That Used To Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back, Friedman and Johns Hopkins foreign policy professor Michael Mandelbaum lament that people “in positions of authority everywhere have less influence than in the past,” due to a “corrosive cynicism” preventing “the collective action that is required.” America, David Brooks wrote in March 2010, “is suffering a devastating crisis of authority,” resulting in a “corrosive cynicism about public action.” The similarities are not accidental.

* Rare sighting Thursday of Moynihan on cable news, talking about ICE, J.D. Vance’s response to socialism, AOC’s woke-triangulations, Todd Blanche’s speech to the Justice Department, and Donald Trump re-re-naming the Kennedy Center. Heckuva screen cap:

* Kmele, too, took his regular perch on CNN Tuesday, yakking about DSA elections, the post-Trump GOP, moves to nationalize election policy, and the Air Force 1 switcheroo:

* On Wednesday I appeared on Runaway Country with Alex Wagner, a newish pod in the Crooked Media/Pod Saves America stable, talking about the DSA, Trump’s hold on the Republican Party, and Tucker Carlson’s trial balloon for a third-party run. My bit starts at the 33:46 mark, though you may want to re-wind if you like Act Blue ads:

* Speaking of the alleged Tucker Carlson candidacy, I threw some cold water on it Wednesday over at Reason. Here’s a section on the Carlson/J.D. Vance/Peter Thiel relationship that may be of interest (as are some of the hyperlinks therein):

Carlson was one of a dozen attendees at a foundational 2019 meeting in Rockbridge, Ohio, convened by Vance and his longtime mentor Peter Thiel, that soon blossomed into “one of the most influential forces in GOP politics,” according to a November 2025 Washington Post article about the collection of Silicon Valley investors, economic populists, and media entrepreneurs. “Political strategists,” the Post asserted, “credit the close-knit network of businessmen-cum-donors with helping fuel the president’s reelection last year and propelling one of its own—Vance—into the vice presidency.”

It was also good for Carlson: 1789 Capital, a “patriotic” and “anti-woke” venture capital firm founded by some of the Rockbridge attendees in 2022, chose as its first investment Last Country Inc., the digital media company Carlson founded after being fired by Fox News. (Beginning in the momentous month of November 2024, the venture fund brought on Donald Trump Jr. as a partner.)

The vice president and the podcaster have had each other’s backs ever since that first meeting, in service of Rockbridge’s aim to (in the Post‘s characterization) “equip MAGA to outlive Trump.” In March 2025, Carlson called Vance “the only person in the entire Republican Party…who’s capable of carrying on the Trump legacy and expanding it, making it what it should fully be.” At a Heritage Foundation event the following month, he said “J.D. Vance is the future, period.”

Things got squirrely after the September 2025 assassination of Charlie Kirk, which sent some in the conservative mediasphere down conspiratorial and antisemitic rabbit holes, leading both to widespread condemnation and strategic fence-sitting. Amid a season of reporting about racist and antisemitic trolling among professional young conservatives in Washington, D.C., Carlson chose this moment to interview Nazi Groyper Nick Fuentes, a decision that would soon lead to convulsions at the Carlson-supporting Heritage Foundation.

Vance’s first response to all that was to post on X that “The infighting is stupid.”

* Tangle News this week posted a live discussion on A.I. that it held a month or two back in West Virginia, featuring Kmele with past Fif’ guests Andy Mills (#457, M.O. #289) and Kat Rosenfield (#448, #565):

* And just saw that Kmele’s Big Think posted his interview with Dan Carlin of Hardcore History one month ago:

* Friend o’ pod Jamie Kirchick (#55, #347 and #394) had a good Atlantic piece on (why not!) Jim Jones and the People’s Temple. Professional politics passage:

In 1972, the San Francisco Examiner published a four-part investigation into abuse and financial impropriety within the church, and five years later, New West magazine reported on the physical and psychological terror that Jones inflicted on his followers. But Jones’s proven get-out-the-vote operation apparently eclipsed local officials’ misgivings. Jones’s ever more abusive and erratic behavior was ignored or rationalized by people who should have looked harder.

State Assemblyman and future Mayor Willie Brown once praised Jones as an “American Gandhi,” a combination of Martin Luther King Jr., Angela Davis, Albert Einstein, and Mao Zedong (he meant this as a compliment). California Governor Jerry Brown attended a testimonial dinner held in Jones’s honor, and in 1976 the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, Walter Mondale, invited him onto his campaign plane. Nine months before the massacre, the city supervisor Harvey Milk, one of America’s first openly gay politicians, lauded Jones as a “man of the highest character” in a letter to President Jimmy Carter.

* Meant to post this last week, but: Two-time guest Scott Lincicome (#479 & #499) published a crackerjack, eminently book-markable survey on the controversies and countervailing facts about data centers. Nut graf: “[M]ost of the common objections to data centers collapse under scrutiny. The buildings certainly aren’t faultless and raise some real challenges, but they also generate substantial benefits that the backlash conveniently ignores. To the extent data centers really do create problems, moreover, the source is mainly government policy, especially subsidies and energy bottlenecks. And that means better policy can mitigate the real problems surrounding America’s data center buildout—no bans or dire economic consequences needed.”

* Comment of the Week comes from Regina Rodriguez:

Quick note on Amazon Hub Delivery (program where independent contractors can build their own delivery company) - my hubby runs his own (non-delivery) business out of the house but economic conditions have made it so the business is earning maybe half of what it normally would. He looked into the Amazon Hub delivery and let me tell you, it’s been a lifeline. At the start up he decided what days he wanted to deliver, how much and Amazon set him up with all the technology so that its super efficient. He’s getting fresh air, exercise and additional coin, and I get to keep my paid Fifth subscription - Thank you Jeff Bezos.

Sendoff: One of the stock music-biz characters I enjoy most is The Hustler—a guy (almost always male) who maybe starts off as a would-be pop idol, transitions quickly to TV, some promotions here and there, trying to surf out the changes in the industry for as long as he can, and maybe create some indelible moments along the way. So describes Johnny Benjamin de Jong, a.k.a. Johnny Young, a.k.a. a guy you’ve probably never heard of unless you’re Australian, who died this week of pancreatic cancer at the age of 79. The Dutch-born Young was most famous for being the creator/producer/host of Australia’s Young Talent Time show from 1971 to 1988, launching various pop careers. But he got his start as the groovy mid-‘60s front man for Johnny Young and Kompany, scoring a number-one Aussie hit with the double-sided “Step Back” / “Cara-lyn,” covers both. He was also at this time hosting The Go!! Show, which was exactly like it sounds. But the magic really happened when he moved into an apartment with Barry Gibb, who prodded him to write his own damn songs. The results made Australian music history—not for the Kompany, but for acts such as Russell Morris, Ross D. Wyllie, and Ronnie Burns. These songs were less beach-party, more introspective, topical, and psychedelic. For Burns he wrote “Smiley,” a 1969 track about a Vietnam vet. Wyllie (and then later Herman’s Hermits) got “The Star,” one of those self-referential songs about the promise and limits of fame (I try to hack through it here). But it was Morris’s “The Real Thing” that changed time—record-breaking length (6:20!), record-breaking cost, part “Strawberry Fields,” part Manson-inflected Beach Boys; carved firmly into the Aussie rock pantheon:

Terry Moran, former ABC News correspondent, revealed on The Fifth Column (Members Only episode #339) that the network gave the Dr. Anthony Fauci editorial oversight on a story about the COVID lab-leak theory.

“The day that it’s supposed to air, it gets reviewed and it comes back to me and it is incomprehensible. I’d never been angrier,” said Moran. “Lawyers, standards, and I was told… Fauci.

Moran told The Fifth Column hosts Michael Moynihan & Matt Welch that he had not previously spoken about the incident.

“I probably shouldn’t have.”

-Terry reads that tweet

-Fired, suspended, non-renewed…whatever

-Any regrets?

-Network news is dying and everyone’s jumping ship

-The 9/11 flag-pin controversy

-Hire more people who voted for Trump

-Why not …

Read more

-Did anybody actually watch this Tucker and Hunter interview?

-“Montrosity” and other difficult words

-The adventures of Proximity Hong

-The curious case of Jason Arday

-Is there any chance Jesse Singal is racist?

-AOC discovers Woke 1.0 was crazy

-Shane Gillis and the conspiracy of enforcing things nobody believed

-Thank you, Thom Tillis. Also, fuck you.

-Funding the other side’s whackos

-Mamdani declares war on Amazon

-A general rent strike. Over one cockroach.

-David Remnick meets the DSA

-Kmele gets swarmed by the Hasan bots

-So, how great was Mao?

-Midterm Madness and the 2028 Democratic sweepstakes

-Clip Roulette

-Kmele tries to explain himself. It does not help.

-Can America get at least a busted Boris Johnson?

Prefer to watch & chat live with other members of the Fifdom? This episode premieres over on our YouTube channel at 12PM EST.

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One of the odd things about Friday’s Real Time With Bill Maher experience was how much of the discussion centered on places and institutions where the madnesses of 2020-21 have not yet subsided. And then, like clockwork, the controversial-in-lingering-woke-circles WNBA player Sophie Cunningham (see last week’s Firehose for details) was smacked hard full across the face by DiJonai Carrington, who, after being ejected, posted “WHITE PRIVILEGE” on Threads. (I will note here that Cunningham has become a lightning rod chiefly for advocating that only biological women should be allowed to play in women’s sports, which is a race-neutral concept.) The once-great Sports Illustrated magazine commemorated the hackery with the vile headline: “Sophie Cunningham Got a Bitter Taste of Karma.”

In a related side-drama, former NBA players Royce White and Enes Kantor Freedom have declared that they are entering the next WNBA draft, because after all, the league rules (plus the dominant POV of the anti-Cunningham faction) just say you need to be a woman, without getting hung up on the definition of the word. As ever on all things WNBA, it’s best to consult with Iowahawk.

These are the types of moments where you want to hear from former Fifth Column guests Ethan Strauss (#185, #333, #383, Members Only #151, #408) and Kat Rosenfield (#448, #565), and sure enough, the two podcasted on those and other topics just this Friday. Though, as we shall soon see, that was not the only reminder this week that though the tide may have subsided, there are still all kinds of nasty crabs jabbing their claws at any available normie feet.

* Here’s the Overtime segment from Friday night:

* On both the Overtime and earlier in the main episode, praise was sung for Nicholas Eberstadt’s terrific book Men Without Work. I talked with Eberstadt about the labor force’s missing men back in the old Paloma Media studio, for episode #376.

* There was also a stray reference (I think? Hard to remember through all the fast talk) to the laugh-out-loud travails of finally resigned Cambridge bullshit-artist prof Jason Arday, who we laughed about with Jesse Singal in #568. Jesse published a New York Times op-Ed Saturday under the headline, “A Top Scholar’s Fall Shows That Universities Don’t Get It,” arguing that: “This was a prime example of academia’s maddening tendency to embody the worst caricatures painted by its critics. The available evidence strongly suggests that, when faced with the allegations against Mr. Arday years ago, Cambridge and the other academic institutions connected to him responded not by genuinely investigating them with integrity and transparency, but acting in ways that helped him avoid scrutiny.” To which former Washington Post press critic Dan Froomkin blueskied, “Who at @nytopinion.nytimes.com decided: ‘hey, let’s Jesse Singal to do some racist schadenfreude!’”

Jesse and his better half recorded a paywalled Blocked and Reported episode on the topic as well.

* Kmele did his CNN thing on Saturday:

* I did my Reason Roundtable thing on Monday:

* This week around here we switched it up and put our trio-only episode behind the paywall. Here’s some of what you non-paying subscribers missed:

* And here’s a clip about A.I. with our techno-grump guest on M.O. #337, Harper’s Magazine Publisher Rick MacArthur:

* Some listeners flagged the moment in our latest episode where I balked at David Frum’s assertion that Donald Trump doesn’t love his kids. The point I was attempting to make wasn’t necessarily about parenthood, it was about the use of omniscience when characterizing a political opponent, as Frum did toward the end of his controversial March 2003 National Review piece, “Unpatriotic Conservatives.” Here are those last three paragraphs that I contended were what critics of the piece always quote:

There is, however, a fringe attached to the conservative world that cannot overcome its despair and alienation. The resentments are too intense, the bitterness too unappeasable. Only the boldest of them as yet explicitly acknowledge their wish to see the United States defeated in the War on Terror. But they are thinking about defeat, and wishing for it, and they will take pleasure in it if it should happen.

They began by hating the neoconservatives. They came to hate their party and this president. They have finished by hating their country.

War is a great clarifier. It forces people to take sides. The paleoconservatives have chosen — and the rest of us must choose too. In a time of danger, they have turned their backs on their country. Now we turn our backs on them.

For those who didn’t know, Frum and his wife, Danielle Crittenden, lost their daughter Miranda to cancer two years ago. Crittenden a few months back published a book about it called Dispatches from Grief: A Mother’s Journey Through the Unthinkable. America’s very own reporter Nancy Rommelmann reviewed it a couple weeks ago in Commentary.

* Comment of the Week comes from Gordo:

I moved to Columbus from California, for a few years. I would pass by Meijer’s and think, “What the fuck nonsense word is that, and what the hell is a Meijer?”

After about a year I finally went in, I stayed for about an hour. I didn’t need to, but I wanted to see everything, I took it all in. I went to my car and wrote to several people, the same message:

“I’m in a store, it’s better if I don’t write the name, but, you can buy a filet of fish, a pet fish, and live fucking ammo.”

That was five years ago, and I still remember sending that text.

Thank god I live back in Monterey, the Midwest is too damned cold.

Say what you want about California people, but know this, I can see the Pacific right now, and the weather is perfect all year round. 🖕

Sendoff: One of the most glorious and star-crossed career paths in 20^th century music was the proto-punk Garage Rock-turned Punk Rock-turned New Wave pipeline. A category filled with local legends, spectacular flameouts, and some loud, sloppy, fantastically uneven recordings. I had never heard of Jeff Conolly before he died on my birthday from bladder cancer at age 69, but I can guarantee Moynihan has a story or two. “There may have been no more voluble and volatile presence on the Boston rock scene in the late 1970s and 1980s than Jeff Conolly,” begins the WBUR obit. The garage/punk band was DMZ; the shambolic & ever-lineup-shifting alt-rock combo the Lyres was the vehicle thereafter. Conolly sang, played the organ, flopped around, and fired everyone (his washouts included guys who would move on to The Cars and Yo La Tengo). It’s a lot of noise and aggression and wit, but occasionally, as in this song (which I try to hack through here), the results come dangerously close to infectious power pop. RIP, wild man!

Greetings! Below find the link for this month’s Second Sunday, taking place LIVE on Zoom at 9PM EST.

Paid subscribers get the link below the fold.

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-involuntarily unionized at The Atlantic

-spy novels, bureaucrats and expense reports

-turning down Bill Buckley’s golden ticket

-prosperity, security and how quickly it can all disappear

-Frum is forever a man of 1989

-God makes you lucky, then convinces you you’re smart

-Tucker Carlson was always capable of many things

-falling flat on your back isn’t progress

-the Michigan Senate choice from hell

-Democrats discover Trump’s permission structure

-Midterm Madness in Michigan

-the polling industry has a phone problem

-politics for people who can afford to lose

-“I saw you coming so I could stop you”

-immigration restriction without the Trumpism

-fascism has the better sales pitch than communism

-what Donald Trump loves besides himself

-the conservative future Frum got very wrong and other reflections

Prefer to watch & chat live with other members of the Fifdom? This episode premieres over on our YouTube channel at 12PM EST.

Follow The Fifth Column

YouTube: @wethefifth
Instagram: @we.the.fifth
X: @wethefifth
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-Moynihan has the clap or something

-Who exactly is the demographic for this show?

-Moynihan’s European vacation involved bus karaoke, too much drinking, and now the shakes

-Matt went to Cooperstown with Bill Schulz…

-The forgotten insanity of the Peekskill riots

-Paul Robe…

Read more

Why do we love “Freebird”?

I mean the grown-up kind of love, where you’ve already cycled through your teenage “That’s awesome!!” to your college/young-adult snark at your friend’s band’s show to “Play Freebird!”, to your thirtysomething yeah-I’ll-hit-stop-on-the-radio-scan-and-rock-out-a-bit-in-the-car-when-nobody’s-looking, to your middle-aged, full on weeping when our Olympic boys and gals score a goal. (Or even, let’s be honest, during that Budweiser commercial.) Is it the verse lyrics? (“I’m a speed-travelin’ on now,” as I thought it was until THIS VERY SECOND, upon learning it’s “I must be traveling now”?) Either way: Probably not. Is it that delicious acoustic-guitar f-l-a-n-g sound, or the always-underrated piano, or the church organ? The “Stairway to Heaven”-like, middle-school-dance-tastic classic rock slow-part-then-fast-part? The requisite ripping guitar solo(s)? Each certainly plays their role.

Probably the correct answer is that the teenager was right: It’s awesome! Or, as Spinal Tap taught us, it’s the Mystery of Roll—we don’t why we respond to great art, we just do. But I would also suggest there’s another reason why our Southern Men carved themselves a place on the Mt. Rushmore of Freedom Rock, and that’s the power of a goddamned great organizing metaphor. What kind of American doesn’t intrinsically understand I’m as free as a bird now / and this bird you’ll never change? No wonder they had to speed up the song and start shredding: That’s just too much fuck-yeah to possibly contain.

Which brings me to the terrific documentary whose theatrical debut I was lucky enough to witness Friday night:

Why did so many of us absolute non-birders fall in love with this charismatic raptor, to the point where some of us (*coughs*) still follow an alarming number of urban-wildlife accounts on Twitter? Some of it is definitely the Mystery of Roll, in addition to how crazy we still were at the three-year mark of the pandemic. But also the metaphor is just sitting right there: Caged bird is set free, counted out, then almost miraculously learns how fly and hunt and search (in vain!) for love. Like Lynyrd Skynyrd, he makes a legendary run before his untimely demise.

You don’t have to be a Flaco obsessive to enjoy this movie, which was directed by our friend Penny Lane, nor do you have to be New Yorker or New Yorkophile (though, my goodness, is it a love letter to this city and it’s wonderfully odd/unpredictable/brilliant characters). The thing is laugh-out-loud funny in places, blessedly narration-free, and just beautiful to look at and listen to. There’s a limited theater run RIGHT THE HELL NOW; the more you reward good things, the more good things there will be to reward. And that’s the memo.

* Speaking of the movies…. We missed you, Arch!

* Gosh, I thought we hated commies around here, but then up from the Red-baiting top rope comes Bill Maher!

* Speaking of the Mark Twain Prize-winner, I will be on HBO’s Real Time this coming Friday. Turn on, tune in, drop out!

* Always good to have the size-obsessed Jesse Singal on, as we did this week in Episode #568 (and previously in #111, #171 & #501). As per usual when the subject of COVID-19 comes up, there is a minority of you got very upset at this discussion. I was going to write a whole thing about that, but then “Freebird” intervened, and anyway, the world doesn’t lack for my (and others’) words on the subject. My Reason colleague Robby Soave (#332, #517) had a helpful little piece this past week titled “What Anthony Fauci’s Defenders (and Critics) Get Wrong.” I also agree directionally (if not degree-ly) with this Vinay Prasad explainer about why some people still criticize the once-lionized face of public health:

It isn’t because he was wrong. Scientists are wrong all the time. Some scientists are mostly wrong. A few scientists are nearly always wrong. Science is quite forgiving towards people who are wrong. That’s not it. […]

Instead, Fauci is the rare scientist who checked a series of boxes that together generates ire. He (a) alone or with only a small group made decisions that (b) coerced hundreds of millions to do and not do a series of debatable actions (c ) while being largely incorrect (d ) unable to admit uncertainty or doubt (e) unable to gather more evidence (f) demonizing scientists who disagreed and, as we now know, [(g)] while keeping a diary that reveals he often did not believe what he was saying.

That’s a really unique series of events for a scientist. And to do it on so massive a scale. As a general rule in science, if you coerce people to do something — which their intuition questions — you better be near certain. Fauci was near guessing.

* Those who faced real-world ramifications just for expressing skepticism about various Covid-era claims will not soon forget the experience, nor should they. Cultures that enforce orthodoxy on contestable claims end up suppressing speech in the short term, but sowing the seeds of their own demise in the not-so-long.

That’s the subject of a great Free Press essay this week from Kat Rosenfield (#448, #565). Pegged to the mini-kerf(l)uffle over WNBA player Sophie Cunningham calmly advocating for women’s sports to be limited to biological females, Kat’s piece picks at the media machinery of attempted consensus. Longish excerpt:

Recall, for instance, the intense enforcement of the 2022 discourse surrounding Lia Thomas, née William Thomas, a swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania who had been a relatively unexceptional competitor on the men’s team but catapulted to record-shattering dominance after undergoing hormone therapy and getting approval to compete against women. […]

It wasn’t just that mainstream media coverage of Thomas was uniformly positive; it was that a narrative had been born. There was a laudatory Sports Illustrated documentary; glowing profiles by ESPN and ABC; a nomination for the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) Woman of the Year award. The ACLU tweeted in support, and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) issued a fact sheet instructing journalists as to how Thomas’ story should be covered.

At the same time, women who objected to this state of affairs were excoriated as bigots, bullies, and grifters—including the female swimmers on the Penn women’s team who reported that Thomas’ behavior in the locker room was making them uncomfortable. Thomas’ teammates were cautioned not to speak to the media; those who were uncomfortable with Thomas’ presence in competition or comportment in the locker room were instructed to address their biases with a therapist. Riley Gaines, a swimmer from the University of Kentucky who became an outspoken activist for barring natal male athletes from women’s sports after competing against Thomas in 2022, was widely portrayed in the press as an opportunistic, attention-seeking loser and physically attacked by demonstrators during a college speaking engagement. As recently as last summer, The New York Times described Gaines as an activist whose goal was nothing less than “the legal and cultural dismantling of the belief that transgender people exist.” […]

None of this is to pick on Lia Thomas personally. The movement needed a protagonist; if it hadn’t been the swimmer from Penn, it would have just been someone else. But because it was Lia Thomas (and because the standard uniform for women swimmers leaves so little to the imagination), the visual record of this moment makes for a startling retrospective into just how extreme its demands are. What was required was not just the subversion of our instinctive sense—what Cunningham calls “common sense”—that it was both unfair and immoral to force women to swim against a post-pubescent male; it was the rejection of the epistemic reality that undergirded our moral intuitions. Photographs from this period depict the six-feet-four-inch Thomas literally towering over the competition: broad-shouldered, square-jawed, intact penis and testicles bulging conspicuously beneath a women’s tank-style swimsuit. As naked emperors go, this one was both indelible and undeniable—and yet, denying it was what the party demanded.

And so deny it was what people did.

* Kmele this week did his CNN thang:

* There was also an enTanglement discussion on all things Fauci:

* The Reason Roundtable this past week talked DSA, Iran, and The Odyssey:

* It’s the return of Producer Jason’s Video Vault!

Books are often better than their film adaptations, and that certainly holds true for 1990’s Miami Blues, but Alec Baldwin’s truly psychotic performance as fresh-out-of-jail grifter Freddy Frenger makes this one of my all-time favorite examples of Florida noir. The novel was the first of Charles Willeford’s Hoke Moseley detective series, and is notable for focusing almost entirely on the criminal rather than the cop. Staying true to the source material, the movie-Mosley is both a secondary character and a shithead, played to perfection by Fred Ward (and marking the second time he stepped into what could have been a film franchise based on a popular paperback series [the first being Remo Williams, based on the Destroyer series by Warren Murphy], but instead was one-and-done). It certainly seems like director George Armitage (who later brought us Grosse Point Blank) was pulling up the bridge behind him, because his version of Miami Blues is a totally self-contained maelstrom of gleeful chaos—it’s funny, it’s violent, and it’s unpredictable. Adding to the volatility is Jennifer Jason Leigh as Susie Waggoner, a prostitute who becomes Freddy’s live-in accomplice in an absurd crime wave that you have to see to believe. Watch for free on Tubi; buy the BluRay; here’s the trailer:

* Comment of the Week comes from Nathaniel Tull:

I have a great [Trevor] Hoffman story. Many years ago, I was at a MKE vs SD game in Milwaukee. I, being a proper WI sports fan, had been tailgating prior to the game and was properly lubricated (I.e. drank enough to kill fans from other states). Me and my compatriots made our way to our seats in the outfield and, lo and behold, we were seated right above the opposing team’s bullpen. We spent the next couple hours heckling the Padres relief pitchers, bullpen catcher, and support staff. Finally, the ninth inning comes around and Padres are up by a run or two so we start really going at Hoffman. Nothing terrible, mostly calling him washed up, etc. Hoffman gets the signal to come into the game, he gets up, walks towards the bullpen exit, turns around stares me in the eyes and does the finger across the throat, and heads out to the mound. He proceeds to sit down the Brewers in order with that absolutely filthy change up and my beloved squad lost. It was glorious.

Sendoff: I cried six times Wednesday after hearing of Glen Hansard’s death via motorcycle crash at age 56, but that’s because I only watched six of his videos—a street performance of “Into the Mystic” with Markéta Irglová, duet of “Falling Slowly” with Eddie Vedder, performance (in Kilkenny!) of “Drive All Night” with Bruce Springsteen, TV duet of “Bird of Sorrow” with Imelda May, footage of him singing in a pub` one hour before his death, and of course, his legendary performance of “Fairy Tale of New York” at Shane MacGowan’s funeral. I don’t own any of Glen’s music; couldn’t name even a handful of his songs, and none of that matters, except as testimony to my sloth. He was the leading human avatar of a type or types I know well and have occasionally run with—the principled street musician, the doomed Irish romantic, the generous harmonist, the guy who just brought that glorious-sounding beat-up guitar with him everywhere & you were grateful that he did. And crucially, he and Irglová were at the center of one of my favorite movies ever, a tiny but wise meditation on music, harmony, and romantic longing, Once. The clip below from that movie is the best cinematic depiction I have ever seen of a music connection being made in real time, while the clouds lift and return and lift again from Hansard’s face. Meanwhile, because of the example of Hansard’s life, I have decided to attempt a supplement to this weekly Sendoff, in the form of me trying to learn & then record myself playing a song from the recently deceased. First stab at this link.

-Most roads lead back to Prague for Matt Welch

-about that letter…six paragraphs, $5 million in free publicity and Harper’s back in the mainstream

-It was NAFTA, not woke, that elected Trump. Or was it?

-Illegal immigration is a wage issue

-Who still believes free trade is the answer to everything?

-Vietnam made …

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-Moynihan out, Jesse Singal in

-Bari Weiss hired everyone except Jesse

-The Prince of Science re-enrages everyone (or at least Rand Paul)

-Gell-Mann amnesia and the collapse of institutional trust

-The media needed a COVID daddy

-An OpenAI model escaped the sandbox

-The analogy of the paperclip machine and how it consumed the universe

-Cambridge protected alleged plagiarist Jason Arday

-Midterm Madness, Ohio governor race version

-Kmele feels that LeBron will never love him but he doesn’t want to talk about it

-Three grown men relived their greatest pickup games

-Kmele wanted the gods back in The Odyssey

-Mamdani Mart promised groceries at 30 percent off

-Billy Bob Thornton returns from hell in White Knight (a Kmele Foster joint)

-Nazi dinosaurs stalked Jews through Schindler’s Park

-Jesse discovered second-order effects

-Not every strange obsession with Israel was antisemitism

-Rent stabilization has worked great for millionaires

-No French goodbye for Kmele

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Wanna hear a nice story?

So, we’ve been going to Cooperstown every year since 2022 to watch the induction ceremony at the Baseball Hall of Fame. It’s a fun four-day weekend, with museum visits, lake swimming, VFW bar drinking, and the world’s most wholesome lil’ parade, in which four or five dozen Hall of Famers put-putt in the back of pickup trucks down the tiny Main Street, waving to crowds that are maybe three deep on each side. This year for the first time I brought along the youngest offspring, who’d long wanted to go.

Upon her first visit to the museum, and therefore the new (and newly refurbished/expanded) museum store, Coco wanted one thing: A San Diego Padres cap. Not because she’s a traitor to her ancestral responsibilities of being an Angels fan (no matter how passive), but because it’s her way to honor and remember her late Uncle Larry, who died six years ago. Larry, a baseball player, fanatic, and coach (whose ashes may be illegally scattered on a certain college ballfield), had lived in San Diego for two decades-plus, and converted to the local Padre faith.

So the next day, after the aforementioned lake-swimming and VFW-drinking, we turtled up to Main Street for the parade. Now it’s true that most of the time Coco toggled between boredom and mortification at Uncle Bill Schulz’s curious behavior there, like when he attempted to hurl a baseball card at Harold Baines:

But, one of the charms of the exercise is when a half-dozen or so players, always led by Cal Ripken, dismount from their trucks and work their way back up the parade lines, signing autographs. This year among that handful was a guy who pitched 16 years for the San Diego Padres, Trevor Hoffman. Coco was obviously wearing her SD cap….

We are not a family much interested in autographs, but c’mon, man. Two sweet girls in pole position generously parted ways and invited Coco in. Uncle Bill leaped into action, shouting elaborate lies at the fantastically-haired Hoffman (“I’m her father! She’s the biggest Padres fan ever!”, etc.). Slowly, he worked his way to my daughter, and then did a remarkable thing—just stood there with her for 90 seconds plus amid the clamor, engaging in conversation, busting her chops about her Mike Trout shirt, and writing a whole damned novella on the inside brim of her cap. Then he made sure to wave us over to take the pic you see at the top. It was really, really nice. Later, I learned from my sister-in-law that my niece went to pre-K with Trevor’s son.

At the ceremony the next day, with Coco earlier having been ported to summer camp, we did our usual bluff-top canopy/grilling/observing of the inductees, including roll-call intros for the returning HoFers. Besides the usual lusty booing of Commissioner Rob Manfred, the loudest noise from our camp was cheers for Trevor Hoffman.

The only drawback to the whole chill weekend? We didn’t run into any of you people! I mean, except for the ones inside the tent. Come out next year! You’ll be glad you did.

* OK, enough National Pastiming. Here’s a cupla CNN clips of Kmele last week:

* And here he is on Tangle talking about Donald Trump’s election claims:

* Glad y’all enjoyed Moynihan’s interview with the great historian of China, Frank Dikötter. Here’s a free clip of the two of them discussing the Sinophilia of Hasan Piker:

* Nice reviews also for my Maggie Haberman interview. Here’s the New York Times reporter and Regime Change co-author explaining, re: Trump, that “he’s been calling me ‘Maggot’ since February of 2022.”

We talked a bit at the end about Haberman’s famous journalist father Clyde. Here he is, explaining why his 1966 firing by the Times was the correct decision.

* Brian Huber swears this is his “last request until Autumn,” so let’s have it:

I know this is HoF weekend, so I’m sending this to you early. I now have a link for booking the hotel at a group rate. So here’s a poster image and the link if you want to put it in the Firehose.

Book your group rate for Unofficial Fifth Column Meetup

Emphasis on “Unofficial”!

* Comment of the Week from Spencer Burnstead:

That’s a man who is certaintymaxxing.

Sendoff: Frederick Anthony Picariello Jr., a name you never heard of, died Friday of bladder cancer at age 89. If you know his work at all, it’s under the name Freddy Cannon, which his record company slapped on a recording of the singer/songwriter’s first rock & roll single, 1958’s “Tallahassee Lassie.” That top-10 hit was, according to the New York Times obit, “his favorite song, in part because it began with a poem, ‘She’s My Rock and Roll Baby,’ written by his mother, Antoinette (Rosetti) Picariello.” The Chuck Barris-penned number “Palisades Park” was a bigger hit at #3, and definitely influenced the Beach Boys, but “Lassie” was one of those things that just hit certain people a certain way at a certain moment, which is why there would eventually be covers by the Stones, Tommy Steele, Fleetwood Mac, and the Flamin’ Groovies. Also: “Mick Jagger told Rolling Stone magazine in 1995 that the song had partly inspired his writing of ‘Brown Sugar.’” Cannon was a goofy dancer and nobody’s matinee idol, and his career soon petered out, but he was able to eke out a living on the oldies circuit, and was releasing new music as recently as this year. In this clip, one of so very many Cannon appearances on American Bandstand, our Italian rockabilly stallion unwittingly demonstrates that certain audiences cannot, under any circumstances, keep a beat.

-Frank Dikötter is kind of Dutch, but not really

-Writing the definitive history of Maoist horror

-Edgar Snow a…

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-Kmele sizes Chris up and… is this podcast 10% gay?

-From Fox, to ABC, to CNN

-Did the media make Trump president?

-Celebrity, discontent and everything the media missed

-Being right about what’s wrong

-The duopoly is killing us. DSA isn’t helping.

-Cuomo, Cuomo and Cuomo Crime Time

-Scott Jennings, JD Vance and the rewards of picking a side

-The media discovers capital-T Truth and loses its curiosity

-Trump’s corruption and the limits of whataboutism

-Mario Cuomo should have worn a toga

-Voters don’t want the flaws. They want the disruption.

-There will be more political violence

-Matt Lauer crosses the street to express his condolences

-Broadcasting from the basement and losing an identity

-Illegal immigration and its convenient distortions

-Tucker, Fredo and Mike Tyson

-Kmele can take Joe Rogan. Chris has notes.

-AOC gets savvier; Kmele would prefer an accounting

-I don’t make mistakes anymore. They’re just lies

-COVID couldn’t transcend the culture war

-Midterm Madness

-the first presidential candidates that Matt Welch, Chris Cuomo, and Kmele voted for

-Andrew Cuomo and the outsider problem

Prefer to watch & chat live with other members of the Fifdom? This episode premieres over on our YouTube channel at 12PM EST.

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-yes, he superglues the gold fixtures in the Oval Office

-Maggie Haberman and her very irritating competitor Jonathan Swan

-Project 2025 and Stephen Miller’s search for lawyers who would get to “yes”

-what needs to be in the paper as soon as possible… a…

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I suppose it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that the most interesting fact-checks I came across of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey came not from the brainworms-addled anti-Woke pre-trashers still marring social media, but from, erm, my own daughters. “Circe was too chopped,” said the teen. “You wouldn’t even know that Odysseus was like Athena’s protégé!” complained the tween.

Turns out the kids, quite outside my influence, didn’t need The Dark Knight director consume their own bastardized versions of the literary patrimony of the West. There’s the Percy Jackson books and films, George O’Connor’s Olympians graphic novels, And a pretty fantastic story of a project you may not have heard of called EPIC: The Musical.

Per Wikipedia, EPIC is “a nine-part series of album musicals (referred to as ‘sagas’) written and produced in their entirety by Puerto Rican actor and singer-songwriter Jorge Rivera-Herrans. This musical project, released between 2022 and 2024, is a sung-through adaptation of the Ancient Greek epic poem Odyssey by Homer and takes inspiration from different musical genres as well as modern musical theater, anime and video games.” What’s cool is that Rivera-Herrans wrote the songs, then built and crowd-funded and fan-sourced the productions from the bottom up, auditioning singers on TikTok, encouraging anyone to make their own animations, then plucking the best, of whatever different styles, as Canon.

Coco says EPIC is more true to the source material than Christopher Nolan. She recommends the songs “Puppeteer” and “Open Arms,” but you could also just watch the whole damn thing:

* Speaking of highbrow, in this week’s back-from-the-dead Mailbucket, I lamented the online absence of the classic 2000 Adam McKay-filmed SNL short “The H is O,” in which bro-han pickup artist Ben Stiller is goaded into scoring … Glenn Frey. As played by Will Ferrell. Alert listener Iris promptly found the link, and now I shall tempt the gods by attempting to embed:

* IMPORTANT MUSICAL CORRECTION. On Episode #566 I made the regrettable error, pointed out by many of you, that American heroes Cheech & Chong had a song called “Beaners.” In fact, the song was “Mexican Americans”; “Beaners” was more a work in progress:

* OK, OK, news of the week. Those of you back-of-the-planers who think you didn’t needed to listen to the full Bret Stephens episode just because the naked-Trotskyite Mexican grandma stuff was in the opening bit, well, you missed what many in the Comments hailed as a top-10 show. Plus, the part where the New York Times columnist straight-up called J.D. Vance an anti-Semite:

Oh, and about Bret’s grandma….

He wrote about her at length six years ago. Sample:

She also rented an apartment on Barrow Street under an assumed name. Ostensibly, it was meant to be a studio where she could work on her painting. But, as she delightedly confessed in an interview more than 50 years later, its real purpose was to “learn certain things, sexually, so I could teach my husband” to become “a little more capable in that field.” […]

And there was the time she rented out her Acapulco home for $25 a week to Norman Mailer, sometime after “The Naked and the Dead” had made him a literary sensation. During his stay Mailer busted down a door in a drunken rage, assaulted his girlfriend, arranged to watch a sex act performed on a donkey and finally — this is the part that seemed to scandalize her the most — stiffed Annette on the rent and the maid on her pay. […]

Growing up, I knew I had a very unusual — if sometimes narcissistic — grandmother. A memory from when I was about 12 or 13, having a lunch of leftovers in her apartment in Mexico City:

“Bret,” she said, deadpanning it, “When sex is good, it’s really good.”

“Uh, OK, Grandma.”

“And when it’s not as good — it’s still pretty good.”

* Let’s clean things up. Here’s a clip of Moynihan on Uncomfortable Conversations w/ Josh Szeps, headlined “Michael Moynihan on Socialism, ICE & Lindsey Graham’s Butthole”:

* More on the late South Carolina senator’s preferences from pal Jamie Kirchick (#55, #347 and #394):

Was Lindsey Graham gay? As the author of a book about the history of gay Washington, D.C., it’s a question I’ve been asked frequently for years, and even more so since his sudden death last weekend. The South Carolina Republican’s lifelong confirmed bachelorhood, vocal intonation, and Southern dandy demeanor (if not sartorial choices) prompted many to conclude that he was, as they say in that part of the country, “light in his loafers.” Graham’s repeated attestations to the contrary had zero effect on those invested in the narrative that he was. Only about the matter of J. Edgar Hoover’s rumored cross-dressing (for which there is some circumstantial but no direct evidence) am I questioned more.

* The forever-hawk also came up on this week’s Reason Roundtable:

* Speaking of Reason, my colleague Jacob Sullum got some well-deserved love this week from Mediaite, in a piece titled, “Reason Magazine Comes Out Swinging Against Confirming Todd Blanche as AG: ‘Brazenly Corrupt.’” I’m cited/quoted near the end. From that:

Another Reason contributor, editor at large and former editor in chief Matt Welch, has also used his column space to excoriate Blanche, featuring him prominently in an article titled “The Most Corrupt Presidency in American History, by the Numbers.”

Mediaite asked Welch, from his perspective as the magazine’s former editor-in-chief, about the libertarian take on such issues. For libertarians, replied Welch, there is a strong interest in “power,” specifically the “critique” and “suspicion” of how it is exercised and imposed. […]

[T]here is … a negative side when we see a “cronyist machine trying to politicize what should be nonpolitical,” using government agencies to go after the president’s enemies and political opponents.

“This is appalling from a libertarian point of view,” said Welch, and these problems had only gotten worse “comparing Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0.”

It might be “inconvenient” to have these problems pointed out for the libertarians who voted for him and support some of his agenda, but ignoring that is “not our job as journalists.”

This current administration is “corrupt in a way that we just have not seen, and we need to confront that,” Welch concluded.

* Kmele and the Tanglers this week talked about cyclosporiasis, public health, and suchlike:

* Wait, what fresh hell is this??

Well, it’s an advertisement for the first-ever live show by one of our illegitimate-baby podcasts, Ask a Jew! Chaya Leah & Yael are for some reason going to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on Aug. 10, inviting on past Fif’ guest Nadav Eyal (#382, Members Only #305). Tix here. Also! The extremely unauthorized Fifth Column Dallas Meetup Convention Thingie is on for Nov. 13-15, deets & more questionnaires here.

And a reminder that on Nov. 4-6 we will be podcasting from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s Soapbox 26 conference in Philadelphia, along with fellow speakers Sarah Isgur (M.O. #314), Noam Dworman (#549), David French (#191, #325, #365, #555) Nick Gillespie (Special Dispatch #72, #379, M.O. #251, #551), Greg Lukianoff (#216, M.O. #183, #427, M.O. #276), Jacob Mchangama (#102 & #344), John McWhorter (#84, #121, #188 & #366), Matt Taibbi (#226, #348), and Ilya Shapiro (#361), for starters. Make sure to use the discount code FIFTH to save $50 on tickets.

* Time for Producer Jason’s Video Vault!

A Spanish-language film set in Mexico might not be what you’d expect from the British director of Repo Man and Sid & Nancy, but with its blend of grittiness, humor, and a touch of the surreal, Highway Patrolman fits right in with Alex Cox’s oeuvre. Youthful Pedro Rojas (Roberto Sosa) is a newly minted member of the national highway patrol, much to his father’s dismay. Assigned to a rural area of northern Mexico, Pedro’s idealism is eroded by each passing day’s danger, graft, and boredom. His life then takes a turn for the better (or does it?) when he marries Griselda, a domineering farmer with a willingness to overlook his drinking and dalliances, so long as he keeps bringing home the kind of cash that only a corrupt cop can swing. Pedro’s appetite for cash and increasing hubris complicate his life, yet this is no clean morality play: it’s one of those rare films in which you really don’t know what’s going to happen next, and that alone makes it worth watching. Stream on the Criterion Channel; buy the the BluRay; here’s the trailer:

* Comment of the Week comes from Richard:

I subscribe every month for the “are we recording this part” 🤣🤣🤣

Sendoff: Jennifer Precious Finch was a badass Gen X punk rock art girl, who died of brain cancer Saturday at age 59. She was the bass player for L7 during the band’s glory days, back when punk rock was magically becoming mainstream. Played in a mid-‘80s band with Courtney Love, dated Dave Grohl, flipped back and forth between L.A. and Seattle, taking quality alt-rock photos along the way. Did I see L7? Don’t think so, but you can never rule it out. They were universally understood to be dead cool, back when people were still leery of such things. Finch leaves behind many admirers, some other rock projects, and a bunch of songwriting credits, including this one:

-Bret’s naked grandmother and the Trotsky/Diego Rivera/Frida Kahlo connection

-The family saga of Stalinists, refugees and Reagan Republicans

-Learning to love America through tap water and cops you don’t have to bribe

-Belgium, a sick little, horrible place

-America, land of late bloomers

-The socialist Sweden Bernie remembers no lon…

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Newer subscribers may be puzzled by this word “Mailbucket,” let alone to learn that there have been 21 of the bastards before this morning. Well, thing is, sometimes (as in the past half-year) your Bucketeer in Chief gets busy! What normally happens is that once a month or so around these parts our in-box becomes over-swollen with quality missives providing valuable insight, sometimes at unreadable-on-the-pod length (though it’s true we also haven’t really been doing traditional Mailbag episodes lately either), and when the bounty becomes too much to not share, we, uh, not unshare!

At such junctures I will lightly edit the things, insert links as necessary, respond when so moved in italics, et voilà!

This fresh batch includes local views on nationally controversial elections, the world’s most obvious/Fiftastic Rich Man/Poor Man joke, some Worst Songs nominations, and more. The next installment will come sooner than five months!

From: Scott

Subject: Mainer Report on Platner

Date: July 11, 2026

Hi!

Thanks for the episode w/Kat on Platner.

I live in Maine and thought I’d nonconsenually share my experience of Platner and the folks who support him. I work construction (but also went to NYU) so the people I encounter are both working class and not.

The only folks who have Platner’s signs on their lawns are educated, upper class elitists. The lady who showed up at my house to “win” my vote for Platner was a 60+-year-old retiree driving a brand new EV. I’ve never heard any of my working class friends even mention him. I’m not entirely sure they know who he is. But even if they do, he doesn’t resonate with them enough to warrant a conversation.

Anyway, all this is to say you’re mostly spot-on with your commentary. The people who want to vote for Platner moved here from other states and his apologists are all of a very specific ilk. I’ve seen the same folks cannibalize Al Franken and hold up “believe all women” signs at rallies.

But honestly, I don’t think Platner would have won anyway. The people getting excited about him were always going to go Dem anyway. This was always a losing battle because anybody not ideologically imprisoned was neutral to negative on Graham. Everybody here knows oysters are bougie shit and the idea he was a man of the Mainers was always too bitter a pill to swallow.

***

(Would only add to your excellent local testimony that while I agree that oysters are bougie shit [and also, just gross], it wasn’t always thus):

***

From: Sarah

Subject: NY-7

Date: June 30, 2026

Comrades,

Greetings from the “commie corridor” – a.k.a. a fairly fancy part of Brooklyn (for reference, I’m a stone’s throw away from the old Vice building, my kids go to gymnastics around the corner). As such, I guess my new congressional representative is Claire Valdez.

One thing to mention about her election is that Team Valdez had by far the strongest ground game of the candidates in this race, at least around these parts. Valdez canvassers came to my place at least three times, dropping leaflets twice when I wasn’t home (I accidentally answered the door the third time; that will teach me). Her people were also regularly out on street corners or at the farmers market trying to make her case in person.

By contrast, her competitors had a couple signs up in local bodegas but that was about it from what I could see. On election day, [Antonio] Reynoso’s people were outside my polling place (including outgoing Rep. Nydia Velasquez, looking pretty pissed) but Valdez had 2x the number they had. Julie Won (the only candidate not to lead with “abolish ICE and Israel too,” from what I could tell) sent me a text message the day after election day, reminding me to vote. Alas.

So there’s some element of old fashioned pounding-the-pavement/strategizing to actually get her name out there that must have had an effect, beyond everyone around here agreeing to seize the local Maru Coffee means of production.

Thanks and keep the episodes coming, I love how prolific you all have gotten, it’s hard to keep up!

(As you know but readers/listeners might not, this ground-game disparity was painfully evident with Zohran Mamdani as well.)

***

From: Mark D.

Subject: Episode 565 — Wolves

Date: July 8, 2026

Matt mentioned a love of wolves as a kid. If you’re still into wolves, check out American Wolf by Nate Blakeslee. Great book focusing on the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone. He tells some great wolf stories. He also tells both sides of the reintroduction story, getting the rancher and hunter side too. Wolves win in the end (mostly).

Rick McIntyre also has a decent series on Yellowstone wolves. He was the Yellowstone “wolf guy” for several years and retired 8-10 years ago (he’s mentioned often in Blakeslee’s book). He’s not the best writer, but he knows more about gray wolves than anyone in North America. Some of his books read like a compilation of field notes, so the writing isn’t compelling. But he can still tell some interesting stories.

(Thanks for the recs, Mark! I’m much less fanatic than I was as a brooding 4^th grader, but I love a good American animal-comeback story. The American Buffalo is one of my very favorites from Ken Burns….)

***

From: Rowland

Subject: Rich Man/Poor Man

Date: July 2, 2026

My fellow Americans,

I was thrilled two of my favorites from podcastistan came together when you had Adam Carolla on. And I was so glad you all discussed the Rich Man/Poor Man bit that Seinfeld loved. But I was practically shouting at my phone over the fact that the perfect tie-in to both shows never occurred to anyone. To add to the canon of RM/PM jokes I present you with.....

Never flies coach.

America is awesome. Soccer is OK I guess. The Knicks are world champions. MAGA is a leftist movement of people too stupid to realize it. And commies disguised as democratically-mandated thieves are bleeding-heart fascists. As dismaying as the rise of the DSA is, I’m not too worried when I consider they really haven’t thought their agenda through, have they? How are they going to confiscate the wealth of a heavily armed population, particularly after having abolished the police? Silly commies.

Happy 4th, guys. Keep up the good work.

(DOH!!!! My God, that is perfect. We will share with him.)

***

From: Joe

Subject: In Defense of the Hawks

Date: June 20, 2026

Hey Guys,

I just wanted to offer that the American Revolution is the biggest counterargument to Matt’s case against voluntary wars and I can’t blame any American who is rightly romantic about their founding trying to chase that high. I mean, the most notably counterexample produced the most free and prosperous country in the history of the world.

WHAT IF IT WORKED ONE MORE TIME MATT?

In all seriousness, Trump is the ultimate monkey paw president. He does so many things I’ve only ever dreamed a president would do and his execution on all of them with the exception of his SCOTUS appointments have been the worst version they could? Trump does such a good job at doing anything badly, it’s hard for me to accept him as your example of “SEE?!” Matt because I’m sure even Polymarket would agree that a bowl of mayonnaise would have got a MOU.

(I know this is all in good fun, but you have aroused the pedant. 1) The “voluntary wars” bit is from Moynihan, though I think it’s largely right. I might phrase it as *defensive* wars, meaning: Americans will always fight (and crush you) if you have attacked us, and we are most apt to support and in some cases join a foreign war if a comparative good guy has been invaded by a baddie. 2) The American Revolution is not a counterargument to that thesis! MFers attacked us, after having closed down our ports & commerce, and flooded the zone w/ Redcoats! Sure, it was a tad on the *audacious* side to go up against history’s largest-ever Navy/armada up to that point, but playing defense on our own soil, while the lobstahbacks were through their plunders flipping Loyalist regions to Rebel, is if anything a potent warning against empires relying on mere military superiority to pacify far-flung locals. And 3) Trump is hardly my example of “SEE?!” My examples of “SEE?!”, directed more at our consistently interventionist friends like John Bolton, are Iraq, nation-building in Afghanistan, Libya, and now Iran.)

***

From: John S.

Subject: Patriotic Quirky people / Buying You Decor for the Studio

Date: June 11, 2026

Hi gents,

Paying subscriber (ding, ding, MFer!) and one of the original No Step on Snek emailers when that episode came out in 2024.

Was walking through newly revitalized downtown Bristol, Connecticut, today and found Dark Moon, this delightfully quirky and fun gift shop. Thought you’d appreciate the flags and pocket guides advertised on the sidewalk! Inside has such an eclectic set of things of many life persuasions, but I loved the joy of celebrating America from all types of Americans. Why, we’re awesome, honestly. Now, can we do a crowdfunding campaign to get those pocket constitutions into every member of Congress? And can I buy you these flags for your studio????? Small price for all the enjoyable episodes.

Keep up the great work.

(Why yes indeedy, you CAN, nay MUST send those to the studios! Shoot me a personal email, and I’ll get you our mailing address. As for Congress, the Cato Institute already sends ‘em Constitutions!)

***

From: Shawn

Subject: The Retro Sex Pope and Bad Music

Date: June 3, 2026

Good evening gents,

I’m emailing from the city home to Matt’s murder hotel, Huntington Beach, while making dinner tonight. In my deep dive to throwback episodes I get to enjoy as a paid subscriber, I learned that Kmele is a sex pope, that I have to look forward to rethinking my distaste of the Doors, and that Michael would probably cost less than the therapist I refuse to get.

I want to agree and add on to Michael’s insightful claim that “We Didn’t Start the Fire” is the worst song in history, but add that it has competition, and want to get your take on the following 5 songs.

1. “What’s Up?” – Four Non Blondes

2. “We Built This City” – Starship

3. “The Heat Is On” – Glenn Frey

4. “(You’re) Having My Baby” – Paul Anka

5. “Barbie Girl” – Aqua

I’d add “Got My Mind Set on You” by Harrison but I respect the other 99.9% of his work too much for that. Please feel free to call me wrong, and add your own.

Love peace and chicken grease,

(First up, we done DID this exercise a year ago, son! And as seen there, one from your excellent Top 5 is in mine as well. Though as *also* stated there, everybody’s Worst 5 list always includes something I unironically like, which in your case is “Having My Baby.” The rule basically is that every song I heard in my parents’ station wagon is unimpeachable.

Follow-ons: 1) “Got My Mind Set on You” is near the top of any list of songs you didn’t know were covers. 2) You sure Harrison’s error rate is just 0.1%? Gone Troppo still exists, you know. 3) I was *gonna* say that at least “The Heat Is On” brought us the classic “The H Is O” SNL short, but … I can’t find that anywhere! Someone please discover & leave in the comments.

OK! Nice to be back ‘bucketing, and see you all again soon.)

-The Moynihan Report will return

-Hand jobs and the intellectual life of West Hollywood

-Release the Welch canceled-songs playlist

-The Iran deal is dead. The war is back.

-Why did Iran blow it up? Why does a dog lick his balls?

-Air power has never toppled a regime

-The anti-globalists discover the Strait of Hormuz

-Israel’s secret Ahmadinejad project

-In partial defense of the late Lindsey Graham

-Politics is gross. Stop loving politicians.

-Fellating is best done behind closed doors

-“There is no they. There is only we. And we usually don’t know what the fuck we’re doing.”

-Midterm Madness comes to Michigan

-Haley Stevens brings a little bit of stick-it-to-’em

-Is this DSA thing real?

-Colorado nominates a man who first killed at seven (he thinks)

-Two fatal ICE shootings in two weeks

-Ann Widdecombe is murdered. Britain shrugs.

-Kmele attempts the Caitlin Clark/data center crossover. It does not land.

Prefer to watch & chat live with other members of the Fifdom? This episode premieres over on our YouTube channel at 12PM EST.

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