The Fifth Column (A Podcast)
The Fifth Column
343 w/ Mike Pesca (ex-Slate, The Gist podcast) "Inexplicable Offense, Boring Exile, Triumphant Return"
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343 w/ Mike Pesca (ex-Slate, The Gist podcast) "Inexplicable Offense, Boring Exile, Triumphant Return"

Almost a year after being run out of Slate for possession of an unpopular opinion, journalist and podcaster Mike Pesca joins the Fifth for his first post-controversy conversation on how it all went down, when banal opinions became "harassment," and what we can expect from the The Gist 2.0.


  • Is Kmele being prioritized for Covid treatment? Because, ya know...

  • Mike Pesca gets pushed out of Slate (for referencing, but not saying, a magic word)

  • Bull Connor's boss, Steve

  • A "harassment-worthy" opinion

  • Was anyone brave and did they call bullshit? Ummm...

  • N-words and Mohammad cartoons

  • Insert $5 for more podcast

  • Kmele's Kovid fog

  • The roughest period of Mike's life, ever

  • The new, new journalism

  • Hating Joe Rogan

  • You don't have the truth, journalists. But you can get there

  • The Gist's approchal

  • Moynihan likes The Gist. Except that one episode...

  • The media is atomized. Or maybe balkanized

  • Coleman is a good rapper

  • Don't catastrophize the normal



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The Fifth Column (A Podcast)
The Fifth Column
Your weekly rhetorical assault on the on the news cycle, the people who make it, and occasionally ourselves. Kmele Foster (Freethink), Michael Moynihan (Vice), and Matt Welch (Reason) talk and laugh and drink their way to at least quasi-sanity in a world gone mad, often with the aid of clean and articulate guests. Weekly Members Only subscription edition often comes with listener mail and professional-quality (if inappropriate) singing. Analysis. Commentary. Sedition.