* Jack London and hobo Oakland

* The lovely government of Qatar

* Trump in Saudi

* A carnival of corruption

* Chasing heroes…

* The end of the “introventionalists”

* But do they *fear* him?

* The new Chomskyites

* Declining freedom…

* Trump’s fat, rich friend who wants price controls

* The triumph of gesture politics

* Black Leo

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You demanded, we complied. Last month in this space, I interviewed science/technology/Covid journalist David Zweig about his great new book, An Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions. It was a bracing conversation, filled with damning media/elite criticism, blue-state horrors, and F-bombs galore.

Then a funny thing happened: Dozens of you wonderful paying subscribers said Mr. Welch, tear down this paywall, so we can share this with our normie friends! And so I have.

A good time to mash the subscribe button!

Now it’s your turn, o demanding listeners (and even non-demanding freeloaders) – let’s hook some new normies into your favorite podcast, and maybe persuade some of you fence-sitters about the primo content you’ve been missing out on. As Pope Bob from Chicago has taught us, the more people subscribe, the more special treats for everybody. Amen.

Without further ado, the original text for the episode.

***

On May 11, 2020, as I was navigating personal collapse (“it’s been a really shitty two months,” I said on an interesting-to-listen-to-now Special Dispatch #20), my two daughters were wrestling unhappily with Zoom school, and all three of us lads were in the process of buying Covid cars, I came across a Wired article that landed like a Cher-style open-handed slap across the face: “The Case for Reopening Schools: Lots of other countries have decided that it's time to take this step. Why is the US holding back?”

The piece, by David Zweig, was very contrary to the U.S. news coverage at the time, chock full o’ studies and data points and hyperlinks, and opened like this:

Schools are reopening in countries around the world in response to a substantial body of evidence that children are largely unaffected by Covid-19 and minimally contagious when they get infected. Experts and policymakers abroad also acknowledge that school closures perpetuate a long list of known harms to children.

Yet, oddly, the US is following a divergent path.

Along with other real-world evidence trickling in from around the globe, Zweig’s essay (plus a June 24 follow-up), was part of my four-month journey from close-the-schools alarmist to open-the-schools monster, the latter condition from which I would spend more of my journalistic energy over the ensuing few years than I care to remember.

Zweig, also a New York City parent of two schoolkids at the outbreak of Covid, is determined never to forget. His book An Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions, is more than mere rage-calorie score-settling, however. At heart, he tells me in this occasionally fiery conversation, it’s about how we make decisions under crisis, and how our country operates under duress.

What he both discovers and explicates, in fascinating detours through Evidence-Based Medicine and the philosophy of science, is that two institutions in particular let us down: Public health elites, and the media. “This is an extraordinarily compelling story about evidence being ignored and dismissed,” he says. “They ignored empirical evidence that was right in front of their fucking face.”

Trust me, you’ll want to get to the last 15 minutes here, where Zweig describes how this process transformed his politics. It was “this revelatory moment,” he says: “Oh my God, I was a complete arrogant asshole.” Few others are spared.

Some links:

* Excerpt in The Atlantic, “The Disaster of School Closures Should Have Been Foreseen”

* Excerpt in The Free Press, “How Covid Lies Destroyed Kids’ Lives”

* Zweig’s Substack, Silent Lunch

* NPR, “What Parents Can Learn From Child Care Centers That Stayed Open During Lockdowns,” June 24, 2020

* The New York Times, “How 132 Epidemiologists Are Deciding When to Send Their Children to School,” June 12, 2020

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* The Bill Bixby of East Egg

* Figure it out, people

* Solitude: City vs. Country (not a reference to the Jonathan Richman song, btw)

* Allemansrätten and who makes the most money in your postal code

* Jawohl CHEF!

* Banning internships will help the poor

* “Worse than Watergate” and the Ballad of G. Gordon Liddy

* How does one start restoring a car

* The brilliance of our mod…

UPDATE: The initial version of this episode was missing two audio clips, both of them featuring exceptionally stupid people saying exceptionally stupid things. To be honest, you were be better off not hearing either of them. But the episode has been corrected, the punishing stupidity included, and now you’re worse off…

* Notes from a live event (going live later today)

* Fifdom represents

* Spotify exposes!

* RIP Swampy

* India, Pakistan, and the American retreat

* Ending power, hard and soft

* Marjorie Taylor Chomsky

* Israeli endgame

* Portnoy’s NYT complaint

* Piers Springer and the forbidden word

* Don’t give money to meth head Nazis who yell at babies

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wethefifth.com/subscribe

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* Tickets for tomorrow’s Moynihan-moderated debate at the Village Underground can be purchased here! And subscribe to the Moynihan Report YouTube channel!

* Winnipeg land acknowledgements

* Prison competition

* Tariffs for erotic French movies

* Traitorous Hollywood not paying enough to make movies

* A listener wants to talk about Steph Curry

* Rare books

* Lying on the fact…

They’re all back. And they recorded a very fun, very long one…during the day…to minimize drunken regrets. So many topics are covered—the Koch brother, the last episode, bad interviewers, bad manners, the strange new media, the strange new Ukraine strategy, exit Walz, etc—that we might as well dispense with the usual bullet points and just get right into it…Enjoy!

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Moynihan couldn’t make it (we don’t know where he is, but if you see a shirtless man yelling at a parking meter in lower Manhattan, please let us know). In his absence, Kmele and Welch cover a wide swath: alien oceans and scientific hype cycles, the collapse of local journalism, the rise of YouTube basketball nerds, and why Luka Dončić is the people’s MVP. They also wade into darker waters—federal crackdowns on campus speech, student visa censorship, and the increasingly authoritarian posture of Trump 2.0.

Plus: reader mail, a reluctant defense of David Hogg, a rant about scams and AI voice fraud, and a minor audio glitch that might actually be evidence of extraterrestrial life.

Errr….This one gets pretty heated. But we’re all still friends! We think. And Moynihan is now sober and his blood sugar is back to normal, so there’s that too. Either way, hats off to Batya for braving another episode with three people who disagree with her on pretty much everything. We talk Tariffs, Trump, lawfare, Ukraine, and everything in between.

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* The Hungarian dentist and the prostitute theory

* Your TV wife sees Hitler all the time, no?

* Facilitate…

* Dinners with politicians

* A digression on Big Star (FYI: "Holocaust”)

* Elder scams

* Apple Watches and proof of life

* Back to Rogan and Murray

* A trip to Libya for a copy of the Green Book

* #9 Fifth Dream

* Doing an impression of a smart person / Paul believes

* A theory …

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.wethefifth.com

On May 11, 2020, as I was navigating personal collapse (“it’s been a really shitty two months,” I said on an interesting-to-listen-to-now Special Dispatch #20), my two daughters were wrestling unhappily with Zoom school, and all three of us lads were in the process of buying Covid cars, I came across a Wired article that landed like a Cher-style open-ha…

Moynihan is out with a “tooth thing” (which sounds lame, but is allegedly a “painful,” “very serious” dental emergency that definitely doesn't involve a tall, attractive blonde woman). Fortunately, our pal Jesse Singal (Blocked and Reported, Singal-Minded) is along for the ride, and outlines the plans for his heroic crusade to save THE REPUBLIC by beefing with JD Vance on X. We dive into Trump 2.0’s extra-constitutional improvisations, fail to steer clear of trade policy, and search desperately for a silver lining in our late-capitalist, national-populist, increasingly surrealist Idiocracy. Also in the mix: a little Elon drama, libertarian coping strategies, various flavors of executive branch lawlessness, and a surprising outbreak of informed optimism about the future.

* Tooth decay, high-end prostitutes, and podcast logistics

* Jesse Singal enters the chat (possibly still mid–Twitter beef)

* Deportation by executive vibe

* Due process is for losers

* When JD Met Jesse: A Very Sexy Love Story (by Selena Montgomery)

* The most important internet slap-fight in American history

* Hotel El Salvador: now accepting unwanted Americans

* Bannon’s “flood the zone” plan meets sheer incompetence

* Shouting at Bill Hemmer

* Campus protests, free speech, and DHS interns with tasers

* Jesse accidentally agrees with libertarians?

* And can Jesse say one nice thing about JD Vance? (And, “Thank you”!?)

* To the Moon, and Mars, and WHERE ELSE BEYOND

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wethefifth.com/subscribe