Appears in this episode

Andrew Sullivan

Moynihan is one-third of The Fifth Column — the sharp, hilarious podcast he does with Kmele Foster and Matt Welch. He was previously the cultural news editor for The Daily Beast, a senior editor at Reason, and a correspondent and managing editor of Vice.

We recorded the episode a few weeks ago, on July 24. You can listen right away in the audio player above (or on the right side of the player, click “Listen On” to add the Dishcast feed to your favorite podcast app — though Spotify sadly doesn’t accept the paid feed). For two clips of our convo — on the conspiracy theories of RFK Jr., and the deepening rift within the Israeli government — pop over to our YouTube page.

Other topics: his Boston upbringing with a “union guy” father and being the first college grad in his family; on the agony of writing as a profession; on the “laziness” of many top writers; on flawless ones like Michael Lewis and John Updike; Moynihan’s review of a new book on Orwell; why Animal Farm was passed over by publishers; Orwell’s distrust of intellectuals and losing many friends on the left; his love of Englishness; wondering how he would react to mass migration and postmodernism; Kingsley Amis and his cohort being the original “lol alt-right”; Enoch Powell and his “Rivers of Blood”; the elections in Spain and the far-right party’s floundering; immigration in Sweden; Brexit; violence against Venezuelan immigrants in Brazil and Colombia; why Islamism is barely discussed anymore; Trump and DeSantis on Social Security; the debate over sex changes for kids; the success of the gay rights movement through persuasion; Brendan Eich; the propaganda around Covid; what Moynihan calls the “the Mis/Disinformation Industrial Complex”; lab leak; Elon Musk; the AIDS denialism of Duesberg and Maggiore; Holocaust deniers; Marty Peretz; Kissinger; Vidal; Hitch of course; Oppenheimer and McCarthyism; Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs; Hollywood’s double-standard when it comes to pro-communist films; “Angels in America”; the big increase in black deaths after BLM in 2020; amnesia over Afghanistan; and the first time I ever did poppers. Good times.

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