The Fifth Column 30th Annual Webby Awards Submission Page
THE FIFTH COLUMN is a twice-a-week, fearless long-form conversation show about media, politics, and culture, for people who still believe disagreement can produce clarity in today’s head spinning news cycle.
Hosted by journalists Kmele Foster, Michael Moynihan, and Matt Welch, The Fifth Column pairs sharp analysis with gallows humor, and replaces audience-flattering certainty with rigorous, unsentimental inquiry. The show is skeptical of partisan scripts, allergic to moral theatre, and willing to challenge orthodoxy from every direction, including its own, while still finding levity in a bleak news cycle.
Most political media is engineered for speed, outrage, and affiliation. This show is engineered for something rarer: a conversation that can withstand real questions, pressure-test narratives, and reward intellectual honesty.
1) The Fifth Column brings major voices into unscripted, high-friction conversation
Guests like Megyn Kelly, Jessica Tarlov, Jon Lovett, Errol Morris, Rand Paul, Abby Phillip, and Chuck Klosterman aren’t booked for soft-focus agreement or news-hit-like interviews. We book them because the format is built to challenge smart people in real time.
2) It’s scaled, consistent, and durable
This is not a one-off “moment.” It is a sustained body of work for nearly a decade: 600+ episodes and 29M total audio downloads since 2016, with ~37K downloads per episode.
3) The video pivot expanded the show’s reach without changing its standards
After nearly a decade audio-only, the show launched its video podcast in October 2025, extending the format to YouTube and social video, with 2.5M video views since launch.
4) It serves an audience that actively chooses depth
With 64,000+ active Substack subscribers, the show functions as a weekly ritual for people who want more than the day’s talking points.
Recent Standout Moments
Peter Moskos joined us within hours of the Alex Pretti shooting in Minneapolis to interrogate the gap between what the videos show and what federal officials immediately claimed. He argues that without credible, independent oversight (and with ICE/DHS operating with poor tactics and weak accountability), “wait for the investigation” is not a serious answer.
The Fifth Column launched its video era by putting Megyn Kelly on screen as the first guest and the episode became a catalyst for the right’s civil war in real time. It exposed how journalistic standards are enforced selectively when conspiracies and loyalty tests drive the incentives, and when the Tucker–Candace–Fuentes ecosystem sets the temperature. The fallout was explicitly discussed by The New York Times and Mediate, among others
We sat down with Pod Save America’s Jon Lovett as national politics drifts from persuasion toward pure tribal warfare. Lovett argues Democrats win by delivering visible competence, while Republicans keep betting they can ride radicalism without paying for it.
Host Matt Welch joined Karen Bass at the mayor’s home as Los Angeles tries to rebuild after deadly fires and absorb the fallout of aggressive ICE operations. Bass argues the public narrative blurred two distinct realities, an on-the-ground disaster and a separate wave of political messaging that made a complicated situation look like collapse.
Some Stats:
•29M total audio downloads (since 2016)
•600+ episodes
•37K downloads per episode
•64K+ active Substack subscribers
•2.4M YouTube views since the October 2025 video launch
Host Bios
Kmele Foster is Editor-at-Large at Tangle News, a co-founder of Freethink Media, and a former co-host of The Independents on Fox Business. He co-hosts The Fifth Column and is known for advocating free speech, individual liberty, and rigorous, anti-tribal analysis.
Michael Moynihan is an award-winning journalist and political commentator, and co-host of The Fifth Column. He has covered politics and world affairs for The Free Press and VICENews, where he served as National Correspondent.
Matt Welch is Editor-at-Large at Reason and a panelist on The Reason Roundtable. He served as Editor-in-Chief of Reason (2008–2016), is the author/co-author of two books on American politics, and has published widely across major outlet
