Michael Moynihan On Orwell And Conspiracies
The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan
Andrew Sullivan
4.6 • 836 Ratings
🗓️ 11 August 2023
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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.
It’s a fun summer chat with an old friend. We recorded the episode a few weeks ago, on July 24. For two clips — 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.
Browse the Dishcast archive for another conversation you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Vivek Ramaswamy on his vision for America, Sohrab Ahmari on his new book Tyranny Inc., and Freddie deBoer on his new book How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement. Also, in the fall: Ian Buruma, David Brooks, Spencer Klavan, Leor Sapir, Martha Nussbaum, Pamela Paul and Matthew Crawford. A stellar roster!
Please send any guest recs and pod dissent to [email protected].
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Hi, welcome to another dishcast. |
| 0:32.6 | You can tell we're giggling already. |
| 0:34.4 | That's because my guest is Michael Moynihan, whom I was about to introduce |
| 0:38.3 | and I was like, well, how do I introduce Michael Moynihan, except to say this, that he is, I know this |
| 0:43.2 | much I can say, and then I'm going to ask you to introduce himself. He's one third of, at least one third |
| 0:48.4 | of We the Fifth podcast, which is fucking amazing. It's incredibly funny. I feel saner from listening to it. |
| 0:57.2 | You will too. Thank you, Andrew. |
| 0:58.8 | And anyway, what else, Michael? You got, you got, you're no longer advice. |
| 1:04.0 | I'm no longer advice. I don't think anyone is. I mean, that's like, you know, who's still on the Titanic. |
| 1:09.2 | There's maybe one person left, you know, |
| 1:11.4 | leading the band as it sinks, but Vices filed bankruptcy. But yeah, I was advised for many, |
| 1:17.1 | many years. We worked together at Newsweek Daily Beast. And so, you know, I worked on the Vices |
| 1:21.9 | two HBO shows and then the Showtime show. And now I am independent, much like you. |
| 1:28.4 | And it is a glorious, glorious feeling because I have stopped holding back. |
| 1:34.1 | I mean, I'm probably going to blow up my entire life because at least Vice could have provided |
| 1:38.2 | those guardrails for me. |
| 1:39.9 | They were like, you know, you probably shouldn't say these things. |
| 1:42.0 | But so no, I mean, the fifth column is is at |
| 1:45.0 | we the fifth dot substack.com and we record twice a week over there with Camille Foster, the great |
| 1:49.8 | Camille Foster and the great Matt Welch. So, and I'm writing again, which I just did a piece the other day, |
| 1:55.9 | a 2000 were a piece on George Orwell. Really? So, and I realized that I don't like writing. I forgot how much I hated writing. |
| 2:01.8 | It is, it is a pain. |
... |
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