Q & A, Hosted by Jay Nordlinger: Recent Episodes
The Ricochet Audio Network
Jay Nordlinger is a senior editor of National Review and the music critic of The New Criterion. His guests are from the worlds of politics and culture, talking about the most important issues of the day, and some pleasant trivialities as well.
Alexander Malofeev is a Russian pianist, born in 2001. He left Russia in 2022 and lives in Berlin. Last night, he played a recital at the Salzburg Festival. The day before that, I sat down with him for a podcast on behalf of the Salzburg Festival Society. I will write an article about Malofeev, and his recital, in due course. In the meantime, here is our discussion, our podcast. Sasha (as he asks me to call him) is not only a brilliant pianist, he is also a wonderful interviewee—thoughtful, candid, endearing. You’ll see.
Oh, one more thing: In this podcast, we talk about Mikhail Pletnev’s transcription of the Grand pas de deux from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker. It is a frequent Malofeev encore. To hear Sasha in it, go here.
And one more one more thing: interviewee and interviewer:
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The “D” stands for “Daniel,” actually. But when I introduce him on this latest podcast of ours (we have done many), I’m inspired to say, “… my guest today is my longtime friend and colleague Kevin Williamson—Kevin D. Williamson, and the ‘D’ is for ‘Damn Right.’”
He is, too, reliably.
Kevin is the national correspondent for The Dispatch, and his latest book—penetrating and stylish, in his accustomed fashion—is Big White Ghetto.
In our Q&A, we traverse many issues, of many types: political, literary, economic … One of our first issues is Homer’s Odyssey, and the new Christopher Nolan movie. Everyone with a pen has written about it. A piece by Kevin is one of the best: here.
What have the Greeks and Romans and antiquity in general meant in Kevin’s life? That’s what I want to know.
We then talk about—be prepared for three explosive words—“the common good.” Sounds good. Is it, and if so, how and when?
We move on to policing, and ICE in particular. (Are these guys police—actual cops—or do they belong in a different category?) Then we get into conservatism, and the state of the American Right.
Here is a general statement made by Kevin, one I fully endorse: “Our crisis in our politics is I think fundamentally a spiritual and moral crisis. It’s not an economic crisis.”
And yet, there is economics to discuss. Recently, I had a column headed “A Screaming Yet Quiet Problem, &c.” I was talking about our nation’s fiscal house: the federal budget deficit, the national debt. I ask Kevin to scream about it, as he has been doing for many years.
In truth, he does not scream. He addresses the problem in a cool and collected manner, while sparing nothing.
Another issue: the Haitians in a little Midwestern town. Two years ago, Kevin published a piece called “The Exotic Cat-Eaters of Springfield, Ohio.” (Marvelous, memorable piece of reporting and thinking.) In our Q&A, I quote to him a tweet from Noah Smith:
I will never forget the “Haitians eating cats” lie. I will never let it go. It was so deliberate and monstrous and unprovoked and cruel, and no one has ever apologized for it.
Something to think about. Something to burn about.
Toward the end of our conversation, we talk about language, accents, where we’re from. Kevin has lived all over America, and abroad (India). Is he always a Texan, wherever he goes?
Before signing off, I say, “Kevin, you provide your readers edification, laughs, and I would say comfort. You make one feel less alone, and thank you so much.” He answers, “Man, if people are turning to me for comfort, God help us.”
Well, so be it.
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Gabriel Sterling was one of those human guardrails. There are guardrails written down—in the Constitution, in our laws. But what do they matter, if there are not officials who will do their duty?
Sterling is an elections official in Georgia, a Republican. He refused to say that the 2020 presidential election in his state was anything other than what it was: scrupulously fair.
Stephen Richer was such an official in Arizona. I podcasted with him in April 2024, and I have now podcasted with Sterling. (A sterling guy, he is.)
We talk about many subjects—with an emphasis on the 2020 election—but I will be brief in this accompanying text.
Many people say of Mike Pence, “Yeah, he did not betray his oath on January 6. He did not betray his country. Big deal. You wanna give him a cookie for that? You wanna praise and hail him?”
You can say something similar about Gabriel Sterling, Stephen Richer, and others. I understand the sentiment very well.
There is a story I’ve told many times, in different contexts. It is about Bobby Jones in the 1925 U.S. Open. He called a penalty on himself—a two-stroke penalty. No one had seen the infraction. But he had, and golf is a game of honor.
He wound up losing the Open by one stroke.
When people praised him for his sportsmanship and honesty, he would have none of it. He scoffed, “Sooner praise a man for not robbing a bank.”
I get it, I get it—and I agree with it. But …
What if everyone else is robbing a bank? What if powerful people, and your fellow party members, are pressuring you to rob a bank? What if it takes courage, guts, not to rob a bank?
This is why I think the likes of Pence deserve our thanks.
In our podcast, Gabriel Sterling tells a story or two, and I will quote him in one (paraphrasing slightly):
Not long after the election, I was at a Publix, a supermarket, here in Metro Atlanta, and there was a young African-American man, wearing a mask. He was mopping. He was down on the floor, cleaning up a spill, and he saw me, and he got up immediately. He said, “Mr. Sterling, Mr. Sterling.” I’m like, “Yes?” He said, “I just want to thank you so much. This was my first vote. I’m so proud to know that you were defending it.”
I’m getting teary-eyed now thinking about it.
Same here, honestly.
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Alexander Browder is an extraordinary young man. A 17-year-old Brit, he has just been sanctioned by the Russian government. His “crime”? Alexander has uncovered the Kremlin’s cryptocurrency racket—its money-laundering operation.
For details, go here.
He has also uncovered eye-popping things about North Korea and Iran, and their exploitation of cryptocurrency.
Alexander is the son of Bill Browder—Sir William Browder—the financier who has devoted his life to opposing Putin and his dictatorship. In 2018, I wrote a piece: “A Family in History: The strange odyssey of the Browders.”
At the end of our conversation, I tell Alexander that I’m worried about him. Bill has long been in the crosshairs of the Kremlin, and now this teenage Browder has rattled the Kremlin’s cage too?
Says Alexander, “I think that if you live in fear, it really constricts you and what you are able to do.” Think of the people in Ukraine, he says, who are assaulted by Putin’s military daily. “So, if I can have any effect, why shouldn’t I be doing something?”
An amazing young man, and a chip off the old block.
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As regular readers know, one of my favorite writers, and favorite people, is Mark Helprin. His new novel is Elegy in Blue. (Marvelous title, and utterly suited to the book.) (It wouldn’t be so marvelous if it weren’t so suited, true.) The book includes some familiar Helprinian themes: love, New York, the sea, courage. In our new Q&A, we discuss those, and more.
Mark ends our discussion by emphasizing the beauty and protean wonder of the English language. He is both a guardian of our language and a pride of it.
This fellow is important to me and many others.
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One of my favorite writers—one of my favorite commenters on social affairs—is Conrad Kottak. He writes at The Anthropocene Anthropologist: Reflections on Bizarroland. Maybe I could quote from the introduction of this new Q&A:
… our guest today is Conrad Kottak, one of the leading anthropologists in the world. He is a cultural anthropologist—rather than an archeologist, say, or a primatologist—but he has his fingers in many pies.
He is a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan, where he has taught since 1968. I myself had the privilege of taking one of his classes. He has done extensive fieldwork in Madagascar and Brazil. He is the author of several textbooks in wide use.
In this Q&A, he tells me something interesting—well, many things that are interesting, but I am now thinking of this: He has been writing all his life, since he was a little boy. He always wanted to be a writer, and the writing came before the anthropology. For all these years, he has been writing as an anthropologist.
He went to Columbia University, home of anthropology. Is that what introduced him to the field? Got him hooked on it?
“Well,” he says, “I had a fourth-grade teacher who did a unit on South American Indians that I thought was pretty interesting. It fascinated me. But that lay in abeyance for quite a while until I got to college.”
One of his teachers at Columbia was Margaret Mead, whose name for a long time was virtually synonymous with anthropology. In addition to being an anthropologist, she was a generalist, writing on a variety of subjects for a variety of publications.
Conrad Kottak, too, is an anthropologist and generalist.
Mead was controversial—is controversial—and I ask Professor Kottak to get into it a little, which he does, illuminatingly.
The two countries of his fieldwork, Madagascar and Brazil—they seem to me remote, exotic, romantic. (Those are all forbidden words in anthropology, I’m sure. I almost specialize in forbidden words.) Professor Kottak has seen many sides of life. Indeed, he has examined them up close.
I ask whether he was amused when a hit movie called “Madagascar” came out (2005). The people in Madagascar were not amused, he says. The world seemed more interested in saving wildlife than in addressing human problems.
A blunt question, and a natural one: Did anthropology get flaky? Did a field that once attracted brilliant minds go all soft and political and granola?
In the course of his answer, Professor Kottak says something central: Respect for fact must be paramount. Without a respect for fact, you don’t have science, social or otherwise.
Here is another question: Are differences between peoples more interesting than similarities, or vice versa? Well, any anthropologist worth his salt studies and accounts for both.
One thing Professor Kottak is known for is his inclusion of television. What I mean is, he writes about the impact of television on societies. Here in the United States, we used to be bonded by TV shows. Those bonds are … loosening, as we all look at select material on our phones.
Oh, there are so many things you can discuss with an anthropologist, and with Conrad Kottak in particular. You will enjoy getting to know him.
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Beverly Gage is a professor at Yale and has a new book, timed for our 250th anniversary: This Land Is Your Land: A Road Trip through U.S. History. In a Q&A, we talk about this book and plenty more.
“Q&A,” by the way, is the name of my podcast. For an interview show, it is not an especially imaginative name, but it serves.
Professor Gage grew up outside Philadelphia. “When you were a girl,” I ask her, “did you read history like a fiend or did that come later?” She read “pretty widely,” she says. This reading included the trilogy by John Jakes about the Civil War—North and South. They were huge sellers, those books.
Beverly was a musician: violinist, pianist, conductor. In college, however, she gravitated to other interests. She went to Yale and then, for graduate school, to Columbia.
Can she name us a few of her favorite historians? Historians of the U.S., that is? She gives me two names: W. E. B. Du Bois (who, in addition to everything else he did, wrote a history of Reconstruction) and Richard Hofstadter. One thing those two had in common is: they could write like angels.
That counts, when it comes to engaging a reader …
In 2022, Professor Gage published a biography of J. Edgar Hoover, G-Man. It won the Bancroft Prize, the top award in U.S. history. And the Pulitzer Prize and yet others.
I ask her a few questions about Hoover—including, “Was there anything good about him?” Well, he was “a believer in nonpartisan professional government service.” He was an “institutionalist.” He would not have liked the current FBI director.
Was Hoover guilty in the matter of Martin Luther King? Did he and the FBI treat the civil rights leader unfairly? Very much so, answers Professor Gage.
One more question, which is interesting in light of the FBI’s hounding of gays: Was Hoover himself gay? By all appearances, yes.
Professor Gage’s new book, This Land Is Your Land, takes its title from a famous song: Woody Guthrie’s number from 1940. The song was, in part, a response to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America.” Guthrie was a leftist, a supporter of Stalin’s Soviet Union.
His song is an interesting story, but suffice it to say, here and now: it is part of the American treasury. You know the words:
This land is your land, this land is my land,From California to the New York Island,From the Redwood Forest, to the Gulf Stream Waters.This land was made for you and me.
The subtitle, remember, of Professor Gage’s book is “A Road Trip through U.S. History.” That is an American rite, and right, you could say: a road trip. I’ve always wanted to do the Maine-to-California thing. Never have. Beverly Gage has, two or three times.
In this new book, she starts in Revolutionary Philadelphia and winds up at Disneyland, in SoCal.
I tell her, “I think your book belongs in the category of civic education, which has been one of my causes in recent years.”
“Very much so,” she says. “I mean, it’s not civic education in the sense of saying, ‘There are three branches of government, and here’s how they work,’ but it’s civic education in that it prods people to go out and get to know their country.” (I have paraphrased.)
Last year, Yale formed a Committee on Trust in Higher Education. It delved into a number of issues: grade inflation, tuition prices, admission policies, political bias, etc. Professor Gage was a co-chairman of the committee. It issued its report in April.
We talk about this a bit. And I ask her, “If you were czar—if you could wave a wand—what would you do, to improve higher ed?” She would get costs down. And she would get laptops and the like out of the classroom (except where strictly necessary).
Maybe I have typed enough and should let you get on with hearing or watching our podcast. Beverly Gage is an excellent conversationalist and teacher.
Q&A is the podcast of this site, Onward and Upward. The site is supported by readers and listeners. To receive new articles and episodes—and to support the work of the writer and podcaster—become a free or paid subscriber. Many thanks to you.
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To quote my introduction,
Lamar Alexander is one of these golden children: Eagle Scout; president of his high-school class; governor of Boys State; editor of the college newspaper; Phi Beta Kappa; governor, which is to say real governor; university president; cabinet member; U.S. senator; presidential candidate.
The presidency, by my calculation, is the only thing that ever eluded Mr. Alexander.
He is a Republican. At the outset of our conversation, I suggest to him that he could not get anywhere in GOP politics today. His credentials and abilities would work against him. “Am I cynical or realistic?”
“I hope you’re not realistic,” Alexander says.
He has written his memoirs: The Education of a Senator: From JFK to Trump.
Alexander is a seventh-generation Tennessean, a native of a mountain district that was Lincolnite. It was a Union area. When asked about his politics, Alexander’s great-grandfather would say, “I’m a Republican. I fought with the Union, and I vote like I shot.”
Today, you can see Confederate flags in that district, as you can in my home state of Michigan—including way up north, in the Upper Peninsula. Curious phenomenon. In our podcast, Alexander and I discuss it a bit.
His parents were teachers and public-spirited. When Lamar was ten, his father took him to the courthouse to meet Congressman Howard H. Baker Sr.—father of the future senator (and majority leader). “I was sure that I had just met the most respected man I was ever likely to meet,” says Alexander, “other than my dad and the preacher. I was raised to respect public service.”
Alexander went to Vanderbilt and then to New York University Law School. It was quite a switch, living in Greenwich Village. Alexander has had a broad experience.
In the Nixon White House, he worked under Bryce Harlow, the legendary staffer and adviser. (Harlow had advised Eisenhower previously.) He is known by some of us for a particular saying: “Trust is the coin of the realm in Washington, D.C.”
Says Alexander,
What I mostly remember about him is his wisdom and ethical attitude. At 29 years old, I sat 50 feet from the Oval Office at a desk crammed up next to his. I listened to his telephone conversations and saw other White House aides come in with difficult issues. The question he asked more often than not was, “What would be the right thing to do?,” and for many of them, that would clear up what they ought to do.
I got my Ph.D. in politics and government from that remarkable person.
Alexander also worked for Howard Baker (Jr.). I have an easy question: Would he have made a good president?
Here is Alexander’s answer (and I will lightly paraphrase, as is my custom in these articles):
In my opinion, the most important attributes of a president are character and temperament. And it would help if the president were very broad-gauge—if he had had a broad-gauge life.
Then, I would hope the president leaned right, because I’m a conservative, but I’d rather have one with superior character and temperament, someone I could introduce my grandson to, someone about whom I could say to my grandson, “I hope you grow up to be like him.”
Howard Baker was that kind of person.
In our Q&A, we talk about Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Reagan. We talk about the difference between being a governor and being a senator. (Alexander is well positioned to discuss this issue.) We talk about education policy. (Same. Alexander was education secretary under Bush 41.) We talk about running for president.
I ask him something cheesy, and something important—something along the lines of “Will our democracy survive?” Sure it will, he says. But then he holds up his smartphone: This is a problem, our “digital democracy,” which does a great job of setting people at enmity, driving them into little tribes.
One of the people Alexander has most admired is John Minor Wisdom, the appeals-court judge, one of the “Fifth Circuit Four.” Young Alexander worked for him, down in New Orleans, where the court is based. The “four” were instrumental in the advancement of civil rights.
In addition to his legal duties, Alexander played at Your Father’s Moustache, a bar and nightclub on Bourbon Street. Alexander plays the piano and the trombone.
During one of my campaigns, a reporter said, “Mr. Alexander grew up in a lower-middle–class family in the mountains of Tennessee,” where I live today, and my mother—I talked to her that weekend, and she was reading Thessalonians to gather strength for how to deal with this slur on the family.
She said, “Son, we never thought of ourselves that way. You had a piano lesson from the day you were three and a library card from the day you were four. You had everything you needed that was important.”
What a joy, to speak with Lamar Alexander. As I say at the end of our podcast, I wish I could go out and vote for him today.
Q&A is the podcast of this site, Onward and Upward. The site is supported by readers and listeners. To receive new articles and episodes—and to support the work of the writer and podcaster—become a free or paid subscriber. Many thanks to you.
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It is always a treat to talk with Harvey Mansfield—Harvey C. Mansfield Jr., the scholar of political philosophy. He has been on the faculty of Harvard University (his alma mater) since 1962. Today, he is a professor emeritus.
Many times, he has been my guest on Q&A. And he is again.
His new book is The Rise and Fall of Rational Control: The History of Modern Political Philosophy.
Opening question (mine): What is modern political philosophy? That is, when does it begin? It begins, says Professor Mansfield, with “Nick Machiavelli” (as he calls him, with a smile). Machiavelli advanced the idea of “rational control.”
And what is rational control? Professor Mansfield explains the concept and provides a few examples. When they put speed bumps in your neighborhood, instead of going door to door asking people to drive slowly and carefully? That’s rational control.
I ask Mansfield a range of questions, including this: “I assume you’ve read everything in your field—the ancient philosophers, the medieval ones, and the modern ones. But are there any gaps? Do you have a ‘lacuna,’ as Bill Buckley would say? Something you haven’t read but ought to?”
“Oh, look,” says Mansfield, “I’m not as widely read as some other people.” He tries to “go deep” with selected books, rather than to get a “glimpse” at everything. Just now, he is studying Swift: Gulliver’s Travels.
Another question: “When we’re young, we tend to have clear, strong opinions about things: about politics, philosophy, literature, music, and so on. But our views may shift as we grow and ripen. In the field of political philosophy, are there some who have gone up in your estimation and some who have gone down?”
Yes, says Mansfield. John Rawls has gone up. As for those who have gone down—Harvey graciously demurs.
One of his books is The Spirit of Liberalism (“liberalism” in the sense of “political freedom”). In our Q&A, we talk a bit about liberalism—its nature. Its strengths and weaknesses. Its durability and fragility. Mansfield is very canny on the subject.
You know where illiberalism holds sway? On our college campuses, too many of them.
In a Q&A with another regular guest, George F. Will, I asked, “Have you ever been starstruck by anyone?” Yes, he said—by Isaiah Berlin. Well, has Harvey C. Mansfield been starstruck by anyone? Yes—by Leo Strauss. For a year, he attended a weekly seminar with Strauss.
“Astonishing,” says Mansfield. “I’d never seen anyone so smart, and so knowing, and so impressive. It took all my powers to keep up with him, or to try to keep up with him. … That was the experience of my life, I would say.”
Toward the end of our podcast, we talk about novels and poetry. One genre that Mansfield reads is mysteries. They entail the importance of punishment. That’s not something you’re likely to hear about in political-science class, says Mansfield.
Among his authors are Agatha Christie, J. K. Rowling, and Joe Ide. The third of these is a cousin of Francis Fukuyama, the political philosopher.
By the way, does Professor Mansfield have a favorite Founder? Not really, but if he did, it would be Madison, paired with Hamilton—those two main authors of The Federalist. “That book is just so wonderful. It’s a joy to read, it lifts your mind.”
A talk with Mansfield is pretty joyous and mind-lifting itself. Our podcast had some technical difficulties—some delays, some “freezing.” It’s a little choppy. But it’s smooth enough, and I know you will enjoy.
Q&A is the podcast of this site, Onward and Upward. The site is supported by readers and listeners. To receive new articles and episodes—and to support the work of the writer and podcaster—become a free or paid subscriber. Many thanks to you.
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Introducing this Q&A, I say,
… our guest today is Cass Sunstein, the law professor, the legal thinker, the writer. For many years, he taught at the University of Chicago, and for many years since, he has taught at Harvard. He has written a profusion of books, to go with countless articles—though maybe someone has counted them.
His latest books, I believe, are On Liberalism: In Defense of Freedom and Separation of Powers: How to Preserve Liberty in Troubled Times.
Professor Sunstein is also a Substacker. His Substack is called, straightforwardly enough, “Cass’s Substack.” Truth in advertising. It is delightful and nutritious, time after time.
Toward the top of our program, we spend some time on liberalism—beginning with what it is, what we mean by it. In his book on liberalism, Sunstein isn’t talking about the policy preferences of George McGovern or Barack Obama. He’s talking about the liberalism of the American founding, a liberalism that encompasses Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, et al.
The “holy trinity” of liberalism, says Sunstein, is “the rule of law, pluralism, and freedom.”
Hey, what’s “the rule of law”? Sunstein gives a very clear explication of that as well.
As for the separation of powers—how’s that going in these United States? Sunstein points out something interesting: Congressmen “have been more protective of their own party’s president than of their own institution.” And this is something the Framers “didn’t anticipate.”
In 2020, David French published a book called “Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.” Let me quote from my review of it:
French is doing his best to make an academic paper famous. He has cited it in his speeches for years, and he devotes a chapter to it in his book. He says that the paper does no less than “explain America.” If there is one point in the book to understand, he says, it is the point of the paper.
What is this blockbuster piece of writing? Published in 1999, it’s “The Law of Group Polarization,” by Cass Sunstein … And what is its point? French boils it down to these simple words: “When people of like mind gather, they tend to become more extreme.”
This extremism can lead to nasty words on social media, sure. It can also lead to a lot more.
In our Q&A, Professor Sunstein expounds.
His sport is squash, and he has a reputation for it. I ask, “Are you a professional or a top amateur?” He will allow the following and no more: “Well, I’d say an avid squash player. I’ve played in professional tournaments but haven’t done particularly well in them, so I consider myself an enthusiast and not incompetent.”
At the end of our conversation, we say a quick goodbye—because he is “due on the court,” as he says.
I have written many times about Robert Conquest, the historian and poet (and a friend of mine, I’m lucky to say). I once asked him (something like), “What are you?” In other words, “How would you describe yourself politically?”
In the course of his answer, he brought up Orwell: who spoke of “law and liberty.” The “law-and-liberty lands.” Bob said, “I’m for a law-and-liberty culture.”
So, indeed, is Cass Sunstein, who is a superb interlocutor, a superb teacher. You will see and hear.
Q&A is the podcast of this site, Onward and Upward. The site is supported by readers and listeners. To receive new articles and episodes—and to support the work of the writer and podcaster—become a free or paid subscriber. Many thanks to you.
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Our latest guest on Q&A is a “legal eagle,” as I say in my introduction.
He is Gregg Nunziata, the executive director of SRL—the Society for the Rule of Law. The organization serves an important purpose.
Gregg worked in the Justice Department. And for the Senate Judiciary Committee. And for the Senate Republican Policy Committee. And for Senator Marco Rubio. And so on.
He was in the heart of the Republican legal world.
These days, he has one overriding concern: to defend the rule of law.
Yes, and that’s a fine overriding concern to have.
At the outset of our Q&A, I ask Gregg, “What is the rule of law?” I will paraphrase his answer (though closely):
I think the rule of law, most basically, is the idea of fair play—that we, as citizens, as individuals, live in a system that has rules for resolving disputes.
For most of human history, the weak have been at the mercy of the strong, or the whim of a leader. That is still true for most of the world today. The rule of law is a great equalizer that puts all this aside and says, “We’re going to resolve our differences peacefully and through process.” …
Everything that human beings value—everything that Americans value and maybe take for granted—rests on the rule of law. Prosperity, physical security, our liberties—it all depends on the rule of law.
My remark is, “Yes, it’s kind of the ballgame” (and I’m not so sure about the “kind of”).
The Society for the Rule of Law was founded by a bunch of conservative Republicans, basically, who were concerned about what was happening on “the legal right,” as Gregg Nunziata says, and on the right generally.
What was happening? Well, you know: a collapse of principle.
Gregg and I talk a bit about his upbringing, his education, his formation. In the 1980s, there were two people who made a deep, deep impression on him: a president, Ronald Reagan, and a Supreme Court justice, Antonin Scalia.
After 9/11, Gregg wanted to work in government somehow—and he eventually got to Washington.
About one of the people he worked for, I tell him the following:
Marco Rubio may have been my favorite politician in America—certainly top five. I have no idea who he is. There’s “no there there.” I have a better grasp on Lindsey Graham! I have no idea who Marco Rubio is, except for the ambition part. And I absolutely adored him.
Gregg says,
I worked for three senators directly. I worked with many others, but with three directly. The first, I respected; the second, I loved; but the third, I believed in.
The first was Arlen Specter, from Pennsylvania. The second was John Thune, who is now the majority leader. And the third was Marco Rubio. …
I really believed in him and his vision. I worked closely with him for four years, and very much wanted him to win the presidential nomination in 2016. A part of me died that year. I mean, it was really disillusioning.
Gregg remembers a fellow who “would speak really, really eloquently about the power of democracy, about the importance of international alliances, about the importance of USAID …”
Yeah.
At some point, Gregg and I talk about the Justice Department. I had always understood it to be an institution serving the country as a whole. Now it is simply the president’s legal shop—an instrument of his will. They have hung a banner of him—of his visage—on the department itself, physically.
Gregg says: “civic blasphemy.”
He also says that lawyers working for the government once understood themselves to be lawyers first, meaning that they told the president when something was undoable because it was unlawful.
Autres temps, autres mœurs.
Gregg says,
I hear regularly from conservative law students that the law doesn’t matter, that we live in a post-legal regime, a post-constitutional regime, or that everything is just about power. Or you hear that law is just an elaborate ruse of the Left to suppress traditionalism and Western civilization.
If you can’t count on a conservative law student to believe in law, you’re in a rough spot. …
I’m just scandalized by the radicalism we see in the Republican Party and from young self-styled conservative intellectuals who don’t want to conserve a thing but want to burn everything down. That worldview has been wrong since Paris in 1789.
Yet Gregg does not despair—and he works every day toward “American renewal,” as he puts it.
For my money, Gregg Nunziata is one of the most important lawyers in the country. He could be at a high, high echelon of power, in the Republican Party, in the Trump administration. All he had to do was play along.
Instead, he heads this Society for the Rule of Law. I’m grateful for the guy, and I know you’ll enjoy getting to know him.
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Charlie Sykes is a veteran journalist, of a conservative bent. He is a writer and broadcaster. Find Charlie at To the Contrary, his Substack. On Q&A, he and I have had a meaty, wide-ranging chat.
He is a Wisconsinite, whose father was a newspaperman. “I always thought of the daily newspaper as a daily miracle,” says Charlie. I thought the same thing, by the way.
When Charlie was in eighth grade, his dad was the Wisconsin campaign manager for Eugene McCarthy’s presidential campaign. Charlie traveled around the state that year.
He was immersed in politics—the affairs of the nation and world—at an early age.
Incidentally, Charlie’s father would move rightward, and so would Charlie himself.
Charlie always had a zest for politics. So did I. Has this zest worn off, for both of us? Do we derive the same pleasure from politics—the debates, the rough-and-tumble, the game—that we once did? No.
But it is our duty to hang in there, says Charlie: to make the points that need making, and to take the stands that need taking.
In this Q&A, we spend a little time on the Iran war. I want to know: Was it worth it? And is “was” the right tense? I hope it was worth it; I’m not sure it was.
We then talk about the world we inhabited for so long: conservative journalism, right-of-center politics. Dramatic changes have taken place in that general world. The conservatism of the past has been replaced by the right-wing populism of today.
I confess to Charlie that the shock has not quite worn off for me—though I have had at least ten years to adjust, which is more than enough.
On this as on all other subjects, Charlie has interesting things to say—frank and thoughtful at the same time.
Some people claim that you can draw a straight line from our kind of conservatism—what Charlie Sykes and I have long argued from and advocated—to today. He and I both say: nuts.
We get into the touchy subject of racism a little. And also the subject of tribalism. The “call of the tribe,” as Mario Vargas Llosa says. Tribalism seems to be natural in man—and bless all those who overcome it.
I know what it is to hate one’s political enemies. I stuck with Reagan through everything—Iran-contra, Bitburg … I loved him, yes, but, even more, I hated his enemies.
You can’t bear for the “other side” to win, even for a second.
As I say on this program, I half-believed the conspiracy theories about Bill Clinton: the Mena airport, Vince Foster, Webb Hubbell … I half-believed the “birther” theory about Barack Obama.
What are the conspiracy theories about Donald Trump? I’m not sure there are any. Everything is out in the open—often trumpeted and bragged about!
In our discussion, Charlie Sykes and I talk about Rush Limbaugh: his influence, his legacy. Also, the media today. What does “the media” mean, by the way? Does the term make sense any longer? Does anyone sit down at 6:30 for the evening news—with Rather, Brokaw, or Jennings?
Anyway, you will want to hear Charlie, on our various topics. Before we close, we talk about refuges from politics. Charlie lives in the Wisconsin woods and “touches grass” every day. In New York, I may not touch grass much, but they do have mats at the golf range.
Thanks for listening.
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Yaqiu Wang has devoted her life to the cause of human rights in China. It is a great and important cause. She has worked for Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, and the Committee to Protect Journalists. Currently, she is a fellow at the University of Chicago’s Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression. Her website is www.wangyaqiu.com.
She was born in a village in southeast China. Her family was a peasant family. That’s what it said right on the registration card: “peasant.”
Yaqiu grew up in a relatively liberal, relatively lenient period. The word “relatively” is very important. The atmosphere seemed stifling at the time. But under Xi Jinping, Communist rule would become much worse.
Yaqiu’s education was doctrinaire—ideological—and she always saw through it. She knew that Communist China was a kingdom of lies.
One day, she found a book—The Private Life of Chairman Mao. This is the memoir of Mao’s personal physician, Li Zhisui. It is an eye-popping book. Yaqiu Wang read it in amazement, as many of us did. It contradicts the mythology surrounding the “Great Helmsman.”
(I relied on this memoir in the Mao chapter of my book on the sons and daughters of dictators: Children of Monsters.)
Wanting to leave her homeland, Yaqiu came to America, studying first at the University of South Carolina. What did she think of America, when she got here? I will paraphrase her:
I felt what many Chinese feel, when they see America: People have freedom on their face. If you’ve grown up in China, you see the difference immediately. Americans carry freedom with them when they walk on the street, when they talk to you. They have no fear.
In China, there are many things you can’t talk about. You can’t express your feelings. You are disciplined. From a very young age, you know that you are supposed to say certain things and not say certain things. You become a person with fear written on your face.
When you come to America, you see people without fear. There is freedom on their face.
Does she worry about her security? Even on foreign soil? Of course she does. The Chinese government doesn’t care where you live. Mainly, though, she is worried about her family back home. She cut off all communication with them, in the hope of sparing them repercussions from her human-rights work.
“That must be incredibly painful,” I say. Yes, it is.
I have a question for Yaqiu Wang: “Did you choose this work or did it choose you?” Again, I will paraphrase her answer:
I really feel it’s a calling. …
I was born the third child of my family. At the time, China had a one-child policy. The first child, my brother, had a disability, so my sister, the second child, was legal. I was the illegal child. My mother had to hide all during her pregnancy. My birth itself is a human-rights story.
When I was growing up, I always heard the propaganda that extra children—that’s what they called them: “extra children”—were a burden to society. I didn’t dare go to school with my sister, because people would then know I had a sibling, which would bring shame.
I carried that shame until I came to America, where I realized that having siblings is normal.
Before we sign off, I ask Yaqiu Wang whether there is anything else she would like to say—whether there is something she would like people to know. She cites two things.
First,
I really want Americans to know that what they have is very good, and they should cherish it. They should fight for the freedom they still have. Americans are accustomed to freedom and democracy—they have had it for 250 years. Americans have always been lucky, but maybe your luck is running out. So, please defend the freedom you still have.
Second,
I want Americans and the rest of the world to know that Chinese people want freedom and democracy. It’s just that the repression is so severe, they do not express it. Their fear is internalized. But if you spend enough time with them, privately, they will let you know: they do want freedom and democracy.
Once we were off the air, Yaqiu and I kept talking for a bit. She said, “Have you heard about people who feel they were born in the wrong country? That they were really born with an American mind and heart?” Yes, I have. “Well, that’s true of me,” she said.
She also thinks it is “crazy” for Americans to oppose immigration, given our history and our character.
Yaqiu Wang is a real individual, an independent thinker and spirit. It was a privilege to listen to her.
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Don Williams—Donald Mace Williams—is a writer. A poet, a novelist, a journalist, a translator, and so on. A real man of letters. He has been steeped in poetry all of his life. When he and his family were living in tents during the Depression, he had Mark Van Doren’s Anthology of World Poetry at his side. That amounts to an education, in one volume.
But Williams went on to have a lot more education, in the classroom and beyond.
He was born in Texas on “Black Thursday”—October 24, 1929, when the stock market crashed. He has titled one of his novels “Black Tuesday’s Child.” (Note the switch of days. “Black Tuesday,” in 1929, was five days after the 24th.) Another novel is The Sparrow and the Hall, set in medieval England.
Speaking of old England—very, very old England—Williams is a translator of Beowulf: here.
Further dipping into Williams, here is a volume of poetry (his own). Here are poems of Rilke, which he has translated. Don has had a productive life.
One of his first loves was music, a love that of course endures. He studied singing, and his brother became a pianist. And what goes with songs but poetry? Poetry in a great range of languages.
Robert Frost is a poet who has meant a lot to Williams. So have a good many others, some of whom we discuss.
In our Q&A, we talk about all sorts of things. It’s a treat to hear Don recite poetry—his own and others’. He has a wonderful voice, a voice redolent of Texas (and perhaps other parts of the country too, as Don has lived all over).
There are a couple of questions I forgot to ask him. So, I asked him by e-mail, afterward. And he gave me written answers. Would you like to hear him?
I asked him something like this: “You have taught writing. I’m not sure how I would do it. I mean, I could work with someone’s copy. I could edit it and show him what I was doing. I did that for years. But teaching writing? Really teaching it, the way you would teach math or history? I’m not sure how I’d go about it.”
Don answered,
I tried to teach writing for a good many years, both on newspapers and in college journalism classes. When I was the writing coach for The Wichita Eagle, I sat with reporters and went over their stories line by line, suggesting this or that change and commending phrases I liked. Every day, also, I wrote comments on that day’s stories and passed them out. I’m not sure I improved anybody’s writing either way. I think I usually, over the years, found exactly the same things to quibble over or praise in a reporter’s work that I had found at the start.
What I hope may have helped writers write better is a couple of maxims that helped me from my first days as a reporter. One was home-grown. My dad, who had been a reporter and editor among many other things, told me, “Don’t say, ‘He attempted to accomplish the difficult matters,’ say, ‘He tried to do the hard things.’” And though I never worked for The Dallas Morning News, I knew what the signs in the newsroom said: “Write Like You Talk.” Not quite good grammar, but just the right tone. If I did teach anyone to be a better writer, I imagine it was by promoting those directives and others like them.
Yes. For many years, people have asked me (something like), “How should I write?” And I tend to say, “Write like you talk (and gussy it up a little bit, if that seems wise). Don’t try to have a ‘writing voice’ separate from your actual voice—your way of speaking. Writing is speech written down, basically. You write it down so that others, who aren’t with you, can hear it.”
On meeting me, readers have often said, “You talk like you write, and you write like you talk!” I really can’t do otherwise. I mean, I can, but it sounds stiff.
Bill Buckley wrote exactly like he talked. (He would want me to say “as he talked.”) So did Norman Podhoretz. So did David Pryce-Jones. I could go on …
Another thing I wanted to ask Don Williams was, “Who are your favorite singers?”
The answer:
When I started voice lessons, at 16, my ideal was the young John McCormack, who, even on the acoustic 78 r.p.m. discs that I bought for a quarter each at the Salvation Army store in Denver, sang beautiful, perfectly free tones such as no tenor I’ve heard since then has produced. Later, I added to my list of ideal singers the Danish tenor Aksel Schiøtz, a wonderfully warm-voiced and tasteful artist.
But the singer who made the greatest impression on me in live recital was Leontyne Price. I dislike routine standing ovations, because if you do them for every performer, how do you show your enthusiasm for great ones? But when Price ended her program with “Summertime” from Porgy and Bess, I jumped up, yelling—and then fell back into my seat because my knees were so weak. A glorious sound.
Two notes, please: John McCormack was the favorite singer of the late, great Martin Bernheimer, the music critic and scholar. (For my appreciation of Martin, written in 2019 when he passed away, go here.)
Note 2: Don says, “… the singer who made the greatest impression on me in live recital was Leontyne Price.” Same.
Back to our podcast: There are a couple of technical glitches in it—well, not glitches, but curiosities, let’s say. Don is using a friend’s Zoom set-up, so it has her name on it, not his. I myself am zooming in and out, somehow. (I guess zooming goes with Zoom.) My app has switched itself to some setting, in mysterious fashion. I’ll see whether I can un-switch it.
But forget tech. The main thing is to meet—to get to know—Donald Mace Williams, which is a pleasure to do.
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As I say in my introduction, Tom Malinowski has had a long and varied career: in the State Department, the White House, Congress, and elsewhere. I hugely enjoyed my hour of talking with this fellow. I think you will as well.
He began life in Poland, in 1965. Is he related to Bronisław Malinowski, the great anthropologist—indeed, a founder of that field? Yes: the anthropologist was Tom’s great-great-uncle.
Before deciding on a college, Tom visited the University of Chicago. (UC was a seat of anthropology.) “I found, to my surprise and delight, that one of the main intro freshman classes was ‘Marx, Freud, and Malinowski.’ I’m, like, ‘Hello!’”
At some point, Tom visited a place that few of us have ever been to: Papua New Guinea. There, “Malinowski” is a very important name.
When he was six, Tom moved with his mother and stepfather to America—to New Jersey. Still, he would be caught up in the drama of Poland—the Solidarity movement, martial law, etc.—as I was. (I am two years older than Tom.)
In the summer of 1981, he was in Poland and actually met Lech Wałęsa, the Solidarity leader. A Polaroid picture was taken of the two of them, and signed by Wałęsa. Tom still has it.
“I was always politically connected,” he says. “I had an awareness of communism and what it was and why it needed to be resisted, and why the United States of America had a special role in the world.”
“That is kaput, apparently,” I remark. Malinowski is a little more generous or philosophical.
“People grow up with different experiences,” he says. We are far removed from the World War II and early Cold War generations. They had experiences that were “eye-opening and ass-kicking.” Young people are living through their own times. May they, too, have their eyes opened and their asses kicked, in a good way.
Young Malinowski went to Berkeley and then, as a Rhodes Scholar, to Oxford. He studied with, among others, Timothy Garton Ash, “the great chronicler of Eastern Europe and the struggles for democracy,” as Malinowski puts it.
Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary, went to Oxford on a George Soros scholarship. (I’m not sure he mentions that much.) This was a little before Malinowski, but they met once.
Malinowski is not at all surprised that Orbán became what he became.
In our Q&A, Malinowski and I talk a little party politics: R’s and D’s. I say to him, “You may think this is bad of me, Tom, but I’m a little surprised that you became a Democrat. I was, and am, a roaring Reaganite, and you became a Democrat, which you’re allowed to do. It’s a free country. But why, and when?”
Malinowski gives a good and interesting answer, having to do with family and other things.
He worked for tough-minded Democrats—men and women who were tough-minded about foreign policy in particular. He was an aide to Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the Senate. “He could be a jerk,” says Malinowski, “but he was brilliant, and he expected a lot of the people who were working for him,” in a way you could respect and admire.
Malinowski regards his stint in Moynihan’s office as his graduate school, “even more than my time at Oxford.”
In the State Department, he worked for Clinton’s two secretaries of state: Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright. Christopher was a canny lawyer and negotiator—a problem-solver and dealmaker par excellence. He was not one for the “stage,” however.
Albright, on the other hand, was one for the stage. She enjoyed representing the United States ’round the world. She was big on promoting American values. Malinowski notes that he and she “had the East Europe thing in common.” (Albright was born in Prague, in 1937.)
In the White House, Malinowski worked as senior director of the National Security Council. He then worked for Human Rights Watch. Later, he was an assistant secretary of state.
And in 2018 he ran for Congress, winning. He served two terms. He was defeated in 2022 and again last month, in a primary. That was a weird one. AIPAC came in to portray him as pro-ICE and pro-Trump. Again, a weird one.
We talk about politics both narrow and broad. I myself am not much of a believer in “American exceptionalism”—not anymore. I think we’re vulnerable to the same ills as everyone else. The same temptations, the same extremisms. The same fevers.
How can the human material differ from place to place, and time to time? We Americans aren’t extraterrestrials.
But leadership matters of course—for good or ill. Lincoln spoke of appealing to “the better angels of our nature.” Demagogues appeal to the worse.
Malinowski points out that the technology of social media is designed to appeal to our worse angels—our worst. This technology has had a terrible effect, on Americans and everyone else.
“So, we’re not exceptional in that way,” says Malinowski, “but we’re still the only country in the world that has the power and occasionally the predilection to do unselfish things for the common good.”
Eventually, we talk about the Iran war (the current one) and the Ukraine war. Malinowski met Volodymyr Zelensky before the war began (the full-scale war). He was not filled with confidence. That is, Malinowski was not confident about Ukraine’s leadership.
But Zelensky was put to the test, as few statesmen are. And “he’s the leader of the Free World right now,” says Malinowski. I agree.
“The stakes in Ukraine remain astronomical,” says Malinowski. “This is the fight for the survival of the international system. And this is a fight where a great power invaded Europe, and the Ukrainians have been literally putting their bodies between us and arguably our most dangerous adversary in the world, protecting us, protecting our European allies, making it so that all we have to spend is money, as they spend their lives.”
We are incredibly lucky, if we only knew it.
Tom Malinowski and I close our Q&A with memories of John McCain, whom we both admire and whom Tom knew well. This podcast is for—well, lovers of history from the mid–20th century on. My thanks to Malinowski for doing it.
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Dalibor Roháč began life in Slovakia, or Czechoslovakia. He is now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, in Washington. His Ph.D. is in political economy. He says that his role is to explain Europe to Americans and, increasingly, America to Europeans.
In our Q&A, we talk about the “old days”: Czechoslovakia, Havel, the “velvet divorce,” “lustration,” and so on. We also talk about the “new days,” or current days: Robert Fico, the prime minister in Slovakia; Viktor Orbán, the prime minister in Hungary; Andrej Babiš, the president in the Czech Republic. Which of these men likes Putin most?
The Ukrainian struggle is, among other things, the great nationalist cause of this century. Ukrainians are fighting and dying to hang on to their country: its freedom, its independence. They are fighting to defend their very right to exist. Yet many people in the Free World who style themselves “nationalists” are sympathetic to Putin and hostile to Ukraine. How can this be?
One can imagine an organization: “Nationalists for the Russian Empire” (or “Soviet Empire”).
In any event, Mr. Roháč and I touch on this question. And at the end, I ask him to say a few words about the United States—how we are faring and what our prospects might be.
For many years now, I have learned from this fellow. He has knowledge, wide and deep. And he has judgment—even nuance (dread word).
As I mention in our podcast, he shares a name with an opera by Smetana: Dalibor, which is rarely seen or heard, but definitely worth knowing. I wrote about it a little in an article last September.
Smetana aside, enjoy Dalibor Roháč.
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One of the writers I read most regularly is Clay Risen. He writes obituaries for the New York Times. Another way to say that is, he is a composer of mini-biographies, week after week.
He has also worked as a political writer. And he has authored ten books, on various subjects: including the American civil rights movement, Theodore Roosevelt, McCarthyism, and whiskey.
In our Q&A, we spend some time on Roosevelt. What a fascinating, and multifaceted, man. We also talk about his growing up—Clay’s, that is (but TR’s too, come to think of it). Clay is from Nashville. Actually from Nashville.
I have known many Nashvillians, but they have been people who moved there.
The bulk of our conversation, we spend on obituaries—their whys and wherefores. As my regular readers know, I love obits. It’s not that I’m macabre. No. I’m sorry the person has died. I just love life stories.
Consider a couple of things. (1) Maybe my favorite genre, in the book world, is biography and autobiography. (2) My attention span is possibly—possibly—getting a little shorter, what with blogposts and tweets and all.
Therefore, obits are pretty much made for me.
Many years ago, I talked with Bob Bork about the New York Times. He had given up reading the paper, out of political disgust. But there was one section he could not give up, and would not give up: the obits.
He was addicted (and so, I suppose, am I).
What are the ingredients of a good obituarist? Clay Risen touches on the main ones. You have to be curious—curious about people, curious about life, in all of its diversity, and weirdness. You have to be an absorber of information. It helps to be a fast learner. And you have to be sensitive.
There are family members to consider—survivors of the deceased. Is it nice, or right, to speak ill of the dead? No. At the same time, an obit is not a eulogy. An obit requires biographical honesty.
An obituarist for the New York Times has a special burden: the Times obit will be the “obit of record,” the obit that people will turn to, for years and years.
“Hey, what was the deal with that John Smith fella? Hang on, let me Google the New York Times obit.”
I think of music criticism (as I tell Clay in our podcast). The Times is more or less the trade journal of classical music. There is a lot riding on a Times review. There is extra weight on the shoulders of a Times critic—he can hurt someone.
I really can’t, which is a relief. Which frees one up, really.
Anyway, they are a very interesting subject, obits. And Clay Risen is a very interesting talker about them, and many another subject as well. You will enjoy his company. A literate, learned, genial man.
At the end of our Q&A, I ask him whether he’s glad to be an obits writer in our present era—rather than a political reporter, say. “Yes,” he answers, “a thousand times yes.”
I get it!
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Some years ago, I was looking into Stephen Harper, who was then the prime minister of Canada. David Frum said to me something like this: “You’ll want to talk to Jason Kenney. He’s a conservative intellectual who does politics.” That was a very good suggestion.
Well, Mr. Kenney is my latest guest on Q&A. For almost 20 years, he served in his country’s House of Commons. Have I said—have I been clear—that Kenney is a Canadian? Well, he is (of Irish extraction).
Under Harper, Kenney held various ministerial positions, including minister of defense. Later, he was premier—governor, in essence—of Alberta.
And he is an excellent conversationalist.
I want to know: Have Donald Trump and the Republican Party done wonders for Canadian patriotism? Is Canadian patriotism at something like an all-time high? Yes, says Kenney, but he adds a caveat or two.
In Quebec, there are renewed rumblings of secession. And there are similar rumblings in Alberta.
Jason Kenney and I take a walk down Memory Lane—to 1992 and the famous line, or once-famous line, “It’s the Sun wot won it.”
Britain’s Conservatives had beaten the Labour Party, and the tabloid (the Sun) was taking credit for it.
Well, was it Trump and the Republicans “wot won it” for Mark Carney and the Canadian Liberals last year? Oh, yes. The Conservative Party was miles ahead in the polls, until Trump et al. began their out-of-left-field belligerence toward Canada.
In our Q&A, Jason Kenney and I talk about Canadian identity, and its relationship to America. We also touch on a trio of Canadian authors: Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, and Robertson Davies.
Plenty of prime ministers come up: Lester Pearson, Pierre Trudeau, John Turner, Brian Mulroney, Jean Chrétien, Harper, Justin Trudeau, Carney.
By the way, do you recall that Fidel Castro was a pallbearer at Pierre Trudeau’s funeral? He was—and Kenney encountered that tyrant in an elevator …
Early in our conversation, I ask Kenney how he became a conservative. Well, for one thing, his first roommate in college had a subscription to National Review. And young Kenney sneaked glances at Bill Buckley and others.
Which could have an effect on a person (as it did on many of us).
We talk about Ukraine. Canada has a substantial Ukrainian population, or a Ukrainian-Canadian population. Canada has been strong in support of Ukraine and clear-eyed about Putin. And yet, some Canadians have the same media habits as some Americans.
So, as in America, you get people who, in Kenney’s words, “regard Vladimir Putin as the savior of Western civilization and Christendom, and Volodymyr Zelensky as a war criminal.”
I would have thought the Canadian Right less vulnerable to that than the American Right, but maybe not.
Jason Kenney has spent a lot of time—a lot of time—on immigration and associated issues. Associated issues? I mean assimilation, multiculturalism, identity—all that. For about five years, Kenney was Canada’s minister of citizenship, immigration, and multiculturalism.
We talk a bit about these issues—and Kenney quotes Tony Blair, who said something like this: “Host countries have a duty to be welcoming, and newcomers have a duty to integrate, and that duty involves the duty to follow the law.”
Kenney and I also talk about health care. Canada has one system, we Americans have another (if “system” is the right word). What the hell should be done in this messy, complicated, maddening, and very important field?
Unsurprisingly, Kenney has some smart, informed things to say on the subject. It is possible to have a basic guarantee of coverage—with a flexibility that allows for private care.
In our conversation, we do not cover the waterfront, exactly, but we have a good long walk on the beach. You can learn a lot from this fellow. He reminds me of Britain’s Daniel Hannan: an intellectual—a conservative intellectual, or a classical-liberal one—who does politics.
Enjoy.
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I’ll quote from my introduction:
… our guest today is Michael Feinberg, a former FBI agent who is now a writer and editor with Lawfare. With the FBI, he won a slew of awards and commendations, but was forced out last year when the regime of Kash Patel and Dan Bongino came in. He wrote about all this in a moving article called “Goodbye to All That.” Mr. Feinberg, of course, borrowed his title from Robert Graves.
He grew up in the Chicago suburbs—in “John Hughes territory,” as I call it. In fact, many of Feinberg’s friends—plus his sister—appeared as extras in John Hughes films.
Feinberg went to Brandeis University and then Northwestern’s law school. He was a conservative with a libertarian bent. He read Reason, National Review, The Weekly Standard. He was a member of the Young Friends of The New Criterion.
The whole bitsy, as we’d say in the Midwest.
Oh, here’s another thing: “I was probably one of the few people, in their twenties, who sat through the entirety of Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation in a public library.”
Mike was practicing law. One day, the family threw a surprise birthday party for his grandfather, who was turning 90. One guest at the party was the honoree’s brother, age 87. The two of them were reminiscing about how they joined the Army after Pearl Harbor.
And Mike thought: I was in my first year of law school on 9/11. But I did not change the course of my life at all. Maybe I should do something more public service–oriented.
The FBI it was.
Feinberg spent a lot of time countering the influence of the Chinese government. He worked with many different types in the FBI. We discuss all that. And what happened to the Bureau with the onset of the second Trump administration.
Are there still good people—real professionals—in the FBI? Can the damage be repaired, at some point in the future? What have we lost, and how long might it take to rebuild it?
We spend some time on the Epstein scandal. “Scandal” is far too light a word. “Abomination,” “horror.” We also spend some time on ICE. Is this how a law-enforcement agency should behave? Some do behave that way, says Feinberg—but not in countries, or under regimes, that we Americans generally seek to emulate.
At the end of our conversation, we talk about a big question, almost a sentimental one: “where we are.” What has become of our country. Mike cites the parable of the Prodigal Son. And he looks forward to a kind of national homecoming.
It was a real pleasure to talk with this fellow, and to learn about the FBI from him, and I’m glad he is “in the arena,” contributing in the ways available to him. He doesn’t have a gun and a badge anymore—or at least not a badge—but he certainly has tools.
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Last Friday, there was a day-long event at Princeton: the Aaron Friedberg Retirement Colloquium. Participants included a range of the professor’s colleagues and students (present and past). Friedberg has had a full, busy career.
He is a professor of politics and international affairs. Among his books is A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia. As I say in my introduction, he has had a stint or two in government, including two years in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.
In our Q&A, we talk about some personal things. Friedberg is from Pittsburgh, and he grew up in an academic family. He went to Harvard, for college and graduate school, studying with Samuel P. Huntington, Stanley Hoffmann, Ernest R. May, and others.
(You could learn a lot from those fellows—and Aaron did.)
We talk about people and events from history. The Holocaust, of course, must be reckoned with, to the extent it can. Friedberg is a great admirer of Churchill. He was not perfect—who is?—but we were lucky to have him (“we” the world).
In due course, Professor Friedberg and I talk about life on campus. Has he experienced a Wokistan? (No.) And we talk about “where we are”: where international relations stand.
The United States, Russia, China ... It has been a good run since 1945, despite conflagrations: a U.S.-led international order. With America turning its back on that order, apparently, what might come next?
Will it be “might makes right,” “the law of the jungle,” and “spheres of influence”?
It is a good time to talk with Aaron Friedberg, and I’m glad I have done so. I think readers and listeners will be too.
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This is an important moment in Iran: people are out in the streets, demanding change; the dictatorship is murdering them by the thousands. I definitely wanted to talk with Marina Nemat, a woman I have known and admired for many years.
She is a dissident from Iran. Since 1991, she has lived in Canada. You will see, in our podcast, that she is in a picture-perfect Canadian setting—like from a movie. But her thoughts are with Iran.
Marina was 13 when Khomeini’s revolution took power. At 16, she was arrested. For more than two years, she was kept in Evin Prison, one of the most horrific places on earth. I have heard Marina describe it as “the high school from hell.”
In exile, she has published two books: Prisoner of Tehran and After Tehran: A Life Reclaimed. This summer, she will publish another book, a historical novel: Mistress of the Persian Boarding House.
In our podcast, she remembers the revolutionary times of the late 1970s. And she relates those times to today. “Déjà vu,” she says. The end of the Islamic Republic may be at hand. Then again, it may persist, on and on. Who knows?
Marina Nemat does know this: there needs to be a transition to democracy. Whether she will ever be able to return to her native country—even for a brief visit—she can’t know.
“My grandmother escaped the Russian Revolution in 1917,” she says. “She died when I was seven. So, this is 53 years ago.” Marina continues:
“I remember, before her death, before she got sick, she always said, ‘The communist murderers will be gone and I will go home one day.’ And she never did. She was buried in Tehran.”
Over the years, at various turns, I have done several podcasts with Marina Nemat. I have always found a conversation with her not only informative but moving, too. I bet you will find the same. Grateful for Marina.
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I have known Linda Chavez for many years, and have read her for even longer. Do you know I had a hard time introducing her? I really did. This is what I wound up saying:
... our guest is Linda Chavez—whose life has been so multifaceted, it takes a while to sum up.
She has held several governmental positions. She ran for the U.S. Senate. She is the founder and chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity. She is the vice-chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative.
She is a policy analyst. A columnist. A book-author. Her autobiography, An Unlikely Conservative, is outstanding. She has now written a novel: The Silver Candlesticks. It has a subtitle: A Novel of the Spanish Inquisition.
The Silver Candlesticks tells the story of the author’s family—her father’s side. A fascinating story it is.
That family has been in the United States—or what became the United States—for many, many years. How many? Well, Linda puts it this way: By the time the colonists got around to signing the Declaration of Independence, her family had been here for almost 200 years.
Beat that, as Bill Buckley would say.
So, is Linda Chavez a “Heritage American,” to use the new nativist jargon? She is an American, and she loves this country’s heritage: the principles and ideals embodied in our founding.
She has spent a lot of time on the issue of immigration, and we discuss it a bit in our Q&A. We also discuss the phrase “equal opportunity”—as in the name of her organization, the Center for Equal Opportunity. She is eloquent on that phrase, that concept, as on everything else.
At the end of our podcast, I ask her an embarrassing question—but not so embarrassing that I don’t ask it. It is a question that has been asked in every generation: “Are we losing America?”
We never have. But—is some worry in order? Linda is, again, darn eloquent.
Every time she talks, it’s like a civics lesson. I will now stop typing so you can listen to her.
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When it comes to questions of U.S. foreign policy—when it comes to questions of world affairs in general—there are certain people I always want to hear from. One of them is Nick Burns—R. Nicholas Burns—the veteran U.S. diplomat.
Let me quote from my introduction to this new Q&A:
He is what you might call a “generalist.” He has served in many capacities and many places. He has studied, and worked on, a wide range of issues.
When he was a new Foreign Service officer, he was in Africa and the Middle East. At the White House, he worked in Soviet, then Russian, affairs. He was State Department spokesman. He was ambassador to Greece, and ambassador to NATO. He was an undersecretary of state. Most recently—from 2022 to 2025—he was ambassador to China.
Before going to China, he taught at Harvard’s Kennedy School. Where he is once more.
In our Q&A, we range widely, with Burns speaking crisply and analytically and me kind of sputtering and emoting. But I very much enjoyed our conversation—and learned from it—and I believe others will too.
We talk about China: the government’s aims, the persecution of the Uyghurs, the shackling of Hong Kong, the fate of Taiwan.
We talk about Ukraine and Russia. And about NATO and Europe.
And, of course, we talk about the United States: our character, our choices.
Maybe I could paste a few samples, paraphrasing Mr. Burns. At the outset of our conversation, I ask whether China aspires to be a global hegemon, in addition to a regional one.
Burns:
I don’t think the Chinese, in their heart of hearts, believe that they can be the world’s greatest power in five to ten years. But I do think that’s an aspiration. You know, they’re very fixed on anniversaries. And 2049 will mark the centennial of the takeover of China by Mao Zedong and the Communist Party.
So, to be a global hegemon—or the global hegemon—by that year is one of the Party’s ambitions.
“But even sooner than that,” Burns continues, “there’s no question in my mind that China wishes to become—aims to become, is determined to become—the strongest power in the Indo-Pacific.” And “that means overtaking the United States.”
Charles Krauthammer used to say that decline is a choice—for us Americans, that is. Does Burns agree? Yes, “because there’s human agency,” he says, “and we determine, in a democracy, what our priorities are.”
At times, the United States has been outward-looking, and at other times, inward-looking. We had better be careful where, and how, we look.
Burns became U.S. ambassador to NATO in August 2001. On September 12, members of the alliance invoked Article 5—which says, in essence, “An attack on one is an attack on all.” President Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, remarked to Burns, “It’s good to have friends in the world.”
In our Q&A, Burns says,
We are so powerful—and I’m proud that we’re powerful, I love our country, I want us to be strong—but we often need friends in the world. If we try to go it alone, against Putin or Xi Jinping ...
Burns continues,
China is a peer power, in all senses. Russia is a peer power in the nuclear-weapons realm. But if you add our allies—the European allies and NATO, the East Asian allies—we democratic countries are stronger. We can keep the peace through deterrence. And that’s probably the most important lesson I’ve learned since I started as a lowly intern for the State Department in West Africa in 1980.
Here is Burns on Taiwan: “I do not believe that the takeover of Taiwan by the government of the People’s Republic is inevitable.” He elaborates.
Here is Burns on the war in Europe:
It’s disheartening to see the United States position itself as some kind of neutral mediator between the aggressor, Putin, and the victim, Zelensky; the aggressor, the Russian state, and the victim, the people of Ukraine. We have to be on the side of the people of Ukraine, because Putin has crossed the most important red line in global politics: You cannot go into someone else’s country and overtake it by force and get away with it—especially given Russia’s history and Soviet history over the last 100 years or so.
These days, the U.S. State Department acts like a branch of the Republican National Committee. Last month, the department issued the following pronouncement:
This Thanksgiving, we’re grateful for President Trump. Because of his bold and visionary leadership, our nation commands respect on the world stage.
Six days later, the department issued another pronouncement:
This morning, the State Department renamed the former Institute of Peace to reflect the greatest dealmaker in our nation’s history.
Welcome to the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. The best is yet to come.
Nick Burns has served under six presidents and nine secretaries of state—Republicans and Democrats. And he knows you take an oath to the Constitution, not to a party or man. He is stirring on this subject, in our Q&A, as on all the other subjects.
Which include the U.S. Agency for International Development and our “radios”—including Radio Free Asia, which meant a lot to people in China, among other countries. Says Burns,
I don’t get it. We’re in a competition with China, and we have just basically destroyed the institutions that were helping us to compete.
At the end of our conversation, Burns puts in a word for immigration—one of the things that have “made us a great, great nation.” Nick’s paternal grandparents came from Ireland, poor as hell. Teenagers, both. Their grandson has represented America in capitals all over the world.
If I had my way, he’d be secretary of state. But his students at the Kennedy School are lucky to have him, and we in podcast-land are lucky to have him too. I could edit this podcast to make it sleek(er)—but I have left in my fumblings and ramblings and interruptions. There are technical glitches, too—some “freezing,” some inadvertent self-muting. Moreover, the podcast could be shorter, tighter.
But I am presenting it “as is,” and I will now stop typing and let you listen, when you have the time.
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Gambling on sports is as old as sports, no doubt. Cavemen must have gambled, somehow, when it came to tossing sticks or what have you. Jumping to the 20th century, we in America had the Black Sox scandal of 1919.
In recent times, however, sports gambling seems to have swept the nation. It is ubiquitous—and as easy as flicking a finger on your phone. FanDuel and other such companies are raking it in. And gambling takes a terrible toll: on individual gamblers and on sports itself.
This is the opening topic of this new sportscast, featuring my main gurus, David French and Vivek Dave.
We move on to the issue of college conferences. Do you know which schools belong to which conferences at this point? Does it make sense for UCLA and Rutgers to be in the same conference? The one school is in southern California and the other is in New Jersey, some 2,800 miles away.
Even in the jet age, that’s a haul.
We also talk about the “coaching carousel.” A head coach jumps from one school to another—one team to another—even before post-season play begins. Is that any way to run a railroad? Is it ethical, admirable?
Other topics include the downfall of the Michigan football coach, the reaction of Notre Dame to its exclusion from the playoff, and the increasing irrelevance of bowl games.
Often, sports issues are societal issues. This point came to mind as I was listening to David and Vivek today.
They are endlessly knowledgeable and a pleasure to listen to. I have decided to open the comments section to everyone (not just paid subscribers). So, if you’d like, weigh on in.
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In my introduction to this Q&A, I say,
... our guest today is David Frum, the writer. What does he write? Books and articles, about history, politics, culture, and so on. He is almost the definition of a generalist.
He works for The Atlantic and hosts The David Frum Show. He can be found at DavidFrum.com.
Also, he and I are old colleagues and friends. And yet, I learned something, during our latest Q&A. He went to the National Music Camp, in Interlochen, Michigan, in the summer of ’76. I myself am an Interlochen kid. (My first summer there was ’77.)
David was at camp on July 4, 1976, America’s bicentennial day. That was also the day of the raid on Entebbe—the military operation in which Israeli commandos rescued hostages at the airport in Uganda. David’s mother called him at camp, to tell him this news.
Barbara Frum, let me say, was one of the most prominent newscasters in Canada (where David was brought up).
Our subject in this latest Q&A is both a timely one and a timeless one (unfortunately): antisemitism. (Isn’t that a dumb word, by the way, for Judenhass, or hatred of Jews? And yet, David explains, it is a useful one in our time.)
Earlier this week, David tweeted,
Republicans are having a big, public argument about the antisemitism that has contaminated their party. Democrats aren’t.
He added,
“Their antisemites are vile neo-Nazis. Our antisemites bring exciting new energy to our party!”
In our Q&A, we talk about Nick Fuentes and the Right, and Zohran Mamdani and the Left. (I do not mean to equate Fuentes and Mamdani, let me quickly say.) We talk about how Left and Right draw near to each other, or blend. We talk about what antisemitism is—its nature.
Can there be anti-Zionism without antisemitism? In theory, sure. Populism without antisemitism, nationalism without antisemitism? Of course. But in practice ...
The world is lousy with conspiracy theories. Not all of them relate to Jews, needless to say. But funny how conspiracy theories tend to veer, before long, in one direction ...
In this conversation, David Frum talks both intellectually and personally. One can learn a lot. And though our subject is deadly serious, there are streaks of humor.
I am grateful, as always, to and for David.
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For many years, a favorite guest of Q&A has been Daniel Hannan, the British writer and politician—since 2021 a member of the House of Lords. In this new Q&A, Dan is sitting in the Royal Gallery, in Parliament. (I am sitting at home.)
Bill Buckley taped some episodes of Firing Line in the Sistine Chapel. I can’t see myself podcasting from that room; but I enjoyed looking at Dan in the Royal Gallery, via Zoom.
My conversation with Hannan is wide-ranging, as usual. We talk about the British monarchy, and its meaning to the United Kingdom. (Of course, it has different meanings to different Brits.) We talk about the nature of democracy, in its multiple forms (constitutional monarchy being one of them).
Many countries are seeing the rise of populism, and worse. Hannan wonders whether “the tide is going out on the culture of democracy.” People will accept the results of elections if their side wins, of course. And if their side does not?
We touch on Nigel Farage, Nick Fuentes, and others. We talk about antisemitism and philosemitism. The Ukraine war, too. Brits as a whole have been foursquare behind Ukraine and against Putin. This makes a contrast with the United States.
Our conversation is leavened by poetry: Philip Larkin and Robert Conquest—and Shakespeare. Dan closes with some lines from Richard II. A joy and a privilege, and an education, to sit with Daniel Hannan.
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In my introduction to this Q&A, I say,
... our guest today is a college student—a senior at Stanford—and a journalist already, believe it or not. We have known each other for some time. He is John R. Puri—more formally, John Raj Puri.
Isn’t that a great moniker?
John comes from Des Moines, where he has seen the Iowa caucuses up close. Early on, he was drawn to politics and public affairs. When he was in elementary school, he learned the names of the presidents, in order—their full names, including middle names. When John was eight, his brother and his parents dressed up as Batman characters for Halloween. John dressed up as Richard Nixon.
You think I’m kidding? Photographic proof, thank you very much:
Later, when John learned more about Mr. Nixon, he decided that, if he had been a voter in 1972, he would have voted for John Ashbrook in the Republican presidential primaries.
In due course (a Buckley phrase), John found, well, William F. Buckley Jr., Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, George F. Will, and others.
Doing this Q&A, I ask John about politics on campus, to the extent that politics plays a part in campus life. (How big a part, really, is the question.) I also ask him what concerns him the most, in the arena of politics. His answer: the durability of our “constitutional design.” He is a man of 1776 and 1789, he says (alluding to the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution).
John R. Puri, it seems to me, is a throwback of a conservative—a wonderful throwback—and he may well give you hope for the future, as he does me.
“I’m glad you exist,” I tell him at the end. I sure am.
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Jeff Jacoby is now part of the furniture—part of the furniture of American journalism, certainly of opinion journalism. Since 1994, he has written a column for the Boston Globe. That is extraordinary longevity in the media. You can also find him at (where else?) jeffjacoby.com.
Though Jeff is a fixture in Boston, he comes from Cleveland. He regards himself as an Ohioan in Boston (as I regard myself as a Michigander in New York).
Jeff is a conservative, of the pre-2016 variety. To a degree, he has held down the conservative fort in New England these past 30 years.
With the regnant Right today, he has many differences, obviously. Maybe the biggest has to do with immigration—which he regards as a boon to our country.
... on a personal level, I’m the son of an immigrant, and I’m the father of an immigrant, and I’m the father-in-law of an immigrant. And I grew up in a community where I was surrounded by immigrants. I have a feeling for the value and the contribution of immigration to American society.
Not long ago, words such as those were standard-issue. Now they are fighting words.
In our Q&A, Jeff and I talk about various subjects, including the media, the Ukraine war, and music. At the end, I ask him to tell one of my favorite stories—a story he told me long ago, about a trip he took with his father to Auschwitz.
An adornment to our scene, a blessing on it: Jeff Jacoby.
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This new Q&A has two guests. With me gabbing too, it is a three-way convo. My guests are Bill Kristol and David French, those sharp and experienced political writers, and two of the people I most value.
You are, by now, familiar with “the Politico story”—the report from Politico about Young Republican leaders and what they say in their private (formerly private) chats.
This is dark, obnoxious stuff—to call it illiberal would be kind.
I have written a column about this matter, here. In it, I ask some questions that I have now put to Kristol and French: Was it ever thus? Can you draw a straight line from Reagan conservatism to Trumpism and today’s GOP?
(I say no—firmly, vehemently no.)
In our Q&A, we talk about our experiences in college and grad school. We ask: Was the “Reagan Right” a “real Right”? Or was it an exceptional, ephemeral Right, a classical-liberal Right, now engulfed by nationalism, populism, and worse?
In 2002, not long after 9/11 and the beginning of the War on Terror, Michael Walzer wrote a famous essay, famously titled: “Can There Be a Decent Left?” Well, can there be? Can there be a decent Right?
We address those questions, too.
Between the wars, in 1935, Sinclair Lewis wrote his novel It Can’t Happen Here. I always resented this book, starting with its title (an ironic one). My former resentment aside: Can it? Can Americans be seduced by fascism and other dark isms, same as other peoples?
David French, in particular, notes the rising popularity of Nick Fuentes. I mention Fuentes in my column today. He is more popular, more influential, than should make any of us comfortable.
A free society, an open society, is a relative rarity in human history. We wonder—French, Kristol, and I—whether we can “keep” this republic (to borrow Franklin’s word).
You can learn a great deal from Bill Kristol and David French. I long have. Make time for this meandering, meaty discussion. I think you will find it worthwhile.
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Kristina Hammer is the president of the Salzburg Festival—which in Salzburg, and Austria, and Europe, and the music world, is a very big deal. She grew up in Germany—the Black Forest—and studied in Mainz and Vienna. As a business executive, she worked in the department-store field for a while. And in cars: Aston Martins, Jaguars, Mercedes-Benzes, and other fine autos.
Get this: She had a role in bringing the Aston Martin back into the Bond movies. (I think that 007 had been driving a BMW for a bit.)
Kristina Hammer has led a busy and multifaceted life, and she has interesting things to say about a range of subjects.
Her life has always been filled with music. She first visited Salzburg when she was five or six. Her grandmother had taken her. Kristina went to the Marionette Theater to see The Magic Flute. She soon “graduated” to other performances.
In the course of our conversation, I bring up the subject of fundraising—fundraising and sponsorship. I recount a conversation I had with Beverly Sills, years ago. (Sills, to remind you, was a soprano, and one of the most famous opera singers in the world. In fact, she was a celebrity, certainly in America. After her retirement from singing, she served as an arts administrator.)
“I raised $100 million for the March of Dimes,” she told me. (I might mention that both of Sills’s children were severely handicapped.) Back then, a hundred mil meant something, trust me. “Medical causes do better than music,” she continued. “If you have some disease to cure, you’re not going to want to fork over millions for another production of La bohème.”
But! “But I say in all my speeches, ‘Art is the signature of civilization.’” And Sills was successful in raising money for the arts, as she was in her sundry other endeavors.
I have typed enough. You will want to hear Kristina Hammer. Unfortunately, my technology was imperfect. She is softer in volume than I would like. (I am loud as ever, I’m sorry to say. Booming.) But she is plenty audible and well worth it.
This episode concludes my series from the Salzburg Festival. Q&A will resume with other guests, in other sectors, shortly.
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Julian Prégardien is a tenor from Germany—despite his French-looking name. On his father’s side, he is Belgian, Italian, and Dutch. “A true European,” he says, a real mixture. One of his ancestors is Sweelinck, an important composer in pre-Bach days.
I talked with Prégardien at the Salzburg Festival, while conducting interviews for the Salzburg Festival Society. He was singing Mozart at the festival. And in this sit-down, I open with a question about Mozart.
Prégardien is fascinating on this composer, as on several others. I will paraphrase:
I think the challenge that comes with singing Mozart is that you better follow his idea and not exaggerate your own idea about what is in the music. Mozart is something that lies perfectly between subjectivity and objectivity of expression. To serve Mozart is quite a challenge: vocally, mentally, artistically, and as a human being.
Mozart can never be about you. It has to be about the composer and his ideas.
Prégardien is a leading Don Ottavio, a character in Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni, and many people think that Ottavio is a thankless part (despite two great arias). Ottavio is thought of as weak and bland.
Comments Julian Prégardien:
I would say the image of Don Ottavio reveals a problem of our modern society, because to say that a supportive man is weak is something we should have overcome in the 21st century.
Don Giovanni should not be adored, because he’s the bad guy. Don Ottavio’s the good guy. He is husband material.
Mozart and Da Ponte [his librettist] are holding up a mirror to society. They are saying, “I bet you like Don Giovanni more than you do Don Ottavio. You better think about that.”
Prégardien grew up in Limburg, a medieval town in Hesse. Limburg was spared bombing in World War II. Prégardien owns an apartment in a house built in the 15th century.
He was part of the boys’ choir in town, a choir co-founded by his grandfather. Interesting man, his grandfather. Owing to an accident, he had a wooden leg. He sold walking sticks. He met a woman who sold umbrellas and walking sticks, and she became his wife, Julian’s grandmother.
They had a son Christoph, Julian’s father—one of the greatest lyric tenors of our time.
Did Christoph teach Julian? He had the good sense to let the boy go his own way. Naturally, Christoph was an influence on Julian. He “idolized” his father, he tells us, and still does. But Julian is not a carbon copy. Each singer is his own man.
By the way, father and son don’t argue about who has the more beautiful voice. They agree: Christoph’s father, and Julian’s grandfather, had the most beautiful tenor voice of them all.
I ask Julian, “Did you listen to any pop singers growing up?” Oh, yes, many. He names some German singers, including Herbert Grönemeyer. There was also the Kelly Family. And boy bands, including NSYNC, Caught in the Act, and the Backstreet Boys. Prégardien also mentions Nirvana and Kurt Cobain.
A special treat is that the tenor sings a line or two of a few songs. Pop singers are lucky that Prégardien doesn’t encroach on their territory, professionally.
As he is moving on the subject of Mozart, he is moving—very moving—on the subject of Bach. He has sung Bach his entire life. He and Bach have been constant companions.
Prégardien says,
He is a miracle. He was a giver all of his life. It was never about him. He signed most of his music “Soli Deo gloria” [Glory to God alone]. The buildings that he can construct with his music are both human and divine.
We also talk about Schubert. And the fortunes and fashions of the music industry. At the end, I ask him to give me some of his favorite singers. He names quite an assortment.
Andreas Scholl, the countertenor. Thomas Hampson, the baritone. Bryn Terfel, the bass-baritone. (His Rodgers & Hammerstein album!) The sopranos Pia Davila, Sabine Devieilhe, Dorothee Mields, and Jeanine De Bique. And Frank Sinatra and Amy Winehouse.
And his father, Christoph.
On all of these people, and on our various subjects, Julian Prégardien is thoughtful and interesting. One can learn a lot from him. And simply enjoy him. I’ll stop typing now and let you listen.
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Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen is an American countertenor—a singer from Brooklyn, N.Y. How do you pronounce that first name? As he explained to me, think of three letters: R-E-A. “Ar-ee-é” (with the stress on the first syllable.) And his last name is not “Cohen” but “Nussbaum Cohen.” Delightful guy. Excellent conversationalist. I have sat down with him at the Salzburg Festival.
I begin by asking—for all our sakes—“What’s a countertenor?” I will give his answer in slight paraphrase:
In classical music, a countertenor is still a bit of a rarity, but in pop music, it’s something we’re completely used to. It’s just a man singing in a range we traditionally associate with a woman. A range that is sometimes called “falsetto.” In pop music, you’re used to hearing the Bee Gees or Michael Jackson. Lots of male pop stars sing high like that.
How did Aryeh get launched, so to speak? If I have understood correctly, he was ten, and he attended the birthday party of a fellow ten-year-old—Elias. The party was American Idol-themed. There was a karaoke machine. And Aryeh’s number was “Respect,” the Aretha Franklin hit. He really let ’er rip.
And Elias’s mother, Frances, was amazed. “That’s a voice,” she said. She urged Aryeh’s parents to do something about it. She badgered them at school pickups and synagogue. Finally, they said, “Okay, okay,” and put him in a children’s choir.
That choir was not run-of-the-mill. They sang backup for—get this—Billy Joel, James Taylor, Sting, and Elton John. “I joke that I peaked at 13,” says Aryeh.
He also sang as a cantor. So did Richard Tucker and Jan Peerce (Rubin Ticker and Jacob Pincus Perelmuth), who became world-famous tenors.
Aryeh went to LaGuardia High School, a.k.a. the Fame school. Fellow students at the time included Ansel Elgort and Timothée Chalamet. He then went to Princeton, planning to go into law and politics. But something happened: he saw an opera (La bohème at the Met, in the Zeffirelli production). He thought, I want that.
He got it (though maybe not La bohème, which is not countertenor-friendly).
Near the end of our conversation, I ask him about his favorite singers. He names Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, the late mezzo-soprano. So did Fleur Barron, on an earlier Q&A. Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen goes on to name some rockers, pop artists, et al.
Crosby, Stills & Nash. Dylan. The Punch Brothers, with Chris Thile. Andrew Bird. Lake Street Dive. Brandi Carlile.
Aryeh and his wife have a four-month-old, Eli, who’s already bouncing around to Beyoncé.
I greatly enjoyed talking with ANC—not “African National Congress” but “Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen”—and I believe you will enjoy him too.
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Rainer Honeck occupies an interesting, and important, perch: he is a concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic. I have sat down with him at the Salzburg Festival, in a series of conversations hosted by the Salzburg Festival Society. It was a privilege to talk with Mr. Honeck. He rarely gives interviews. He lets his violin do the talking. He also claims he is not very good in English—but he can certainly express himself, as you will hear.
Mr. Honeck is a native Austrian, a member of a distinguished musical family. (His brother Manfred is the conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.) The Honecks are distinguished, yes, but they were not born with silver spoons in their mouths. Far from it. They are musical “Horatio Algers,” I would say. They were privileged in the following respect: their father loved music, and immersed his children in it. (The Honecks’ mother died early on.)
The first question I ask Rainer Honeck is a basic one: What does a concertmaster do? The first thing he says is: Well, you have to be a good player. At least as good as the ones sitting behind you. Otherwise, you have problems.
I would think.
Over the years, I have talked with many violinists, and I usually ask, “Did you have models growing up? Violinists you especially admired and prized?” Often, they name Oistrakh or Heifetz (or both). (Younger ones tend to name Anne-Sophie Mutter.) Honeck says “Arthur Grumiaux,” the Belgian. Grumiaux was from a working-class family, but he was an aristocrat of the violin, an exemplar of taste.
I might note here that Rainer Honeck is a soloist and a chamber-music player, in addition to a concertmaster. He is a conductor, to boot.
What other questions? Well, Honeck plays a Stradivarius—does the quality of an instrument matter? Yes, all other things being equal. But the quality of the player is what really counts.
The Vienna Philharmonic is one mighty orchestra in the German-speaking world—and the world at large—and the Berlin Philharmonic is another. They are the big kahunas, you could say. What is the difference between their sounds?
Honeck says that the Vienna Phil is a “team-player orchestra.” They listen closely to one another, achieving unity. This comes, in part, from playing in the opera. (The Vienna Phil is the “pit band” for the Vienna State Opera, as well as a concert orchestra.) The Berlin Phil? They strive for unity too, of course—but they are also an orchestra of brilliant soloists.
Naturally, I ask Mr. Honeck about conductors he has worked under. He has very interesting things to say about Carlos Kleiber, Herbert von Karajan, and Leonard Bernstein, among others.
He has a lot to impart, and now I should stop typing and let you listen to Honeck himself. A rich musical resource.
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Fleur Barron is a very interesting singer, and an exceptionally versatile one. This summer, she is making her debut at the Salzburg Festival, where I sat down and talked with her. She is singing Mahler—a composer she has been singing a lot lately.
Where is she from? Well, her bio tells us this: “Born in Northern Ireland to a Singaporean mother and British father, Ms. Barron grew up in Hong Kong and later New York.” Her father was Brian Barron, a war correspondent for the BBC.
Fleur went to Columbia University, where she majored in comp lit. Her studies in college were broad. (She was versatile even then.) In her freshman year, she was thinking of a double major in math and medieval studies. (That is a mighty combo, in my book.)
Go back a little. When Fleur was a schoolgirl, she was cast in Aladdin—as Aladdin. She wanted to be Jasmine, as any girl would. But they cast her as Aladdin, owing to her relatively low voice. (Ms. Barron is a mezzo-soprano.)
My observation: Shouldn’t Fleur Barron get the title role, whatever it is?
In our podcast, I ask her about her life and career, and about music and the music industry. What is the future of classical music? That is a standard question, but not a bad one. In all of these matters, Fleur is wonderfully articulate, and you will enjoy spending time with her.
A very impressive young woman, and “a real individual,” too. (That was one of my grandmother’s highest terms of praise: “a real individual,” someone who doesn’t come out of a cookie cutter.)
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Gilberto Morbach is one of the most impressive young intellectuals I know. He is a scholar of legal philosophy and related fields. He is interested in, and devoted to, the rule of law, above all. He is a Brazilian, and I have consulted him in the past about the politics—the turbulent and complicated politics—of his country.
At the outset of our podcast, I ask him about his intellectual formation. He is an admirer of John Locke and Adam Smith. He also mentions Dostoevsky and Camus as influences.
He mentions a book, too, one that I am keen to read: Liberalism, Old and New, by José Guilherme Merquior (1941–91), a versatile Brazilian writer and intellectual.
For the last many years, Brazilian politics has been dominated by two big figures—two flaming populists, one of the Left, one of the Right: Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro. Gilberto Morbach gives us reads on both of those men.
President Trump has just socked Brazil with big tariffs. Why? Well, we all know that Trump does not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. He says so when he goes to visit Middle Eastern dictatorships. Yet he says that Brazil deserves to be punished with tariffs because the authorities there are persecuting Bolsonaro—who stands accused of planning a coup d’état.
Is Trump right? (No.)
How ought Bolsonaro to be characterized? Fashy? How about Lula? Commie? Dr. Morbach answers these questions, and all others, with knowledge and care.
For decades now, there has been a joke, and it must be a painful one to Brazilians. It goes something like this: “Brazil is the country of the future—a future that never seems to occur.” Back in the early 1940s, Stefan Zweig, the great Viennese writer, who had sought exile there, wrote a book called “Brazil, Land of the Future.” At the end of our conversation, Dr. Morbach deals with that question.
You will very much enjoy listening to him, I know.
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Seventeen times, Dottie Pepper won on the LPGA Tour. That includes two majors. In the years since, she has been a voice of golf: in particular, an on-course reporter for CBS Sports. With Jay, she talks about her life and this game that enchants, frustrates, and engrosses so many.
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Waad al-Kateab is a Syrian journalist, filmmaker, and activist, in exile. Jay did a “Q&A” with her in 2021. And then wrote a piece about her, “Witness from Syria.” Last month, the House of Assad fell, after about 55 years. Jay has spoken with Waad al-Kateab again. A moving and informative conversation.
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Jay has frequent opportunity to talk with Ramesh Ponnuru and Richard Brookhiser, two of his colleagues at National Review. He figured: why not have a talk with them on the air? He has done that—about politics, the media, conservatism, presidents, America, and more. Join them.
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David Frum was born and raised in Toronto, the son of prominent Canadians. He has since become a prominent U.S. writer, and a U.S. citizen. Nevertheless, there is hardly anyone more knowledgeable about Canada: its history, its politics, its cultures—its spirituality, if you will. With Jay, he discusses Justin Trudeau, Pierre Trudeau, relations with the USA, and so on. Fascinating. (Really.)
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Ivana Stradner is an analyst of international relations. She is affiliated with the School of Advanced International Studies, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and other institutions. She was once a Jeane Kirkpatrick fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Serbian-born, she is an admirer of Ronald Reagan and an advocate of freedom and democracy—one with clear, properly cold eyes. With Jay, she discusses her life and some of the pivotal issues of our time.
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Mark L. Clifford has written a biography: “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic.” Jimmy Lai is a political prisoner. Mr. Clifford has known and worked with him for many years. With Jay, Mr. Clifford discusses this extraordinary man. His release is wished for, prayed for, by freedom-lovers around the world.
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Nury A. Turkel is a Uyghur-American lawyer and human-rights activist. Jay did a “Q&A” with him in 2018—when the world was first learning about the mass persecution of the Uyghurs. In 2022, Mr. Turkel published a book: “No Escape: The True Story of China’s Genocide of the Uyghurs.” Last week, he had the best Thanksgiving ever: his mother, whom he hadn’t seen in 20 years, was released from China in a swap between Beijing and Washington. She has now met four of her grandchildren for the first time. With Jay, Nury Turkel talks about his family and the Uyghur people more broadly. An informative and moving conversation.
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Joshua Roman is a cellist, a superb musician. Lately, he has been engaged in something called “the Immunity Project.” About four years ago, Roman contracted long COVID, which turned his life upside down. He is an example of resiliency and good cheer—an inspiration. He and Jay talk about the heart of things.
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The baseball season just past—Shohei & Co. The college football season in swing—too much professionalization? The NFL season (why are the Jets perpetually woeful?). The NBA season—amazing, that LeBron. The Big Three in tennis, and their departure from the scene. Finally, travel sports, and what this new reality in American life is doing to our youth. These are the topics of this “Q&A”-cum-sportscast, with Jay’s regular gurus David French and Vivek Dave.
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Ron Blum is a correspondent for the Associated Press. He writes and reports on baseball. And opera. He is encyclopedic in each field. A pleasure to converse with.
Bernard-Henri Lévy, the French philosopher, writer, and activist, has been going to Israel his whole life, virtually. He went on October 8, 2023, the day after the attack. His new book is “Israel Alone.” With Jay, he discusses various aspects of this war. Also Russia’s war on Ukraine. And the connectedness of things. A meaty and clarifying discussion.
Natan Sharansky began life as Anatoly Shcharansky. He was a dissident and refusenik in the Soviet Union. For nine years, he was a prisoner in the Gulag. He then made his life in Israel: as a writer, a politician, a human-rights activist, and so on. With Jay, he talks about the war in which Israel is engulfed. And the Ukraine war. And the consequences of all this for the world. He also talks about the prisoner swap between the West and Russia last summer. He himself was part of such a swap, in 1986. A conversation with Natan Sharansky is always a privilege.
We are in a general-election season and a baseball post-season. Prime time for George F. Will. He and Jay have a wide-ranging conversation. Whom would Will appoint as president, if he could? Is Shohei Ohtani a unicorn? Who is Will’s favorite player? What of immigration? What of transgenderism? What of . . .? There is no better conversationalist than George F. Will.
As Jay says in his introduction, Jonathan Martin, a.k.a. J-Mart, is one of the best political reporters in America. He writes a column for Politico and pops up regularly on television. With Jay, he talks about his life and career—and the very serious game of American politics and democracy.
Cornel West and Robert P. George are two famous intellectuals, who are famously friends. One is on the left, the other the right. They have a book coming out: “Truth Matters: A Dialogue on Fruitful Disagreement in an Age of Division.” Jay talks with them about their friendship, their views, their personal experiences, their heroes—a range of issues. One can learn a lot from this pair.
In this episode, Jay talks with two young colleagues of his: Kayla Bartsch and Haley Strack, who are William F. Buckley Jr. fellows at National Review. In a wide-ranging conversation, they talk about growing up, influences, conservatism, pronouns (as in “What are . . .”), music, and other interesting things. A relaxed yet meaty confab.
Manfred Honeck is one of the leading conductors in the world—and one of Jay’s favorite musical guests. Maestro Honeck is the music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. He comes from Austria, where he played in the Vienna Philharmonic. He and Jay sat down last month in Austria—before an audience of the Salzburg Festival Society. You can learn a lot from this man, Honeck.
Kate Lindsey is a mezzo-soprano, from Richmond, Virginia. She is now based in the U.K. She is a versatile singer, singing opera roles and songs. A brainy singer, too. And a wonderful talker, about all aspects of her art and business. Jay spoke with her before an audience of the Salzburg Festival Society. It is a pleasure to listen to Kate Lindsey—when she is singing, of course, but also in conversation.
Ausrine Stundyte is an opera star—a soprano from Lithuania. As Jay says in his introduction, “She is a phenomenal singer, and a phenomenal singing actress. She also has interesting things to say.” About singing and opera, yes. But about other things, too: such as emerging from Communism when she was about 14. Jay spoke with Stundyte before an audience at the Salzburg Festival last month. Enjoy.
Kathryn Lewek is an American soprano, who, this summer, has been singing at the Salzburg Festival. That’s where Jay caught up with her. They talk about her life, and voice, and other interesting things. “Katie” is especially known for portraying the Queen of the Night, in Mozart’s “Magic Flute.” Mozart “is my sugar daddy,” she says. “He’s given me everything I’ve got. He bought my car, he bought my house. He feeds my kids . . .” A delightful woman, and a brilliant singer, Kathryn Lewek.
Maestro Riccardo Muti is a fixture at the Salzburg Festival. This year, he conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony. Between rehearsals and performances, he sat down with Jay to discuss a variety of matters—musical and even social. What constitutes harmony in society? And what can music teach us about how to live together? A session with Muti is informative, enriching—and, not least, fun.
Ilya Somin is a law prof and all-around intellectual. He is of a libertarian bent. He teaches at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. He began life in the Soviet Union. He was but six when his family immigrated to America. He read Robert Nozick, and Tolkien, and others. He went to Amherst, Harvard, and Yale. He is a Boston sports fan. With Jay, he talks about life, the law, and the American experiment. A formidable mind, a formidable teacher.
Rosa María Payá is a democracy activist. So was her father, Oswaldo—killed by the Cuban regime in 2012. With Jay, Rosa María talks about political prisoners, the Castros, the alliance between Havana and Moscow, the alliance between Havana and Beijing, the nature of democracy, and more. She is a brave, poised woman, with a touch of nobility about her, or more than a touch. Her father would beam.
For The Atlantic, Eliot A. Cohen has written a piece called “Farewell to Academe.” The subtitle is: “I leave with doubts and foreboding that I would not have anticipated when I completed my formal education in 1982.” With Jay, he talks about this. They also talk about Israel and Ukraine. About U.S. politics. About the life of the mind, including poetry (Dylan Thomas, Edwin Arlington Robinson). A wide-ranging, personal, and informative conversation.
Anastasia Shevchenko was a civil-society leader in Russia. She was the first person prosecuted under the Kremlin’s notorious law concerning “undesirable organizations.” She fled Russia in the summer of 2022 and continues to work for human rights in her native country from abroad. Earlier this month, she was a guest, by video hook-up, of the Oslo Freedom Forum. In this “Q&A,” Jay talks with Mrs. Shevchenko about the Soviet Union, Putin, Ukraine—many things. An encounter with Anastasia Shevchenko is a pleasure and an inspiration.
Christian Schneider is a writer and podcaster. With Scot Bertram, he hosts a podcast about “Saturday Night Live.” Jay talks with him about “SNL,” about politics, about politics and “SNL,” etc.
Adrian Karatnycky is a New Yorker with Ukrainian-Polish heritage. For eleven years, he was president of Freedom House. Today he is with the Atlantic Council and other organizations. He was a student of Ukraine—and the general neighborhood—long before most people thought of Ukraine. He has now written a history: “Battleground Ukraine: From Independence to the War with Russia.” With Jay, Karatnycky talks about some of the basics. A deeply knowledgeable man about a crucial set of issues.
Carlos Fernando Chamorro is one of the most important journalists in all of Latin America. He is a Nicaraguan—though the dictatorship has stripped him of his citizenship. He now works in exile, in Costa Rica. He is the son of Pedro Joaquín and Violeta Chamorro. His father was the editor of La Prensa, the newspaper that opposed the Somoza dictatorship. He was assassinated in 1978. His mother was elected president of Nicaragua in 1990. Carlos Fernando was involved with the Sandinista movement for some years. Like so many others, he turned into an opponent. They have hounded him out of the country. Yet he is still on their tail. With Jay, he discusses family, Nicaragua, and politics in general.
Across the globe, Paul Rusesabagina is known as “the hotel manager.” In 2004, Don Cheadle portrayed Rusesabagina in the movie “Hotel Rwanda.” (Cheadle won an Academy Award for the portrayal.) In 1994, Rusesabagina was the general manager of a hotel in Kigali. In that capacity, he saved 1,268 refugees from murder—from the genocide. In 2005, George W. Bush bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Rusesabagina. But the hotel manager’s troubles were not ended. In 2020, he was kidnapped, imprisoned, and tortured by the Rwandan dictatorship for two years and seven months. Jay has sat down with Rusesabagina at the Oslo Freedom Forum, asking about his life, and life more generally.
Richard Brookhiser has written many books about the American Revolution and the Founding Fathers. He got interested when he went to college—to Yale, where he saw John Trumbull’s paintings. Now he has written a biography of the artist. A wonderful student and explainer and depicter, Brookhiser is.
Illia Ponomarenko is one of the leading war reporters and defense analysts in Ukraine. He himself is Ukrainian—from the east of the country. He went to college in Mariupol, which has now been bludgeoned and taken over by Putin’s forces. Ponomarenko has come out with a book, mid-war: “I Will Show You How It Was: The Story of Wartime Kyiv.” Jay talks with him about issues that gnaw at a great many.
Mohamad Jebara grew up in Ottawa, Canada, the son of Lebanese immigrants. He, and they, were “cultural Muslims.” But he soon became a scholar of Islam, and a philologist. He is a man of formidable learning, and he has a gift for imparting what he knows to a general audience. From ages ten to twelve, he memorized the Koran. It is still there, in his head. He practices while driving or working out. His new book is “The Life of the Qu’ran.” Jay asks him some basic questions, questions to which many may like to know the answers. An interesting and illuminating confab.
Simone Sepe and Saura Masconale teach at the University of Arizona. He is in the law school; she is in the Department of Political Economy and Moral Science. They are both associated with the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom. He is from Rome, she is from Verona. They are married, with three excellent children. Jay talks with them about their interests (and his).
Vernon L. Smith is one of the leading economists of our time. He was born in Wichita, on January 1, 1927. In 2002, he shared the Nobel Memorial Prize with Daniel Kahneman. Professor Smith has taught at many universities. He is a classical liberal, in the mold of a Smith of yore: Adam. With Jay, he talks about his life, his findings, and freedom—glorious, precious freedom.
Robert Mundheim is a leading professor of law, who has also worked in the private sector and in government. (He worked on the Iran hostage crisis, in particular.) He started out in Germany in 1933. His wife, Guna Mundheim, is an artist, who started out in Riga in 1936. They have much to impart, in this wide-ranging conversation.
Stephen Richer has been at the center of election controversies in Arizona. He is the recorder of Maricopa County. Donald Trump defamed him. So did Kari Lake. So have many others. Lake, he actually sued. She capitulated. Richer is a conservative Republican who has had a fascinating journey in our democracy—too fascinating for comfort. With Jay, he has a frank, engrossing conversation.
Peter Pomerantsev is an authority on propaganda—and counter-propaganda. He is a Soviet-born British writer and teacher. His latest book is “How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler.” That propagandist was Sefton Delmer, a fascinating personality. World War II offers parallels to our own day, of course. Pomerantsev is a master of a slippery and critical subject.
Howard G. Buffett is, among other things, the head of the foundation that bears his name. He has been “many, many things in life,” as Jay says: “businessman, farmer, politician, lawman, conservationist, anti-poverty activist, author, philanthropist,” and more. To date, Buffett has donated more than $500 million to Ukraine. He and Jay discuss that, plus a range of other issues: law enforcement, drug policy, poverty alleviation, conservation—and growing up as Warren’s son. A superb conversationalist, Howard Buffett is.
Michael Lockshin is a film director, who grew up in both the United States and Russia. (Actually, he grew up in the Soviet Union, too.) He has made a magnificent movie: “The Master and Margarita,” based on Bulgakov’s classic novel. It is a sensation in Russia. It has been denounced by the authorities, for hitting too close to home: for depicting the struggle of artists against dictatorship. With Jay, Lockshin talks about literature, movies, identity, and Russia today.
Carl Gershman was the founding president of the National Endowment for Democracy, serving in that position from 1984 to 2021. Jay talks with him about his life: starting with his boyhood in New York. Along the way, Gershman touches on Max Shachtman, Sidney Hook, Leszek Kołakowski, Pat Moynihan, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Ronald Reagan, Natan Sharansky . . . Wonderful stories, wonderful points—grave and important issues.
Patrick Chovanec, as Jay says in his introduction, is a hard man to sum up: an econ whiz; a China man; a politico (of a sort); a writer. Now he is a pilot. His new book is “Cleared for the Option: A Year Learning to Fly.” Jay talks with him about a slew of issues, relating to what Chovanec has done and learned in his life. Get to know this interesting and versatile fellow.
David Zuluaga is an intellectual, a philosopher, a management consultant, a politico—many things. He is also a friend of Jay’s. And he has been spending a lot of time on artificial intelligence: studying it, explaining it. In this “Q&A,” he discusses some fundamental issues concerning AI. He also talks some philosophy in general—a delight.
Bret Stephens is a columnist for the New York Times. Previously, he was a columnist for the Wall Street Journal. In 2013, he won the Pulitzer prize for commentary. Earlier in his life, he was the editor of the Jerusalem Post. He and Jay talk about Russia and Ukraine. And about Israel, Gaza, and antisemitism. And about the U.S. media. A rich, multilayered conversation.
Luke Coffey is an expert on foreign policy and national security. He works at the Hudson Institute. He was in the Army, serving in Afghanistan. Jay asks him about Afghanistan: Did we achieve anything in that country, in our 20 years there? Or was it all for naught? Discussion then turns to Ukraine: Is it in the U.S. interest? Why? What would be the consequences of a Putin victory over Ukraine? What do you think Americans ought to know? A blunt and bracing conversation.
Phillips O’Brien is a professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. He has had a British career. He was born and bred in Boston, however. In recent years, he has thought and written a lot about Ukraine—and he has valuable things to say about all the essential questions. For instance, who’s arming whom, and how? He and Jay go over these questions.
The latest novel by Mark Helprin is “The Oceans and the Stars.” What’s it about? Helprin gives this summation, in his conversation with Jay: “love and war.” The book is also a hymn to the U.S. Navy. Helprin and Jay talk about the writing life and life at large.
Jay hosts a sportscast, with his usual gurus, David French and Vivek Dave. How ’bout them Lions? How about Bill Belichick? And Nick Saban? NBA-wise, how about Wemby? And LeBron? And others? A wide-ranging, lively, and sometimes contentious conversation. Good stuff.
Deborah Lipstadt is a well-known scholar of modern Jewish history, antisemitism, and Holocaust denial. She has written many books. In the 1990s, she was involved in a famous trial against David Irving, the notorious English Holocaust-denier. (She won.) The case was depicted in a 2016 movie, “Denial,” in which Prof. Lipstadt was portrayed by Rachel Weisz. Today, Prof. Lipstadt works in the State Department: as the U.S. special envoy for monitoring and combating antisemitism. She has a lot to say, as you can imagine—very important things to say.
Yaroslav Trofimov is the chief foreign-affairs correspondent of the Wall Street Journal. He was that paper’s bureau chief in Afghanistan and Pakistan. His previous books have been about the Middle East and the broader Muslim world. But he was born in Ukraine—and has been covering that war, intensely. His new book is “Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine’s War of Independence.” Jay asks him about essential things.
Shai Davidai is a professor at the Columbia business school. Recently, he has been writing about the explosion of antisemitism on his campus—an explosion that is nationwide and nearly worldwide. Davidai has never experienced anything like this before; neither have many. He and Jay talk over some of the crucial issues.
Simon Kuper is a jack of many journalistic trades. He is a columnist for the Financial Times. He is a prominent soccer writer. He has written a book about George Blake, the British spy for the Soviets. He recently wrote a bracing column titled “What if Russia wins?” He has lived in many parts of the world. He has highly interesting things to say about sports and the rest. Spend a bit of time with him.
Since October 7, Aviva Klompas has provided an extraordinary service. She has brought a wealth of information about that day’s attack. And about the people held hostage by Hamas. And about instances of antisemitism around the world. She has done this mainly through Twitter, or X. She has devoted her life to combating antisemitism through education. She does not fear to deal with some of the darkest elements around us. An extraordinary person, Aviva Klompas. She and Jay discuss some of the biggest and most problematic issues.
Introducing Natan Sharansky, Jay Nordlinger calls him “the great dissident and refusenik; the Israeli politician; the Jewish leader; the human-rights activist.” In this episode of “Q&A,” Jay has Sharansky discuss October 7; the hostages; the role of Iran; the question of Russia; the position of the United States; the nature of antisemitism; and more. No one is better equipped to discuss these matters than Sharansky. A highly valuable conversation.
Sahar Tartak is an undergraduate at Yale University. She was an intern at National Review magazine last summer. She is a Jewish, pro-Israel student in a largely hostile environment. Jay asks her, “How has it been?”
George Weigel is one of America’s leading political writers and social critics. His biography of John Paul II—“Witness to Hope”—is one of the great modern biographies. With Jay, Weigel talks about his growing up in Baltimore. The conversation moves to Ukraine, Israel, and some key questions of American politics today. George Weigel is both sagacious and blunt.
Eliot A. Cohen, the scholar of international affairs, is a favorite guest of “Q&A.” He has written a new book, a Shakespeare book: “The Hollow Crown: Shakespeare on How Leaders Rise, Rule, and Fall.” Shakespeare knew . . . everything. Professor Cohen knows a great deal too. At the end of his conversation with Jay, he talks about Ukraine and Israel and the immense challenge facing us all.
Once more, Jay speaks with Haviv Rettig Gur, the Israeli journalist, about what is going on in Israel and the profound meaning of this moment.
A conversation with Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, about the economy, politics, and life.
Haviv Rettig Gur is one of the leading journalists in Israel. He is the senior analyst of the Times of Israel. He is a regular guest on “Q&A.” Listeners want to hear from him, for a deeper understanding of what is going on in Israel and in the Middle East more broadly. With Jay, he has discussed the Hamas attack and the war to come. Most illuminating.
Adam Fischer is a noted Hungarian conductor (as is his brother, Ivan). He conducted at the Salzburg Festival in August. And, in an event hosted by the Salzburg Festival Society, Jay had a conversation with him. Very interesting man, Maestro Fischer. Bright, experienced, candid. One learns from him.
Jay’s guest is Scott Lincicome of the Cato Institute. He and Cato have launched a defense of globalization, or the right of people in different nations to trade with one another. He and Jay talk about this and a host of other issues: growing up; going to school; words such as “capitalism” and “neoliberal”; economics and demagogues; the problem of China; the travails of Detroit’s “Big Three”; and more (including Lincicome’s jihad against expiration dates on food products).
Marco Armiliato is a veteran conductor from Italy. He has spent most of his career in opera, and in Italian opera in particular. He is a regular at the Met, the Vienna State Opera, and other important venues. Last month, he conducted at the Salzburg Festival, and he was a guest in the series of conversations hosted by the Salzburg Festival Society. Jay does the questioning. In the course of their talk, Armiliato says that Luciano Pavarotti, the late tenor, was full of sunshine. Just the same is true of Maestro Armiliato. He is one of the most beloved people in all of music—for reasons that will be obvious when you listen to him.
Sebastien Lai is the son of Jimmy Lai, the great Hong Kong entrepreneur and publisher who is now a political prisoner: a symbol of the general struggle of Hong Kong against the tyranny that has engulfed it. Sebastien is campaigning around the world in his father’s behalf. He has many interesting things to say: about his dad, about Hong Kong, even about some deep things in life.
Michael R. Strain is an economist at the American Enterprise Institute. Jay talks with him about his upbringing, his education, and how he arrived at his views, which favor economic freedom and freedom generally—the “open society.” What about our federal budget deficit and national debt? Is there bound to be a reckoning? Strain says that there are two kinds of reckoning: a horrendous, destructive bear, suddenly at your door; and termites, eating away at your foundations, day after day. We are in termite territory. Economics may be a “dismal science,” but not in the hands, and in the conversation, of Mike Strain.
In this conversation, Jay asks George Will about issues that both have been thinking about: the GOP presidential race; Ukraine; our fiscal house (wobbly); abortion; affirmative action; drug legalization. What else? Well, baseball, and Shohei Ohtani in particular. And books—books that left a political mark. And Jim Buckley, who passed away last week at 100. In 1976, he and Pat Moynihan ran against each other for a U.S. Senate seat. George Will tells a wonderful story about that. All in all, a refreshing and invigorating half-hour.
Lea Desandre is an Italian-French mezzo-soprano and one of the brightest lights in singing today. She trained, for years, as a dancer. But music proved to be her calling. With Jay, she talks about her voice, her upbringing, Julie Andrews (yes), “The Little Prince,” and “life its ownself.” A visit with this young woman, you will find, is enchanting.
Adriana González is a star of the Salzburg Festival this year. She is a soprano from Guatemala—an unusual place for a classical musician to be from. Sitting on a terrace in Salzburg, Jay talks with her about her life and art. Adriana is a breath of fresh air.
Issue upon issue: climate; “Barbenheimer”; political labels; conspiracy theories; transgenderism; Ukraine; books . . . Like many other people, Kevin D. Williamson and Jay are thinking about these issues, and jaw about them. A candid and probing discussion.
Sardar Pashaei is an Iranian-American athlete and democracy activist. He comes from a family of dissidents. Also a family of athletes. He and his brothers were wrestlers. One of them, Saman, is in prison. Sardar was World Youth Champion in 1998. (Also Asian Youth Champion.) His government denied him the right to compete in the Olympic Games. He has been in America since 2009. An extraordinary man.
Frederica von Stade—“Flicka,” universally—is one of the outstanding singers of our age. She is an American mezzo-soprano. With Jay, she talks about music and life. She even does a little singing, as a bonus. Get to know this remarkable person.
Earlier, Jay spoke with Perry Link about Liu Xiaobo, the great Chinese democracy leader, of whom he has co-authored a biography. For that episode, go here. In the present episode, Jay speaks with Professor Link about being a China scholar—the language, the political pitfalls, and so on. As Jay says in his introduction, it is “a joy” to listen to Perry Link—“a joy and an education.”
Liu Xiaobo was one of the great men of our age. He was a Chinese intellectual and democracy leader. In 2010, while in prison, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He died, still a prisoner, in 2017. Perry Link and Wu Dazhi have written a new biography: “I Have No Enemies: The Life and Legacy of Liu Xiaobo.” Jay talks with Professor Link, who is very interesting on this subject, as on so many others.
Kyle Parker, of the U.S. Helsinki Commission, is a fount of knowledge. He was key in the formation of the U.S. Magnitsky Act. That got him placed on Putin’s Most Wanted list. He was a guest on “Q&A” in 2018. When it comes to the Ukraine war, he not only has facts, he has perspective. To listen to him is an education and a pleasure, even when the subject is grim. Utterly authoritative, Kyle Parker is.
Sanaa Seif is a young woman from Egypt. She is a democracy campaigner. A human-rights campaigner. Egypt has about 60,000 political prisoners. One of them is Sanaa’s brother, Alaa. Sanaa herself has been in prison three times. She is very gentle, very soft-spoken—but obviously made of steel. Meet this extraordinary and compelling young woman.
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Nazanin Boniadi is a British actress who has been seen in many movies and television shows. Among the former, “Hotel Mumbai.” Among the latter, “How I Met Your Mother.” For Jay’s purposes, however, she is a splendid advocate for human rights in the country of her birth: Iran. What she has to say is both informed and moving.
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A sportscast, with Jay’s gurus David French and Vivek Dave. They begin with the new marriage between the Saudis and the PGA Tour. And then they get to basketball — the NBA in particular. Have a listen to two affable and knowledgeable fellows (plus Jay).
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Riccardo Muti is one of the most renowned musicians before the public today. Born in 1941, he has conducted in Milan, Vienna, London, Philadelphia—many places. Since 2010, he has been the music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He is leaving that position at the end of this season, which is nearing. After a recent concert, Jay sat with the maestro in his studio to talk about music, and life. A rich, interesting, frank, amusing, and sometimes poignant conversation. Lend an ear.
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Bob McElroy is a powerful individual. He thinks, speaks, and acts powerfully. He has devoted his life to helping the homeless. He has been through all the problems they have. McElroy is the president and CEO of the Alpha Project, in San Diego. He is a “point of light”—so designated by Bush 41’s foundation. Jay wrote about McElroy in a piece on San Diego and homelessness. Homelessness is a problem—a scourge—throughout the country. Bob McElroy knows the why and wherefores. And he speaks with refreshing frankness. You will enjoy hearing him.
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Natan Sharansky has been a world hero since the 1970s. He was a prisoner in the Soviet gulag for nine years. Afterward, he wrote one of the great prison memoirs: “Fear No Evil.” On May 8, he published an op-ed piece in the Washington Post: “Why Putin’s repression is worse than what I endured under the Soviets.” With Jay, he talks about the Kremlin’s current political prisoners, and the war on Ukraine, and related subjects. To listen to Sharansky is a bracing and instructive experience.
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In journalism, Cathy Young is “an MVP of this era,” says Jay: “the era of the Ukraine war, and associated convulsions in the world.” Cathy Young is a writer at The Bulwark, in addition to contributing to Newsday, Reason, etc. She has been a columnist for many years. Born in Moscow, she grew up in the Soviet Union, coming to America at 17. With Jay, she talks about Russia, Ukraine, and America—and a bit more, including literature, music, and animals.
Daniel Johnson is a British writer and editor, now at The Article, of which he is the founding editor. With Jay, he talks about his father, Paul, the great journalist and historian. (For Jay’s appreciation of Paul Johnson, go here.) What a great subject Paul Johnson is. And Daniel knows that subject exceptionally well.
John Engler was the governor of Michigan (Jay’s home state) for three terms: from 1991 to 2003. So, on this program, you have two Michiganders, talking about things Michigan and things national. The Republican Party, past and present. The Democrats, past and present. The media, presidents, abortion, American culture—Engler has a wealth of information, and a wealth of highly informed opinions. At the end, there is some talk of Detroit sports, which is not a happy subject of any Michigander, but about which there is always hope.
When something big happens in Israel, or to Israel, Jay and his listeners want to hear from Haviv Rettig Gur, the senior analyst of the Times of Israel. He knows the ins and outs, the views of the various parties and factions. He is an Israel-explainer par excellence. At the moment, Israeli society is being torn apart. A (rare) domestic crisis is upon the country. What must its external enemies think? In any event, the crisis needs explaining—and HRG is the man to do it.
Across China, brave people are staging protests. Talking with Jay about this is Jianli Yang, a veteran Chinese democracy activist. He was at Tiananmen Square, in 1989. He was a political prisoner. He is a scholar, a poet—many things. Jay has admired him since they first met in 2001, and Jianli Yang has important, and informed, things to say, always.
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Betsy DeVos has been an education reformer—and philanthropist—for some 35 years. In the Trump administration, she was education secretary. She has written a book that is part personal memoir, part policy book: “Hostages No More: The Fight for Education Freedom and the Future of the American Child.” From Jay, she fields some questions general and specific: “What is ‘education freedom’?
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Jamie Fly is the president of RFE/RL, that combination of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. RFE/RL is especially critical these days, when the Kremlin is waging its war on Ukraine, and its usual disinformation war. Questioned by Jay, Jamie Fly goes through some of the basics. A very important arena, we’re talking about.
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Bibi’s back, and so, on “Q&A,” is Haviv Rettig Gur. He is a favorite guest of this program. He is an Israel explainer par excellence. HRG is the senior analyst of the Times of Israel. With Jay, he talks about the return of Benjamin Netanyahu to power. About the nature of politics in Israel: tribal. About Iran, Ukraine, and other things—including Kanye and Kyrie.
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As usual, Jay has some questions for George F. Will: What do you think about the midterms? Is Biden all there? What is the importance of Ukraine? How do you deal with the terms “liberal” and “conservative”? What about the F-word, “fascism”? What was Johnny Carson like? How about David Letterman? Have you ever been starstruck? Is Shohei Ohtani like Babe Ruth? There are more questions where those...
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The sports world has some hot issues — and Jay calls on David French and Vivek Dave to discuss them. In the NFL, the fate of Tua Tagovailoa. And the fate of Tom Brady. In the NBA, the punch thrown by Draymond Green. Also: Is LeBron finished? In college football, the SEC vs. the Big Ten. Etc. Yes, a wide world of sports, and a cracking conversation.
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Stephen Gutowski is one of the leading gun journalists in the country. He is the founder of The Reload, a news site. He is an analyst for CNN. If he doesn’t know it—and it concerns guns—it is probably not known. In this podcast, Gutowski teaches Jay a few terms, including “Fudd” and “tacticool.”...
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Oleksandra Matviichuk is a Ukrainian human-rights lawyer, the head of the Center for Civil Liberties, in Ukraine. The center has just been announced as a recipient of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Jay spoke with her when she traveled to New York, for a session of the Oslo Freedom Forum. They talk about her life and work. Her work takes a toll, but it is urgently important.
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Berta Valle is the wife of Felix Maradiaga, a Nicaraguan political prisoner. He was a presidential candidate last year, arrested along with other candidates by the country’s dictator, Daniel Ortega. Maradiaga is one of Jay’s favorite people. Jay did a “Q&A” with him in 2019 (here). Berta Valle is an outstanding person herself, doing all she can to help her husband. This conversation with Jay is...
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“Columny” was William Safire’s word for the craft of column-writing (he also called it “the column dodge”). Steve Chapman has been an outstanding columnist for more than 40 years—mainly with the Chicago Tribune. He has now retired. Bill Buckley published the first piece that Chapman ever got paid for. Chapman thought about leaving the check uncashed—maybe he should have it framed?
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David Pryce-Jones met the King—George VI—when he was six or so. Later, when he was 16, he observed the King’s funeral procession. The crown fell off the coffin, right in front of him. Two years later, he placed a bet on a horse for the Queen—she had handed him a five-pound note and asked him to do it. David Pryce-Jones is a writer: a journalist, a historian, a biographer, a novelist, a memoirist.
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Daniel Hannan is a frequent and prized guest on “Q&A.” He is a writer, a politician—a member of the House of Lords. He has just been in Odessa. He talks with Jay about Ukraine. Then they talk about the late Queen, and some British politics. A conversation with Dan Hannan is an education and a pleasure.
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Masih Alinejad is a U.S. citizen from Iran. She is a journalist, a democracy activist, and a human-rights activist. Jay wrote about her last year: “A Free Spirit.” In that year, 2021, she was the target of a kidnapping plot by the Iranian dictatorship. In recent weeks, she has been the target of a murder plot. She is unable to live at home, in New York. But she is as outspoken as ever—a free...
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Masih Alinejad is a U.S. citizen from Iran. She is a journalist, a democracy activist, and a human-rights activist. Jay wrote about her last year: “A Free Spirit.” In that year, 2021, she was the target of a kidnapping plot by the Iranian dictatorship. In recent weeks, she has been the target of a murder plot. She is unable to live at home, in New York. But she is as outspoken as ever—a free...
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Recently, John Bolton was the target of a murder plot by Iran. He now has Secret Service protection. He and Jay talk about Iran. Also Ukraine, Taiwan, South Korea, the GOP, and the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago. As usual, Bolton is interesting, informed, and frank.
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Harvey Mansfield is one of the most celebrated and valued teachers in America. He is a professor of government at Harvard—and has been so since 1962. This year, some of his students and admirers held a conference called “Harvey Mansfield at 90.” With Jay, Professor Mansfield discusses some of his career-long concerns: Aristotle, Machiavelli, Tocqueville . . . He also answers, “What is democracy?
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Harvey Mansfield is one of the most celebrated and valued teachers in America. He is a professor of government at Harvard—and has been so since 1962. This year, some of his students and admirers held a conference called “Harvey Mansfield at 90.” With Jay, Professor Mansfield discusses some of his career-long concerns: Aristotle, Machiavelli, Tocqueville . . . He also answers, “What is democracy?
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Kim Holmes is a veteran foreign-policy hand. For many years, he was at the Heritage Foundation. He was also an assistant secretary of state. Today, he is, among other things, vice chairman of the Center for International Private Enterprise. With Jay, he talks about the War on Terror (ongoing). And, of course, the Ukraine war. And China and Taiwan. He also talks about American conservatism: Are...
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Hillel Neuer is the executive director of UN Watch. Like no one else, he keeps an eye on the United Nations, particularly when it comes to human rights. If you care about what the U.N. does with human rights—and usually they do appalling things—then Neuer is your man: your man in Geneva. He is also a broadly thoughtful and experienced man, and Jay asks him some essential questions about his life...
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Hillel Neuer is the executive director of UN Watch. Like no one else, he keeps an eye on the United Nations, particularly when it comes to human rights. If you care about what the U.N. does with human rights—and usually they do appalling things—then Neuer is your man: your man in Geneva. He is also a broadly thoughtful and experienced man, and Jay asks him some essential questions about his life...
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A refreshing, interesting, and meaty conversation about sports with Jay’s gurus, David French and Vivek Dave. Several items are on the menu. The expansion of the Big Ten conference. The idea of the student-athlete. The NBA offseason. (What is Kevin Durant thinking?) Shohei Ohtani. The skills of hockey players. Tiger Woods. The Saudi League. More. These gurus are stuffed with knowledge...
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David Mastio is a veteran journalist, long associated with USA Today. Until recently, he was deputy editorial-page editor. But then he came up against wokeness—and was eventually hounded out of the paper. He has landed on his feet, however, at StraightArrowNews.com. Dave Mastio’s story is a modern American story. He lays it out matter-of-factly. Listen to him. When USA Today lost him—they lost a...
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Jay “nerds out” a bit with Luke Kerr-Dineen, a real authority on golf. LKD is an editor at Golf magazine and Golf.com. With Jay, he talks about the recent U.S. Open. The new Saudi golf tour. The ins and outs of swings. Favorite golfers, favorite courses—the problem of equipment gone wild. A delightful and invigorating discussion, for golfers, of course, but for non-golfers too, who may catch the...
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Jacob Mchangama is a Danish lawyer, civil libertarian, human-rights advocate, and writer. He is the founder and director of Justitia, a think tank. He is an old friend of Jay’s, and a favorite of Jay’s. Mchangama’s new book is “Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media.” Of the book, the late P.J. O’Rourke said, “The best history of free speech ever written and the best defense of free...
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Paul Massaro is a senior policy advisor to the U.S. Helsinki Commission. With Jay, he discusses the Ukraine war, primarily: what it means for the United States, Russia, Europe, and—not least—Ukraine. The views he expresses are his own and do not represent an official position of the U.S. government.
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Michela Wrong is a journalist, and “not just any journalist,” as Jay says in his introduction: She is “a famed, and superb, chronicler of Africa.” Along with her journalism, she has written five books, rightly acclaimed. “In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz” is a fascinating depiction of Mobutu and Zaire. Ms. Wrong’s latest book is “Do Not Disturb,” about Rwanda. You will enjoy this conversation about a...
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Abdulrahman al-Sadhan worked for the Red Cross, or Red Crescent, in Saudi Arabia. He jotted some tweets critical of the Saudi dictatorship, anonymously. But his cover was blown—and he was arrested, imprisoned, tortured . . . This is the Saudi way. Working to win his release is his sister, Areej. As Jay says, “she is a brave, determined woman, and, of course, a very loyal sister.” This is a story...
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Jewher Ilham, age 27, is a Uyghur activist, in the United States. She is a spokesman for the Coalition to End Forced Labour in the Uyghur Region. Her father, Ilham Tohti, an economist, is somewhere in the gulag. The U.S. State Department has classified China’s persecution of the Uyghur people as a genocide. Jewher Ilham is the author of “A Uyghur’s Fight to Free Her Father” and “Because I Have To.”...
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Vladimir Kara-Murza is one of the leading Russian democracy campaigners. He is an old friend of “Q&A” and an old friend of Jay’s. Now he is a political prisoner. His wife and partner—his wife and chief ally—is Evgenia Kara-Murza. In this conversation, she talks about her husband, their marriage, their work, the Russian people . . . As Jay points out, she is much like Vladimir: brave, elegant...
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Akhil Reed Amar is an outstanding teacher of the Constitution, and American history. He is a professor of law at Yale. He was born in Michigan to immigrant parents from India. The latest of his several books on the Constitution is “The Words That Made Us.” He recently wrote about Roe vs. Wade, explaining why he, a pro-choice Democrat, thinks it is a bad decision. He does a podcast called “Amarica’...
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Harvey Sachs is one of the great writers about music. “His biography of Toscanini,” says Jay, “is one of the greatest biographical feats I know.” Sachs’s latest book is “Ten Masterpieces of Music.” With Jay, he talks about this mighty ten. The conversation at large abounds in interesting facts, observations, opinions, and stories.
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As Jay says in his introduction, Matthew Continetti is “a conservative and a conservative-ologist: a student of conservatism, a dissector of it, an expert on it. He has written a new book: ‘The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism.’” Jay and Matt have a meaty hour on conservatism. And they barely get started.
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Inna Sovsun is a member of the Ukrainian parliament. What she has to say about what is happening in her country right now is very informative and not a little moving.
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“On ‘Q&A,’” says Jay, “I have had people from many walks of life: politicians, novelists, athletes, comedians, scientists, journalists, businessmen, sopranos, human-rights activists—on and on. I don’t think I have ever before had a poet. So, today is the day to have one. She is Danielle Rose.” And a very interesting person is she. A thought-provoking, enriching conversation.
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Jimmy Crumpacker is a very interesting fellow who is running for Congress in Oregon. He is from an old Oregon family—about as old as such a family can get. Jimmy Crumpacker is seventh generation. He is a Republican, of the old school, which is to say, he believes in limited government, free markets, and economic growth. Also the rule of law. Born and raised in Portland, he discusses with Jay the...
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Eliot A. Cohen is a professor of international relations. As Jay says, he is a leading expert in the field—a man from whom you can learn a great deal. Cohen discusses two of his own professors in this “Q&A”: Richard Pipes and Samuel Huntington. Are we in a Huntingtonian moment? A clash of civilizations? Jay asks Eliot Cohen several specific questions about Ukraine and Russia...
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Hanna Liubakova is a journalist whom Jay respects a great deal. She is a Belarusian, in exile, who reports on her own country, of course, but also on the war in Ukraine. Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, the Baltic countries, other countries—all these things are connected. Hanna Liubakova is deeply and widely informed, and she makes the rest of us more informed too. With Jay...
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Once more, Radek Sikorski brings his expertise to this program—and at a critical hour. He is a Polish member of the European Parliament. He was foreign minister and defense minister of his country. With Jay, he discusses Putin’s war on Ukraine, from military, political, psychological, and other points of view. A clarifying analysis.
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Luba Kolomytseva is the art director at National Review. She is an old friend and colleague of Jay’s. They first met in November 1998, when Jay arrived at NR. Their first conversation was about Ukraine and Russia. They have been talking about the subject, on and off, ever since. Luba began life in Kharkiv, Ukraine. These weeks have been emotional for her—a “torture,” she says.
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Bill Browder is the financier who is the driving force behind Magnitsky acts—acts that allow governments to sanction individual human-rights abusers, rather than whole peoples. He is one of Vladimir Putin’s chief enemies. He has been in Putin’s crosshairs for years. Browder is the author of “Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice.” With Jay...
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Casey Michel is an expert on a shadowy world: financial corruption, around the globe. Where do the oligarchs get their dough? How do they hide it? How do they invest it? Where do they park it? Have Americans, and others, aided and abetted them? With Casey Michel, Jay gets into this critically important subject. Mr. Michel is the author of a new book, “American Kleptocracy: How the U.S.
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Teng Biao is a prominent lawyer, human-rights activist, and democracy leader from China. He comes from a small, poor village and went to the country’s leading university: Peking University. He earned a Ph.D. in legal philosophy. His life took a turn, though: he entered dissidence, wanting to defend people’s rights and speak for the voiceless. He was therefore imprisoned and tortured several times.
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Kateryna Yushchenko was born and raised in Chicago. Her parents were Ukrainian refugees, who had been through many storms. Kateryna worked in the Reagan State Department — on issues of democracy and human rights — and then in the White House. She moved to Ukraine and became First Lady of the country. Her husband, Viktor Yushchenko, was president from 2005 to 2010. He survived a poison attack — a...
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Francis Fukuyama is one of the most influential political thinkers of our times. He teaches at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, at Stanford. He is chairman of the editorial board at American Purpose. With Jay, he talks about his upbringing and education. His paternal grandfather came to America from Japan in 1905. His father was born and raised in Los Angeles.
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Myroslava Luzina is a political analyst and consultant in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. She is also a book translator and other things. She is someone, as Jay says, from whom you can learn a great deal. Jay asks her about the situation in Ukraine now: What does it feel like? Are people making preparations (for a further Russian invasion)? Are Ukrainians becoming more nation-minded?
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As in 2008, the Chinese government will soon host Olympic Games. Talking about the issues with Jay is Perry Link, the estimable China scholar. Should the U.S. be boycotting? Is a diplomatic boycott enough? How about Peng Shuai, the tennis player? Should Elon Musk be doing business in Xinjiang Province, or East Turkestan, where the Uyghurs are being persecuted? And so on and so forth. At the end...
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Vladimir Kara-Murza is a Russian democracy leader, writer, documentary-maker, etc. He has long been admired by Jay and many others. Kara-Murza worked with Boris Nemtsov, the Russian opposition leader murdered in 2015. He himself has been subject to two murder attempts (by poison). In this “Q&A,” Kara-Murza and Jay discuss Russian civil society; the relationship between the current government and...
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Togo is a West African country, of about 8 million. Since 1967, it has been ruled by two dictators, father and son. An outstanding—and outstandingly brave—opposition leader is Farida Nabourema. Jay wrote about this young woman in 2018: “Daughter of Togo.” He also did a “Q&A” with her. She is back, now, with the latest: the latest about her country. Although her remarks are specifically about Togo...
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The college-football playoffs are coming up. On hand to discuss them are David French, Vivek Dave, and Rahul Danak. Also, should coaches just up and leave, before bowl games? Should athletic departments fire them mid-season? At the end of this podcast, Vivek and Rahul discuss the Concession Call. When their schools play each other, in football or basketball, the alum of the losing school has to...
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Josh Kraushaar, of National Journal, is one of the best political reporters and analysts in America. His handle, on Twitter, is “Hotline Josh,” for reasons he explains in this conversation with Jay. He and Jay jaw over some of today’s politics: Biden—is he all there? Harris—does she have what it takes? Trump—are he and the GOP at one? Josh also provides assessments of the four big leaders on the...
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Vladimir Putin’s Russia is threatening Ukraine as never before. Why does it matter? What is the interest of the United States? John Bolton has long experience with Russia and Ukraine. He answers the vital questions, with candor and clarity.
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Walter Wolf has written an unusual book on a very difficult and important topic—a book that meets a screaming need: “The Right Rehab: A Guide to Addiction and Mental Illness Recovery When Crisis Hits Your Family.” He knows from personal experience. He is now trying to help others.
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Daniel Asia is a composer and a professor at the University of Arizona. He heads the American Culture and Ideas Initiative. Some of his articles are available in in a collection: “Observations on Music, Culture, and Politics.” Jay wrote the foreword to it. He and Dan Asia are old friends and comrades. In this conversation, they talk about Dan’s life (very interesting); the state of music education...
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With two of his gurus, David French and Vivek Dave, Jay talks college football, Major League Baseball, the NFL, and college basketball. The guys hash over the Big Ten, the Houston Astros, Aaron Rodgers, Ben Simmons, and more. Vivek is in a peevish mood; David is freewheeling. An excellent discussion.
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Garry Kasparov is the chess champion and democracy champion. He was Jay’s very first guest on “Q&A,” in 2015. For 255 months, Kasparov was the world’s No. 1 in chess. As Jay points out, Tiger Woods, in his career so far, has been No. 1 in golf for 158 months. Kasparov is chairman of the Human Rights Foundation and also chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative. RDI has a new program called...
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Widely known as “BHL,” Bernard-Henri Lévy is a French philosopher and writer. He is one of the leading “public intellectuals” of our time. Not content with his armchair and library, he goes on adventures, including dangerous ones. His latest book is “The Will to See: Dispatches from a World of Misery and Hope.” Jay talks with him about his book, his life, and his thoughts.
Sponsored by Ladder, X-Chair
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Mark Haidar is “a tech whiz and entrepreneur,” as Jay says. Mr. Haidar has founded or co-founded several companies and has several patents. He lives in Dallas, but started out in Lebanon. His family was very poor, and his country was beset by war. His rise has been spectacular. Mr. Haidar is featured in George W. Bush’s latest book, “Out of Many, One: Portraits of America’s Immigrants.” He and Jay sat down together at the Bush Center in Dallas. Listen to the stories this man has to relate—amazing.
Sponsored by The Bradley Foundation, X-Chair
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You will want to meet Masih Alinejad, an extraordinary woman from Iran. She is a journalist, who defied the rulers of her home country. She is now in exile, in the United States. Recently, she was the target of a kidnap plot by the Iranian regime. She soldiers on, undaunted. She is full of courage, full of love. Jay sat down with her at the Oslo Freedom Forum in Miami.
Sponsored by The Bradley Foundation, X-Chair
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That is the slogan of Leopoldo López: “El que se cansa, pierde.” “He who tires, loses.” López is a face and voice of the Venezuelan opposition. He was imprisoned in February 2014. He made a daring escape from the country in October 2020. This week, at the Oslo Freedom Forum, Jay talked with López about his life in and out of prison. And about his hopes and dreams for his country.
Sponsored by Aura, X-Chair
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Robert Costa, the Washington Post reporter, is a frequent guest on “Q&A,” and an old friend and colleague of Jay’s. With Bob Woodward, Costa has written “Peril,” which is the best-selling book in the country at the moment. It is about the last days of the Trump presidency, essentially, and the first days of the Biden presidency. With Jay, Costa discusses a number of issues and personalities. The personalities include Trump, of course – and Pence, Rudy, Lindsey, Barr, and Quayle. Dan Quayle is an interesting blast from the past: a Republican vice-president from Indiana, like Pence. Costa has reported deeply, and has important things to say.
Sponsored by X-Chair
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John U. Bacon was Jay’s guest on “Q&A” last summer—talking about some terribly serious issues in college sports. In this new episode, JUB talks about his new book: “Let Them Lead: Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America’s Worst High-School Hockey Team.” That team was the Huron High School River Rats, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Before coaching at Huron, John went there. So did Jay. They are old friends and classmates. John turned the hockey team around in an extraordinary way. In this achievement are lessons for all of us.
Sponsored by The Bradley Foundation, X-Chair
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The heading of this episode tells you the necessary: John Bolton discusses Afghanistan with Jay. Bolton has served in the national-security field for many years, including as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and national-security adviser to the president. His memoirs are “Surrender Is Not An Option” and “The Room Where It Happened.” With Jay, Bolton talks about why we went into Afghanistan; what we did there; how we left; and what it all means. This talk is a half-hour of knowledge, experience, and blunt reality.
Sponsored by Startmail, X-Chair
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Christopher Meyer has had an action-packed life. For 33 months, he was deployed across three combat zones, in support of special operations. He received a Bronze Star in Afghanistan. He is the artistic director of a new theater: Veterans Repertory Theater. And, like many other vets, he has been involved in the effort to rescue Afghan allies, on the run and facing death. Some people speak of a “Digital Dunkirk.” You will want to hear what Chris Meyer has to say: he is eloquent, blunt, informed, and determined.
Sponsored by X-Chair
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Regula Mühlemann is a “bright and rising and wonderful young soprano,” as Jay says in his introduction. She is from Switzerland. And she performed at the Salzburg Festival this summer. Jay interviewed her, in the series of public conversations hosted by the Salzburg Festival Society. Get to know this appealing young artist (Regula, that is—no offense to Jay).
Sponsored by X-Chair
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Maria DeCotis is a comedienne, an actress, a writer, a singer, a dancer—a Renaissance woman in entertainment. She came to broad public attention when she impersonated Andrew Cuomo, during the pandemic. It was hilarious, and creative. She has lost Cuomo as a public figure, but she has many more characters in her repertoire. With Jay, she talks about her life and career. She is a breath of fresh air. “A break away from the everyday,” as a fast-food slogan once had it. Enjoy.
Sponsored by X-Chair
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Radek Sikorski is a veteran journalist, writer, politician, and statesman. He has been foreign minister and defense minister of his country, Poland. He is now a member of the European Parliament. He first went to Afghanistan, as a war correspondent, in 1986. With Jay, Sikorski discusses Afghanistan and U.S. foreign policy. They move on to Belarus, Poland itself, Hungary – and last, the very question of democracy and freedom. Democratic values are under siege and need help.
Sponsored by Startmail, X-Chair
Join the conversation and comment on this podcast episode: https://ricochet.com/podcast/q-and-a/afghanistan-belarus-and-other-countries-of-concern/.
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Jay has a leisurely, wide-ranging, enriching hour with Daniel Hannan, the writer, columnist, and member of the House of Lords. What’s that all about, by the way? Is the House of Lords a senate? Do they wear wigs? And how about “House of Cards”? Is Westminster anything like that? Hannan and Jay further talk about Peru, where Hannan was born and grew up. A new president has been elected—a real bolshie. How does democracy fare across the world, in this age of pandemic and strongmen? At the end of their conversation, the two talk about Shakespeare, about which Daniel Hannan is authoritative and, as ever, eloquent. You will enjoy this hour—the cast of characters is large (FDR, Churchill, JFK, Macmillan, Reagan, Thatcher, Falstaff, Cleopatra, Bill Clinton, Blair, Boris) and the subjects burning or engrossing, or both.
Sponsored by Tommy John, X-Chair
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Jay convenes a sportscast, with two of his regular gurus: David French and Vivek Dave. They talk some Olympics—Simone and the twisties, plus other issues. Including transgenderism. And: Should PGA stars be in the Olympics? The guys also talk the NFL, the NBA, and the SEC. Initials abound, as do personalities. A lively conversation.
Sponsored by X-Chair
Join the conversation and comment on this podcast episode: https://ricochet.com/podcast/q-and-a/simone-giannis-djokovic-and-other-athletes-we-have-known/.
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