Q & A, Hosted by Jay Nordlinger

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 emphas...

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—bu...

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...

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. H...

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 questio...

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...

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 R...

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,...

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 pea...

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...

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-grea...

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...

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 som...

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 clea...

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 fr...

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...

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...

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 Oppor...

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...

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 i...

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 la...

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 Gall...

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...

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 mys...

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 stuf...