Q & A, Hosted by Jay Nordlinger

Talking with Mona Charen is one of my great pleasures in life. She is a dear friend and I admire her greatly. For years, we were podcast partners. A few days ago, we recorded a Q&A . A brief reminder of Mona and her professional doings. She is a syndicated columnist . She is a writer and editor at The Bulwark . She is the host of The Mona Charen Show . She is the author of several books, including...

As I say in my introduction, Yaroslav Trofimov is one of the best foreign-affairs correspondents in the world. Born in Kyiv, he joined the Wall Street Journal in 1999 and has been its chief foreign-affairs correspondent since 2018. Among his books is Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine’s War of Independence . He has also written a novel, No Country for Love , which is about U...

Over the years, I have done several podcasts with Jeb Bush. They are always interesting and refreshing. For two terms, 1999 to 2007, he was the governor of Florida. Other governors looked to him for inspiration and advice. (I heard several of them say so, on the record and off.) After his governorship, he established his Foundation for Excellence in Education, otherwise known as “ ExcelinEd .” He...

Maybe I could quote from my introduction: … our guest today is one of my favorites: Steven B. Smith, the scholar of political philosophy. He is a Chicagoan—not a North Shore kid but a gritty South Sider, who would earn his Ph. D. at the local school: the University of Chicago. Since 1984, he has taught at Yale, where he is the Alfred Cowles Professor of Political Science. He is the author of many...

The only thing wrong, the only thing regrettable, about this podcast is that it’s out of proportion. What I mean is, Flicka, the legend, the giant, is in a little box and I’m in a bigger box. That’s the way the technology worked out. If I could reverse the boxes—believe me, I would. “Flicka” is Frederica von Stade, the great mezzo-soprano, and she is the subject of a new documentary: Flicka: A Lov...

Listeners to Q&A are familiar with Manfred Honeck, and with Rainer Honeck, too. The latter is a concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic. I interviewed him last summer on behalf of the Salzburg Festival Society —listen to our conversation here . Rainer Honeck is now retiring from the Philharmonic, though his musical activities will continue. Manfred Honeck, I have spoken with several times, and he...

Eric Cutler is one of the best tenors in all the world, and he is my latest guest on Q&A . He is singing this summer at the Salzburg Festival, where I am also working (in different capacities!). I have sat down with him on behalf of the Salzburg Festival Society . Eric is from Adel, Iowa, about 25 miles west of Des Moines. In his sophomore year of high school, something interesting happened. It wa...

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...

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 accustom...

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 su...

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—...

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...