Jay Nordlinger

Pardon the plagiaristic title, but it describes this podcast with David French and Vivek Dave, two of Jay’s regular gurus on sports. They do the Major League Baseball playoffs, the NFL, college football, the NBA (happy new season), and a dollop of Tiger Woods. There are many issues discussed in this episode, including the rather philosophical or elevated: Why sports? A freewheeling joy of a podcast, live-and-in-the-flesh from Chicago.

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Jay tells a joke in this episode — pretty good (according to him and his gang). He also talks about politics and music. We hear from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, which has just had a name change, and from a late, great Spanish soprano. Jay also shows how Andrew Lloyd Webber borrowed — and borrowed wisely — from Puccini.

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Charlie Sykes joins Mona to chew over the past week and exult in a new project they’ve helped to create. Then Mona and Jay review the lessons of the Khashoggi story, the “woman thing,” Betsy DeVos, and much more. It’s a wide-ranging discussion!

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Stephen Harper was prime minister of Canada from 2006 to 2015. Jay routinely referred to him as “the Leader of the West.” Harper has just published a new book, “Right Here, Right Now: Politics and Leadership in the Age of Disruption.” Its themes are populism, conservatism, and current passions. Harper came of age with Reagan and Thatcher (and so did Jay). This is a different moment, though, and Harper has thought deeply about it. Jay talks with him about all this, plus some other issues—including U.S. perceptions of Canada, the nature of Pierre Trudeau, and Harper’s remarkable encounter with Putin. Stephen Harper is not to be missed: not only a superb practitioner of politics (witness his decade-long premiership) but also a superb analyst of politics.

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Jay talks about music, especially loud music. (You get some Verdi and Wagner in this episode.) He also talks about hero-Nobelists, North Korea, and more. No earplugs required.

Togo is a little country in West Africa, wedged between Ghana and Benin. For more than 50 years, it has been ruled by two dictators, father and son, one after the other — as in Syria and elsewhere, as Jay points out. This regime is opposed by a remarkable young woman named Farida Nabourema, who is Jay’s guest. Wait’ll you hear her story, her thoughts, and her spirit. You could almost feel sorry for the dictatorship.

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That’s the song they play at the end – sung by Tony Bennett, whom Jay passed on the streets of New York the other day. Before they get to the moon, so to speak, Mona and Jay talk about North Korea, the Kavanaugh drama, and a host of other issues, including a perennial: personal responsibility. Who wants to take it? Noble and rewarded are those who do.

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Jay starts out with a little music, including the one about the bee. Then he gets into some political issues — before ending with golf, tennis, and, again, music.

Jay begins this episode with Alec Baldwin and ends it with a reflection on colors — especially blue and red. In between are some grave subjects, but also light. You hear Kiri Te Kanawa sing “Come to the Fair,” for example. There’s some Ella Fitzgerald, too.

Leyla Hussein is a leading campaigner against FGM, which stands for “female genital mutilation.” She has lived in Britain for many years but started out in Somalia – where she herself underwent this brutal practice. She was seven. Jay interviewed her a year ago, at the Oslo Freedom Forum. He saw her again a few days ago at another session of the forum – and she was agitated by news she had just received from home, i.e., from Somalia: the deaths of several young girls from FGM. Instead of “deaths,” you could say “murders.” Jay said to her, “Want to talk about it?” She said yes, so he turned on his tape recorder and Leyla talked for a few minutes – passionately and truthfully, as usual. Hear this extraordinary woman.

Jay wanted to talk some things over with Kevin D. Williamson, and Kevin obliged. They talk about issues of concern to them both: what makes an economy go (and stall); the whys and wherefores of immigration; the effects of trade; the nature of poverty. They talk about other issues too, including (gulp) Playboy clubs. KDW is a wonderful thinker and gent, and these qualities come shining through in this podcast.

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Jay and Mona muse on the nature of guilt, the human condition, whether old people know anything about sex and violence, believing all women/condemning all men, and much more.

On assignment in Miami, Jay ran over to Coral Gables to see Jeb Bush. They talked about current issues — the Kavanaugh mess, the Florida election races, Hurricane Florence — and some issues of longer-term concern: the nature of the Democrats, for example, and the nature of the Republicans. Also under consideration are refugees, immigrants, and American identity. Bush talks about the presidential race in 2016 and the presidential race coming up in 2020. At the end, the subject is family — the Bush family, in particular. In this highly interesting hour, Jeb Bush talks politically and personally, both.

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Enes Kanter is an NBA player, a New York Knick. He is also a Turk — and an opponent of the Erdogan regime back home. This opposition has not come without cost. On Monday, Jay talked with Kanter at a special session of the Oslo Freedom Forum in New York.

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Jay talks words, concepts, and the world – including Syria, Russia, Burma, and Taiwan. He also does a little sports (Tiger Woods). And music. Leo Ornstein lived to 106, in three different centuries. Did he compose in all three of them? Possibly…

Legal eagle Ed Whelan joins to talk Kavanaugh and its permutations. Jay and Mona then turn to Democrats beclowning themselves, Trump doing the same, armchair analysis of Lindsay Graham, an act of conscience at Google, and tennis stars losing it.

Music from this week’s show: Prokofiev, Piano Concerto No. 3, played by Martha Argerich and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Claudio Abbado

Rachel Fulton Brown is a professor of history at the University of Chicago. She is a medievalist. And she has attracted great controversy. Naturally, Jay wanted to talk to her. They talk about being a medievalist. What attracted her to the field in the first place? They talk about “The Lord of the Rings.” And then life in academia, when your views are considered heretical. She is a happy warrior, Professor Fulton Brown, and also a fencer. A woman of parts. And a woman of guts.

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Do you have your piece of the pie? Is an economy, or a society, a pie, leaving us all fighting for crumbs? Jay talks about this, as well as disinvitation, the anonymous op-ed piece, Europe’s politics, the power of talk, and the power of music.

Jim McAdams is a professor of international relations at Notre Dame, and a “Communistologist,” as Jay says. He was seen by millions in a video a couple of weeks ago, broadcast during the Notre Dame–Michigan football game. McAdams is one of the leading authorities on Communism in the world. He is the author of “Vanguard of the Revolution: The Global Idea of the Communist Party.” Jay reviewed it here. And he talks with McAdams about a number of issues, including his own background: How did a good American boy get so interested in Communism? Among the other issues are China, Cuba, Gorbachev, the United States, and the fate of liberal democracy. McAdams says, powerfully, that love is under challenge. It must be stood up for.

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Jay talks about Bill Clinton, Louis Farrakhan, Nancy Pelosi, George W. Bush, Theresa May, Howard Cosell, Neil Simon, and more. He ends with Don Cherry, the late singer and golfer — what a combo, what a life.

Ep. 195: A Wide World of Sports

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Ep. 40: Pick Up the Pace

Ep. 265: TALLLK OR TOK?

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Ep. 194: Stephen Harper: Where We Are

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Ep. 39: With, or Without, Earplugs

Ep. 193: Out of West Africa, a Dictator’s Scourge

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Ep. 264: Fly Me to the Moon

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Feel the Buzz

Ep. 37: The Turning Crowd

Ep. 192: A Burst of Passion and Truth from a Defender of Girls against Mutilation

Ep. 191: Kickin’ Back with Kevin, Seriously

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Ep. 263: Doo-Dah

Ep. 190: Jeb at Large

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Ep. 189: A Turk, a Knick, and a Mensch

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Ep. 36: My Kingdom for a Grubstake

Ep. 262: Anathemas in All Directions

Ep. 188: One Gutsy Medievalist. (She Fences, Too.)

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Ep. 35: Movin’ On Up

Ep. 187: The Communistologist

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Ep. 34: With a Cherry on the Bottom

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