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Mona and Jay’s guest this week is Professor Richard Pipes, the historian of Russia (and national-security official in the Reagan administration). His subjects are Russia, Ukraine, Putin, Obama—and some others as well. He is one of the leading scholars of our time. Then, Mona and Jay take up yet more subjects: national greatness, and the question of honor; America’s energy revolution; charter schools, and a fissure on the left; Lincoln and Churchill, as a pair; the abominable Harry Reid; the interesting Maria von Trapp (daughter, not governess); etc.

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This week, Mona and Jay welcome Brad Smith, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission. He explains some of the strange doings of the IRS and other federal bodies in the Age of Obama. Then, Mona and Jay discuss a vexing question: Why do the people let the government get away with it? Why do they let the government tie us down, in nonsensical and harmful ways? The second the people want a different kind of government, we will have it. There is talk of Ted Cruz, the Olympics, opera, and even Ike’s Tree (R.I.P.). Finally, Mona has some kind words for the New York Times, which, even more amazing, are justified.

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As usual, Mona and Jay talk about subjects beautiful and ugly. In the latter category: Bill Ayers, IRS harassment, and Pete Seeger’s Communism. In the former category: Brahms, congressional oversight, and free enterprise (particularly as a means of uplifting the poor). Mona gives a tour de force on the effects of family breakdown. The two do some chuckling over the New York Times. There is also a Buckley story or two. The podcast ends with music that Mona mentions at the top of the show: the final movement of Brahms’s G-minor piano quartet, orchestrated by Schoenberg. It’s marked “Rondo alla zingarese,” i.e., “Gypsy rondo.”

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Social issues predominate as Jay and Mona consider the 41st anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision. The term “pro-choice” is on the way out apparently, to be replaced by the more anodyne “women’s health.” Persisting in what the left would doubtless label a “war on women,” the Need to Know pair consider the bona fides of pro-“women’s health” pin-up Wendy Davis and swing by Brooklyn to consider whether it’s okay for religious Jews to ask women to dress modestly in their shops.

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Jay and Mona welcome back the Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald who discusses her Wall Street Journal op-ed about the self-sabotage of Western Civilization – that is, the decline of the study of Shakespeare, Milton, and Chaucer, and other DWEMs in favor of race, gender, disability and other “identity” writings. Mac Donald focuses on UCLA, but it’s a national phenomenon. 

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Mona and Jay talk about the week’s hot topics: Pajama Boy, Duck Man, etc. They also talk about some presidents past, including two Bushes and one Nixon. They talk about the next chapter for Mona’s youngest son: He’s going off to college. What’s it like, for conservative parents to send their offspring to a place like Penn? They end their podcast with some Christmas music – and a lovely dose of Engelbert Humperdinck. (Not the Vegas singer – not that there’s anything wrong with him – but the German composer from whom he took the name.)

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Well-stuffed with Thanksgiving feasts, (and taking a moment to condemn Thanksgiving Day shopping) Jay and Mona tackle Obamacare with fresh gusto, wondering about the “crisis of statism” as the pretensions of central control wither in the icy blast of reality.

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This week on Need to Know, Jay and I welcome the insightful and erudite David Pryce-Jones. David tries – and fails — to understand John Kerry’s reasons for truckling to Iran and betraying Israel, and reflects on Obama’s foreign policy generally. We recall with bitterness Obama’s awful dereliction in 2009, when Iranians took to the streets to attempt to dislodge the world’s most dangerous regime, and Obama remained silent.

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ObamaCare goes down the tubes, but is that good news or bad news? Also, Benghazi is back, Jon Stewart goes rogue, revisiting the idea that bi-lingual education is bad, what Brown hasn’t done for you lately, foreigners and the Klan, and one more pass at Mona’s new favorite version of Puccini’s “O mio babbino caro,” from “Gianni Schicchi.”