This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, December 16, 2011.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Christopher Hitchins, one of the world's most celebrated contemporary writers, pundits, and

social critics has died. He was 62. In 2004, Christopher Hitchin displayed his

wit at the Cato Institute City Seminar on the topic of New York's draconian smoking bans.

When I worked in London at the old New Statesman magazine, which I did for many years,

we used to have weekend competitions, various kinds of spooks and

fantasies. One was, I remember, to do a mock paragraph of the introduction of a Graham Green novel.

Graham Green novel.

Graham Green entered under a pseudonym, came third.

But a regular favorite was this.

It was advice to American tourists on their first visit to London.

And the winners that I remember best were, try the famous echo in the British Museum reading room.

Always if you enter the subway carriage, remember to shake hands with everybody before sitting down.

And if you see someone doing the Times Crossword, it's always very much appreciated if you offer your help to them. prostitutes may easily be recognized by the

habit of rattling tins full of coins to attract custom and brothels by blue lamp. You might not get that bit particularly. That's how to

recognize a police station in England. Anyway, you say when you go in they may pretend

not to know what you're talking about but that's just their British reserve if you persist they

will so anyway I remember thinking once I moved to New York I remember thinking you

couldn't do that competition here. What would you

have to do in New York to draw attention to yourself in that way? What would make people

say he's trying to make himself conspicuous or herself? It doesn't seem to me it could be done.

...