Aloha at Namaste everyone and welcome to In Politics with John Heilman, my new

podcast on Politics and Culture for Odyssey and Puck, where I am, the chief political columnist, cranking out a weekly

dispatch that shares its name in politic with this show.

The column arrives via email every Sunday night, and if you haven't subscribed already there's a sweet

sweet 20% discount waiting for you at puck. News slash impolitic that's puck

dot news slash impolite that's puck dot news slash I m p. m p. olli Huck episodes twice a week every Tuesday and Friday featuring fresh spirited

candid conversations with the people who roam the quarters of power and

influence in America in politics, business, tech, sports, entertainment, food

and more as the A-list authors and journalists

who chronicle their lives and exploits.

And today we are lucky, so lucky, to have with us one of the very best of that breed who just happens to apply his trade across the pond in Blighty

aka Profidious Albion, aka the nation of Shopkeepers, aka Mary Old England. The one, the only,

Jonathan Friedland, the son of a storied Fleet Street Hack who himself was the author of more than 40 books.

Jesus.

Johnny Friedland was a prodigy from the jump.

He worked on a kibbutz before heading to Oxford where he was mentored by Mark Regev, the current Israeli ambassador to the UK,

and then in turn Johnny served as the mentor to Borat, which is to say, Sasha Baron Cohen.

His extraordinary career in British journalism began in which is

Shorted- and then to the Guardian where he first served as Washington correspondent from 1993 to 1997,

which is, I'm pretty sure, although I was drunk most of that time, I'm pretty sure that's

where our paths first crossed. After drifting away from the Guardian for a time to become a prize-winning

columnist at the Daily Mirror in the Evening Standard and a contributor to the New York Times,

...