Welcome to the commentary magazine podcast today is Columbus Day.

October 12 2020 I'm John Pajor. It's the editor of commentary magazine with me as always executive editor Abe Greenwald.

Hi, John.

Seger writer Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.

Hi, John.

And associate editor Noah Rothman. Hi, Noah.

Hi, John.

So Abe, we're closing the November issue of commentary this week and material from the issue will be online probably Thursday Friday.

What's special about this issue?

This is commentary's 75th anniversary issue.

Yes, commentary was founded.

The first issue of commentary came out in November of 1945.

So we are 75 years old.

And once that was not so extraordinary to be a publication that was 75 years old, I think now in the past,

now in 2020, it is pretty extraordinary to have survived and thrived for three quarters of a century while other publications have collapsed, fallen by the wayside lost their reasons for being lost, their advertising lost money lost everything.

And here we are because of the passion of our readers and the support of our philanthropically minded readers.

And with you today to be talking about the politics of the moment, the issue features a beautiful article by commentaries, sort of longest-lived contributor now, I think, or like,

a survived continuous contributor, Joseph Epstein, on his experience writing for commentary, a piece by Matthew Cottonetti on commentaries influence on American foreign policy over the decades, and a conversation between me and my father, Norman Pajoritz, he was the editor for 35 years from 1960 to 1995.

I've been the editor since 2009 and we basically talk about what it means to edit a magazine, how commentary was different from other magazines, and what editing is, how it works, how it functions.

And so that is what we have.

And great stories in there about particular articles throughout the decades.

Yeah, anecdotes and interesting sides and give you a behind the scenes look at the grade and the not so great, let's say.

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