Hello, welcome to the Editor's Desk. This is the podcast where we take a closer look at the essays and articles in the latest print issue of First Things Magazine. I'm Rusty Reno on the editor of First Things Magazine, and I'm here with you today at the editor's desk.

Well, today I'm just delighted to welcome Chris Caldwell to the podcast, and we're going to talk

about his review of the William F. Buckley biography by Sam Tannenhouse. Welcome to the podcast, Chris.

It's great to be here, Rusty. Well, let's start,

well, let's not start with William F. Buckley Jr. Let's start with William F. Buckley,

Sr. I was really, I learned a lot. I had not read the biography, but in your review, I was just

tickled to learn more about the patriarch.

He seemed to have been a kind of very American figure, sort of.

Yes.

You know, there's a bit of a Gatsby-esque quality to William F. Buckley, Sr.

Yes, but I think that Gatsby is a northwestern or Midwestern figure, whereas William F.

Buckley's father was a real Texan. And there are a lot of, there are a lot of surprises about

him. I think that certain people knew that Buckley

was somehow had a fortune that came out of the oil industry, and that's roughly speaking true.

But William F. Buckley, Sr. was a guy who grew up, you know, he was an Irish Catholic, but born in Texas, which is

already an unusual thing. And there was a lot about his father that William F. Buckley,

Jr. didn't know, and that his father never revealed to him. So his father got a, had a lot of

investments in, uh, in, uh, in Mexican, um, oil,

in Venezuelan oil, got chased out of Mexico, um, um, in the early part of the 20th century,

amid sort of some revolutionary tumult and had a, uh, a great sort of resentment for, you know,

popular uprisings and had a great tendency to align himself with, let's just say,

hard-riding elites, you know. So you could see that Buckley himself would be...

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