Turkish Delights

Istanbul, Not Constantinople.

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Today’s Ruminant, recorded live from an undisclosed hotel in the depths of Chicago, finds Jonah even more scatterbrained than usual. Although he begins by discussing the nature of the First Amendment and why Twitter isn’t at the heart and soul of American democracy, he quickly abandons rank punditry and veers in a radically different direction. With a vacation in Istanbul coming up, Jonah tells the long, strange tale of his first visit to the city, which may or may not evoke comparisons to Midnight Express. It’s an unconventional episode, but don’t say you weren’t warned. 

Show Notes:

– Bari Weiss’ “Twitter Files”

– David French: “Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson Don’t Understand the First Amendment”

– Christian Schneider: “Does Nobody Understand How the First Amendment Works?”

– The Remnant with Scott Lincicome

– The Remnant with Jonathan Rauch

– Charlie Cooke and Michael Brendan Dougherty debate Republican electability

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Comments (34)
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  1. Avatar photo
    Dave Carson

    Jonah, a while back you mentioned you were looking for a biography of Atatürk. Did you find one?

    Loved the story. Lived in Turkey as a teen back in the 70s and it was a great experience (except for terrorists and coups). You're right about Australians. We did an off-season trip to Pamukkale and the only other people there were a pair of Australian hitchhikers.

    In later years I worked with a Finnish church that was supporting churches behind the Iron Curtain. Travelled to many interesting places on Balkan, and eventually Soviet trains. Most memorable was riding from Plovdiv, Bulgaria, back to Greece with a Romanian English teacher in our compartment. I asked her how to say the name of their leader and she did not answer. After we crossed the border into Greece, she looked at me and said "Chow-shesh-koo."

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  2. Cbailey348

    I loved this episode. The road trip story was Fabulous!!

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    Stevecplz

    Excellent podcast. Many thanks.

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  4. Bruce Summers

    I loved this episode...great story by a great story teller!

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  5. Deborah.Millet

    Topic for remnant suggestion — Could you do a dive (of any depth) into expat and/or expatriate?

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  6. Joe1776

    I also failed French in high school. But my teacher kindly gave me the lowest D because she found some of my answers amusing. Basically I would try phonetically spell English words with a thick French accent. Like "La Fingares" for instead of the French word for fingers.

    But anyway. Here is my concern with twitter and to be clear at the outset the concern is with both parties not just the left. If the government is sending FBI or NIH people to tell your private company what speech might be "misinformation" or violate election laws etc., that is a problem. I am not saying what evidence there is on that but I am not happy with the Biden's press secretary saying they need to look into Twitter now that Elon Musk took over. Obviously they can't do anything to force speech but the fbi and the federal government can make that company very unprofitable by long litigation over all sorts of unrelated issues if they don't "play ball."

    The right does this as well talking about how they think they need to "take action" at the government level if conservative voices are being suppressed.

    IMO we need to send a clear message to our politicians that they have absolutely no business investigating what content is on these platforms. If twitter wants to be all leftist that is their right. If Elon Musk wants Twitter to allow everyone to speak that is his business. No one in our federal government should be looking into any of it.

    I think this sort of bullying by government claiming to bring anti-trust suits or whatever because they don't like the speech is a violation of the first amendment and we need to call it out quickly and make it clear this is not ok. If we allow this sort of indirect influence we will find the federal government is indeed censoring our speech.

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  7. Avatar photo
    Seth B

    Bon vacances, Monsieur Goldberg!

    And by the way, in passing you mentioned Matt Welch. He'd be a fun Remnant guest sometime.

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  8. Mccleary

    Thanks so much, Jonah. Not sure if you even read these messages but please know that this was a wonderful podcast. It took me back to the experiences that I had backpacking Europe with a Eurorail pass in hand. Spent time in Switzerland at a place called, Balmers. We gathered a travel delegation that would make the UN proud. This included an Aussie on a forever post-college walkabout! Traveled all over with that group (or it seemed like it). Also had a "sketchy" experience with my college buddy on that trip. We would play a game called "Pick a Spot" by closing our eyes in front of a map. Where our pointed finger landed was the destination. That's how we found ourselves in Berlin 4 months after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Learned a valuable safety lesson on that trip. We couldn't sleep in the train station. Zoo Station was notoriously unsafe then. We took the only accommodations we could find which was a boarding house (I use that term loosely) that was entirely rented by 11 or 12 illegal Yugoslavian dudes. Scary situation but lived to tell. I won't go into the details but suffice to say we were happy to survive.

    Enjoy your vacation and thanks again for this and all of your podcasts.

    Best wishes.

    Miriam

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  9. Gennady1

    Jonah, LOVED your travel story!
    In Feb'92, my wife and I took our then-14 yo daughter on a train trip from (East) Berlin to Prague. This fairly-short, 6-hr long overnight trip, on the Berlin-Prague-Budapest-Bucharest-Belgrade train, with a typical Soviet-style service and conveniences, with burly conductors and grumpy attendants, really made our innocent child grow. At 7am, when the restaurant at the Prague train station opened, we were amazed to see the service tray emptied of all (0.5L) beer mugs, while none of the coffee cups were touched. Such was life in Prague in '92. The food was cheap, beer was great, and a room in the suburb cost $20 (for all 3 of us). And we rented it from babushka on the platform, just like you described.
    Thanks for the memories!

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  10. Avatar photo
    Kelli Long

    I loved your Istanbul story.

    Three years ago, we and three other couples spent a day and a half in Istanbul on our way to take a blue cruise (which was the best experience ever.) Such friendly and generous people. We stayed in a hotel off a little side street and were looking for a place to eat breakfast before we took a walking tour. There was a tiny café across the street - way too small for 8 people. But they insisted they could serve us. "No, no! Wait. Here, sit, sit!" So they brought out 4 small tables and chairs and lined them up on the sidewalk and started bringing out all this wonderful food. Since it was a sidewalk, we could only sit on one side of the tables facing out toward the street, so we looked like we were recreating The Last Supper. They kept bringing plates of deliciousness until we couldn't eat any more.

    While we were paying, we asked about hiring a taxi to take us to the airport the next morning. The café owner's brother drove taxi. "My brother has a very good taxi. A Mercedes. He can take you." So he did. It's such a funny memory. They did whatever they needed to do to accommodate us and get our business. The hospitality was over the top the entire time we were in Turkey.

    I hope you are able to rest, relax, and recover at least a little during the trip. You'll have a wonderful time there with TFJ.

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