You may know that Atlantic writer and PEC resident David Frum launched a new podcast in April, The David Frum Show.

What you may not know is that the last few episodes were recorded in Picton, at The Royal Hotel.

But, last week, Mr. Frum was at the Gazette office, home not just to Canada’s oldest weekly, but, apparently, the only place in town with reliable Wi-Fi. At least, it was working that day.

Over the July 1 weekend, The Royal experienced a service interruption. The Picton Branch Library, another tried and true spot, was closed.

And so, Mr. Frum appeared about 11:15 Monday morning, a vase of flowers in one hand and a framed photograph of his daughter, Miranda, in the other. Miranda passed away last year, and she is never far from her parents’ thoughts.

He had a laptop, a microphone, and a tight timeline.

A 10:45 interview for the show had already been jettisoned. Mr. Frum needed to record an opening for the replacement show — an interview with the U.S.’s former Ambassador to Ukraine — and then log onto The Dispatch podcast for noon.

But first, he needed a set. 

Generally, Mr. Frum is positioned in his home’s library, before mahogany shelves full of political and historical volumes. His pocket square matches the vase of flowers.

“I like a library feel,” he says now, surveying the cluttered shelves in my office. Yes, we’ve been here two years. No, we never properly unpacked.

Dismayed, I scan the volumes. Evelyn Waugh. Nancy Mitford. Not much in the way of august political commentary.

“I can get out some Hume. And I think I have some Gibbon somewhere,” I volunteer, trying to unpack the boxes of books lying around and dust at the same time. I know I have multiple volumes of Hume’s History of England and Gibbons’s Decline and Fall. Somewhere. And some respectable books on WWII, not just the one about Unity Mitford now in view. Where are they? 

I rapidly lament all the things I like to do more than clean up. Proofread the classifieds. Listen to phone messages.

He gives up on the shelves. “Do you have a desk I could sit at?”

If only I had known David Frum would be wanting to sit at my desk. Today.

I gesture at the litter of papers, diet coke, and a wall clock that never got affixed to the wall. “Hmm,” he says. If I were Bridget Jones, I would crawl underneath it.

We move into a room called the Archive, because it is covered with fragments of yellowing paper from prehistoric Gazettes. “This has possibilities,” he says, trying not to look at his watch.

Interviews with Interesting People

The David Frum Show features interviews with The Washington Post’s former editor, Marty Baron, Tina Brown, of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. Today, the guest was supposed to be George Conway — a legal and political commentator based in Washington. He is, unfortunately, most famous for formerly being married to Kellyanne, Counselor to the President during Trump’s first term.

Ms. Conway used the phrase “alternative facts” to defend the administration’s fabrications. As outrageous as that was then, Ms. Conway’s antics now seem almost pastoral, a prelude to the present horrors.

So opposed is Mr. Trump to anything resembling facts, the current administration has launched a series of extortionate lawsuits against the news media. CBS’s parent company, Paramount, just agreed to pay $16 million to settle Trump’s claim that it was the network’s fault he “looked bad” in an interview with Kamala Harris.

One of the Trump administration’s first actions was to shut down Voice of America, a move as destructive as its dismantling of USAID. In its place, however, Forbes is reporting that Trump Media & Technology Group is testing an international rollout of its alternative facts social media platform, Truth Social, to be called Truth+. 

Revelations like these make it difficult to sleep at night. And that’s before the lifting of sanctions against Russia, the illegal deportations, the concentration camps, the crypto.

These are the topics of Mr. Frum’s show, which offers learned commentary on current events. It takes the long view. As he explained that day on The Dispatch, as I pretended not to listen, democracy has always had to weather highs and lows. This is just a low.

Quickly, we drag over a table and chair and arrange a backdrop in behind by stacking bound volumes of the newspaper high enough to display the photo and flowers for the camera. I surreptitiously dust up some of the fragments. I am hoping the gold lettering on the volumes looks good on TV.

Mr. Frum zooms in his producer, also his son, Nathaniel, whose own podcast, Calls from a Killer, just debuted on the CBC. He starts giving commands about adjusting the light and moving the props.

It will do. I retreat to my messy office.

Family Matters

An hour later, after all the recording is over — if he was frazzled earlier, it was barely visible — I ask if his show’s intro music is intended to recall Downton Abbey. As you settle in, you can’t help thinking Lord Grantham is about to welcome you to Highclere Castle.

He laughs. “I’ve never seen Downton Abbey. I was thinking more of Succession.” He smiles. A gentle reference to his mother, renowned CBC interviewer Barbara Frum. Her 20-year career, first in print, then radio and, finally, television, made her a major presence in the Canadian news landscape before her untimely death at just 54, from leukemia. She was inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame in 2022.

“I was also thinking of Masterpiece Theatre,” he continues. “It’s meant to be kind of wistful, or melancholy…but reassuring.”

The show is just finding its footing in a fractured media landscape very different from that Barabara Frum could command at the CBC of the 1980s. While a major story in The Atlantic will reach millions of readers, the podcast has about 100,000 regular listeners.

It is also distributed over social media — a highly unreliable medium. “There it’s all about the algorithm, and it makes no sense, of course. One week there will be 550,000 viewers, another week 50,000, and there’s no rhyme or reason to it.”

I will be speaking to the always interesting David Frum about these and other things at The Regent Theatre on July 24.  Tickets, available at the Hospital Foundation, will support the new hospital’s mammography machine.