Two years ago today - February 17th 2021 - I was getting ready for another guest-hosting stint on the EIB Network when my friend Kraig Kitchin, the founder of Premiere Radio Networks and (since Kit Carson's death) Rush's acting "chief of staff", telephoned with devastating news: a year after his diagnosis of advanced lung cancer, Rush had died that morning. We had all known, since the day he announced his condition, how the story ends - but he had fought against it so hard just to be here for tomorrow's show, or the day after that, the news still came like a gut-punch out of the blue. I miss him and his wisdom and generosity on this day above all others.

As I suggested that morning, I wasn't sure how much of the medium - AM talk radio - would survive without him. And so, I think, it is proving. Which is a big problem for conservative ideas and their place in the wider world.

We'll talk about that a little later on today's edition of our Clubland Q&A, live around the planet but with a special thought for the all-time colossus of American radio. The action begins at 3pm US Eastern/8pm Greenwich Mean Time. We'll try to pin down the rest of the time zones below, but do, as they say, check local listings.

It's not, formally, an EIB "Open Line Friday", but we'll operate in that spirit and take questions from Mark Steyn Club members across the globe on whatever's on your mind. Whether or not you're a Steyn Clubber you can listen to our Q&A live as it happens wherever you chance to be on this turbulent earth: membership is required only to ask a question. We love to hear from brand new members, and we are delighted to say that yet again in this last week we have been deluged by GB News viewers who've chosen to follow The Mark Steyn Show to its new home. So if you've joined the Club in recent days - or re-joined (as several lapsed members have), either for a full year or a see-how-it-goes experimental quarter, do shoot me a head-scratcher for today's Q&A, and I will do my best to get to it.

~Not much remains of the old EIB family - the replacement show no longer uses the branding - but the one and only Mister Snerdley is still around and he'll be joining me on this year's Mark Steyn Cruise, and, I'm sure, be happy to share memories of his dear friend. Please click at right to see James in our fabulous cruise promo. More information here. (Rush hosted a cruise in, I think, the late Eighties, and after that decided never again.)

~Over the last year and more, The Mark Steyn Show has tried to broaden the range of contributors and feature new faces on the way up. One consequence of that is that they're increasingly in demand from other outlets: Over the weekend, my Dutch friend Eva Vlaardingerbroek will be co-hosting a Twitterspace livestream (not sure I know precisely what that is) on the Covid vaccines this Sunday at 6pm GMT/1pm North American Eastern. And, also over the weekend, my Aussie friend Alexandra Marshall will be launching her own show Down Under.

I'm thrilled and flattered to say that I'll be a guest on both Eva's and Alexandra's new outings, so I hope you'll want to tune in.

~So, on this mournful anniversary, see you back here at 3pm EST/8pm GMT. If you have no desire to join The Mark Steyn Club, no worries, as they say in Oz: We seek no unwilling members - and as always the show is free to listen to, so we hope you'll want to tune in.

As soon as we go live, members should log-in and submit their queries via our comment form below - and they'll be answered as-it-happens on the audio livestream that should magically appear just before we go on air.

~Clubland Q&A is a special production for The Mark Steyn Club. We're not paywalling off SteynOnline or any of that nonsense - and in fact this site now offers more free content than ever before in our twenty-year history. However, Club membership does confer a few benefits, including not only participation in our Q&As but also access to Tales for Our Time, our Sunday Poems and much more.

So make sure you join us live this afternoon at 3pm North American Eastern Time. That's 4pm in the Canadian Maritimes, half-past-four in Newfoundland - and, beyond the Americas, 8pm in London; 9pm in Paris; 10pm in Kiev; 11pm in Moscow; half-past-eleven in Tehran, for all you Newfoundlanders who move to Iran for the half-hour time zone; 1.45am in Kathmandu, for all you Iranians who move to Nepal to check out the quarter-hour time zone; 4am in Singapore, 7am in Sydney, 9am in Auckland, and Saturday lunchtime in His Majesty's Dominions across the Pacific.