We began with Scotland, but somehow we got to spanking. The “we” is Jay Nordlinger and me on our podcast, Need to Know. Huge sighs of relief that the United Kingdom remains united. We would not welcome a world in which Russia is expanding while Great Britain is contracting.

We wonder if the scandals about hitting children — and that’s what spanking is — will provoke more honest examination of the topic. Steven Holmes had a very honest and affecting story at CNN about the black community’s relative tolerance for the practice. We spend some time on Groundhog Day, not the movie, exactly, but the endless, recurring practice by Democrats of accusing Republicans of racism. Deeply corrupt, profoundly cynical, will it ever end?

But there’s always music. We close with the “patriotic hymn” created in 1921 when a poem, “I vow to thee my country” by Cecil Spring Rice, an ambassador from Britain to the U.S., was set to music by Gustav Holst. It’s actually a version of Holst’s “The Planets.” Stirring stuff. The version you hear at the end of our podcast was performed at the Royal Albert Hall in 2011.