Two linguistic science specialists join us in this conversation from 1996 as we ask and they answer such basic questions as: How did language originate? Do non-human animals ever achieve real language? What are the major families of language? Why and how do languages change and new ones emerge? If the French (actually from Normandy) had not successfully invaded Britain in 1066, would the English language exist? These and many other fascinating issues are discussed by our two guests while the host goes on to recite the middle-English prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Leonard Pitts joined us in 2006 to discuss his then just-published book “Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood.” He deals here with problems which have persisted: how to prepare a black child for contacts with police; the effects of feminist theory upon black fatherhood; absent-father black families as a source of social pathology and as a source of suffering for the father himself. Strong stuff, strongly articulated!

Well, maybe not everything but in this spirited conversation with two physicians and one psychologist – all specialists on aging – we get around to almost everything. Including: longevity and its extension, modes of decline, methods of cognitive maintenance and, more broadly, the joys as well as the burdens of aging.

Over 800 people died in the middle of the Chicago River on an early morning at dockside one sunny day in July of 1915. Matching the tragedy of the Titanic, it is now lost in memory except for the tales still told in Chicago. Here is a striking account by Jay Bonansinga. He did the definitive history and discussed it with us one night in 2004. Of equal interest are the phone calls from descendants of some of the survivors.

Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Horthy, and Antonescu all led fascist states in 20th century Europe. The first two listed led their nations against us in World War II. How did fascism arise? What were its central ideas and intentions? Was war essential to the fascist program? How and why did the populations of Germany, Italy, Hungary, Spain and Romania support their fascist regimes? Why and how does fascism persist in contemporary political life? These are some of the questions addressed in 2006 by our two expert historians of the fascist states.

The Old Testament – the Hebrew Bible or Tanach – combines myth, allegory and particularly in the later books, historical events. Modern biblical scholarship has worked for over a hundred years to decode the text so as to reveal the “true story” of the group that became the Jews. James Kugel is one of the leading contributors to that effort. Now at Bar Ilan University in Israel, he taught before that at Harvard where his undergraduate course in the Hebrew Bible usually drew 800 or 900 registered students. He joined us in this memorable 2007 program about the hidden meanings of the biblical text.

A 2005 Jihadist terror bombing killed 57 London commuters. The next day we talked with a dear London friend, the mystery novelist P.D. James who had a few years earlier been elevated to the peerage and thus was a member of the House of Lords. Lady James gave us a chilling account of what had just happened and a most insightful interpretation of this early chapter in the terrorist assault upon the West. Here is a crucial portion of that conversation.

Our guest in this deep-probing discussion is historian Scott Appleby of the University of Notre Dame. He was, together with Martin Marty, the founder and director of a great project on modern religious fundamentalism which involved the contributions of over a hundred scholars from around the world as they investigated  the origins and militant intentions and programs of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism,  Buddhism and Sikhism.

Appleby is the Dean of the new School of Foreign Affairs at Notre Dame and one of the sharpest, wisest and valuably uninhibited analysts of the evil  that men do with religion as a primary political tool. Here he applies his analytic skill and wide knowledge to modern “Islamism” and helps to illuminate the origins and the long-lasting threat that the west (and the world!) must now confront.

Of the many programs we have done on evolutionary theory and research none was more sharply and effectively focused on the (failed) challenge to Darwinism posed by the “theory” of intelligent design. In this discussion from 2002 two great guests, Robert Richards and Robert Roose, review the general evolutionary view and take on the ultimate issue concerning the complexity of the human eye.

So said Wellington about the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo – and the same can be said and is said by our guest, John Ferling – about the outcome of our Revolutionary War. In this 2006 conversation the masterly historian reviews how lucky we were and how much our victory was a gift from the French, who finally provided the naval blockade which blocked the escape of the British from Yorktown. The broader lesson is how utterly contingent can be the turns of history. Ferling provides a wonderfully rich narrative backing for this view.