That burden was nothing less than mental disease which kept Sherwin Nuland in a mental hospital for over a year. A distinguished Professor Of Surgery at Yale, he is also the celebrated author of many finely-wrought books drawn from medical science and culture, among them “How We Die” and “The Wisdom of the Body.” Though I had known him for years, I was stunned by what he revealed in this conversation in 2003 and in his then-new book “Lost in America.”

Those 40 years in the 19th century ended at Wounded Knee with the final defeat of Indian counter forces. A great figure in this extended war was Crazy Horse, who is memorialized in a fine and vivid biography by Joseph Marshall,  himself a member of the Lakota Sioux tribe. He is joined in this 2004 discussion by Brian Hosner, an historian of this epic struggle.

Publisher Adam Bellow, son of Saul, looked to his famous father to land his first job. Such stories provide a good basis for this wide-ranging 2005 discussion in 2005 of nepotism in our time and across history. Beyond the moral issue of should it be done are the sociological issues of: How often is it done? How is it well or poorly done? Is it a benefit or burden for the larger society? As we kick these matters around some surprises are bound to show up.

It remains a contentious issue in military history but, probably, the British outfit called the “Special Air Service” was the beginning. It was put together at the time of the Falklands war between the UK and Argentina and then went on to secret missions in Asia and all over the Middle East. One of the original SAS fighters, Andy McNab, tells the tale and recounts some truly daring assaults and escapes in this 2002 conversation.

Ideas do indeed have consequences and the ideas that flow from University-based Middle East Studies Centers often have strong pro-Arab, anti-Israeli influence in policy-making sectors of the State Department and the White House itself.  According to Martin Kramer, one of the few Israeli policy scholars who has ever served in such institutions – always as a visitor funded by extra-university sources – this is true over all the western world but particularly in the United States.For many years head of strategic studies at Tel Aviv University and now President of Shalem College in Jerusalem, he joined us together with Charles Lipson of the University of Chicago for a discussion of the connection between Muslim jihadist extremism and the views expressed within this sector of American academia, up to and definitely including the new decapitation-prone “Islamic State.”

Jean Shepherd fully deserved that title. He is long gone but much remembered by fans who hear fragments of the Shepherd style in some of the best of the ad-lib broadcasters today. Here we talk with his biographer Eugene Begmann in 2005 and then get a smashing excerpt from Shepherd waking up night-time New York.

The obituarist here is the great Mark Steyn. When not contemplating the dishonesty of the left and the decline of western civilization, he writes some of the most interesting and most entertaining obituaries ever published. Here he is visiting with us in 2007 and chatting about various exemplary and appalling recently concluded lives including Ronald Reagan, Princess Margaret, Idi  Amin, Bob Hope, the son of Benito Mussolini, and the guy who invented Cool Whip.

This was based on a prediction from, of all people , George Will. The 2001 conversation deals with “the psychology of religion,” a course that I was teaching at the time. Some 13 years later Cardinal George was about to retire but remained one of the great intellectual presences within the Catholic church.

 …was waged over the New Testament and the question of which books, including various “gospels,” were to be included and which rejected. Two great Biblical scholars, Bart Ehrman of the University of North Carolina and Margaret Mitchell of the University of Chicago, in 2005 reviewed the rich modern research including the most important issue of how the Resurrection acquired canonical status.

…is either directly or inversely related to its length. Thus, taking two great clichés about history, if Santayana  (“those who forget history are condemned to repeat it”) is true or false then Henry Ford (“history is bunk”) is correspondingly false or true. Whether concerning history, politics, love, wealth or life itself (“life is a bitch and then you die”), the thousands (millions?) of aphorisms, maxims and wise saws are the stuff of conversation and argument.

Our guest Professor Gary Saul Morson collects them and writes books about them and in this conversation we kick many of them around, pondering their correct attribution and incidentally asking: Is it true or false, partially or universally, and who handled the truth of the matter better than this?