Is euthanasia the shape of things to come? The basic question of the emergent field of bioethics is discussed here in its many varieties – and varying verities – by three concerned and sophisticated scholars: Dr. Leon Kass, who served as the head of the bioethics commission for the second President Bush, plus John Tilner and Nigel Cameron.

According to Margaret Thatcher, talking on our radio program some years ago, the crucial occasion was the meeting between Gorbachev and Reagan in the mid 1980s in a haunted house in Iceland. The meeting seemed to be a failure – floundering over the issue of the “Star Wars” program – but it led to a halving of the nuclear arsenals of both nations within a year. A fly on the wall at the original meeting was Ken Adelman, then the Director of the Office of Arms Control and Disarmament. Here is our recent discussion with him as based upon his new book in which he reveals the almost surreal story of that weekend  in Reykyavic.

There are serious historic, Koranic and Sharia grounds for just such an assertion and Joe Morris reviews them here, noting some of the main reasons for the return – contested but potent – of beheading-based Jihad.  Morris, one of the founding members of our political A-Team, is a former Assistant Attorney General of the United States and one of the few non-Muslim experts ShariaLaw. In this examination of the movement to erect the beginnings of a universal Islamic Caliphate, threatening to kill all “non-believers,” we are also joined Chris Robling, a corporate consultant who once served at the CIA and is another member of our A-Team.

It is not the “opposable thumb” or “bipedal locomotion” that accounts for human superiority over other animals. Rather – and of course – it is the evolved brain of homo sapiens. Two leading brain researchers discuss the role of the brain in “language, love, liberty” and other distinctive human attributes in this 2007 conversation.

One of the best journalists ever to cover Washington was Tom Wicker of the New York Times. When finally he retired in 2004, having covered all of the regimes from Eisenhower to George W. Bush, he appeared on our program to talk about his many encounters with the Presidents – including how he got a prominent place on Nixon’s Enemies List.

All you need to know about the English language is to be found in the great Oxford dictionary, except the tale of the strange genius who conceived and organized it and the many unusual assistants – including a murderer and a madman – who worked with him. All of that is to be found in Simon Winchester’s book on the subject and in this extended 2003 conversation.

Two great historians covered the great 5th century (BC) war between Athens and Sparta. Thucydides was not available for interview – but Donald Kagan, Professor of History at Yale University, was. Our memorable conversation occurred in 2003 and provides a compelling illumination of the nature of war itself.

The immediate connection is that they were borm on the same day – within hours of one another. The further connection is of course that each changed the course of history in an irreversible way. Adam Gopnick of the New Yorker magazine did a brilliant book on the subject, and here he is in a program from 2009.

The great poet said “The world is too much with us” and if living at this moment he might well add, “and it all might be breaking down right now.” All this is examined in a contentious and extended exchange by our discussants: Chris Robling and Charles Lipson of our A-Team and our Democratic strategist friend David Lundy.

The famously rejected nominee takes on the Supreme Courts of the U.S., Canada and Israel and finds them representative of a great failing in western jurisprudence: i.e. seeking to make new law and, thus, to “legislate” instead of “adjudicate.” He had just published in 2003 a book laying out the argument that he presents quite forcefully in this discussion. And speaking of counter-factuals, how might our history have been different if he had been allowed onto the Supreme Court?