1776 was the title and subject of David McCullough’s vigorous narrative of the battles of that first year when the odds that you would get in London were, to say the least, not favorable. Deservedly considered our leading “popular historian,” he joined us for this memorable program in 2005.

Daniel Aron of Harvard started this great enterprise and here, in a 1996 conversation, he is joined by three of his colleagues in a scholarly but vivid discussion of such contributors to the “canon” as Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, Dreiser, Hemingway and a dozen others along the route.

Brother Billy and sister Ruth joined us one memorable night in 1978 as the conversation veered toward Billy’s politically incorrect (as they would be now) social aversions. Sister Ruth who was a “lay evangelist” somehow finessed the difficult moment to the delight of the host and of Jim Wall, then the editor of Christian Century magazine.

Here’s a head-on and confrontational discussion of some of the main issues – immigration, health care, decline of marriage and family-formation, economic recovery – that differentiate liberal and conservative these days. Chris Robling and Charles Lipson are mainstays of our A-team and Kitty Kurth is partner in her own political public relations firm.

That was the purpose of “neoconservatism” according to one of movement’s founders, Irving Kristol, writing in 1977. Our discussion of the intellectual biography of Kristol and of his equally influential wife Gertrude Himmelfarb, is with Jonathan Bronitsky. His Phd thesis was to be published around the time of this discussion. You can follow Jonathan on Twitter at @jbronitsky

That is the basic question of paleontology. Here, from a discussion in 2004, we are joined by some leading members of that scientific discipline who track how homo sapiens (us!) evolved and ultimately won out over all other hominid competitors.

With three historians of the winning, settlement and turmoil of the American West, we recount the realities behind the mythology. This memorable discussion occurred in 2002.

That was the task brilliantly performed by Nobel Laureate Gary Becker, recently deceased at 83. This wide-ranging conversation with him was conducted in 2005.

With Donald Kagan of Yale University we discuss the great conflict between Athens and Sparta, as originally reported and explained by one of the generals, Thucydides, who is still regarded as “the father of history.” This 2003 conversation illuminates the causes, nature and consequences of war as they were 2,500 years ago and still are today.

Our guest is the brave woman from Somalia who has – to understate the case – courted some danger in criticizing and leaving Islam. A former member of the Dutch parliament, she has recently been disinvited as commencement speaker at Brandeis University. Her appearance on our program in 2007 is memorable for the depth of her analysis and the force of her life story.