Harry Stein, former liberal and now aggrieved conservative (it happens a lot in New York) has run all the risks in his book of last year, now retitled Why We Won’t Talk Honestly About Race. Honesty begins, he asserts, with the full recognition and examination of the two separate Black  Americas.  In this conversation he holds forth on the various “let’s pretends” that help to perpetuate the dysfunctional world to which “inner city” young blacks have been consigned. Among the great pretenses are: fathers don’t matter; crime has nothing to do with race; multiculturalism makes for better education. Yes, to be sure,  Stein risks being defamed as “politically incorrect.” But someone has to do it and no other we know does it with as much clarity, verve and restorative good humor.

We’re joined by Virginia Morell, a science writer and author of the new book Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures. We talk with Morell about animal emotion, feeling and consciousness – and whether any of those actually exist! It’s a fascinating discussion we thoroughly enjoyed.

We’re joined by Robert George, professor of jurisprudence at Princeton, and lecturer at Harvard Law School. Many have said that as Niebuhr was the earlier ideational manifestation of American liberal Protestantism so George now is for contemporary American conservative Catholicism. Here he addresses the many issues currently roiling both in the Catholic church and in the public square. An interesting analytic exercise would be to compare George’s views to what we have been hearing from Pope Francis.

Russia is no longer a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. It’s a kleptocracy. One of the on-scene journalists who has most expertly detailed how it became one, how it presently operates, and the dangerous ambitions that now activate it’s elite, is David Satter. We spoke with David in an earlier podcast and then again after his return to Moscow. Here he is in full and fascinating form.

There are about three conservative cartoonists fully employed by American daily newspapers. How do we know that? Because one of them told us so. That is Scott Stantis of the Chicago Tribune and here he is discussing the cartoonist’s art and what’s wrong (and sometimes right) in American politics.

As we approach the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, we talk with Philip Shenon, author of A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination. In the book, Shenon looks at the findings of the Warren Commission and the conspiracy theories surrounding Kennedy’s death, pointing out many peculiarities on the day and following days of the assassination.

Of the many authors who have written about the Kennedy assassination from every possible conspiracy angle and who appeared on our program over the many years, one that really stands out is political scientist John McAdam. He wrote, “JFK Assassination Logic: How to Think About Claims of Conspiracy,” and joined us for a richly detailed discussion. Here is the full program.

That is to say, the language, literature, music and spirit of the culture of the East European Jews. The key to the post-Holocaust  survival of that culture was and remains the Yiddish language. Our guest in this podcast, Jonathan Brent, is the Executive Director of YIVO, the Yiddish Research Institute which was founded in Poland in 1925 and fled the Holocaust by moving to New York in 1940. Before he came to YIVO about three years ago Jonathan was Editorial Director of Yale University Press and helped to open the Stalin Archives in Moscow. He then commissioned more than 20 books revealing the barbarism and evil of that epoch.

That title is literally true. Over 90 percent of what actually is there can’t be seen. Thus, astrophysicists and cosmologists now speak of “dark energy” and “dark matter” which together account for the continuing and eternal expansion of the universe until everything will be too far away to be seen at all. This kind of thing does, perhaps, reduce American politics and troubles to their comparative triviality. Our guide to the universe in this broadcast is Michael Turner,  the discoverer of dark energy and a man who talks about cosmology with enough excitement and lucidity to create the illusion, at least, of comprehension in his listeners.

There was another side to the father of “political realism” as Harvey Mansfield – by far the weightiest and most pertinent of the conservatives who do serious political philosophy – demonstrates in an important new essay just published by The New Criterion and discussed in this conversation. Machiavelli as the cynical and amoral advisor on how to gain and – far more difficult – HOLD power is, of course, found in The Prince. But as author of the Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy, his true colors as a moralist  show through vividly. So argues Mansfield, the reigning intellectual in the Harvard Department of Government. Mansfield goes on in our conversation to examine how Mach the Moralist can assist those in power who aspire to do respectful good for the states or nations that they aspire to ”serve.”