Add 6.22.19. Milt interviews a trio of experts on Mormonism’s present form as a major religion, and a significant presence in U.S. life. Guests are Jana Riess, author of “Mormonism for Dummies,” Patrick Q. Mason, Chair in Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University, and Chicago Tribune religion reporter Manya Brashear.

Added 6.14.19. Milt interviews Kyle Olson in 2011 about his then-new book, “Indoctrination.” Olson is the founder and CEO of the Education Action Group, a Michigan-based non-profit which favors charter schools and education vouchers and has attracted attacks from pro-teachers-union advocates as a tool of the DeVos family, Republicans, and conservatives. Olson maintains – and discusses with Milt – his contentions that intellectual diversity and free inquiry are being subjugated in U.S. public school classrooms for anti-American, redistributionist advocacy driven in part by teacher training programs at the nation’s colleges and universities.

Added 6.7.19. Loaded with historical radio clips, Milt interviews broadcast historian J. Fred MacDonald about 20th Century broadcasting history. The show starts with a vintage clip that jolts the listener back to  a national turning point. The Sunday broadcast of the New York Philharmonic, live, playing Shostakovich’s Symphony #1 in F Minor, is interrupted by a news bulletin, and then continued radio news coverage of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The episode traces the role of broadcast communications in U.S. history, politics and public opinion going forward from that point.

Added 5.31.19. Modern Russia is a study in intersectionality. How is it shaped by the overlapping spheres of strongman leader Vladimir Putin, the criminal oligarch class, plus a media more and more owned by said oligarchs, and the restless but still somewhat cowed masses? What are the key takeaways on the nation’s resurgent geopolitical profile? Milt probes the problems and prospects of modern Russia with two eminent “Russianists.” They are John Bushnell, a Northwestern University historian, and Martha Merritt, then of the University of Chicago.

Added 5.3.19. In this 2000 episode, Milt interviews famed U.S. astronaut Jim Lovell about the tricky Apollo 13 mission, and more. The 1970 voyage was to be the third U.S. moon landing – but minutes before touch-down, an oxygen tank explosion caused major damage to the spacecraft. That forced a tricky but ultimately safe return to earth. Often called a “successful failure,” the mission led to a 1994 book co-authored by Lovell titled, “Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage Of Apollo 13,” and a year later the movie “Apollo 13,” starring Tom Hanks as Lovell.