Talk-show host Michael Medved writes sharp and popular books advancing an optimistic view of the American prospect. Back in 2009 we discussed his then-just published work, “The 10 Big Lies About America.”

…that swept the country for 10 or so years was at its height when we did this program. Thousands of female “patients” were persuaded by stupid or incompetent “psychologists” that they had been sexually abused by their fathers or by others when in fact nothing of the sort had happened. The psychological injuries to those who had these false memories implanted and to those they accused still persist though the social panic has by now died out. In the middle of that period of panic we did a close analysis of what was happening. Our guests were three valuable debunkers, one a psychiatrist, another a psychologist and one a lawyer who helped the nation to put this harmful myth aside.

And here’s another charged conversation with the political scientist on our A Team, Charles Lipson of the University of Chicago. As we dart about in our usual free-associative style some of the matters we hit upon are:

• What do the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movement have in common?
• Did Obama represent the last gasp of Democratic Party “progressivism?”
• Is there a  notable decline and disorder in the moral competence of  the white, working class family.?
• Does the presidency really matter or is it increasingly owned by “Wall Street” and the Media?
• Are Jeb Bush, Scott Walker or any other Republican possibilities actually “unowned?”
• What accomplishments adorn Hilary’s “great resume?”
• How about chucking it all for a parliamentary system?

This conversation came before the President’s lecture to the nation and the world about the equivalence of ISIS and the Crusades. That would have made a great extra feature for this edition but you might now want to conjecture about how that fits in with what Charles has to say, early on, about the decay and demise of the “progressivism” project.

We are astonished. The “we” is me and my guest, Charles Lipson, member of our old A-Team and one of the country’s five leading political scientists (by Rosenberg Ranking). Astonished by what? By the man who wasn’t there. Where? In Paris, of course.

Yet other things about the recent performance of our old colleague from the University of Chicago continue to astonish – among them his inability to call Islamic terrorism what it is. As usual with Charles the conversation wanders in many correlated directions including: the talent level of the President’s foreign policy advisors, the appalling consequences that followed from the stance announced way back in the Cairo speech and, probably essential for the rest of the century, the required policy for playing through the struggle with recidivist and homicidal Jihadism.

That’s the title of a wonderfully outspoken book by John Silber who was, for many years, the President of Boston University. Architecture is, of course, the most public of the arts. You can put a bad painting in the basement but  not a bad building. Always an outspoken critic, Silber finds many modern buildings that he would like to have torn down. In this discussion from 2008 he identifies and describes them and names the names of their designers, And to my mind, his judgments are absolutely correct!