You could of course answer Adam or Moses. But for Robert Pinsky, former poet laureate of the United States, it has to be David. So he attests – and reveals why – in this engrossing  conversation with Judaic historian Benjamin Sommer and the fascinated moderator of the program. The extra attraction: Some wonderful  poems about David read  here by Pinskey.

Back in 1995, as he was readying himself for his attempt to get elected to the State Senate of Illinois, this youngish Chicago lawyer (and former community organizer!) joined us to discuss his new book and his attitudes toward various major matters. Having heard him on the air for this hour and a half discussion would you have predicted a “big public career” to come?  Frankly, it did not so strike me. But upon the guest’s departure the program’s producer, an otherwise calm, quite intelligent and slightly cynical recent Yale graduate, excitedly declared, “I don’t know where he’s going but I want to go there with him!!” How much of the Obama to come do you hear in this longish sample of the Obama that was?

That was the sub-title of Bob Woodward’s book about William Casey, who ran the CIA as a war operation. Before Casey’s death in 1987 Woodward interviewed him deeply and fully – and shortly after that published this astonishing account and gave us this rather stunning discussion of the hidden history he had uncovered.

The language of the Jews of Europe persists despite the devastating effects of the Holocaust. Here in 1995 we discuss that language and its influence upon American English and popular culture with three masters of the language and its history.

For what? For seizure of power and subsequent authoritarian rule. In this program from 2008, Professor Phillip Freeman, author of a new biography of the leading Roman, tracks his rise, conquests, and dramatic fall on the Ides of March.  It is noteworthy that in many languages the term for the King (such as Tsar and Kaiser) are variants of Caesar. Some crucial scenes from Shakespeare’s play of the same name punctuate the discussion.