This is about the formulation and the growth of the civil rights movement along with the setbacks and changes that occurred during that long period. One outcome is a strain of white guilt that continues to forcefully shape today’s political culture, discourse, and public policy. And which, ironically, may well comprise a form of racism itself. The author Shelby Steele has written powerfully and convincingly on the topic. Here we talk with him.

A few years after the end of her premiership Margaret Thatcher came to spend two hours with us, and we are still looking for the full tape! But here’s a fascinating fragment of that conversation from 1992 as she reminisces about her first meeting with Gorbachev when he dropped in for a real conversation (with no preparatory notes and only his translator) at 10 Downing Street.

To our interview collection of occupants of the office (Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, George Schultz, Madeline Albright) we must add Warren Christopher. He  filled that most important cabinet position during all of the first term of Bill Clinton. Here in 2001 he reminisces about such problems as Bosnia, Haiti, NAFTA and Yeltsin on his good and bad (drunken) days.

Yes, of course. The list is a long one that does not begin and end with Edmund Burke. Here is a discussion with a thoughtful and well-informed historian who has done a fine book about 14 American conservatives who help to define that political species.

Jack Germond was one of the great print and TV journalists  focused upon national politics. In 2004 he took a cynical but amused look at the unreliability of his journalistic brethren – particularly as they offered their quick and dramatic appraisals on weekend TV.