In this 2000 program, Nathanial Philbrick, author of “In the Heart of the Sea,” recounts the true-life story that probably inspired Melville’s Moby Dick. The Essex, a whaleship out of Nantucket, was completely destroyed by the great sperm whale that it was pursuing  in the South Pacific about a thousand miles east of the Marquesas Islands.

Despite his trial in Jerusalem and his subsequent execution, Eichmann, who was in charge of the Holocaust of European Jewry, remains an enigmatic figure. Was he merely a bureaucrat “following orders” or was he an enthusiastic mass-murderer? One of the best book-length studies of Eichmann was by Neal Bascom. Here he is in a full discussion from 2009.

Is Homo Sapiens directly descended from some prior species? If so, it would probably be “Homo Neanderthalis.” That is the question with which this fine discussion from 2004 begins. One of the participants is a biological scientist and the other is engaged in archeological anthropology. Both have spent their careers trying to track the long geneology of our species.

“Strange” because of its fictional beginning, but full of revelations from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Edmund Morris. He is joined in this conversation from 1999 by Joe Morris. The two Morrises are not related except in their shared and striking competence as political historians.

As you have probably heard, Peter Schweitzer, author of the recent book “Clinton Cash,” asserts that they are. Here, he lays out his case.