Bellow died in 2005 and about a week later we commemorated his passing with an extended discussion of his art and his life. One of our guests, Richard Stern, was Bellow’s close friend and played a major role in bringing him to the University of Chicago. Both Stern and our other guest, Alexander Hemon, were important working novelists at the time of this deeply probing discussion.

Graham Allison, former Assistant Secretary of Defense and one of the founders of the Kennedy School at Harvard, wrote a book 11 years ago saying that such an attack was ultimately inevitable. In this riveting conversation from 2004 he lays out the facts and the reasoning behind his warning. The likely source of such an attack is no longer Osama Bin Laden. But as you listen ask yourself whether this analysis does not apply as well – or even more closely – to ISIS.

What if the Confederacy had won at Gettysburg? That and similiar questions always arise as one ponders the mysteries of history. The Gettysburg counterfactual and others are examined here in a discussion in 2001 featuring three military historians.

No, it’s not the group you think it is. It’s “Beyond the Fringe” an early post-war group introduced here, in a program about British and American comedy, by Abe Peck who was one of our regulars in the 1980s. Peter Moore is in the group as are various others who went on to prominence after they escaped from Oxford University.