Publisher Adam Bellow, son of Saul, looked to his famous father to land his first job. Such stories provide a good basis for this wide-ranging 2005 discussion in 2005 of nepotism in our time and across history. Beyond the moral issue of should it be done are the sociological issues of: How often is it done? How is it well or poorly done? Is it a benefit or burden for the larger society? As we kick these matters around some surprises are bound to show up.

It remains a contentious issue in military history but, probably, the British outfit called the “Special Air Service” was the beginning. It was put together at the time of the Falklands war between the UK and Argentina and then went on to secret missions in Asia and all over the Middle East. One of the original SAS fighters, Andy McNab, tells the tale and recounts some truly daring assaults and escapes in this 2002 conversation.

Ideas do indeed have consequences and the ideas that flow from University-based Middle East Studies Centers often have strong pro-Arab, anti-Israeli influence in policy-making sectors of the State Department and the White House itself.  According to Martin Kramer, one of the few Israeli policy scholars who has ever served in such institutions – always as a visitor funded by extra-university sources – this is true over all the western world but particularly in the United States.For many years head of strategic studies at Tel Aviv University and now President of Shalem College in Jerusalem, he joined us together with Charles Lipson of the University of Chicago for a discussion of the connection between Muslim jihadist extremism and the views expressed within this sector of American academia, up to and definitely including the new decapitation-prone “Islamic State.”

Jean Shepherd fully deserved that title. He is long gone but much remembered by fans who hear fragments of the Shepherd style in some of the best of the ad-lib broadcasters today. Here we talk with his biographer Eugene Begmann in 2005 and then get a smashing excerpt from Shepherd waking up night-time New York.

The obituarist here is the great Mark Steyn. When not contemplating the dishonesty of the left and the decline of western civilization, he writes some of the most interesting and most entertaining obituaries ever published. Here he is visiting with us in 2007 and chatting about various exemplary and appalling recently concluded lives including Ronald Reagan, Princess Margaret, Idi  Amin, Bob Hope, the son of Benito Mussolini, and the guy who invented Cool Whip.