That is to say, the language, literature, music and spirit of the culture of the East European Jews. The key to the post-Holocaust  survival of that culture was and remains the Yiddish language. Our guest in this podcast, Jonathan Brent, is the Executive Director of YIVO, the Yiddish Research Institute which was founded in Poland in 1925 and fled the Holocaust by moving to New York in 1940. Before he came to YIVO about three years ago Jonathan was Editorial Director of Yale University Press and helped to open the Stalin Archives in Moscow. He then commissioned more than 20 books revealing the barbarism and evil of that epoch.

That title is literally true. Over 90 percent of what actually is there can’t be seen. Thus, astrophysicists and cosmologists now speak of “dark energy” and “dark matter” which together account for the continuing and eternal expansion of the universe until everything will be too far away to be seen at all. This kind of thing does, perhaps, reduce American politics and troubles to their comparative triviality. Our guide to the universe in this broadcast is Michael Turner,  the discoverer of dark energy and a man who talks about cosmology with enough excitement and lucidity to create the illusion, at least, of comprehension in his listeners.

There was another side to the father of “political realism” as Harvey Mansfield – by far the weightiest and most pertinent of the conservatives who do serious political philosophy – demonstrates in an important new essay just published by The New Criterion and discussed in this conversation. Machiavelli as the cynical and amoral advisor on how to gain and – far more difficult – HOLD power is, of course, found in The Prince. But as author of the Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy, his true colors as a moralist  show through vividly. So argues Mansfield, the reigning intellectual in the Harvard Department of Government. Mansfield goes on in our conversation to examine how Mach the Moralist can assist those in power who aspire to do respectful good for the states or nations that they aspire to ”serve.”

The greatest persisting mystery from the twentieth century is the career of Adolf Hitler and his “success” in leading his military and his “Volk” into the ultimate abyss of mass murder in the Holocaust. The impossible task of “explaining Hitler” was confronted by many and, in the consensual judgment of the historians, none came closer than Sir Ian Kershaw. Here is the full interview that I did with him after the publication of the second volume of his great study of this freakish figure who was at the center of unaccountable, ultimate evil.

For despairing conservatives who think they discern the inevitable decline of their country, new hope and optimism may be found in the new book by James Bennett and Michael Lotus, American 3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity in the 21st Century–Why America’s Greatest Days Are Yet to Come. Or, maybe not. Here is a close and critical discussion with Michael Lotus who foresees a great “rebooting” of America.