In his second appearance on Conversations, former Deputy National Security Advisor (under George W. Bush) and Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Elliott Abrams explains the challenges to a new president of quickly putting together a foreign policy team and the urgency the new president will face in restoring America’s global standing. Kristol and Abrams discuss particular hot spots around the world including the Middle East. Finally, Abrams offers advice about how the new president should work within and around Washington’s entrenched bureaucracies.

In his tenth conversation with Bill Kristol, Harvey Mansfield recommends some important and diverting books from different genres. Mansfield discusses crime fiction, comedic novels, biographies, and political science and considers what we can learn from the best writers in these genres. Mansfield also interprets Jonathan Swift’s "Gulliver’s Travels" as a critique of modern science. Other authors discussed include: Bill James, Agatha Christie, Donald Westlake, P.G. Wodehouse, James Q. Wilson, and Winston Churchill.

In his second conversation with Bill Kristol, American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray discusses the state of American civic life and how this can help us understand the current political moment. Murray explains how the decline of communities, the effects of immigration, and the growth of anti-trade sentiment have fueled populist impulses in 2016. Kristol and Murray also revisit Murray's prescient The Bell Curve (1994) and discuss how cognitive ability might affect American life in the future.

In his second conversation with Bill Kristol, Claremont McKenna professor of political philosophy Mark Blitz discusses American liberal democracy. Blitz explains the meaning of individual natural rights and why they form the basis of American government. Blitz and Kristol then consider critiques of American liberal democracy—most prominently, that the American regime promotes inequality or leads to a lowering of standards. Blitz addresses these criticisms and explains why the American regime remains solid and defensible.

In his third conversation with Bill Kristol, Paul Cantor focuses on works of literature—plays, short stories, and novels—that deepen our understanding of the characteristics and challenges of political and economic liberty. Cantor considers a variety of authors from across the centuries—Ben Jonson, Daniel Defoe, Georg Büchner, Elizabeth Gaskell, Joseph Conrad, Franz Kafka, and Tom Stoppard—who thought deeply and wrote powerfully about the politics of freedom.