On this week’s episode of Isaac Chotiner podcast, I Have to Ask, Chotiner spoke with Stephen Kotkin, a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union who has just published the massive second volume of his Joseph Stalin biography, called Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941. With another volume set to come, this one ends just on the eve of Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union.

Learn behind the scenes stories of some of the objects on view in the exhibition with Marissa Schleicher Rhee, project archivist for exhibitions, Hoover Institution Library & Archives.

Will 2018 see a continuation of the third great stretch of instability in national politics?

John F. Kennedy was assassinated 54 years ago today. There were the usual articles in the media recognizing the anniversary, all pretty much boilerplate accounts of the assassination, the conspiracy theories, and the obligatory mention of "Camelot" and how different the country might have been if Kennedy had lived.