In a sort of frenzy of anti-Imus zeal, I invited two very smart and jovial fellows, Professor John Mark Reynolds of Biola University and Professor David Allen White of the United States Naval Academy, to spend an hour on air laying out the thirty books your freshman ought to have read in his or her first year of college if you got your money's worth.

The transcript is here.  (Producer Duane, who transcribed it, may be lying in wait to kill me.)  The audio is here.

I thought it was a very interesting conversation, but I was unprepared for the volume of mail requesting the list from across the country.  We talk show hosts tend to forget that America is full of very bright, very curious people who at least occasionally want to step back and look up.

I am tempted to ask today's guests, Mark Steyn and James Lileks, how many of the 40-odd titles thrown out by the good professors they have read.  But I am afraid it would be another exercise in humility for your host, who, sad to say, didn't even recognize Boethius' The Consolation of Philosophy.