Shooting this week’s Uncommon Knowledge interview, Harry Jaffa told me during a break what it had been like to attend a tutorial with his old professor and mentor, the great political philosopher Leo Strauss.

Jaffa, who studied with Strauss at the New School for Social Research, in Greenwich Village, during the 1940s, would turn up at Strauss’s office in the late afternoon. Strauss would lecture Jaffa for three hours. When evening fell, Strauss would pack up, close his office, and leave the building — all as he continued to lecture. Throughout the walk to the subway station, then down the stairs and onto the platform to wait for the train, Strauss would continue lecturing. When the train arrived, Strauss would get on, then continue lecturing through a window, Jaffa trotting alongside as the train began to roll.

“Where the platform ended and the train disappeared into the tunnel,” Jaffa said, “that was where a lecture from Leo Strauss would end.”

Which helps explain Harry Jaffa’s technique in answering questions himself.

Discussing the context of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the subject of his classic work, Crisis of the House Divided, I kept trying to get Jaffa to answer questions in one or two sentences each. He kept refusing, insisting on provided nuance and detail — on presenting the issues in 1858 just as they would have seemed to Lincoln and Douglas.

What you’ll see here isn’t tidy television. It’s a remarkable mind.

Click here.