With the recent announcement that Oppenheimer, the film directed by Christopher Nolan, had garnered 11 Academy Award nominations, it seemed timely to pull from the archives this rarely seen episode of Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson from 1996 (the third episode ever shot), featuring nuclear physicists and Hoover senior fellows Edward Teller and Sidney Drell. Teller was involved in the development of the first atomic bomb and is prominently featured in Oppenheimer. Drell was an expert in the field of nuclear arms control and cofounder of the Center for International Security and Arms Control, now the Center for International Security and Cooperation. He later was deputy director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC) from 1969 until his retirement from the lab in 1998. In this episode, Teller and Drell engage in a lively debate about the role of nuclear weapons and how they should be regulated in the late 20th century.

Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University. In this interview, Ferguson discusses his stunning essay “The Treason of the Intellectuals,” published in December 2013 in the Free Press. The essay delves deeply into the changes Ferguson has observed in his 30-year career as an academic, especially over the past 10 years. He describes in the opening of his essay: “I have . . . witnessed the willingness of trustees, donors, and alumni to tolerate the politicization of American universities by an illiberal coalition of ‘woke’ progressives, adherents of ‘critical race theory,’ and apologists for Islamist extremism.” Ferguson also discusses the resignation of Harvard president Claudine Gay and what it means for all institutions of higher learning, as well as putting forth some solutions for addressing these issues.

Between now and the spring, the Supreme Court will rule on at least three cases involving Donald Trump. Two questions: What should the Court’s rulings be? What will they be? To answer those questions and more, we turn to our in-house legal experts: NYU Law School’s Richard Epstein and Berkeley Law School’s John Yoo.

Tom Cotton has been a US Senator since 2015. Before that he served for two years in the US House of Representatives from the Arkansas Fourth District, after defeating a two-term Democratic incumbent. Cotton served in the US Army, where he was stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan. He’s a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. In this wide-ranging interview, conducted in the Hugh Scott Room in the US Capitol, Senator Cotton opines on a variety of issues, including the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine and the looming conflict with China over Taiwan; his “war” with the New York Times; what can be done about the lack of trust in US institutions; and why he’s not running for president in 2024.

Dan Blumenthal is the director of Asian studies at the American Enterprise Institute. During the administration of President George W. Bush, he served in the Department of Defense. Blumenthal’s most recent book is The China Nightmare: The Grand Ambitions of a Decaying State. Elbridge Colby is a founder of the new think tank the Marathon Initiative. During the administration of President Donald Trump, he served in the Department of Defense. Colby’s most recent publication is The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict. In this wide-ranging conversation, Colby and Blumenthal discuss what the United States and its allies can do practically to deter China’s expansion in the South China Sea and its aggression toward Taiwan.

Not yet 40 years old, Republican congressman Mike Gallagher has been elected four times to the House of Representatives from Wisconsin’s eighth district, which includes Green Bay and, more importantly, Lambeau Field, home of the Packers. He’s currently serving as the chair of the US House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. He joins in a wide-ranging conversation to discuss the Chinese threat to Taiwan, TikTok’s dangers to American youth, who actually is the fastest man in Congress, his advice for Pope Francis, and how to be a Packers fan in troubled times.

The past several years have seen consequential changes for NCAA schools and their athletes: the introduction of name, image, and likeness rules; the establishment of the transfer portal; and the realignment of the conferences in which all major college teams and athletes compete—and critically, the distribution of the TV monies the conferences generate. To guide us through this sea change, we drafted two of the most knowledgeable people in sports: former US secretary of state, current director of the Hoover Institution, co-owner of the Denver Broncos, and most recently, special advisor on athletics to the president of Stanford University (more on what that means in the show) Condoleezza Rice; and former Stanford and Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck (also the number-one pick in the 2012 NFL draft). Together, Rice and Luck explain the new terrain of college athletics, how it affects every sport played in the academic realm, what it means for both the Olympics and pro sports, and most importantly, how it will change the lives of college athletes.

Elizabeth Economy did her undergraduate work at Swarthmore, earned a master’s at Stanford, and holds a doctorate from the University of Michigan. She served at the Council on Foreign Relations and the World Economic Forum before coming to the Hoover Institution in 2020. Dr. Economy is the author of half a dozen books, including her most recent volume, The World According to China. She has just returned to Hoover after a two-year leave of absence in Washington, where she served as senior advisor for China to Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. In this wide-ranging interview, Dr. Economy discusses China’s ambition for controlling international internet traffic and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ambition to reclaim “Chinese centrality on the global stage.” Dr. Economy also compares the China policies of the Trump and Biden administrations and notes that both administrations—while agreeing on very little else—agree that China is a danger and must be dealt with, especially with regard to Taiwan.

Thomas Sowell, age 93, is the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution. With his usual fierceness and feistiness intact, Dr. Sowell returns to Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson for a second round of discussion on his latest book (he’s published over 40 titles over his career), Social Justice Fallacies. In this installment, Dr. Sowell discusses in great detail the recent Supreme Court decision on affirmative action, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, and his decades-long friendship with Justice Clarence Thomas. Dr. Sowell also reacts to some YouTube videos of young people reacting to him.

Thomas Sowell, age 93, is the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution. With his usual fierceness and feistiness intact, Dr. Sowell returns to Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson to discuss his latest book (he’s published over 40 titles over his career), Social Justice Fallacies. In this wide-ranging interview, Dr. Sowell discusses the consequences of our society’s embarking on a quest for equality at the expense of merit. Even if every group in society is given an equal chance, he explains, these groups will end up with disparate levels of income or education. Dr. Sowell also criticizes the concept of systemic racism; his research reveals it doesn’t appear to apply to blacks (watch the interview to see why that word isn’t capitalized here) who are married. The interview concludes with Dr. Sowell reading a moving passage from his book.

Steven Koonin is one of America's most distinguished scientists, with decades of experience, including a stint as undersecretary of science at the Department of Energy in the Obama administration. In this wide-ranging discussion, based in part on his 2021 book, Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters, Koonin gives a more refined look at the science behind the climate issue than the media typically offers, guiding us through the evidence and its implications. As Koonin explains in this interview, he was “shaken by the realization that climate science was far less mature than I had supposed” and that the “overwhelming evidence” of catastrophic implications of anthropogenic global warming wasn’t so overwhelming after all.

Condoleezza Rice served as the 66th US Secretary of State from 2005 to 2009 and as the National Security Advisor from 2001 to 2005. She is currently the Tad and Dianne Taube Director and the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Stephen J. Hadley was deputy national security advisor during George W. Bush's first term and is the editor of Hand-Off: The Foreign Policy George W. Bush Passed to Barack Obama, a book that details the Bush administration’s national security and foreign policy as described at the time in then classified transition memoranda prepared by the National Security Council experts who advised President Bush. In this wide-ranging conversation, Hadley and Rice reveal the insights and discussions that informed US foreign policy and national security, particularly in the months and years following 9/11, concerning the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Russia. Decisions made during the Bush years would impact America and the world for years to come, presaging many of the issues being faced today in the Middle East and in Ukraine.

Stephen Kotkin is the Kleinheinz Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and one of the foremost experts on Russia, past and present. Given the momentous series of events in that country over the past few weeks, we recruited Professor Kotkin to sit for another installment (this time in front of a live audience at Hoover) of our occasional Five Questions for Stephen Kotkin series. In this installment, Kotkin discusses the recent mutiny attempt by Wagner military group head Yevgeny Prigozhin, Putin’s perhaps tenuous future, how the Ukrainian offensive might play out, and the future of the NATO alliance.

In this second and final installment of our conversation with Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson, we cover his writing process for his books and columns, examine how “World War II” has earned that name, and preview his upcoming book, The End of Everything: How War Becomes Armageddon, which offers four cases studies of civilizations that collapsed. Additionally, Professor Hanson discusses why Silicon Valley may be the most powerful political force the world has ever seen, outlines the future of the Republican Party and the Conservative movement, and explains how Donald Trump has changed both institutions forever. Finally, Victor (as he insists we call him), looks at the 2024 presidential race as well as US immigration and makes some surprising observations about his own life and career.

Over the years, Hoover senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson has graced Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson many times, often referring to his family home and farm outside of Selma, in California’s Central Valley. So for this interview, we decided to go to Selma and see where Hanson grew up and still lives and where several generations of his family—going back to the mid-19th century—have lived and worked the land. In part one of this two-part interview, we cover Hanson’s rich and fascinating family history and the sweeping changes he’s lived through in terms of both the business of farming and its social life. In part two (coming in two weeks), we’ll cover the political scene, including the upcoming presidential election.

Prior to spring 2020, Jay Bhattacharya was a well-respected but little-known epidemiologist and Stanford Medical School professor. But when the COVID pandemic broke out that March, Dr. Bhattacharya was thrust into a leadership role as coauthor of the groundbreaking Santa Clara Study, one of the first comprehensive looks at how the disease spread and impacted populations, and as one of the principals behind the Great Barrington Declaration, one of the first public declarations questioning the lockdown policies then being instituted worldwide. His public interrogation of these policies made him a target of public health officials in the US and abroad—including Dr. Anthony Fauci of the CDC and Dr. Francis Collins at the National Institutes of Health in Washington, DC—and placed him in a media spotlight. In this interview, Dr. Bhattacharya reflects on those battles, what we learned, and how we might better manage future pandemics.

Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of numerous books, including Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe and  Kissinger, 1923–1968: The Idealist. In this conversation, we cover the conflict over Taiwan: why it’s a cold war, when it started, how to avoid allowing it to become a hot war, and how to de-escalate and even win it. Along the way, Ferguson discusses the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the role of the United States and Western Europe in both conflicts, and how we can avoid once again living under the threat of nuclear war as we did in Cold War I.

Paul Gregory is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Cullen Professor Emeritus in the Department of Economics at the University of Houston. He’s also the author of a new book, The Oswalds: An Untold Account of Marina and Lee, a fascinating account of the relationship he developed with Marina and Lee Oswald in the summer of 1963, when Gregory was 21 years old. Paul went off to college at the University of Oklahoma in the fall of 1963 and didn’t see Lee or Marina again. Then one fateful day in late November, Gregory was shocked to see a news report identifying Oswald as the lead suspect in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Gregory soon faced interrogations by the Secret Service. Later he would testify before the Warren Commission. In this interview, Gregory recalls these incidents and, as a scholar and skilled researcher, debunks the vast array of assassination conspiracy theories by demonstrating that Lee Harvey Oswald indeed killed Kennedy and acted alone—that the Oswald he once called a friend had the motive, the intelligence, and the means to commit one of the most shocking crimes in American history. 

Will Inboden is a man of many talents: author, academic, and national policy maker, holding positions within the State Department and the National Security Council before returning to academia. He currently serves as executive director of the Clements Center for National Security and as associate professor of public policy and history at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, both at the University of Texas–Austin. In this wide-ranging two-part interview, Inboden discusses in great detail Reagan’s strategy and tactics in bringing the Cold War to a successful and peaceful conclusion through negotiation and, yes, some artful bluffing. In this second installment, we cover Reagan’s second term, including his quest to negotiate and sign a nuclear arms treaty with Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev; the now iconic “tear down this wall” speech (a topic our host has some familiarity with); and finally, the lasting legacy of Ronald Reagan and his place in history.

Will Inboden is a man of many talents: author, academic, and national policy maker. He held positions with the State Department and the National Security Council before returning to academia to serve as executive director of the Clements Center for National Security and associate professor of public policy and history at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, both at the University of Texas- Austin. In this wide-ranging two-part interview, Inboden discusses in detail Reagan’s strategy and tactics in bringing the Cold War to a successful and peaceful conclusion through negotiation and, yes, some artful bluffing. In this first installment, we cover Reagan’s first term in which he deals with the public’s perception of his intelligence, a large and popular antinuclear movement, and the execution of his “peace through strength” initiative.

John Cochrane is the Rose-Marie and Jack Anderson Senior Fellow in Economics at the Hoover Institution and the author of a new book, The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level. In this wide-ranging conversation, Cochrane discusses the root causes of inflation, what we can (and can’t) do about it, the economists who influenced his thinking, and how his father inspired him to become an academic.

Historian Stephen Kotkin became the Kleinheinz Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution in 2022. He taught at Princeton for more than 30 years, and is the author of nine works of history, including the first two volumes of his biography of Joseph Stalin, Paradoxes of Power, 1878 to 1928 and Waiting for Hitler, 1929 to 1941. He is now completing the third and final volume. Since the war in Ukraine broke out a year ago, Kotkin has appeared regularly on Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson to offer his unique perspective on the Russian aggression and answer five questions for us. This is the third installment.

Michael Behe, John Lennox, and Steven Meyer are three of the leading voices in science and academia on the case for an intelligent designer of the universe and everything in it (including us). In this wide-ranging conversation, they point out the flaws in Darwin’s theory and the increasing amount of evidence uncovered by a rigorous application of the scientific method that points to an intentional design and creation of the physical world.

Does God exist? Something—a being, a power—that’s supernatural? That is, an entity that we’re unable to perceive with our five senses but that’s still real? Ever since the Enlightenment, the knowing, urbane, sophisticated answer has been, “Of course not.” Now a historian, a scientist, and a journalist talk it over and reveal new threads in the debate around science and theism.

Benjamin Netanyahu is the past and soon to be again prime minister of Israel. In his new book, Bibi: My Story, Netanyahu describes how he went from an Israeli American high school student in Philadelphia to a member of the Israeli Defense Force, detouring along the way to study architecture and get a master’s degree from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1976. His studies were interrupted when his brother Yoni was killed in the raid on Entebbe, Uganda, which inspired Bibi to return to Israel and dedicate his life to protecting that state. This interview covers those events as well as his rise to the top of Israeli politics—multiple times. Note to viewers: Be sure to watch to the end of the show after the end credits for some additional content that was shot after the interview concluded. 

Grover Cleveland was both the 22nd and the 24th president of the United States, the only man to win nonconsecutive terms in the Oval Office. In his new book, Man of Iron, author Troy Senik discusses Cleveland’s improbable rise from obscure lawyer in upstate New York to mayor of Buffalo, governor of New York, and finally, in 1885, president of the United States; followed by his subsequent loss of the White House in the election of 1888 to Benjamin Harrison, and his unprecedented—and as yet unrepeated—return to the Oval Office after beating Harrison in 1892. Senik also discusses Cleveland’s complicated personal life, why Cleveland helped pioneer the concept of limited government, and why he fiercely opposed the forces of American imperialism. Cleveland also fought against Congress and the political machines in place at the time, including the one in his own party, making him a true maverick long before that phrase was ever applied to politicians.

John Cogan and Kevin Warsh are both Senior Fellows at the Hoover Institution who have spent the careers in and out of government trying to make it more efficient and cost effective. On this show, they discuss their newest white paper, Reinvigorating Economic Governance: Advancing a New Framework for American Prosperity, which is intended to provide a framework to revitalize the governance of economic policy based on our nation’s foundational system of natural liberty. In addition, they also discuss why liberating  the power of the individual, and encouraging the promulgation and dissemination of new ideas, and ensure the fidelity of institutions to their mission, then the United States should significantly improve its economic performance and serve as a more formidable force in the world.

With his many varied interests in technology, politics, and culture, Peter Thiel has often been described as a Renaissance man. So perhaps it was only fitting that we traveled to Florence, Italy—where the Renaissance originated and thrived for hundreds of years—to speak with him. In this wide-ranging interview, we cover several topics, including his support for candidates across the country who are running as outsiders, why technology has not fulfilled many of its early promises, and why California is still America’s incubator for ideas and growth. 

Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio) has served in the US Senate since January 2011. Before that, he served as director of the Office of Management and Budget under President George W. Bush from 2006 to 2007, and as a member of the US House of Representatives from 1993 to 2005. He also served as White House director of legislative affairs under President George H. W. Bush from 1989 to 1991. In this wide-ranging interview conducted a couple of months prior to his leaving office, Senator Portman discusses his legislative record, his accomplishments, his disappointments, and the changes in the culture of Washington DC, that he has witnessed in his 30 years of service. And he hints at what he has planned for the future. 

Current Hoover Institution director and former secretary of state and national security advisor to President George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice is the only person in the world who can speak knowledgeably about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the threat from China . . . and the Denver Broncos and why college sports must be saved from itself. And that’s exactly what she does in this must-hear conversation.

The summer of 2022 saw record temperatures recorded all over the world. Bjorn Lomborg acknowledges that climate change is here, it’s real, and humans are largely responsible for it. He also says that it is survivable and manageable. In other words, climate change is not the extinction-level event it is often characterized as. Lomborg also discusses practical ways to lower our carbon footprint and emissions, pointing out why “carbon free by 2050” probably isn’t achievable and why we should make no massive changes to our economies or lifestyles to achieve it.

In 1970, Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich published a famous book, The Population Bomb, in which he described a disastrous future for humanity: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” That prediction turned out to be very wrong, and in this interview American Enterprise Institute scholar Nicholas Eberstadt tells how we are in fact heading toward the opposite problem: not enough people. For decades now, many countries have been unable to sustain a population replacement birth rate, including in Western Europe, South Korea, Japan, and, most ominously, China. The societal and social impacts of this phenomenon are vast. We discuss those with Eberstadt as well as some strategies to avoid them. Recorded on June 14 at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC.

Historical biographer Walter Stahr has given us definitive biographies of William H. Seward and Edwin Stanton, two of the ablest and most influential members of President Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet. Earlier this year, Stahr followed those books with the definitive biography of Salmon P. Chase, Treasury secretary under Lincoln and one of the country’s most important antislavery lawyers, one of the few who defended fugitive slaves against state and federal prosecutors. After his stint as a lawyer, Chase was elected to represent Ohio in the US Senate, where he was instrumental in helping to settle the slavery question in the United States. Chase also served as governor of Ohio and then as Treasury secretary, where he standardized the dozens of currencies then being issued by local banks and gave us a national currency and a system of national banks. Spend an hour learning about this man, who contributed greatly to the country but whom almost no one today remembers. Recorded on April 15, 2022, at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire.

Dartmouth College anthropology professor Sergei Kan was born in the Soviet Union just a few months after the death of Stalin. He came to the United States in 1974 at the age of 21 and received his undergraduate degree from Boston University and his doctorate in anthropology from the University of Chicago. He teaches courses at Dartmouth on the native peoples of Alaska, on the Jewish diaspora, and on Russia. Next year—the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Gulag Archipelago—Dr. Kan will teach a course titled "Red Terror: The History and Culture of the Stalin Labor Camps." Dr. Kan has been kind enough to offer our viewers a preview of the seminar in advance. Recorded on April 15, 2022, at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire.

Roland Fryer is a professor of economics at Harvard University. Fryer's research combines economic theory, empirical evidence, and randomized experiments to help design more effective government policies. His work on education, inequality, and race has been widely cited in media outlets and congressional testimony. Rafael Mangual is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and head of research for its Policing and Public Safety Initiative. He is also the author of a new book, Criminal (In)Justice: What the Push for Decarceration and Depolicing Gets Wrong and Who It Hurts Most. Together, Mangual and Fryer take a close look at what is and is not working in policing and law enforcement, in some cases citing statistics and research they have personally conducted. They also make the case that most people, regardless of race or economic status, want safe neighborhoods and cities and explain why the defund movement is not popular among them. Recorded on May 13, 2022, in Dallas, Texas.

If there were a Mount Rushmore of American Black intellectuals, the three guests on this show would certainly be on it: Glenn Loury is a professor of the social sciences in the Department of economics at Brown, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, and the host of his wildly successful podcast, The Glenn Show. Ian Rowe is the cofounder of Vertex Partnership Academies and the author of the new book Agency: The Four Point Plan (F.R.E.E.) for ALL Children to Overcome the Victimhood Narrative and Discover Their Pathway to Power. Robert Woodson is the founder of the Woodson Center, an organization devoted to “empowering community-based leaders to promote solutions that reduce crime and violence, restore families, revitalize underserved communities, and assist in the creation of economic enterprise.” In this wide-ranging conversation, the three men debunk The 1619 Project, advocate for the restoration of the Black family and the Black church, describe their own very different upbringings and formative experiences, and discuss the many reasons why they are optimistic about the future of Black Americans, despite the narrative commonly expressed in the media. Recorded on May 13, 2022, at the Old Parkland Conference in Dallas, Texas.

Matthew Continetti is the author of the new book The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism, an extensively researched and reported history of the conservative movement in America. Chris DeMuth is a former president of the American Enterprise Institute and currently a fellow at the Hudson Institute. In this conversation, DeMuth states that national conservatives (or “NatCons”) “are conservatives who have been mugged by reality. We have come away with a sense of how to recover from the horrors taking America down.” Continetti counters —in a typically conservative argument— that there is no need for NatCons to break away from the traditional movement, since they’re all in the same boat and agree on most of the important issues of the day. The elephant in the room in this debate is former president Donald Trump. What he says and does in the next year or two will be crucial toward determining the future direction of the conservative movement. Continetti and DeMuth agree on that. Recorded on May 14, 2022

Yoram Hazony is the chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation and president of the Herzl Institute. His 2018 book, The Virtue of Nationalism, established Hazony as one of the leading proponents of a new kind of “national conservatism.” His new book, Conservatism: A Rediscovery, has set off a passionate debate among intellectuals on the Right to determine what “national conservatism” actually means and why conservatism needs to be rediscovered. We put those questions and many more to Hazony in this interview. Recorded on May 17, 2022

William P. Barr is one of only two people to have served as attorney general of the United States under two presidents and the only one to have done it in two different centuries (under George H. W. Bush from 1991 to 1993 and under Donald Trump from 2019 to 2020). In his new book, One Damn Thing after Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General, Barr goes into great detail about the chaos, the troubles, and the triumph that occurred during the time of his service under President Trump. This wide-ranging interview covers Russiagate, the COVID outbreak, civil unrest, the impeachment, and the 2020 election fallout. Barr is very candid and forthcoming in his opinions on those events and his thoughts on his former boss. Recorded on May 17, 2022

The political philosopher Harvey Mansfield first arrived at Harvard University in the fall of 1949. He has remained at that august institution of higher education and is still teaching at age 90. In this special edition of Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson, recorded in the Baker Library at Dartmouth College, Dr. Mansfield answers five questions about America today from his perspective of observing and writing about the country for more than half a century. Recorded on April 15, 2022

By any measure, Dr. Jordan Peterson is the most famous (now former—as is discussed in this interview) Canadian professor of clinical psychology in the world. He’s also a deep thinker and a best-selling author of multiple books, and has amassed a huge following through podcasts, YouTube videos, and public speaking. Today, Jordan Peterson is one of the most influential voices in the “anti-woke” movement and this powerful interview demonstrates why. Recorded on April 20, 2022, as part of a Classical Liberalism Seminar at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.

Amy Zegart is a fellow at the Hoover Institution, a professor of political science at Stanford University, and the author of a new book, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence. In this frank conversation, Zegart grades American intelligence-gathering operations, recent and historical, and compares them to their counterparts in China and Russia. Professor Zegart also discusses Silicon Valley’s crucial role in these operations and how they often conflict with the politics of the people running tech companies. Finally, Zegart discusses the crucial ability of the intelligence community to recruit the next generation of spies and analysts, some of whom may be her own students. Recorded on March 17, 2022

Recorded on February 15, 2022 Bari Weiss began her career as a mainstream media prodigy, landing coveted positions at the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times in her early twenties. In 2020, she famously resigned from the Times when conditions there became intolerable for her, famously writing in a public resignation letter that “Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor.” Now Weiss is the publisher of Common Sense, her wildly popular Substack newsletter, and the host of the Honestly with Bari Weiss podcast. Her ambition is nothing short of becoming a 21st-century one-woman media company, and based on what she reveals in this interview, she is well on her way to achieving that goal.

Last month, Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson asked Princeton Professor and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Stephen Kotkin 5 questions, all in the foreign policy and history realm. Since then, the world has changed in ways that were unimaginable just 3 weeks ago. So we asked Professor Kotkin to come back for a second round of questions, this time all dedicated to one topic: the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And as usual, his answers are concise, incisive, and analytic. If you want to understand this crisis and some possible outcomes, don’t miss this conversation. 

Stephen Kotkin is a professor of history at Princeton and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is the author of nine works of history, including the first two volumes of his planned three-volume history of Russian power and Joseph Stalin, Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 and Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941. The premise of this show is simple: Peter Robinson poses five questions to Dr. Kotkin: what Xi Jinping, the president of China believes; what Vladimir Putin believes; whether nuclear weapons are a deterrent in the 21st century; the chances of another American renewal; and Kotkin’s rational basis for loving the United States. It’s a fascinating conversation that delves deep into one of the country’s brightest minds. Recorded on January 14, 2022

In what has now become an annual tradition on Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson, law professors John Yoo and Richard Epstein join the show to opine on a newly minted Supreme Court. For the first time in decades, today’s court is dominated by a majority of originalist justices—justices who believe the Constitution means today just what the document meant when it was ratified more than 200 years ago. The professors discuss and analyze Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (the case that may overturn Roe v. Wade), the court’s ruling on mask mandates, voting rights legislation, and other cases to watch. The professors also reminisce about the time the current president of the United States waved a book authored by a then unknown law professor on national television during Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearing. As usual, our yearly show with professors Epstein and Yoo is the closest you can get to law school without having to take the LSATs. Recorded on January 20, 2022

In his long and distinguished career, British historian Andrew Roberts has produced world-class biographies of Winston Churchill, and Napoleon, several histories of World War II and the men who led the countries who fought that war, and other great conflicts in world history. Roberts’s new book is The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III, a biography of the monarch who led England during the American Revolution and who has been made into something of a caricature by Americans, most recently by his portrayal in the musical Hamilton as a preening, stuck-up (but funny) king of England. In this interview and in his book, Roberts goes to great lengths to deconstruct that distortion and, in the process, give us an extremely nuanced and detailed portrait of the man who created the conditions for America’s independence. Roberts also explains in great detail the dynamics between the British parliament and the nascent American government, including a fascinating account of the writing of and subsequent British reaction to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Recorded on December 3, 2021

It’s the last show of the year for Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson, and as is our tradition (for the last two years, anyhow), we’ve invited two of our favorite journalists —Ross Douthat of the New York Times and Kim Strassel of the Wall Street Journal— to look back, discuss, and analyze the year that was. We delve, discuss, and predict politics, the law, COVID, the future of Roe v. Wade, and much more. Recorded on December 13, 2021

Peter Thiel is a Silicon Valley founder and investor, and quite a successful one at that: he co-founded PayPal, was an early investor in Facebook, and started and serves as the chair of Palantir. Lately, Thiel has become more active in politics. He supported President Trump in the 2016 election and has been a force in several House and Senate races in the 2020 cycle. In this wide-ranging conversation, Thiel discusses his politics, his campaign, and the scourge of totalitarian conformism in the United States and abroad; the problem with “following the science”; where President Biden deserved blame and where he does now; and why cryptocurrency may just save the world. Recorded on December 7, 2021

Professor Glenn Loury is in social sciences and economics at Brown University and a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. Prior to that, he became a tenured professor of economics at Harvard at the age of 33. How he got from there to here is an inspiring and fascinating story of hard work and accomplishment that is explored in great detail in this interview. Professor Loury also explains the crucial role his parents and his extended family played in his education and his opinions. Now, in his 70’s Loury has become a leading spokesman on the right, often speaking out against woke culture prevalent on many campuses and other institutions. He also explains his radical (for an academic institution, at least) reading list and syllabus for the courses he teaches at Brown and how an undergraduate student/teaching assistant inspired Professor Loury to create a course intended to liberate his students from the “groupthink” that is far too prevalent at most universities. Recorded on October 28th, 2021 at Fox News, NYC

Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie began his political career as a teenager watching Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford joust for control of the Republican Party at the 1976 GOP convention. From there, he soon entered the University of Delaware and then received his JD degree from the Seton Hall University School of Law. He served as US attorney for New Jersey from 2002 to 2008 and as governor of New Jersey from 2010 to 2018. Gov. Christie ran for president briefly in 2018. The governor guides us through all of those—often embattled—chapters of his life in the course of this interview, including giving us his view of the Bridgegate scandal, and what it was like to be on the debate stage with Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican primary race. But it’s not all politics: we also cover the governor’s views on China, COVID policy, and domestic economic policy. Finally, while he doesn’t make any announcement about his future plans, Christie does describe why he might be the best choice to run—and win—in the 2024 presidential election. Recorded at Fox News in NYC on October 28, 2021

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution. His new book is The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America. As is typical whenever Dr. Hanson joins us, this interview covers a wide spectrum of topics and references, including the Acts of the Apostles, immigration, Jim Crow laws, primary tribal identities, the suburban everyman, the shrinking middle class, and JFK’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech. It’s a bracing conversation with a scholar who has an incredible breadth of interests and knowledge. Recorded on October 23, 2021

From the very beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya has been on the front lines of analyzing, studying, and even personally fighting the pandemic. In this wide-ranging interview, Dr. Bhattacharya takes us through how it started, how it spread throughout the world, the efficacy of lockdowns, the development and distribution of the vaccines, and the rise of the Delta variant. He delves into what we got right, what we got wrong, and what we got really wrong. Finally, Dr. Bhattacharya looks to the future and how we will learn to live with COVID rather than trying to extinguish it, and how we might be prepared to deal with another inevitable pandemic that we know will arrive at some point. Recorded on October 13, 2021

iGeneral H. R. McMaster and military historian Victor Davis Hanson are both senior fellows at the Hoover Institution. In this frank, no-holds-barred conversation, they discuss the United States’ mission in Afghanistan: how it began, how it was conducted, and its ignominious end. McMaster and Hanson debate what worked and what failed, how social issues in the United States may have influenced our mission in Afghanistan and our decision to leave, and whether or not the United States should have continued to maintain a presence instead of leaving in a matter of weeks, abandoning thousands of Afghans loyal to the US mission there (as well as an unknown number of US citizens) after 20 years of military operations in the country. Recorded on September 17, 2021

Joe Felter is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and the William J. Perry Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation. He also served as an officer in the US Army special forces, where he saw combat in Panama, Iraq, and Afghanistan. During the Trump administration, Dr. Felter served as deputy secretary of defense for South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania. In this wide-ranging conversation, Dr. Felter discusses the ever growing threat to Taiwan from the People’s Republic of China and the state of preparedness for such a conflict in the United States and the West. Dr. Felter also discusses the India-Russia relationship and the US opportunity there, and how private industry in the United States can provide better support for the armed forces than the Pentagon itself.  Recorded on July 9, 2021

Amy Zegart is the Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, where she chairs the Working Group on Technology, Economics, and Governance. She’s also a professor of political science at Stanford, and an expert on intelligence, cybersecurity, and big tech. In this wide-ranging conversation, Professor Zegart discusses the US relationship with China and how she views that country’s aggressive stance toward Taiwan; why big tech companies are a potential threat not only to privacy, but also to our national security; and why the next war may well be fought with a keyboard rather than on a battlefield. Recorded on June 30, 2021

Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women’s Rights, Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s book on the explosion of sexual violence and harassment in Europe, was published in early 2021. Since then, the book has sparked a worldwide discussion online and offline about the immigration of huge numbers of mostly young Muslim men (more than 3 million, by some reports) to European cities and its effect on the women who live there. To discuss this phenomenon, explain why many of these young men feel empowered to harass women, and offer some possible solutions, Peter Robinson is joined by Prey author and Hoover Institution research fellow Ayaan Hirsi Ali; Valerie Hudson, a professor of political science at the Bush School at Texas A&M University and an expert on women’s rights and demographics; and Christopher Caldwell, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute and the author of Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West, published in 2009, and The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties, published just last year.  Recorded on June 11, 2021

Thirty-four years ago, on June 12, 1987, Ronald Reagan stood before the Berlin Wall to deliver an address. Just over two years later, on November 9, 1989, the East German government suddenly announced that it had decided to permit free passage between East and West Berlin—the Berlin Wall had ceased to function. To commemorate one of the seminal events of the 20th century, the Reagan Institute invited Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson to participate and record a panel discussion featuring  Peter Robinson, author of Reagan’s speech; Jamie Fly, president and CEO of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty; William Inboden, chair of the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin; and H. R. McMaster, former national security advisor to President Trump and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Together, the panel delves into the history and provenance of the speech, the reaction of the Soviets and of the world to the speech, and its place in history looking back three decades later. Recorded on June 11, 2021

Tyler Goodspeed is the former director of the White House Council of Economic Advisers and currently the Kleinheinz Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He has published three volumes on economic history and holds undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral degrees from Harvard University. He has also studied at Cambridge and Oxford Universities and taught at King’s College London.  Goodspeed explains why he pursued a job in the Trump administration, gives his thoughts on the economic policies of the Biden administration, and describes what it was like to watch one of the strongest economies in the history of the world implode over the course of several weeks in the spring of 2020.  Recorded on May 26, 2021

Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley has just published Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell, the definitive account of the life of Hoover senior fellow Thomas Sowell. In this wide-ranging interview, Peter Robinson and Riley discuss the events and people that helped Sowell become one of the most important American voices on cultural, economic, and racial matters of the last 50 years. Recorded on May 13, 2021

Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe, his new book on the decisions made by governments and public health officials around the world during the COVID pandemic. In this wide-ranging discussion, Ferguson describes what governments and leaders got right and got wrong—very wrong—over the 15 months since the coronavirus spread from China. Were the lockdowns instituted around the world prudent and life saving, or did they cause more damage by crippling economies and creating massive unemployment and enormous government debt across the globe? How can vaccines be created and distributed faster and more efficiently than this one? Finally, what lessons can we learn from this pandemic that can be applied to or even prevent the next one? Yes, Niall is certain there will be another one. Recorded on April 28, 2021

China is a nation with 1.3 billion people, an economy projected to become bigger than the United States’ in just a few years, and a rapidly growing military.  Hong Kong has already fallen under its authority. Meanwhile, Taiwan looms in the distance—with a population of almost 24 million, it’s a technology hub and the world’s leading manufacturer of microchips and other items essential to high tech. What are China’s ambitions toward Taiwan? And if they are ominous, what should the US response to Chinese aggression be? To answer these questions, we’re joined by two experts: former national security advisor (and current Hoover Institution senior fellow) H. R. McMaster and former US deputy national security advisor (and current Hoover distinguished visiting fellow) Matthew Pottinger. They also discuss the Biden administration’s recent diplomatic encounters with China, and which countries might be allies in a conflict with China—and which ones would not be.  Recorded on April 9, 2021

Dr. Stephen Meyer directs the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute in Seattle. He returns to Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson to discuss his newest book,  Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries That Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe. In this wide-ranging and often mind-bending interview, Dr. Meyer explains the God Hypothesis; makes his continuing and evolving case for intelligent design; describes how Judeo-Christian theology gave rise to science; discusses why the discovery of DNA is actually an enigma, as its existence cannot be explained by natural selection; and more. Recorded on March 30, 2021

Interview with Laurence Fox Thursday, March 25, 2021   A brilliant British actor, Laurence Fox happened to say something mildly controversial on the BBC last year—and suddenly found himself a victim of cancel culture. Instead of retreating or apologizing, Fox made the unusual choice to not just rebel but to do it in the most public way possible: by running for mayor of London. Fox knows his chances of winning are slim, but he is using his candidacy to shine a light on what he considers the heavy hand of political correctness in our culture, the increasing lack of freedom of speech, and the oppressive nature of COVID lockdowns in the United Kingdom. It’s a bold and innovative strategy, and who knows—it just might work.  Recorded on March 23, 2021

Dr. Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and visiting professor at Copenhagen Business School. He’s also been speaking and writing about climate science for almost 20 years. In this wide-ranging discussion with Peter Robinson, Lomborg analyzes the Biden administration’s plan to address climate change, lauds a slew of new clean energy technologies that are coming in the next decade, and discusses the upsides—and the downsides—of migrating the world from a carbon-based economy to one based on electricity generated by clean energy sources. Recorded on March 4, 2021

Hoover research fellow Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s new book is Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women’s Rights. It examines the sharp rise in the number of sexual assaults in Western Europe that coincides with the sharp rise in illegal immigration from Muslim-majority countries. The book points out that almost three million people have arrived illegally in Europe since 2009, close to two million in 2015 alone. A majority have come from Muslim-majority countries. Two-thirds are male, and 80 percent of asylum applicants are under the age of 35. In this conversation, Peter Robinson and Hirsi Ali explore the cause-and-effect relationships occurring in these countries, and the responses from European governments, law enforcement, and most surprisingly, from feminists in both Europe and the United States who seem very eager to deflect attention away from illegal immigration, a point the book makes very strongly.

The second impeachment trial of Donald Trump begins on February 9, 2021, but a fierce debate as to the constitutionality of trying a former president in this manner has been ongoing in the legal community for weeks. To bring some possible clarity and resolution to the matter, we assembled three of best and most cogent legal minds we know: Professor John Yoo of Berkeley Law School, Professor Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago and New York University School of Law, and Andrew McCarthy, former federal prosecutor and a legal commentator for National Review and Fox News. Two of our guests argue that a former president of the United States can be tried; one guest takes the other side of the argument. We won’t reveal who takes what angle, but we can say that both points of view get a thorough airing. We leave it to our audience to determine the winning argument. Recorded on February 8, 2021

To mark the first anniversary of the passing of Roger Scruton, Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson was asked by the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation to participate in its Remembering Roger Scruton Memorial Event by interviewing the Right Honourable Michael Gove. Gove is a member of Parliament,  a member of Britain’s Conservative Party, and the current chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and minister for the Cabinet Office.  Gove began reading Scruton’s work as a teenager, and it had a very strong influence on Gove’s intellectual journey toward becoming a Conservative. In this conversation, Gove describes his own relationship with Scruton, how Scruton influenced British politics while living and even after his death, and how Scruton’s fierce support of Brexit was both personally and politically helpful to Gove. He also discusses Scruton's warnings about— and his own experience fighting—“wokeness,” as well as what Scruton might have thought about lockdowns. Finally, Gove shares some thoughts about Scruton’s legacy and how history might remember him. Recorded on January 12, 2021

In 1997, Margaret Thatcher asked Charles Moore (also known as Lord Baron Moore of Etchingham) to write her biography, under two conditions: that she would never read the manuscript and that the work would appear only after her death. Twenty-four years later, Moore has just published the third and final volume of Herself Alone: The Authorized Biography. In this conversation, Peter Robinson and Moore discuss Thatcher’s final years as prime minister and her life out of office. They delve into Thatcher’s relationships with the world leaders of her era, including Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. They also discuss her image now, seven years after her passing, including her portrayal in Netflix’s The Crown. Moore points out that while the show gets many personal details about Thatcher correct, it takes massive liberties when depicting her relationship with Queen Elizabeth and her stewardship of many important events that occurred during her tenure as prime minister, including the Falklands War and the coal miners' strike. Recorded on December 14, 2020

It’s our last show of 2020, and we decided to do something a little different: assemble a few of our favorite guests and take a look back at the year that was. Our panel: the Wall Street Journal’s Kim Strassel, author and columnist Douglas Murray, and Commentary Magazine editor and New York Post columnist John Podhoretz. They discuss the election, the coming Cold War with China, the future of the conservative movement in the United States and abroad, the pandemic, and the political class, and we get some recommendations from our panel members of their favorite shows, books, or movies they used to get through the lockdowns.  Thanks for all of the views, comments, emails, and tweets this past year. We are grateful to have such an engaged and thoughtful audience, and we wish all of you a happy and safe holiday season. We have some great shows planned for 2021 and are looking forward to getting back to our studio and on the road. See you then. Recorded on December 10, 2020

A little over 18 months ago, we interviewed author and columnist Douglas Murray about his then new book The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity. That show was one of our most-watched interviews of 2019, so we thought it was time to sit down with Douglas again and get an update on where things stand with regard to, as Douglas describes in his book, “the interpretation of the world through the lens of ‘social justice,’ ‘identity group politics’ and ‘intersectionalism’ . . . the most audacious and comprehensive effort since the end of the Cold War at creating a new ideology.” We also discuss European politics, examine Boris Johnson’s tenure as UK prime minister, and take a sobering look at American politics from the perspective of a very sharp observer. Recorded on November 23, 2020

Hoover Fellows Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Peter Berkowitz discuss the final report recently issued by the US State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights, of which Berkowitz was the commission secretary. Together they discuss the findings of the report, why Secretary of State Pompeo felt the need for the commission and the report, and the controversy that surrounded both. They compare and contrast the report to the US Constitution, which also prominently mentions unalienable rights, as well as the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948. Finally, they discuss how US foreign policy should employ our belief in human rights to improve the human condition. Recorded on September 3, 2020

Larry Kudlow is the director of the National Economic Council, a position he has held since April 2018. As such, Mr. Kudlow was on the front lines of the COVID-19 crisis in its early days, trying to manage and maintain one of the strongest economies in US history and prevent it from falling into a catastrophic depression. Kudlow discusses in detail what those dark days were like for Kudlow and the rest of the Trump administration and, in addition, how it felt to be on the receiving end of withering and seemingly endless criticism from the media and the administration’s political opponents. Kudlow also discusses why he thinks the economy is well positioned for a strong rebound once the virus is under control and why he fears a Biden administration may reverse many of the economic policies Kudlow has championed, which led to the economic progress achieved before the pandemic struck. Recorded on October 6, 2020

John Yoo is a professor at the University of California–Berkeley School of Law and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. Richard Epstein is a professor of law at NYU, a professor of law emeritus at the University of Chicago, and a fellow at the Hoover Institution. In this wide-ranging discussion, recorded the day after Amy Coney Barrett accepted President Trump’s nomination to the Supreme Court, the professors discuss Barrett’s qualifications and why it was correct and proper to nominate her now—five weeks before an election. They also provide, based on her writings on stare decisis (the legal principle of determining points in litigation according to precedent), insight on how Barrett may rule on some issues sure to be put to in front of the court in the near future, including abortion. Finally, Epstein and Yoo remember Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whom they both knew personally, and discuss her career, both as a jurist and as an activist. Recorded on September 27, 2020

Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, US Army, ret., the former national security advisor and the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution discusses his latest book, Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World, a re-examination of the most critical foreign policy and national security challenges that face the United States, and an urgent call to compete to preserve America’s standing and security. McMaster takes us through a world tour of hot spots and outlines the threats to our security, freedom, and prosperity, including nuclear proliferation and jihadist terrorism. McMaster also discusses his upbringing, his career as a soldier and an officer, and his new life as a policy expert at the Hoover Institution.  Recorded on March 13, 2020

Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson is proud to present the first interview with Condoleezza Rice in her new role as Director of Hoover Institution. After a storied career that includes Provost of Stanford University (1993-1999), United States National Security Advisor (2001-2005), and United States Secretary of State (2005-2009), the author of numerous books, and an inaugural member of the College Football Playoff selection committee, on September 1st, 2020 Director Rice became the Hoover Institution's eighth director in its 101 year history and the first woman to hold the position. In this wide ranging conversation, Peter Robinson and Director Rice discuss Hoover’s mission in the 21st century, the role of think tanks in crafting public policy, her views about the current geo-political situation regarding Russia and China, and her personal thoughts about the national conversation currently underway in the United States about racial relations and how we look back at the country’s founding and history. Recorded on September 9th, 2020

Recorded on September 4, 2020 This is our third conversation with Hong Kong entrepreneur and freedom fighter, Jimmy Lai in less than a year. During that time, Lai has been arrested twice, his family and his employees and colleagues have been harassed and in some cases forced to leave Hong Kong, and Lai himself has been incarcerated. Currently free on bond and facing a trial and an uncertain future, Mr. Lai gets philosophical in this conversation. He describes how his faith has given him strength and comfort and that he is willing to make whatever sacrifice required in order to maintain democracy in Hong Kong. We discuss the political situation in Hong Kong, the precarious position of Hong Kong Executive Carrie Lam, and how the United States and the world can apply pressure to the Chinese, and what’s at stake if Hong Kong becomes just another Chinese city. For further information: https://www.hoover.org/publications/uncommon-knowledge Interested in exclusive Uncommon Knowledge content? Check out Uncommon Knowledge on social media! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UncKnowledge/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UncKnowledge/ Instagram: https://instagram.com/uncommon_knowledge_show 

Recorded on July 29, 2020   On the occasion of his new book, Defender in Chief: Donald Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power, Hoover visiting fellow and Berkeley Law School professor John Yoo joins the show to make a spirited case against the criticisms of Donald Trump for his supposed disruption of constitutional rules and norms. The conventional wisdom is that Donald Trump is a threat to the rule of law and the US Constitution. Mainstream media outlets have reported fresh examples of alleged executive overreach or authoritarian White House decisions nearly every day of his presidency. In the 2020 primaries, the candidates have rushed to accuse Trump of destroying our democracy and jeopardizing our nation’s very existence. In his book and on this show, John Yoo argues the opposite: that the Founders would have seen Trump as returning to their vision of presidential power, even at his most controversial and outrageous. It’s a fascinating and often humorous discussion that could not be more timely.

Recorded on July 24, 2020    This week, a conversation with Bjorn Lomborg, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, the president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, and one of the foremost climate experts in the world today. His new book, False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet, is an argument for treating climate as a serious problem but not an extinction-level event requiring such severe and drastic steps as rewiring a large part of the culture and the economy. Bjorn responds directly to some of the most vociferous climate policy critics, including Greta Thunberg, author David Wallace-Wells (The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming), and proponents of the Green New Deal. We also discuss some promising emerging technologies and why worst-case scenarios are often just that—scenarios that are used to motivate the public into action but are not in fact likely to occur. It’s a sobering and even-handed discussion on climate that does not include apocalyptic endings for the planet. 

The day before this show was recorded, Dr. Thomas Sowell began his 10th decade of life. Remarkably on one hand and yet completely expected on the other, he remains as engaged, analytical, and thoughtful as ever. In this interview (one of roughly a dozen or so we’ve conducted with Dr. Sowell over the years), we delve into his new book Charter Schools and Their Enemies,  a sobering look at the academic success of charter schools in New York City, and the fierce battles waged by teachers unions and progressive politicians to curtail them. Dr. Sowell’s conclusion is equally thought provoking: If the opponents of charter schools succeed, the biggest losers will be poor minority children for whom a quality education is the best chance for a better life. Recorded on July 1, 2020

As the United States and the world embark on fraught conversations about race, history, law enforcement, and the underpinnings of our very civilization, Ayaan Hirsi Ali joins Peter Robinson for an enlightening conversation. A refugee from Africa, Hirsi Ali fled to Europe to escape an arranged marriage, becoming an activist, (now former) member of the Dutch Parliament, and now a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. With a different set of life experiences and perspective from American-born Blacks, Hirsi Ali discusses how, as a Somalian, she views America as the best place on earth for minorities to grow up and achieve their potential. While acknowledging the hardships and miseries that American Blacks have endured and that racism still exists in many quarters of American society, Hirsi Ali emphatically believes that America is more than capable of solving racial inequalities, provided it preserves the institutions that ultimately ended slavery and empowered the protest movements of the 1960s that birthed the Civil Rights Movement. As she wrote in a recent column for the Wall Street Journal, an opinion she reiterates on this show, “There will be no resolution of America’s . . . problems if free thought and free speech are no longer upheld as sacrosanct. . . . Without them, honest deliberation, mutual learning, and the American ethic of problem-solving are dead.” Recorded on June 25, 2020

Recorded on June 18, 2020 Dr. Scott Atlas is the Robert Wesson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, an accomplished physician, and a scholar of public health. For several weeks, Dr. Atlas has been making the case in print and in other media that we as a society have overreacted in imposing draconian restrictions on movement, gatherings, schools, sports, and other activities. He is not a COVID-19 denier—he believes the virus is a real threat and should be managed as such. But, as Dr. Atlas argues, there are some age groups and activities that are subject to very low risk. The one-size-fits-all approach we are currently using is overly authoritarian, inefficient, and not based in science. Dr. Atlas’s prescription includes more protection for people in nursing homes, two weeks of strict self-isolation for those with mild symptoms, and most importantly, the opening of all K–12 schools. The latter recommendation is vital for restarting and maintaining the economy so that parents are not housebound trying to work and educate their children. Dr. Atlas is also adamant that an economic shutdown, and all of the attendant issues that go along with it, is a terrible solution—the cure is worse than the disease. Finally, Dr. Atlas reveals some steps he’s taken in his own life to try to get things back to normal.

Recorded on June 8, 2020 When Hong Kong democracy advocate Jimmy Lai last appeared on Uncommon Knowledge in October of 2019, the situation in Hong Kong was dire but still hopeful. Now, eight months later, the situation has gone from bad to worse, and since that interview, Lai has been arrested twice. In this conversation, Lai explains the widening crackdown the Chinese Communist Party is imposing on Hong Kong, including his interpretation of the recently proposed national security law, which Lai believes will give China the ability to control all aspects of Hong Kong’s freedoms and culture and destroy the city’s financial and media businesses. Lai also makes a plea to the United States and the rest of the world: help Hong Kong by sanctioning China, because in the wake of COVID-19, the country is at its most vulnerable moment in the last 40 years. Says Lai, “If we surrender, we will lose [our] freedom, we will lose the rule of law—we will lose everything.” Whether the world will hear Lai and the rest of the Hong Kong protestors and take action on their behalf remains to be seen. Finally, we ask Lai why he continues the fight for democracy even against seemingly unsurmountable odds. A visibly emotional Lai responds: “Now is not the time for safety, now is the time for sacrifice. . . . I can’t leave; I will fight until the last day.”

Mitch Daniels is the former governor of Indiana (2005–13), former director of the Office of Management and Budget (2001–03), and current president of Purdue University (since 2013). In this wide-ranging conversation with Peter Robinson, Daniels discusses his insistence on keeping Purdue’s tuition below $10,000 and how he does it, his vision for Purdue that includes a mix of online and onsite education, and his efforts to hire an ideologically diverse faculty and recruit students from various backgrounds and ethnicities. He also shares his thoughts on the recent civil unrest, protests, and looting across the United States, and his plans on how to open Purdue and keep it open this fall amid the continuing COVID-19 crisis.

Recorded on May 28, 2020 In his new book, The Decadent Society, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat presents a theory: “Western society stopped advancing in the second half of the 20th century, and the combination of wealth and technological proficiency with economic stagnation, political stalemates, cultural exhaustion, and demographic decline creates a strange kind of ‘sustainable decadence,’ a civilizational languor that could endure for longer than we think.” Against this backdrop, Peter Robinson and Douthat discuss movies, TV shows, the iPhone, SpaceX, and the 747, with some detours into the COVID-19 crisis and our current political situation.

Recorded on May 6, 2020 A true Renaissance man, Matt Ridley is a British journalist, a member of the House of Lords, a businessman, and the author of many publications, including The Rational Optimist, his very influential book about the innate human tendency to trade goods and services, which he argues is the source of all human prosperity. Ridley’s new book, How Innovation Works, chronicles the history of innovation and argues that we need to change the way we think about innovation, to see it as an incremental, bottom-up, fortuitous process that happens to society as a direct result of the human habit of exchange, rather than as an orderly, top-down process developing according to a plan. Ridley also discusses the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the world’s economies, the real story of Thomas Edison and why he was one of the greatest innovators in human history, why China may not be the threat it appears to be (at least not technologically), and some predictions as to what the world may look like in 2050

Recorded on May 8, 2020 Dr. Jay Bhattacharaya from Stanford Medicine makes his third appearance on Uncommon Knowledge in eight weeks, this time to discuss a new COVID-19 survey of Major League Baseball employees he co-authored. The survey tested more than 5,600 employees across all 26 Major League Baseball clubs across the country. The results are yet another data set showing how COVID-19 spreads across geographical and economic lines. Dr. Bhattacharya also discusses the very real health risks associated with a prolonged lockdown and answers some of the questions raised by his last survey of Santa Clara County.   

Recorded February 25, 2020 Yuval Levin is director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the America Dream. The book and this conversation lay out the importance of institutions—from the military to churches, from families to schools—as these institutions provide the forms and structures we need to be free. Levin also explains why political correctness is rampant in the culture, why America’s elites have created a closed-off aristocracy in order to transmit privilege generationally, and why it is vitally important that we as a society recommit to rebuilding and maintaining the institutions that provided the foundation for American society for 200 years. Programming note: this interview was recorded before the COVID-19 crisis reached the United States, so it is not mentioned.

Recorded on April 28, 2020 In this special plague-time episode of Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson, two of the nation’s most brilliant and accomplished humorists have a good time—and say some serious things. P. J. O’Rourke and Andrew Ferguson on COVID-19, their wasted youth, Trump versus Biden, the state of journalism, and why they’d both bet on the United States over China any old day.

Recorded on April 23, 2020   Victor Davis Hanson is both a classical scholar at the Hoover Institution and a farmer in the San Joaquin Valley of California. He’s also a defender of the president (his book The Case for Trump spent weeks on the bestseller lists in 2019) and a close observer of the scientific and medical communities. These disparate interests and fields of study give him unique perspectives and insights on the current COVID-19 crisis. We discuss the current situation with him in great detail, including the difficulties encountered by farmers and by research scientists and doctors, why some areas of the country are affected more than others, his theories about when the virus actually first appeared in the United States, and, finally, what plagues of the ancient world can teach us about how to best manage and get past the situation the entire world finds itself in.

Recorded on April 15, 2020 Douglas Irwin is the John French Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College. He is the author of a number of books, including the definitive history of American trade policy, Clashing over Commerce. In this sheltering at home edition of Uncommon Knowledge, we delve deep into the issues around the Trump administration’s imposition of huge tariffs on goods from China and elsewhere, and the impact of a health crisis that has businesses across the country re-examining their investments abroad. Also, what’s the right way to think about international trade? Is free trade still the best policy? We get deep into the weeds of the issues around imports and exports with Professor Irwin.

Recorded on April 17, 2020 A month ago, we interviewed Dr. Jay Bhattacharya just as the COVID-19 crisis was shuttering the economy and governments were ordering citizens to shelter at home. In that interview, Dr. Bhattacharya mentioned that he himself would soon be conducting tests for COVID-19 in Santa Clara County, California, one of the most active hotspots in the country. Today Dr. Bhattacharya returns to discuss the results of that study and one currently under way in partnership with Major League Baseball. We also discuss some signs of hope, and specifics about how the economy can be restarted safely and efficiently. Dr. Bhattacharya also gives some (unsolicited) advice to Dr. Anthony Fauci, California governor Gavin Newsom, and president Donald Trump.

Recorded on April 9, 2020 As a columnist for the Wall Street Journal and a commentator for Fox News, Kim Strassel is a card-carrying member of the mainstream media. But Strassel is appalled by the media’s treatment of Donald Trump, and not just by journalists from the left. She describes the “resistance” in detail in her recent book, Resistance (at All Costs): How Trump Haters Are Breaking America. She and Peter Robinson discuss the Trump administration's handling of the COVID-19 crisis and the way the media has covered it and disseminated the information to the public. They also discuss the upcoming presidential election (yes, we are still having one) and the politics of the $2 trillion stimulus bill, with more spending on the way, and the realities of restarting the economy in a post- or partial-post-COVID-19 world. Finally, they discuss the pluses and minuses of Donald Trump’s temperament, and the possibility of something good coming from this current crisis.

Recorded on April 1, 2020 Stephen A. Kotkin is a professor of history at Princeton and a fellow at the Hoover Institution. Kotkin is one of the nation’s most compelling observers of foreign affairs, past and present, and is now working on the third and final volume of his definitive biography of Josef Stalin. From that perspective, Peter Robinson and Kotkin discuss Trump’s response to the COVID-19 crisis, Kotkin’s thoughts on the Chinese leadership class and the advantages they may seek to exploit, and which country—China or the United States—will come to represent the more successful or compelling model to other nations.

Recorded on March 27, 2020 Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is a professor of medicine at Stanford University. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a senior fellow at both the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and the Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute. His March 24, 2020, article in the Wall Street Journal questions the premise that “coronavirus would kill millions without shelter-in-place orders and quarantines.” In the article he suggests that “there’s little evidence to confirm that premise—and projections of the death toll could plausibly be orders of magnitude too high.” In this edition of Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson we asked Dr. Bhattacharya to defend that statement and describe to us how he arrived at this conclusion. We get into the details of his research, which used data collected from hotspots around the world and his background as a doctor, a medical researcher, and an economist. It’s not popular right now to question conventional wisdom on sheltering in place, but Dr. Bhattacharya makes a strong case for challenging it, based in economics and science.

Recorded on March 25, 2020 In this first of a new series of Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson conversations done via webcam, Peter Robinson talks to John B. Taylor, the Hoover Institution’s George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics. They discuss the huge impact of the COVID-19 virus on the US and world economy, the likely impact of the federal government's multitrillion-dollar relief efforts, and what the economy might look like as we get to the other side of this crisis.

This week on Uncommon Knowledge, a conversation with author and historian Amity Shlaes on her new book, Great Society: A New History. Begun by John F. Kennedy and completed by Lyndon B. Johnson, the Great Society was one of the most sweeping pieces of legislation ever enacted in American history. On its surface, the Great Society was a plan to reduce rural and urban poverty, but at its roots were the socialist and communist movements of the 1930s. Shlaes shares the history of those movements and lays out how they influenced the post–World War II generation of American politicians, including lesser-remembered figures such as Sargent Shriver, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Walter Reuther. In addition, the Great Society was a harbinger of many of the policies and ideas that are in vogue today, including Universal Basic Income and Medicare for All. Shlaes also argues that what the Great Society’s marquee policy initiative, the War on Poverty, and the new flood of benefits actually achieved “was the opposite of preventing poverty—they established a new kind of poverty, a permanent sense of downtroddenness.” Shlaes proves that, once again, policies and laws with the best of intentions often have the opposite effect.

Recorded on February 24, 2020 This week, Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson travels to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in the nation’s capital for a special one-on-one interview with Vice President Mike Pence. In a wide-ranging conversation, they discuss Senator Bernie Sanders’s statements about Fidel Castro, the killing of Iranian major general Qassim Soleimani, the current situation in Venezuela, the US relationship with China, the effect of the Trump tax cuts, the growing popularity of socialism amongst the nation’s youths, and yes, the formation of the Space Force. Robinson ends the interview by asking the vice president to speculate on his and President Trump’s chances for re-election this fall (spoiler alert: he likes them).

Recorded on January 17, 2020 Peter Thiel, the cofounder of PayPal and Palantir; early investor in Facebook, LinkedIn, and SpaceX; and the founder of the Thiel Fellowship, which encourages young people to drop out of college to start their own businesses, is interviewed live on stage in front of the members of the Mont Pelerin Society. This wide-ranging conversation covers globalization, the continuing and ever-growing threat from China and what the United States can and can’t do it about, what the rise of Bernie Sanders means for the future of US capitalism, the “derangement” (Thiel’s phrase) of Silicon Valley in the last decade, the scourge of political correctness on campuses and in society at large, and why Thiel thinks we should rethink the doctrine of American exceptionalism.

Recorded on January 15, 2020 The impeachment proceedings against President Trump has now reached the Senate and to help our viewers navigate the legal and political issues surrounding it, Peter Robinson sits down with the Hoover Institution’s Visiting Fellow John Yoo and Senior Fellow Richard Epstein, two of the foremost legal scholars in the country. We cover the Articles of Impeachment submitted by the U.S. House of Representatives, the pluses and minuses of calling witnesses, the role of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts in the proceeding, and whether or not President Trump should testify on his own behalf. Finally, Peter asks Epstein and Yoo for their vote predictions on conviction and acquittal and gets their predictions for the election in November.

Recorded on November 11, 2019 This week, a special edition of Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson joins the Hoover Institution in commemorating the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. To mark this event, which marked a significant moment in the ending of the Cold War, we produced a short video featuring an outstanding group of Hoover scholars and Stanford historians. We asked them to recall where they were when the wall fell, and their thoughts and impressions both at the time and now, with a 30-year perspective. After the video, Peter Robinson interviews Hoover Distinguished Scholar George P. Shultz, who served in the Reagan administration as secretary of state and was intimately involved in actions and negotiations with the Soviet Union that directly led to the wall being torn down. His insights and anecdotes are not to be missed. Our interview with Mr. Shultz—a remarkable conversation with someone who at the time of the interview was weeks shy of his 99th birthday—was shot at a small dinner at the Hoover Institution. After the interview, we open the floor up for some questions from the audience. You may recognize some of the participants, including the last guy, who just wants to eat.

Recorded on October 20, 2019 In this special edition of Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson recorded in front of a live audience at the Hoover Institution, Peter interviews Jimmy Lai, the entrepreneur and leader in the fight to preserve democracy in Hong Kong. Lai describes the struggles he has endured including having his home fire-bombed, his family harassed, and his business threatened by the Chinese Communist Party. They also discuss the Trump administration's response to the Hong Kong protest movement, how the NBA and other American businesses found themselves in an awkward position between their business interests and their politics, and what Lai believes to be China’s ultimate goal: to make Hong Kong just another city in Communist China. Finally, Lai asks Americans to keep Hong Kong at the forefront of their thoughts and not to give up on them.

Recorded on June 3, 2019 In this episode of Uncommon Knowledge, Peter Robinson is joined by author and columnist Douglas Murray to discuss his new book The Madness of Crowds: Race, Gender and Identity. Murray examines the most divisive issues today, including sexuality, gender, and technology, and how new culture wars are playing out everywhere in the name of social justice, identity politics, and intersectionality. Is European culture and society in a death spiral caused by immigration and assimilation? Robinson and Murray also discuss the roles that Brexit and the rise of populism in European politics play in writing immigration laws across the European Union.  

Recorded on September 5, 2019. Peter Robinson opens the show by asking Thiel’s views on his own essay “The Straussian Moment.” Thiel responds by saying that people today believe in the power of the will but no longer trust the power of the intellect, the mind, and rationality. The question of human nature has been abandoned. We no longer trust people’s ability to think through issues. Thiel notes that this shift began to take place in 1969, when the United States put a man on the moon; three weeks later Woodstock took place, moving the culture in the direction of yoga and psychological retreat.  Thiel further adds that there was still hope that things would open up for the world in 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed, but that the leaders of China and other East Asian countries did not accept that openness would solve their problems. Instead they learned the opposite lessons from those events: that if you open things up too much, then things fall apart. Thiel ends the interview by noting that there is nothing automatic or deterministic about how history happens, and he expresses his views that economic growth plays a vital role in a country’s future.

Recorded on August 21, 2019 Peter Robinson opens the show by asking General Jim Mattis, former secretary of defense, to explain the word “chaos” from the title of his new book, Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead. (“Chaos” is an abbreviation for “Colonel Has Another Outstanding Suggestion.”) Mattis notes that chaos has been a part and parcel of his life growing up, in the marines, and traveling the world. Mattis further talks about how chaos has been introduced by organizations to disrupt order and keep opponents at the top of their game. But on the battlefield, it is better to introduce chaos early, in order to disrupt enemies’ plans and thus create problems for them and, ultimately, dominate them. Robinson asks about what led Mattis to join the marines and why he decided to serve so long. Mattis explains his love for the country and the great people he met in the service. The fellow soldiers kept him going and inspired him to jot down lessons he had learned that could help future generations learn to serve and lead in better ways. Mattis notes that it is the very high quality of the people whom he met in the armed services that kept him in the military for his career. Mattis talks about how soldiers are brave, rambunctious, and selfless, and how he would rather have crummy jobs at times and work with great people than have a great job and not work with the outstanding people Mattis encountered in the military.  Additional resources: https://www.wsj.com/articles/jim-mattis-duty-democracy-and-the-threat-of-tribalism-11566984601 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gen-jim-mattis-on-war-and-trump/ https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/james-mattis-on-why-he-left-the-trump-administration-but-wont-criticize-it https://www.npr.org/2019/09/02/756681750/jim-mattis-nations-with-allies-thrive-nations-without-allies-wither

Recorded on April 18, 2019 Peter Robinson opens the session by discussing the major improvements that happened over the last one hundred years in the United States, between 1919 and 2019. For example, the GDP per person rose by 760 percent, life expectancy improved from 59 to 79 years, and various other automotive, technological, medical, and quality-of-life advances were achieved. Robinson then starts the discussion with former secretary of state George Shultz, who encourages a broader vision as we look for the reasons for prosperity. Shultz discusses some of the major events that occurred during the 20th century, e.g., the Great Depression, currency manipulation, World War II, and the Holocaust, whose negative impacts framed the mindset of Americans to question the institutions underlying society. Robinson then asks John Cogan about these institutions—private property, the rule of law, free markets—and the importance of these for prosperity. Cogan explains those institutions are necessary for sustained prosperity, which demands conditions that are stable in order to fuel economic growth. Robinson asks Terry Anderson about the importance of property rights. Terry says that property rights are the key to providing people with incentives to care for and maintain the property they own. Anderson notes that nobody washes rental cars, because they don’t own them. Robinson asks Lee Ohanian about the role of immigration in prosperity. Ohanian says that the United States has been fortunate in attracting the best talents from all over the world, which has played a major role in sustaining prosperity. Ohanian notes that having an inflow of immigrants like Sergey Brin from Soviet Union, Elon Musk from South Africa, and others has helped the United States stay on the cutting edge of innovation with new and fresh ideas.

Recorded on July 18, 2019 What did Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin want at the beginning of the Second World War? Peter Robinson starts the discussion by why the “big three” came together as allies in response to Operation Barbarossa during the war. What did the leaders of the “grand alliance” of Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union want? What were their national interests? Robinson asks Roberts if Churchill aimed to preserve the British Empire. Roberts explains that Churchill’s interests were just in national survival. As Britain was under the threat of massive invasion from Germany, he wanted to make sure that the Russians stayed in the war until the Germans were wiped out completely. Roberts also notes that Churchill wanted Russia to ensure that the Americans, when they did finally enter the war in December 1941, were guided toward a Mediterranean strategy. Kennedy discusses Roosevelt’s motive for joining into an alliance in the aftermath of Operation Barbarossa, before officially entering the war. Kennedy says that Roosevelt wanted to make the world safe for the democratic practices and institutions that had already been established, but he did not seek to expand democracy throughout the world. Next, Robinson asks Kotkin about Stalin’s aim for allying with Britain and United States as well as why Stalin did not quickly respond to Hitler’s actions in Soviet Union despite having one of the biggest armies in the world. Kotkin replies that there was misinformation that made Stalin think that Hitler would not actually attack, that Hitler was only amassing the troops to blackmail Stalin into giving up Ukraine and other territories without actually having to fight. Lastly, Kotkin explains, Stalin also joined the grand alliance for national survival. Robinson then continues the discussion with Roberts, Kennedy, and Kotkin by asking how things turned out for the three allies after the war. They examine who won and who lost over both the short term and the long term, as well as how the postwar world set the stage for the emergence of new strong powers, particularly China. This event addresses these and many other important lessons and questions: What happens when an international system that is supposed to keep the peace among nations breaks down? How do nations deal with the breakdown and rebuilding of international order? How can Western civilization remain strong? What are the defense resources required to protect free countries from unpleasant predators in the world?

Recorded on June 6, 2019 in Italy. Based on new evidence and knowledge that functioning proteins are extremely rare, should Darwin’s theory of evolution be dismissed, dissected, developed or replaced with a theory of intelligent design? Has Darwinism really failed? Peter Robinson discusses it with David Berlinski, David Gelernter, and Stephen Meyer, who have raised doubts about Darwin’s theory in their two books and essay, respectively The Deniable Darwin, Darwin’s Doubt, and “Giving Up Darwin” (published in the Claremont Review of Books). Robinson asks them to convince him that the term “species” has not been defined by the authors to Darwin’s disadvantage. Gelernter replies to this and explains, as he expressed in his essay, that he sees Darwin’s theory as beautiful (which made it difficult for him to give it up): “Beauty is often a telltale sign of truth. Beauty is our guide to the intellectual universe—walking beside us through the uncharted wilderness, pointing us in the right direction, keeping us on track—most of the time.” Gelernter notes that there’s no reason to doubt that Darwin successfully explained the small adjustments by which an organism adapts to local circumstances: changes to fur density or wing style or beak shape. Yet there are many reasons to doubt whether Darwin can answer the hard questions and explain the big picture—not the fine-tuning of existing species but the emergence of new ones. Meyer explains Darwinism as a comprehensive synthesis, which gained popularity for its appeal. Meyer also mentions that one cannot disregard that Darwin’s book was based on the facts present in the 19th century. Robinson then asks the panel whether Darwin’s theory of gradual evolution is contradicted by the explosion of fossil records in the Cambrian period, when there was a sudden occurrence of many species over the span of approximately seventy million years (Meyer’s noted that the date range for the Cambrian period is actually narrowing). Meyer replies that even population genetics, the mathematical branch of Darwinian theory, has not been able to support the explosion of fossil records during the Cambrian period, biologically or geologically. Robinson than asks about Darwin’s main problem, molecular biology, to which Meyer explains, comparing it to digital world, that building a new biological function is similar to building a new code, which Darwin could not understand in his era. Berlinski does not second this and states that the cell represents very complex machinery, with complexities increasing over time, which is difficult to explain by a theory. Gelernter throws light on this by giving an example of a necklace on which the positioning of different beads can lead to different permutations and combinations; it is really tough to choose the best possible combination, more difficult than finding a needle in a haystack. He seconds Meyer’s statement that it was impossible for Darwin to understand that in his era, since the math is easy but he did not have the facts. Meyer further explains how difficult it is to know what a protein can do to a cell, the vast combinations it can produce, and how rare is the possibility of finding a functional protein. He then talks about the formation of brand-new organisms, for which mutation must affect genes early in the life form’s development in order to control the expression of other genes as the organism grows. “Intelligent design” is something only Meyer agrees with, but Berlinski replies that as a scientific approach, one can agree or disagree with it, but should not reject it. Meyer talks about the major discovery in the 1950s and ’60s concerning the DNA molecule, which encodes information in a somewhat digital format, providing researchers with the opportunity to trace the information back to its source. Gelernter argues that if there was/is an intelligent designer then why is the design not the most efficient, rather than prone to all sorts of problems, including the mental and emotional. Robinson quotes Gelernter: “Darwinism is no longer just a scientific theory but a basis of a worldview, and an emergency . . . religion for the many troubled souls who need one.” Gelernter further adds that it’s a fantastically challenging problem that Darwin chose to address. How difficult will it be for scientists to move on from Darwin’s theory of evolution? Will each scientist need to examine the evidence for his or herself? These are some of most important questions facing science in the 21st century.

David Berlinski is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, a contributing editor at Inference: International Review of Science, and author of many books. Berlinski discusses his book The Deniable Darwin and lays out how Charles Darwin has failed to explain the origin of species through his theory of evolution. Berlinski explains that change in biology is not continuous—it’s radical, something which Darwinian theory fails to explain. He discusses how Darwinian evolution is blind to the future as there is no fidelity to the facts. He gives examples of amino acids and dogs and explains why there cannot be just one species. He further strengthens his statement by saying that everything cannot be accounted for as being random: there should be some scientific evidence to support it. Berlinski responds to Peter Robinson’s question about Razib Khan’s statement to the effect that, “The seeds of both tyranny and democracy were sown by the evolutionary pressures that shaped humans over millions of years.” He argues that the deepest aspects of our nature are not formed by evolutionary pressures because evolution is relatively neutral. He also replies to Robinson’s question about a remark of Pope Benedict XVI to the effect that Western thought, by its very nature, “excludes the question of God, making it appear an unscientific or pre-scientific question.” He explains that it is not right to argue that physical theories imply that the conclusion is antitheist, as mere exclusion in these theories does not imply that. Robinson further asks Berlinski’s views about the growing population of Islam and decreasing population of Europeans in Europe. Berlinski explains that Muslims take religion seriously, but theology/religion has more or less disappeared from the Western habit of thought. He states that faith and religion should come together. Berlinski further talks about how Albert Einstein’s comments disprove God, not because he is an antitheist, but because Einstein wanted to push quantum theory and his belief in the rational universe. Finally, Robinson asks about Europe’s survival in terms of economy, population, and growth, and Berlinski says that the nation-state is an idea that is no longer there and that patriotism is disappearing.

Recorded: Recorded on May 15, 2019 David Davenport, Hoover fellow and coauthor of How Public Policy Became War, analyzes how presidents have too readily declared war (on terror, drugs, poverty, you name it) and called the nation into crisis, partly to tackle the problem and partly to increase their own power. Davenport explains how policy options have been left behind because the war metaphor reduces the constraints and expands the power of what a president can do. Davenport discusses how Franklin Roosevelt used the declaration of war to expand government and shift the balance of power in the United States in a new direction, away from Congress and the states and toward a strong executive branch. Davenport notes that Roosevelt exchanged the founders’ vision of deliberation and moderation in the federal government for war and action. Davenport explains how, through the course of time, Congress has lost its ability to deliberate, negotiate, compromise, and draft bills, which results in giving more power to the executive branch. Davenport says that members of Congress are sent to Washington to represent us, and they need to be statesmen rather than party loyalists and step up to their proper constitutional role. Davenport also discusses executive orders that permit the president to issue an order on his own without any congressional legislation. He talks about the number of executive orders that have been used by presidents throughout history and how they have impacted the nation. As Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers, the cool and deliberate sense of the community ought, in all governments, and actually will, in all free governments, ultimately prevail over the views of its rulers. Finally, Davenport says he believes that President Trump is on the right track when he takes measures to limit the administrative state.