Uncommon Knowledge
206 episodes - English - Latest episode: 27 days ago - ★★★★★ - 1.8K ratingsFor more than two decades the Hoover Institution has been producing Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson, a series hosted by Hoover fellow Peter Robinson as an outlet for political leaders, scholars, journalists, and today’s big thinkers to share their views with the world.
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
Andrew Roberts on “Conflict: The Evolution of War from 1945 to Ukraine” | Uncommon Knowledge | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
April 02, 2024 18:13 - 1 hour - 87.5 MBHistorian Andrew Roberts is the author of more than a dozen major works of history, including Napoleon: A Life, Churchill: Walking with Destiny, and The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III. His latest book, coauthored with General David Petraeus, is Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine, which provides the basis for this interview. Roberts discusses the differences in the way nations and allied forces prosecute wars in the twentieth century vs. today...
Why Bitcoin Will Take Over The World: Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong | Uncommon Knowledge | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
March 19, 2024 18:10 - 1 hour - 89.6 MBDespite a tumultuous and volatile marketplace; scandals, arrests, and bankruptcies at rival digital exchanges; and social issues disrupting his own company, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is a devout believer in digital currencies and the power of the blockchain. In this interview, Armstrong describes how he co-founded Coinbase, explains the basics of how digital currencies work, and responds to criticisms of cryptocurrency from Warren Buffet and others.
Growing Up Segregated: Three Witnesses To The Struggle For Civil Rights, Part 2 | Uncommon Knowledge | Peter Robinson, Condoleezza Rice, Mary Bush, and Freeman Hrabowski| Hoover Institution
February 23, 2024 19:52 - 56 minutes - 78.2 MBMary Bush, Freeman Hrabowski, and Condoleezza Rice grew up and were classmates together in segregated Birmingham, Alabama, in the late 1950s and early ’60s. After taking a brief visit with Rice to her childhood home, we gather them again for a second conversation in Birmingham’s Westminster Presbyterian Church, where Rice’s father was pastor during that period. In this second part of our interview, the three lifelong friends further recount what life was like for Blacks in Jim Crow Alabama a...
Growing Up Segregated: Three Witnesses To The Struggle For Civil Rights, Part 2
February 23, 2024 19:52 - 56 minutes - 78.2 MBMary Bush, Freeman Hrabowski, and Condoleezza Rice grew up and were classmates together in segregated Birmingham, Alabama, in the late 1950s and early ’60s. After taking a brief visit with Rice to her childhood home, we gather them again for a second conversation in Birmingham’s Westminster Presbyterian Church, where Rice’s father was pastor during that period. In this second part of our interview, the three lifelong friends further recount what life was like for Blacks in Jim Crow Alabama a...
Birmingham, 1963: Three Witnesses to the Struggle for Civil Rights | Uncommon Knowledge | Peter Robinson, Condoleezza Rice, Mary Bush, and Freeman Hrabowski| Hoover Institution
February 07, 2024 21:05 - 1 hour - 85.6 MBMary Bush, Freeman Hrabowski, and Condoleezza Rice grew up and were classmates together in segregated Birmingham, Alabama, in the late 1950s and early ’60s. We reunited them for a conversation in Birmingham’s Westminster Presbyterian Church, where Rice’s father was pastor during that period. The three lifelong friends recount what life was like for Blacks in Jim Crow Alabama and the deep bonds that formed in the Black community at the time in order to support one another and to give the chil...
Uncommon Knowledge Archive: Oppenheimer’s Edward Teller and Sid Drell on ICBM Defense Systems | Uncommon Knowledge | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
January 30, 2024 20:37 - 28 minutes - 38.6 MBWith 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 ...
“The Treason Of The Intellectuals,” With Niall Ferguson | Uncommon Knowledge | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
January 23, 2024 20:04 - 48 minutes - 66.4 MBNiall 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 2023 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 i...
Donald Trump and The Supreme Court | Uncommon Knowledge | Peter Robinson, Richard Epstein, and John Yoo | Hoover Institution
January 17, 2024 02:04 - 54 minutes - 74.8 MBBetween 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.
100% Cotton: The Senator from Arkansas On Issues Domestic And Foreign | Uncommon Knowledge | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
December 19, 2023 19:12 - 57 minutes - 79.3 MBTom 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 Mid...
The Most Dangerous Moment: A Debate on America’s Role in the Pacific | Uncommon Knowledge | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
December 05, 2023 19:03 - 1 hour - 96.1 MBDan 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 ...
Breaking China: Congressman Mike Gallagher on Asian Geopolitics and Beyond | Uncommon Knowledge | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
November 17, 2023 19:16 - 1 hour - 82.9 MBNot 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 Congr...
The Long Game: Andrew Luck & Condoleezza Rice on the Future of College Sports | Uncommon Knowledge | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
November 08, 2023 02:26 - 1 hour - 82.8 MBThe 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 direct...
The World According to China with Elizabeth Economy | Uncommon Knowledge | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
October 23, 2023 23:51 - 49 minutes - 67.5 MBElizabeth 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 advi...
More “Social Justice Fallacies,” With Thomas Sowell | Uncommon Knowledge | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
September 29, 2023 22:09 - 37 minutes - 51.5 MBThomas 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....
Consequences Matter: Thomas Sowell on “Social Justice Fallacies” | Uncommon Knowledge | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
September 15, 2023 16:00 - 42 minutes - 58.4 MBThomas 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 so...
Hot Or Not: Steven Koonin Questions Conventional Climate Science And Methodology | Uncommon Knowledge | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
August 22, 2023 19:48 - 54 minutes - 75.2 MBSteven 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 implicati...
Hadley and Rice on “Hand-Off”: Foreign Policy Decisions in the 9/11 Era | Uncommon Knowledge | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
July 31, 2023 18:15 - 1 hour - 88.9 MBCondoleezza 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 det...
Five More Questions for Stephen Kotkin: Prigozhin Mutiny Edition | Uncommon Knowledge | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
July 13, 2023 17:48 - 51 minutes - 70.4 MBStephen 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, ...
Victor Davis Hanson, Part II: The Contrarian Agrarian | Uncommon Knowledge | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
June 27, 2023 00:24 - 1 hour - 96.3 MBIn 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 o...
A Classicist Farmer: The Life and Times of Victor Davis Hanson | Uncommon Knowledge | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
June 12, 2023 18:19 - 1 hour - 91.9 MBOver 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...
The Man Who Talked Back: Jay Bhattacharya On the Fight against COVID Lockdowns | Uncommon Knowledge | Peter Robinson and Jay Bhattacharya | Hoover Institution
May 18, 2023 19:46 - 50 minutes - 69.2 MBPrior 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...
Cold War II: Niall Ferguson on The Emerging Conflict With China | Uncommon Knowledge | Peter Robinson and Niall Ferguson | Hoover Institution
May 01, 2023 18:33 - 1 hour - 84.9 MBNiall 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 ...
Lone Gunman: The Man Who Knew Lee Harvey Oswald| Peter Robinson and Paul Gregory | Hoover Institution
April 13, 2023 18:03 - 52 minutes - 71.5 MBPaul 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...
Courage and Conviction: Will Inboden on “the Peacemaker,” Part II | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
March 31, 2023 00:13 - 1 hour - 85.3 MBWill 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...
The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, The Cold War, And The World On The Brink | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
March 16, 2023 17:52 - 57 minutes - 79.4 MBWill 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...
Dropping Money From Helicopters: Economist John Cochrane On Inflation | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
February 28, 2023 19:00 - 1 hour - 106 MBJohn 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.
A Historian Of The Future: Five More Questions For Stephen Kotkin | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
February 14, 2023 20:11 - 1 hour - 123 MBHistorian 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 ...
By Design: Behe, Lennox, and Meyer on the Evidence for a Creator | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
February 01, 2023 19:10 - 1 hour - 116 MBMichael 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? A Conversation with Tom Holland, Stephen Meyer, and Douglas Murray | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
January 10, 2023 18:52 - 1 hour - 92.6 MBDoes 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.
“Bibi: My Story,” Benjamin Netanyahu On His Life And Times | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
December 09, 2022 20:00 - 1 hour - 102 MBBenjamin 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 Is...
Hello, Cleveland: Troy Senik on Man of Iron | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
December 06, 2022 02:30 - 1 hour - 97.9 MBGrover 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 un...
The Ethos of Economics with John Cogan and Kevin Warsh | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
November 29, 2022 18:52 - 1 hour - 99.8 MBJohn 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 ...
Peter Thiel, Leader Of The Rebel Alliance | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
November 09, 2022 19:43 - 47 minutes - 65.9 MBWith 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 Cal...
Senator Rob Portman: The Exit Interview | Hoover Institution
November 03, 2022 01:01 - 1 hour - 72.3 MBSenator 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 discu...
Condoleezza Rice on Footballs: Domestic, International, College, and Professional
October 11, 2022 18:02 - 59 minutes - 82.1 MBCurrent 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 Heat Is On: Bjorn Lomborg on the Summer’s Record Heat
September 23, 2022 07:21 - 1 hour - 90 MBThe 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 ma...
The De-Population Bomb
September 15, 2022 01:02 - 1 hour - 91.1 MBIn 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 probl...
The Antislavery Activist That Time Forgot: Historian Walter Stahr On Salmon P. Chase
September 01, 2022 18:57 - 58 minutes - 80.9 MBHistorical 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 lawy...
The Wrath of Kan: A Soviet-Born Anthropologist on Stalin’s Gulag
August 24, 2022 01:03 - 42 minutes - 57.8 MBDartmouth 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. K...
Do Not Defund: Roland Fryer and Rafael Mangual on Crime and Policing in the 21st Century
August 03, 2022 18:59 - 57 minutes - 78.3 MBRoland 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...
Not Buying It: Glenn Loury, Ian Rowe, and Robert Woodson Debunk Myths about the Black Experience in America
July 25, 2022 20:50 - 58 minutes - 80.7 MBIf 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 Narra...
Nationalize or Not?: Matthew Continetti and Chris DeMuth Debate the Future of Conservatism
July 13, 2022 02:46 - 1 hour - 99.3 MBMatthew 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 ...
Yoram Hazony Rediscovers Conservatism
June 23, 2022 09:36 - 1 hour - 98.2 MBYoram 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 ...
More Than “One Damn Thing,” with Bill Barr
June 08, 2022 01:34 - 1 hour - 109 MBWilliam 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...
Harvey Mansfield Counts His Blessings
May 24, 2022 02:17 - 53 minutes - 73 MBThe 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
The Importance of Being Ethical, with Jordan Peterson
April 29, 2022 17:49 - 1 hour - 86.2 MBBy 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 Cla...
Are We Dumb about Intelligence? Amy Zegart on the Capabilities of American Intel Gathering
March 30, 2022 23:07 - 58 minutes - 80.9 MBAmy 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 w...
Bari Weiss on Post-Mainstream Media Life and Her Battles in the Culture Wars
March 15, 2022 18:04 - 57 minutes - 78.4 MBRecorded 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 pop...
5 More Questions For Stephen Kotkin: Ukraine Edition
March 04, 2022 07:59 - 1 hour - 108 MBLast 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 un...
5 Questions For Stephen Kotkin
February 04, 2022 19:00 - 1 hour - 84.3 MBStephen 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 bel...