General (ret.) H.R. McMaster, the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, returns to Uncommon Knowledge to discuss his latest book, At War with Ourselves, in which he candidly recounts his experiences as former national security advisor to President Donald Trump from 2017 to 2018.

In this wide-ranging interview, McMaster delves into the complexities and challenges he faced while serving in the administration and describes his role in providing the president with multiple options and safeguarding his independence of judgment, partially by drawing on the Stoic philosophy of Epictetus to “play well the role assigned to you.” He reflects on the internal tensions and conflicts within the White House, often exacerbated by differing agendas among staff and cabinet members. McMaster also discusses the difficulties in maintaining a productive relationship with President Trump, especially when offering candid advice that sometimes led to alienation. The conversation is a revealing look into McMaster's often tumultuous experiences in the Trump White House but also emphasizes the importance of a well-structured decision-making process in the realm of national security.

“Are we alone in the universe?” That’s the central question we put to astrophysicist Dr. Luke Barnes, cosmologist Dr. Brian Keating, and philosopher Dr. Jay Richards.

Our guests delve into the probabilities and challenges of finding extraterrestrial life, considering the vastness of the cosmos and the fine-tuning necessary for life to exist. They explore the implications of the SETI project, the rarity of Earth-like conditions, and the potential for habitable planets in other solar systems. This discussion is set against the backdrop of broader scientific and philosophical inquiries, including the Big Bang, the multiverse theory, and the role of humanity in the cosmic order. The conversation offers a deep and nuanced perspective on the search for life beyond Earth and what it could mean for our understanding of the universe and our place within it.

Despite 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.

Mary 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 and the deep bonds that formed in the Black community at the time in order to support one another and to give the children a good education. They discuss how they overcame the structural racism they experienced as children to achieve incredible successes as adults. Lastly, they discuss their views on the recent reckoning with racism in today’s culture and weigh in on the 1619 Project and other social programs.

Mary 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 children a good education. They also recall the events they saw—and in some cases participated in—during the spring, summer, and fall of 1963, when Birmingham was racked with racial violence, witnessed marches and protests led by Dr. Martin Luther King, and was shocked by the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. The latter event resulted in the deaths of four little girls, whom all three knew. The show concludes with a visit to a statue of Martin Luther King Jr. erected in Kelly Ingram Park—where in 1963 Birmingham’s commissioner for public safety Bull Connor ordered that fire hoses and attack dogs be used on protestors. There, Condoleezza Rice discusses Dr. King’s legacy and his impact on her life.

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 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 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.

Stephen Meyer is the author of Return of the God Hypothesis and the director of the Discovery Institute. James Tour is a synthetic organic chemist and professor at Rice University, renowned for his work in nanotechnology and his skepticism toward the current scientific models explaining the origin of life. 

In this wide-ranging conversation, Meyer and Tour contrast biological evolution with the more complex challenge of chemical evolution, where modern science still struggles to explain how nonliving chemicals could give rise to life. They critique early experiments like the Miller-Urey experiment, emphasizing that producing basic molecules is far from creating life itself. Meyer and Tour also argue that as scientific understanding deepens, the complexity of life's origins becomes more daunting, raising both scientific and philosophical questions about the adequacy of the current mainstream scientific explanations and theories for the origin of life.

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.

In his 1943 book The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis wrote: “The serious magical endeavor and the serious scientific endeavor are twins: One was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse.” In this Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson, mathematician and philosopher David Berlinski, intelligent design advocate Stephen Meyer, and Associate Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Cambridge University, James Orr explore the parallels between scientific and magical endeavors, referencing C. S. Lewis's notion that both were born from the same impulse, with one thriving and the other fading. They also explore the historical relationship between science and religion, noting how early scientists such as Newton and Galileo saw their work as uncovering divine order, in contrast with the more secular views of modern scientists such as Steven Weinberg and Stephen Hawking. The discussion also reveals deep philosophical and historical insights into the evolution of scientific thought and its complex relationship with materialism and religion.

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.

Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, a think tank dedicated to applying economic analysis, including cost-benefit analysis, to proposed policies around the issues of the day. He’s also a visiting professor at Copenhagen Business School and visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He's the author of many books, including the 2001 bestseller The Skeptical Environmentalist.  His latest book, and the topic for this interview, is Best Things First. Offering cost-benefit analyses of many of the top-line policies of industrial and developing nations, Dr. Lomborg discusses which policies we should prioritize and which we should pay less attention to or end. Lomborg also asserts the benefits of economic growth and says that by spending on technology, we can solve all kinds of big problems, including hunger.

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

Author and columnist Douglas Murray has spent much of the past few years reporting from battlefields in Ukraine and Gaza. His reporting on the harrowing conditions in those wartorn locations make his journalism a must-read. In this wide-ranging conversation, Murray describes what he has witnessed, why the West must ensure victories in both wars, and his reaction to the campus protests across the United States, as well as his views on the upcoming British elections.

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.