Uncommon Knowledge

The media’s treatment of Donald Trump.

Peter Robinson and Stephen 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.

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.

the huge impact of the COVID-19 virus on the US and world economies.

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.

A special one-on-one interview with Vice President Mike Pence.

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.