Uncommon Knowledge

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.

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.

Classicist Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of hundreds of articles, book reviews, and newspaper editorials on Greek, agrarian, and military history and essays on contemporary culture. He has written or edited twenty-four books, the latest of which is The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation. The book—and this conversation—charts how and why some societies choose to utterly destroy their foes and warns that similar wars of obliteration are possible in our time. Hanson provides a warning to current societies not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Currently a fellow at the Hoover Institution, Paul Wolfowitz previously served as director of policy planning at the State Department, as US ambassador to Indonesia, as under secretary of defense for policy, as dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, as deputy secretary of defense, and as president of the World Bank. He is perhaps best known as a policymaker during the war in Afghanistan and the first and second wars in Iraq, and that is what we delve into in great detail in this episode. Wolfowitz gives his views on what the United States got right and got wrong in both Iraq and Afghanistan, recounting the data available to decision makers at the time and the decision-making processes. He also gives new details on why the Bush administration believed Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and determined an invasion of Afghanistan was necessary after 9/11, and how the idea for the surge in Iraq was conceived and executed.

John Etchemendy and Fei-Fei Li are the codirectors of Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), founded in 2019 to “advance AI research, education, policy and practice to improve the human condition.” In this interview, they delve into the origins of the technology, its promise, and its potential threats. They also discuss what AI should be used for, where it should not be deployed, and why we as a society should—cautiously—embrace it.

Historian 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. Roberts also discusses his strong support for Israel in the current conflict in Gaza both in the media and in the House of Lords, where  he is now a member. Roberts also explains (with some understandable exasperation) why Ridley Scott (the director of the recent film biography of Napoleon) is wrong —really wrong—when he says that historians are not to be trusted because “they weren’t there” when they describe historical events.

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.