Episodes
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.
Published 03/19/24
Published 03/19/24
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.
Published 02/23/24
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.
Published 02/07/24
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.
Published 01/30/24
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.
Published 01/23/24
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.
Published 01/17/24
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.
Published 12/19/23
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.
Published 12/05/23
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.
Published 11/17/23
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.
Published 11/08/23
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.
Published 10/23/23
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.
Published 09/29/23
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.
Published 09/15/23
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.
Published 08/22/23
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.
Published 07/31/23
Stephen Kotkin is the Kleinheinz Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and one of the foremost experts on Russia, past and present.
Published 07/13/23
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.
Published 06/27/23
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.
Published 06/12/23
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.
Published 05/18/23
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.
Published 05/01/23
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.
Published 04/13/23
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.
Published 03/31/23
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.
Published 03/16/23
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.
Published 02/28/23