Uncommon Knowledge

The Fight against COVID-19: An Update from Dr. Jay Bhattacharya

Recorded on April 17, 2020

A month ago, we interviewed Dr. Jay Bhattacharya just as the COVID-19 crisis was shuttering the economy and governments were ordering citizens to shelter at home. In that interview, Dr. Bhattacharya mentioned that he himself would soon be conducting tests for COVID-19 in Santa Clara County, California, one of the most active hotspots in the country. Today Dr. Bhattacharya returns to discuss the results of that study and one currently under way in partnership with Major League Baseball. We also discuss some signs of hope, and specifics about how the economy can be restarted safely and efficiently. Dr. Bhattacharya also gives some (unsolicited) advice to Dr. Anthony Fauci, California governor Gavin Newsom, and president Donald Trump.

Kicking and Screaming: WSJ’s Kim Strassel on the Media vs. Trump

Recorded on April 9, 2020

As a columnist for the Wall Street Journal and a commentator for Fox News, Kim Strassel is a card-carrying member of the mainstream media. But Strassel is appalled by the media’s treatment of Donald Trump, and not just by journalists from the left. She describes the “resistance” in detail in her recent book, Resistance (at All Costs): How Trump Haters Are Breaking America. She and Peter Robinson discuss the Trump administration's handling of the COVID-19 crisis and the way the media has covered it and disseminated the information to the public. They also discuss the upcoming presidential election (yes, we are still having one) and the politics of the $2 trillion stimulus bill, with more spending on the way, and the realities of restarting the economy in a post- or partial-post-COVID-19 world. Finally, they discuss the pluses and minuses of Donald Trump’s temperament, and the possibility of something good coming from this current crisis.

Trump, China, and the Geopolitics of a Crisis

Recorded on April 1, 2020

Stephen A. Kotkin is a professor of history at Princeton and a fellow at the Hoover Institution. Kotkin is one of the nation’s most compelling observers of foreign affairs, past and present, and is now working on the third and final volume of his definitive biography of Josef Stalin. From that perspective, Peter Robinson and 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.

Questioning Conventional Wisdom in the COVID-19 Crisis, with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya

Recorded on March 27, 2020

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is a professor of medicine at Stanford University. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a senior fellow at both the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and the Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute. His March 24, 2020, article in the Wall Street Journal questions the premise that “coronavirus would kill millions without shelter-in-place orders and quarantines.” In the article he suggests that “there’s little evidence to confirm that premise—and projections of the death toll could plausibly be orders of magnitude too high.” In this edition of Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson we asked Dr. Bhattacharya to defend that statement and describe to us how he arrived at this conclusion. We get into the details of his research, which used data collected from hotspots around the world and his background as a doctor, a medical researcher, and an economist. 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 Corona Economy with John B. Taylor

Recorded on March 25, 2020

In this first of a new series of Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson conversations done via webcam, Peter Robinson talks to John B. Taylor, the Hoover Institution’s George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics. They discuss the huge impact of the COVID-19 virus on the US and world economy, the likely impact of the federal government's multitrillion-dollar relief efforts, and what the economy might look like as we get to the other side of this crisis.

The Great Society: A New History with Amity Shlaes

This week on Uncommon Knowledge, a conversation with author and 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. On its surface, the Great Society was a plan to reduce rural and urban poverty, but at its roots were the socialist and communist movements of the 1930s. Shlaes shares the history of those movements and lays out how they influenced the post–World War II generation of American politicians, including lesser-remembered figures such as Sargent Shriver, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Walter Reuther. In addition, the Great Society was a harbinger of many of the policies and ideas that are in vogue today, including Universal Basic Income and Medicare for All. Shlaes also argues that what the Great Society’s marquee policy initiative, the War on Poverty, and the new flood of benefits actually achieved “was the opposite of preventing poverty—they established a new kind of poverty, a permanent sense of downtroddenness.” Shlaes proves that, once again, policies and laws with the best of intentions often have the opposite effect.

A Conversation with Vice President Mike Pence

Recorded on February 24, 2020

This week, Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson travels to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in the nation’s capital for a special one-on-one interview with Vice President Mike Pence. In a wide-ranging conversation, they discuss Senator Bernie Sanders’s statements about Fidel Castro, the killing of Iranian major general Qassim Soleimani, the current situation in Venezuela, the US relationship with China, the effect of the Trump tax cuts, the growing popularity of socialism amongst the nation’s youths, and yes, the formation of the Space Force. Robinson ends the interview by asking the vice president to speculate on his and President Trump’s chances for re-election this fall (spoiler alert: he likes them).

The World According to Thiel

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.

The Impeachment Handbook with John Yoo & Richard Epstein

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.

Uncommon Knowledge and the Hoover Institution Commemorate the 30th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall

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.