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.
Jan 27
Thomas Sowell on School Choice and the Price Our Children Pay for Bad Ideas | Peter Robinson | Thomas Sowell | Hoover Institution
Thomas Sowell delivers a sweeping critique of American education, affirmative action, and modern universities, drawing on his own life story—from Harlem classrooms to Ivy League institutions—decades of research, and hard data. Sowell argues that ideology has replaced knowledge an ... Show More
1h 11m
Jan 15
Why Does 2 + 2 = 4? What Math Teaches Us About Deep Reality | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
Is math something humans invent—or something we discover? And why does it describe the universe so uncannily well? In this episode of Uncommon Knowledge, Peter Robinson sits down with mathematicians David Berlinski, Sergiu Klainerman, and Stephen Meyer to explore one of the deepe ... Show More
57m 21s
Dec 16
Russian Soul, American Life: A Conversation with Ignat Solzhenitsyn | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
Pianist and conductor Ignat Solzhenitsyn reflects on growing up in exile as the son of Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, moving from Soviet persecution to a quiet childhood in rural Vermont. Ignat recounts how music, faith, and Russian culture sustained his family far from h ... Show More
1h 4m
Feb 2023
Gabriel Glickman, "US-Egypt Diplomacy Under Johnson: Nasser, Komer, and the Limits of Personal Diplomacy" (Bloombury, 2021)
What happens to policies when a president dies in office? Do they get replaced by the new president, or do advisers carry on with the status quo? In November 1963, these were important questions for a Kennedy-turned-Johnson administration.
Among these officials was a driven Natio ... Show More
1h 22m
Nov 2022
In 1963, A Stuttering, Nebbish Magazine Editor Negotiated a Secret Deal Between JFK and Khrushchev, Averting Nuclear War
As the editor of the Saturday Review for more than thirty years, Norman Cousins had a powerful platform to shape American public debate during the height of the Cold War. Although he was a low-key, nebbish figure, under Cousins's leadership, the magazine was considered one of the ... Show More
47m 23s
Nov 2020
Paul Jankowski, "All Against All: The Long Winter of 1933 and the Origins of the Second World War" (Harper, 2020)
In his latest monograph, All Against All: The Long Winter of 1933 and The Origins of the Second World War (Harper, 2020), Professor Paul Jankowski (Brandeis University) provides a wide-angled account of a critical period of world history, the interwar years, in which the world tr ... Show More
50m 20s
Jan 2022
Graham Allison on how China’s rising global power could lead to superpower conflict—or something else.
It takes a lot to impress Professor Graham Allison when it comes to geopolitics. He is, after all, the Cold Warrior’s Cold Warrior—as one of America’s most influential defense policy analysts and advisors, he was twice awarded the Defense Department’s highest civilian honor for h ... Show More
44m 17s
Sep 2023
The Rough Rider and the Professor with Laurence Jurdem
On today’s episode, Sharon is joined by author and professor Laurence Jurdem to discuss his book, The Rough Rider and the Professor, about the unusual thirty-five-year political friendship between President Theodore Roosevelt and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. While Roosevelt famousl ... Show More
43m 15s