Be careful when one uses the superlative case—best, most, -est, etc.—or evokes end-of-the-world imagery...

In this episode of Uncommon Knowledge, guest Peter Thiel, one of Silicon Valley’s leading investors and thinkers, discusses his new book Zero to One.

In the November/December 2012 issue of Stanford Magazine, Peter Schweizer, the William J. Casey Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, is featured discussing legislation and his current research. Last year, the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes featured Schweizer, spotlighting his book Throw Them All Out: How Politicians and Their Friends Get Rich off Insider Stock Tips, Land Deals, and Cronyism That Would Send the Rest of Us to Prison.Feedback from the program helped pass the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, which prohibits members and employees of Congress from using nonpublic information for private gain.

The Hoover Institution hosted its annual Board of Overseers’ summer meeting during July 9–11, 2013.

The program began on Tuesday evening with before-dinner remarks by Paul D. Clement, a partner at Bancroft PLLC. Clement served as the forty-third solicitor general of the United States from June 2005 until June 2008. He has argued more than sixty-five cases before the US Supreme Court. During Clement’s speech, titled “Federalism in the Roberts Court,” he talked about the revitalization of federalism in the Rehnquist court “imposing some limits on the federal government’s power vis-a-vis the states.”

Richard Epstein, the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the Property Rights, Freedom, and Prosperity Task Force, speaks to the constitutionality of the individual mandate provision of the Affordable Care Act.

Richard Epstein the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, discusses the flaws in the America Invents Act and considers how to create a patent system that more effectively fosters American innovation.

Peter Thiel spoke about the basic principles that underlie innovative products and startup firms, using examples from his own experience starting up firms such as Paypal and Palantir. He  emphasized the importance of creating a firm or product with characteristics of monopoly, and contrasted that idea with the distinction between monopoly and competition taught in economics.

President Ronald Reagan’s relevancy in this day and age.

Paul Rahe says it is easy to explain the nanny state, since there is a nanny in all of us. . . .