WEBVTT - Launching a Second Scientific Revolution 0:00:06.240 --> 0:00:11.000 From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, 0:00:11.000 --> 0:00:14.760 where the good, the true and the beautiful are taught, 0:00:14.800 --> 0:00:19.640 nurtured and honored. This is the radio free Hillsdale Hour, 0:00:19.640 --> 0:00:23.520 bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:24.959 across the country. 0:00:25.000 --> 0:00:30.720 It turns out that every single additional paper produces less 0:00:30.720 --> 0:00:34.360 and less actual improvements in health per paper. We're spending 0:00:34.360 --> 0:00:37.320 a lot of money, but per dollar that we spend, 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:39.880 we're not getting as much as we might as we have. 0:00:40.080 --> 0:00:42.520 People have labeled that the scientific stagnation problem. 0:00:42.560 --> 0:00:45.920 This is your host, Scott Bertram. Welcome to the Radio 0:00:45.920 --> 0:00:50.680 Free Hillsdale Hour. Part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. 0:00:50.960 --> 0:00:55.000 That was Jay Bhattacharya from the National Institutes of Health. Today, 0:00:55.000 --> 0:00:57.240 we hear excerpts from a lecture he gave in April 0:00:57.240 --> 0:01:01.930 of this year titled Restoring Gold standard science. And later 0:01:01.930 --> 0:01:05.970 on in today's program, historian Mark Edward Lender joins us. 0:01:06.170 --> 0:01:10.809 He'll tell us the keys to victory in the American Revolution. First, 0:01:11.090 --> 0:01:14.410 with Doctor Anthony Fauci and Covid back in the news cycle, 0:01:14.410 --> 0:01:17.050 we listen back to portions of a lecture by Jay 0:01:17.050 --> 0:01:20.330 Bhattacharya from the National Institutes of Health, from a Hillsdale 0:01:20.330 --> 0:01:25.250 College National Leadership Seminar in April of 2026 titled Restoring 0:01:25.250 --> 0:01:30.170 Gold Standard Science. Bhattacharya begins by giving his diagnosis for 0:01:30.170 --> 0:01:32.130 what happened during Covid. 0:01:32.170 --> 0:01:35.130 The problem we have now, and it was it was 0:01:35.130 --> 0:01:37.490 the reason the root cause of what happened during Covid 0:01:37.490 --> 0:01:41.810 is that we have a scientific authority that decides what's 0:01:41.810 --> 0:01:46.050 true and false, instead of instead of the normal functioning 0:01:46.050 --> 0:01:49.170 of science. And it's not just one person. I could, 0:01:49.170 --> 0:01:51.930 I could highlight Doctor Fauci. And that would be a 0:01:51.930 --> 0:01:55.130 very simple kind of example, right? Everyone you remember the 0:01:55.130 --> 0:01:58.410 votive candles to Doctor Fauci anyone? Anyone buy one I one. 0:01:58.410 --> 0:02:01.570 Just not a single person bought a votive candle. Um, 0:02:02.890 --> 0:02:05.810 I have to say, it's I find it deeply uncomfortable 0:02:05.810 --> 0:02:10.010 also to, to be a scientific authority, because I think 0:02:10.010 --> 0:02:14.810 really the root of the first scientific revolution was that 0:02:14.810 --> 0:02:19.530 there wasn't a scientific authority. What you had instead was 0:02:19.530 --> 0:02:24.010 you had a displacement of the power to decide for 0:02:24.010 --> 0:02:28.650 society to decide an epistemological authority. Um, out of the 0:02:28.690 --> 0:02:32.410 hands of a small number of ecclesiastical powers. And you 0:02:32.410 --> 0:02:34.089 put it instead in the hands of a few very 0:02:34.090 --> 0:02:36.970 clever people with telescopes, right. That they got to decide 0:02:37.010 --> 0:02:39.290 if the moons of Jupiter move. We are in a 0:02:39.290 --> 0:02:43.530 situation now, and I think Covid made that situation bear 0:02:44.169 --> 0:02:50.490 that a relatively small number of journal editors, uh, people 0:02:50.530 --> 0:02:54.650 who pontificate on TV about science directors of the National 0:02:54.650 --> 0:02:57.180 Institutes of Health get to decide what's true or false 0:02:57.180 --> 0:03:00.780 in science, and I think that's a pretty big problem. 0:03:00.820 --> 0:03:04.980 Jay Bhattacharya continues by assessing the current state of America's health. 0:03:05.020 --> 0:03:07.660 We're not a healthy nation, and that's just a sad fact. 0:03:07.980 --> 0:03:10.940 The Make America Healthy Again movement. I'm allowed to say 0:03:10.980 --> 0:03:18.060 that political slogan here, aren't I? It's a political slogan, 0:03:18.060 --> 0:03:20.700 but it comes out of a real cry for help 0:03:20.700 --> 0:03:24.540 from the American people. We aren't a healthy nation. We have. 0:03:24.580 --> 0:03:28.900 We have huge chronic disease problems. But because of the 0:03:28.940 --> 0:03:31.139 Make America Healthy movement again, I think we actually have 0:03:31.139 --> 0:03:35.500 a chance of, of, of, of solving these problems. Um, 0:03:35.780 --> 0:03:38.220 but we can only do it if we fix science. 0:03:38.700 --> 0:03:41.100 If we want to make America healthy again, we have 0:03:41.100 --> 0:03:43.660 to get the science. We have to launch the second 0:03:43.660 --> 0:03:47.460 scientific revolution, right? Because it's not just that we should 0:03:47.500 --> 0:03:50.420 look to gurus to decide how to make America healthy again. 0:03:50.460 --> 0:03:52.700 I mean, this is part of the problem. Doctor Aaron 0:03:52.700 --> 0:03:57.820 mentioned podcasts. There's some great podcasts out there. But is 0:03:57.820 --> 0:04:00.780 it easy to tell who to get the information from? No, 0:04:00.780 --> 0:04:04.620 it's very it's very, very confusing. And it's a symptom 0:04:04.620 --> 0:04:05.860 actually of the problems of science. 0:04:05.900 --> 0:04:08.540 We're listening to excerpts from a lecture by Jay Bhattacharya 0:04:08.580 --> 0:04:12.860 at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in April of 2026. 0:04:13.020 --> 0:04:17.779 The lecture, entitled Restoring Gold Standard Science, Bhattacharya continues by 0:04:17.779 --> 0:04:21.260 outlining the problems of science. Why are we not making 0:04:21.260 --> 0:04:25.060 more progress? He begins with the replication crisis. 0:04:25.100 --> 0:04:26.940 I'm going to show you some evidence about this, but 0:04:26.940 --> 0:04:30.860 it turns out that it is often the case that 0:04:30.860 --> 0:04:34.779 when people publish scientific articles, even articles you see on 0:04:34.779 --> 0:04:39.660 TV or touted by podcasters or whatever, when independent people 0:04:39.660 --> 0:04:42.740 look at the same article or same ask the same question, 0:04:42.779 --> 0:04:45.820 do the same, even sometimes the same experiment, they don't 0:04:45.820 --> 0:04:49.219 find the same answer. And the vast majority of science 0:04:49.220 --> 0:04:52.940 is not actually subject to replication. That's a major problem 0:04:52.940 --> 0:04:55.710 because because what that means is that a lot of 0:04:55.710 --> 0:04:58.549 what the science we read, a lot of the science 0:04:58.550 --> 0:05:02.790 that we see, um, is not actually true. Just to 0:05:02.830 --> 0:05:06.590 put a fine point on it, I mean, it means, 0:05:06.630 --> 0:05:09.550 it means that when you are making decisions about your 0:05:09.550 --> 0:05:13.390 health and you go look up an article, uh, you 0:05:13.430 --> 0:05:16.109 try to read it and it gives you an answer. 0:05:16.830 --> 0:05:18.110 A lot of the time it's not right. And that 0:05:18.110 --> 0:05:20.230 means and that's true even for your doctors. Your doctors 0:05:20.230 --> 0:05:23.229 will look things up and they'll give advice based on, 0:05:23.390 --> 0:05:26.909 on essentially bad, bad, like bad science. I mean, for instance, 0:05:26.950 --> 0:05:29.630 I'll give you an example. Um, are eggs good for you? 0:05:30.310 --> 0:05:31.870 Eggs are good for you. Eggs are good for you. 0:05:31.910 --> 0:05:34.670 Now they're the superfood, right? I grew up in the 19. 0:05:34.830 --> 0:05:36.470 My dad had a heart attack when I was when 0:05:36.470 --> 0:05:38.990 I was 13 years old and in the in the 80s, 0:05:39.029 --> 0:05:44.590 early 80s. And, um, uh, back then, uh, eggs were poison. 0:05:44.830 --> 0:05:47.510 Remember that? Uh, I did not eat an egg until 0:05:47.510 --> 0:05:49.270 I was 19 years old. And then it was a 0:05:49.270 --> 0:05:53.310 horrible egg white omelet. I don't because because because of 0:05:53.310 --> 0:05:57.030 the cholesterol thing, right? So egg whites then were good 0:05:57.029 --> 0:05:59.710 for you in the 90s and now eggs are superfood. 0:06:00.510 --> 0:06:04.990 Why is that? I could go on about examples like this. 0:06:05.390 --> 0:06:10.350 It's the replication crisis, the scientific ideas that that rule 0:06:10.350 --> 0:06:13.390 our society are not subject to the kinds of things 0:06:13.390 --> 0:06:15.790 that we all learn when we first learned about science 0:06:15.950 --> 0:06:19.349 are the basis of truth. Lots of clever people using 0:06:19.390 --> 0:06:21.390 telescopes to look to the moons of Jupiter. They all 0:06:21.390 --> 0:06:23.870 see the moons of Jupiter move. Then we decide together 0:06:23.870 --> 0:06:29.030 the moons of Jupiter move right. We take as authority 0:06:29.910 --> 0:06:32.750 of someone at Harvard published something and that therefore, that 0:06:32.750 --> 0:06:34.990 person must be right about that thing, right? It was 0:06:34.990 --> 0:06:38.870 published in a top medical journal. Authority is replaced replication 0:06:38.870 --> 0:06:41.469 as the basis of truth in science. It's a major 0:06:41.470 --> 0:06:44.029 epistemological problem that's solvable. 0:06:44.070 --> 0:06:47.830 The second problem of science, as Jay Bhattacharya outlines, is 0:06:47.830 --> 0:06:49.630 scientific stagnation. 0:06:49.630 --> 0:06:52.080 This is a funny claim to make, but it's actually true. 0:06:53.400 --> 0:06:58.360 Per dollar that we spend on science, we get. We 0:06:58.360 --> 0:07:02.280 get less and less advanced than we did ten, 20, 30, 40, 0:07:02.320 --> 0:07:04.920 50 years ago. I'll show you some evidence on that 0:07:04.920 --> 0:07:08.360 in biomedicine. Um, just to, just to give some examples 0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:11.080 of that. There's you've all heard of Moore's Law. Moore's 0:07:11.120 --> 0:07:14.680 law is the, is the, is that the speed of 0:07:15.240 --> 0:07:19.559 CPUs doubles every, every few years. Right. Um, that actually 0:07:19.560 --> 0:07:21.840 apparently is no longer true. The speed of CPUs are 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:26.200 no longer doubling at that at that rapid rate anymore. Um, in, 0:07:26.200 --> 0:07:31.600 in biomedicine, it turns out that every single additional paper 0:07:31.920 --> 0:07:37.119 produces less and less actual improvements in health per paper. Right? 0:07:37.160 --> 0:07:39.200 So like, I'll show you some evidence in just a 0:07:39.200 --> 0:07:43.520 second in a bit about, about randomized trials. Um, that's 0:07:43.720 --> 0:07:46.679 now we're spending a lot of money and we are 0:07:46.680 --> 0:07:49.440 actually getting advances. I already told you that about the 0:07:49.440 --> 0:07:53.370 cystic fibrosis and the and the and all, all of 0:07:53.370 --> 0:07:57.410 the big, big advances. But per dollar that we spend, 0:07:57.410 --> 0:07:59.930 we're not getting as much as we might as we have. 0:08:00.090 --> 0:08:03.929 People have labeled that the scientific stagnation problem. Now, again, 0:08:03.970 --> 0:08:06.370 I think there's reason. The reasons have to do at least. 0:08:06.370 --> 0:08:08.610 I think the reasons the. The way to solve it is, 0:08:08.650 --> 0:08:10.810 is through some reforms at the NIH that I've been 0:08:10.810 --> 0:08:12.530 working on. I'm going to I'm going to brag about 0:08:12.570 --> 0:08:13.050 in just a bit. 0:08:13.090 --> 0:08:15.290 We're listening to a lecture by Jay Bhattacharya at a 0:08:15.290 --> 0:08:19.370 Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in April of 2026. The 0:08:19.370 --> 0:08:24.930 third problem of science, says Bhattacharya, outlines, is funding concentration. 0:08:24.930 --> 0:08:27.490 About a third of the portfolio of the of the 0:08:27.690 --> 0:08:29.890 third of the money that spending. The NIH goes to 0:08:29.930 --> 0:08:33.770 about 20 institutions, 20 institutions. Now, I know that Hillsdale 0:08:33.770 --> 0:08:37.010 is not one of them, because famously, Hillsdale takes $0 0:08:37.010 --> 0:08:45.130 from federal government. But there are excellent scientists at Hillsdale. 0:08:45.130 --> 0:08:48.210 And just as there are excellent scientists all across the country, 0:08:48.690 --> 0:08:51.130 I've now gone on a tour of so many different 0:08:51.130 --> 0:08:53.890 colleges across the country, studiously avoiding as best I could 0:08:53.890 --> 0:08:56.010 any of the top 20. And the reason I've done 0:08:56.010 --> 0:08:58.250 that is because I wanted to see. And what I 0:08:58.290 --> 0:09:04.010 found is that everywhere you go in Alabama, in Iowa 0:09:04.010 --> 0:09:09.490 and Kansas in in in Wisconsin, in Arizona, what you 0:09:09.490 --> 0:09:13.170 find is excellent institutions not in the top 20 that 0:09:13.170 --> 0:09:15.969 do not receive, like, you know, a third of our 0:09:15.970 --> 0:09:20.250 portfolio of money. You have excellent institutions with excellent scientists 0:09:20.250 --> 0:09:22.410 who have a much less of a chance to get 0:09:22.410 --> 0:09:25.569 NIH support for their research than if you are a 0:09:25.570 --> 0:09:29.450 scientist in one of those top 20. And that's the problem, right? 0:09:29.490 --> 0:09:33.650 We are competing with the Chinese who have made tremendous 0:09:33.650 --> 0:09:36.890 investments in their biomedical research enterprise. Actually, they've stolen a 0:09:36.890 --> 0:09:38.810 lot of ours and we've trained them too. But that's 0:09:38.809 --> 0:09:43.850 another story. Um, we have to. So, but, but in 0:09:43.850 --> 0:09:46.770 order to solve that problem, in order to really compete 0:09:46.770 --> 0:09:49.700 with the Chinese, in order to really make the kinds 0:09:49.700 --> 0:09:52.300 of advances that can translate over to better health for Americans. 0:09:52.300 --> 0:09:56.500 We have to we have to empower scientists wherever they are. 0:09:57.179 --> 0:10:00.380 It doesn't matter if they come from Stanford or Harvard 0:10:00.380 --> 0:10:02.660 or whatever. If they have a great idea, we should be. 0:10:02.700 --> 0:10:05.220 We should. We should be funding them. We should be 0:10:05.220 --> 0:10:07.500 trying trying out ideas with them. All right. So I'm 0:10:07.500 --> 0:10:09.900 going to give you those are the that's that's my diagnosis. 0:10:09.940 --> 0:10:12.740 I've given you my three, three reasons. I think that 0:10:12.740 --> 0:10:15.380 we have this problem and we're fixed that we're in. 0:10:15.420 --> 0:10:17.780 We will continue in a moment with more from Jay 0:10:17.780 --> 0:10:21.700 Bhattacharya's lecture at a national leadership seminar for Hillsdale College 0:10:21.740 --> 0:10:27.140 on restoring gold standard Science. First, if you have 30s, 0:10:27.660 --> 0:10:32.940 take a quick break, go to radio our.hillsdale.edu because we 0:10:33.220 --> 0:10:35.900 want to stay in touch with you. If you click 0:10:35.940 --> 0:10:38.620 the subscribe button at the top of the screen and 0:10:38.620 --> 0:10:41.020 then enter your email address, you'll be signed up for 0:10:41.020 --> 0:10:45.459 our email list every week. One email from us telling 0:10:45.460 --> 0:10:49.620 you about the brand new radio free Hillsdale Hour episode. 0:10:49.620 --> 0:10:53.059 Might it be Victor Davis Hanson this week, or Mollie 0:10:53.100 --> 0:10:57.140 Hemingway or Doctor Matt Spalding from Hillsdale in DC, or 0:10:57.179 --> 0:11:01.059 Carol Markowitz or Heather MacDonald? We'll tell you our guests 0:11:01.100 --> 0:11:03.420 each week via email so you don't miss a thing. 0:11:03.620 --> 0:11:08.940 Go to Radio hour.hillsdale.edu, click the subscribe button at the 0:11:08.940 --> 0:11:11.660 top of the page and enter your email address, and 0:11:11.660 --> 0:11:15.700 then we'll be in contact. We continue now with excerpts 0:11:15.700 --> 0:11:18.500 from a lecture by Jay Bhattacharya from the National Institutes 0:11:18.500 --> 0:11:22.579 of Health. It's titled Restoring Gold Standard Science. This was 0:11:22.580 --> 0:11:27.459 delivered in April of 2026 at Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar. 0:11:27.500 --> 0:11:31.460 We previously heard Doctor Bhattacharya outline the problems of science, 0:11:31.460 --> 0:11:35.860 why we're not making more progress now, some potential solutions. 0:11:35.940 --> 0:11:38.940 He begins by outlining and explaining the cause of the 0:11:38.940 --> 0:11:40.340 replication crisis. 0:11:40.380 --> 0:11:45.020 It's authority. It's authority. We decide that we've elevated a 0:11:45.110 --> 0:11:49.110 relatively few sources of knowledge of of authority to decide 0:11:49.429 --> 0:11:52.790 for us what is true or false in society. Maybe 0:11:52.830 --> 0:11:57.189 Doctor Fauci, maybe CNN. God forbid. Don't do that. Um, 0:11:59.030 --> 0:12:01.990 you know, it could it could be anything but um, 0:12:01.990 --> 0:12:04.670 but we, we pick these sources. It could be podcasts. 0:12:04.710 --> 0:12:06.550 We pick these sources of authority and say, well, this 0:12:06.550 --> 0:12:09.310 is what's going to determine what's true or false rather than, 0:12:09.590 --> 0:12:13.350 rather than replication. Uh, the way that we solve the 0:12:13.350 --> 0:12:16.870 problem then is by making replication the standard of authority 0:12:16.870 --> 0:12:19.949 in medicine, the standard of truth in medicine. Essentially, it's 0:12:19.950 --> 0:12:23.350 an epistemological revolution. And actually the the lucky thing for 0:12:23.350 --> 0:12:26.270 me is that the NIH can do that. And this 0:12:26.270 --> 0:12:29.630 is something I'm working on this year. Very, very simple thing. First, 0:12:29.670 --> 0:12:33.390 we have to fund replication, not something that's like sexy, right? 0:12:33.429 --> 0:12:35.110 Because I'm like, okay, I'm going to every time I 0:12:35.110 --> 0:12:36.790 say I'm going to fund replication, I start to see 0:12:36.830 --> 0:12:41.230 people yawn. It's a terrible thing. Um, but I have 0:12:41.230 --> 0:12:43.230 to do it because if I don't fund replication, then 0:12:43.230 --> 0:12:45.510 how do you know what's what's true or false? Now, 0:12:45.510 --> 0:12:48.030 I don't want the government to tell us what what 0:12:48.030 --> 0:12:51.750 should be replicated, what shouldn't. In fact, what happens now 0:12:51.750 --> 0:12:53.990 is if some if some student comes to me and say, Jay, 0:12:53.990 --> 0:12:55.990 I want to replicate your paper, I view it as 0:12:55.990 --> 0:12:58.189 a threat to my career. Right? Because what if they 0:12:58.190 --> 0:13:01.270 find if I'm wrong? Oh my God, a scientist is wrong. 0:13:01.309 --> 0:13:04.630 That'd be terrible. The problem here is that is that 0:13:05.070 --> 0:13:08.590 is that we need to make replication a source of 0:13:08.590 --> 0:13:11.470 advancements in science. Like, it's actually a great honor. Some 0:13:11.470 --> 0:13:12.950 scientist comes to me and says, Jay, I want to 0:13:12.950 --> 0:13:16.030 replicate your work. Well, that means my idea is worth replicating, 0:13:16.030 --> 0:13:18.030 worth looking at. And if they find it's not true, 0:13:18.030 --> 0:13:19.630 then maybe we can figure out why we got a 0:13:19.630 --> 0:13:22.310 different answer. That's how we advance science together. Make science 0:13:22.309 --> 0:13:24.790 into a collaborative thing, rather than one where we're looking 0:13:24.790 --> 0:13:26.950 over our shoulder worried that what I what I'm saying 0:13:26.950 --> 0:13:27.590 doesn't replicate. 0:13:27.630 --> 0:13:32.469 Bhattacharya continues by talking about scientific stagnation and how to 0:13:32.470 --> 0:13:34.310 get things moving once again. 0:13:34.350 --> 0:13:36.510 The average age at which people got their. Get their 0:13:36.510 --> 0:13:39.390 first large grant at the NIH in the 1980s, you 0:13:39.390 --> 0:13:42.070 could be in your 30s and you would get a 0:13:42.070 --> 0:13:45.559 large grant, you get your first large grant. Now, the 0:13:45.559 --> 0:13:47.760 age at which a scientist earns their first large grant 0:13:47.760 --> 0:13:51.800 from the NIH is is the mid 40s. That's what 0:13:51.800 --> 0:13:57.640 this very depressing graph shows you. We require young scientists 0:13:57.640 --> 0:14:00.600 to do postdoc one, postdoc two. Postdoc three. After they've 0:14:00.600 --> 0:14:04.840 done their PhD. After they've graduated from Hillsdale, they still 0:14:04.840 --> 0:14:07.840 can't get an assistant professor job, much less get support 0:14:07.840 --> 0:14:12.880 to get to try their new ideas out. Um, it's 0:14:12.880 --> 0:14:17.320 also true that it's young scientists that are the most 0:14:17.320 --> 0:14:20.480 likely to have new ideas in the first place. Um, 0:14:20.520 --> 0:14:22.680 this is the most depressing paper I've ever this is 0:14:22.680 --> 0:14:24.440 the paper I wrote in Mikko Packalen is the most 0:14:24.440 --> 0:14:26.640 depressing paper I ever wrote. I'll show you why in 0:14:26.640 --> 0:14:29.920 just a second. Um, the question it asks is, uh, 0:14:31.680 --> 0:14:34.200 when in your career are you most likely to publish 0:14:34.200 --> 0:14:38.480 a newer idea? I just there's no way to sugarcoat this. 0:14:38.840 --> 0:14:41.570 It's like it's the first year after you finish your PhD. 0:14:42.170 --> 0:14:44.770 My career age is. I first published my first paper 0:14:44.770 --> 0:14:49.890 in 1996. I'm do the math 30 years old in 0:14:49.890 --> 0:14:53.250 career age when I was 0 or 1 years old 0:14:53.290 --> 0:14:55.650 is when I was most likely to publish a new idea. 0:14:58.450 --> 0:15:00.170 The 30 year olds are all way on the right 0:15:00.170 --> 0:15:03.210 side of that graph. The probability of publishing new ideas 0:15:03.370 --> 0:15:08.330 declines monotonically with career age. And yet we are now 0:15:08.330 --> 0:15:13.210 in a scientific ecosystem where we delay the time to 0:15:13.210 --> 0:15:16.130 which people get their first support for large, large grants 0:15:16.650 --> 0:15:17.970 long into the future. 0:15:18.010 --> 0:15:20.650 We're listening to excerpts from a lecture by Jay Bhattacharya 0:15:20.650 --> 0:15:24.250 for Hillsdale College in April of 2026 at a national 0:15:24.250 --> 0:15:29.690 leadership seminar entitled Restoring Gold Standard Science, Bhattacharya says we 0:15:29.690 --> 0:15:33.530 also need to change how funding decisions are made. 0:15:33.530 --> 0:15:35.530 We have to give support for early career scientists. We've 0:15:35.530 --> 0:15:39.330 already done some, some, some, some some things to do this. 0:15:39.490 --> 0:15:42.130 But this is this is a culture, a major cultural 0:15:42.130 --> 0:15:46.890 shift that's taking place in our scientific, uh, um, in 0:15:46.930 --> 0:15:51.090 science over the last several decades, we have essentially, uh, 0:15:52.130 --> 0:15:54.450 made it much more difficult for early career scientists to 0:15:54.450 --> 0:15:58.250 get their ideas, uh, you know, attempted. We made it 0:15:58.250 --> 0:16:00.690 much more difficult for early careers. We've made it too 0:16:00.690 --> 0:16:04.610 easy to fail as a scientist, as an early career scientist. Right. 0:16:04.690 --> 0:16:08.650 So what happens is you, um, in Silicon Valley, you 0:16:08.650 --> 0:16:11.570 start a firm, you're 22 years old. Somehow you convince 0:16:11.570 --> 0:16:15.130 somebody to give you $30 million and you start a firm, um, 0:16:15.330 --> 0:16:17.850 and it fails, but it was a productive failure. And 0:16:17.850 --> 0:16:20.690 then you get another shot where someone gives you $60 million. 0:16:20.690 --> 0:16:22.490 It's a real good business if you can get it, 0:16:22.490 --> 0:16:25.290 but it's not everyone gets it right. Um, the problem 0:16:25.290 --> 0:16:28.410 in science is that if you do your PhD and 0:16:28.410 --> 0:16:30.450 you don't get your paper published, well, you don't get 0:16:30.450 --> 0:16:32.730 a chance that the postdoc number one, if you don't 0:16:32.730 --> 0:16:35.650 get your a, a fancy paper published postdoc one, you 0:16:35.650 --> 0:16:38.370 don't get postdoc two it's so easy to fail in 0:16:38.460 --> 0:16:41.100 signs anywhere along the training path. And we have to 0:16:41.100 --> 0:16:43.420 change that. We have to make science more resilient and 0:16:43.420 --> 0:16:47.940 easier and with with possibilities of success. So that early 0:16:47.940 --> 0:16:51.220 career scientists can try their ideas out earlier and earlier. Second, 0:16:51.220 --> 0:16:55.740 we have to start funding ideas that are that we 0:16:55.780 --> 0:16:58.100 don't know they're going to work. We have to fund 0:16:58.140 --> 0:16:59.740 ideas that are the bleeding edge. 0:16:59.780 --> 0:17:03.500 And here, Jay Bhattacharya outlines the tricky trap of acquiring 0:17:03.500 --> 0:17:04.420 research funding. 0:17:04.420 --> 0:17:08.500 In order to attract scientists to your institution, where that 0:17:08.500 --> 0:17:11.660 can win those grant applications. You better have great facilities. 0:17:12.020 --> 0:17:13.980 I can tell you, what I've seen is that lots 0:17:13.980 --> 0:17:16.500 of young scientists at some of these top institutions, they 0:17:16.500 --> 0:17:20.220 can't get lab space because it's so competitive. At the 0:17:20.220 --> 0:17:23.020 same time, you have people with amazing ideas outside of 0:17:23.020 --> 0:17:26.060 these top institutions that can't that don't have a chance 0:17:26.060 --> 0:17:29.140 of getting our money because they're an institution that is 0:17:29.140 --> 0:17:32.660 not that doesn't have that fancy lab space the NIH 0:17:32.859 --> 0:17:36.860 gives you. We give facility support, but the way that 0:17:36.859 --> 0:17:39.780 we do that is by. We look at all the 0:17:39.780 --> 0:17:42.540 project money that all the projects. If you look and 0:17:42.540 --> 0:17:46.220 if you win the projects, um, you get the grant money. 0:17:46.780 --> 0:17:49.060 What's the solution to this? The solution to this is 0:17:49.060 --> 0:17:51.619 a radical change and I'm going to work on this 0:17:51.619 --> 0:17:55.020 this coming year. You cut the link between the direct 0:17:55.020 --> 0:18:00.540 money and the indirect money and instead have market competition 0:18:00.540 --> 0:18:05.380 for the facilities money. And then you allow researchers to 0:18:05.420 --> 0:18:08.979 more easily move the project money that they've won to 0:18:09.020 --> 0:18:11.820 the places where the labs now are. And you have 0:18:11.820 --> 0:18:16.060 a dynamic market that attracts scientists to go to the 0:18:16.060 --> 0:18:19.619 places where the facilities are. Essentially, what this will do 0:18:20.300 --> 0:18:23.899 is just expand the places where we send our money. Um, 0:18:24.340 --> 0:18:28.580 and it'll allow the facility support to go not just 0:18:28.580 --> 0:18:32.460 to 20 institutions, but to wherever the great scientists are. 0:18:32.859 --> 0:18:35.460 And then you build the institution up and attract the 0:18:35.460 --> 0:18:39.109 great scientist to your institution. It'll supercharge science across the 0:18:39.109 --> 0:18:43.310 country because the NIH money essentially is a seed seed 0:18:43.310 --> 0:18:49.670 money that that that attracts other investments in institutions. It 0:18:49.670 --> 0:18:52.350 shouldn't just be 20 institutions in this country that get 0:18:52.390 --> 0:18:53.869 half our money or a third of our money. 0:18:53.910 --> 0:18:57.790 Doctor Jay Bhattacharya from the National Institutes of Health concludes 0:18:57.790 --> 0:19:01.389 his lecture by explaining how all of this works together 0:19:01.390 --> 0:19:04.230 to point toward a second scientific revolution. 0:19:04.230 --> 0:19:06.870 The unified funding strategy makes sure that the portfolio is 0:19:06.869 --> 0:19:09.550 at the bleeding edge, that we are funding early career 0:19:09.590 --> 0:19:12.990 scientists with the newest ideas so that we get back 0:19:12.990 --> 0:19:16.469 to funding things at the bleeding edge, solve the stagnation problem. 0:19:16.470 --> 0:19:18.670 But if your funding ideas the bleeding edge, you better 0:19:18.670 --> 0:19:22.149 check if they're true. And so you solve the replication crisis. 0:19:22.150 --> 0:19:24.670 And so you allow people to do replication work to 0:19:24.710 --> 0:19:27.270 check if these bleeding ideas, the bleeding edge are true. 0:19:27.270 --> 0:19:30.109 And then finally, you recruit scientists from everywhere with this 0:19:30.150 --> 0:19:33.310 with this new funding model of funding research. And what 0:19:33.310 --> 0:19:42.190 you have is a second scientific revolution. I started this 0:19:42.190 --> 0:19:44.469 with a pessimistic note, and I want to end with 0:19:44.470 --> 0:19:48.510 an optimistic note. We can solve these the nation's health problems. 0:19:48.510 --> 0:19:51.750 We are the most important nation in the world for many, 0:19:51.750 --> 0:19:53.949 many reasons, not least of which is that we are 0:19:54.070 --> 0:19:57.670 a nation that is absolutely devoted, that has tremendous scientific 0:19:57.670 --> 0:20:01.590 accomplishment to point to. And the future is bright. The 0:20:01.590 --> 0:20:05.750 future is bright because the investments that that that we 0:20:05.750 --> 0:20:09.310 make in science can translate over to better health for people. 0:20:09.310 --> 0:20:12.990 If only we if we solve the things that have 0:20:12.990 --> 0:20:15.550 led to us where we are, there's no reason for 0:20:15.550 --> 0:20:18.150 you to listen to me as an authority. Let's instead 0:20:18.390 --> 0:20:21.310 reason together and figure out what the what, what, what 0:20:21.350 --> 0:20:24.590 way to what what's true in science, and make investments 0:20:24.590 --> 0:20:26.910 that really meet the health problems of the country. Thank 0:20:26.910 --> 0:20:29.629 you so much, and thanks for your kind attention. 0:20:29.790 --> 0:20:33.070 That's Doctor Jay Bhattacharya from the National Institutes of Health. 0:20:33.070 --> 0:20:38.160 His restoring gold standard science from April of 2026. At 0:20:38.160 --> 0:20:41.680 a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar, you can find the 0:20:41.680 --> 0:20:49.960 entire lecture at Hillsdale. Freedom Library at Freedom library.hillsdale.edu. Up next, 0:20:50.000 --> 0:20:53.879 historian Mark Edward Lender joins us. We'll discuss the keys 0:20:53.880 --> 0:20:58.320 to victory in the American Revolution. I'm Scott Bertram. This 0:20:58.320 --> 0:21:18.760 is the radio free Hillsdale Hour. We're back on the 0:21:18.760 --> 0:21:22.679 radio free Hillsdale hour. I'm Scott Bertram. Be sure to 0:21:22.680 --> 0:21:27.000 follow us on X at Hillsdale Radio. We're joined by 0:21:27.000 --> 0:21:30.000 Mark Edward Lender. He has a PhD in American history 0:21:30.000 --> 0:21:34.210 from Rutgers University, professor emeritus of history at Kean University, 0:21:34.490 --> 0:21:38.490 also the author or co-author of 11 books, including Fatal Sunday, 0:21:38.490 --> 0:21:41.890 George Washington The Monmouth Campaign and The Politics of Battle. 0:21:42.090 --> 0:21:45.530 And the New One is War Without Mercy. Liberty or 0:21:45.530 --> 0:21:49.969 death in the American Revolution. Also here on Hillsdale's campus, 0:21:49.970 --> 0:21:54.250 part of our lecture series on 1776. Delivering a lecture 0:21:54.250 --> 0:21:57.570 on Keys to Victory in the Revolution. Mark, thanks so 0:21:57.570 --> 0:21:58.490 much for joining us. 0:21:58.570 --> 0:22:00.570 Well, thank you Scott. It's a pleasure to be here. 0:22:00.770 --> 0:22:04.930 Mark, how did the British treatment of the colonies initially 0:22:04.970 --> 0:22:06.410 spark this war? 0:22:06.650 --> 0:22:09.850 Well, there are so many myths, particularly as to why 0:22:10.650 --> 0:22:13.050 the Americans won that war. And there's a question is, 0:22:13.050 --> 0:22:15.130 did they win the war? Maybe the British lost it. 0:22:15.170 --> 0:22:19.130 And there is a difference. I was asked for last 0:22:19.130 --> 0:22:24.170 night's lecture to to discuss, uh, the keys to the 0:22:24.170 --> 0:22:27.250 Patriot victory. And it was, uh, historians love to get 0:22:27.290 --> 0:22:30.889 asked questions like this because the answer is almost completely Subjective. 0:22:30.930 --> 0:22:33.609 I mean, I've got to pick and choose between any 0:22:33.609 --> 0:22:38.330 number of issues. And historians dealt with this question for generations. 0:22:38.730 --> 0:22:41.850 You take this disparate group of colonies and you match 0:22:41.850 --> 0:22:45.330 them up against the probably at that time, the premier 0:22:45.369 --> 0:22:51.410 military power in Europe, well trained, well equipped army with 0:22:51.450 --> 0:22:55.010 a very capable officer corps. People make jokes sometimes about 0:22:55.330 --> 0:22:59.690 the automatons of the British army. That's nonsense. These were 0:22:59.690 --> 0:23:03.410 good troops. They were motivated. They were led by a 0:23:03.690 --> 0:23:09.410 career officer corps. So how did they do it? There's 0:23:09.410 --> 0:23:11.970 a lot of things that come into play on this. 0:23:11.970 --> 0:23:14.210 And I think part of the reason you've got to 0:23:14.210 --> 0:23:17.649 begin with the issue of motivation. I mean, uh, what 0:23:17.650 --> 0:23:20.729 what possessed these people to take up arms in the 0:23:20.730 --> 0:23:23.489 first place? And, and for that, I think we have 0:23:23.490 --> 0:23:27.450 to look back to the British and specifically to Edmund Burke, 0:23:27.850 --> 0:23:34.820 the Anglo-Irish statesman conservative writer who, in looking at the 0:23:34.820 --> 0:23:39.300 relationship between the mother country and her colonies, came up 0:23:39.300 --> 0:23:43.820 with the term salutary neglect, meaning that the British got 0:23:43.820 --> 0:23:47.060 their empire on a cheap. They had the economic benefits 0:23:47.060 --> 0:23:49.820 and strategic benefits of the colonies without a great deal 0:23:49.820 --> 0:23:53.979 of overhead, because they let the colonies rule themselves. The 0:23:53.980 --> 0:23:57.500 Colonials like the arrangement, of course, because well, they were 0:23:57.500 --> 0:24:00.420 loyal to the. To the King. They had a very 0:24:00.420 --> 0:24:04.820 ambiguous relationship to Parliament, and they liked that. This ended 0:24:04.820 --> 0:24:08.020 with British victory in the Seven Years War, or in 0:24:08.020 --> 0:24:11.300 the American context, the French and Indian War. All of 0:24:11.300 --> 0:24:13.620 a sudden they've got an empire to run. They've got Canada. 0:24:13.660 --> 0:24:20.500 They've picked up colonies elsewhere. So in rationalizing the whole thing, 0:24:20.540 --> 0:24:22.859 then came this whole series of acts, which, you know, 0:24:22.900 --> 0:24:25.700 we learn about from third grade on the the Tea Act, 0:24:25.740 --> 0:24:30.100 the Sugar Act, the Quebec Act, the proclamation of 1763, 0:24:30.100 --> 0:24:33.540 and that brought an end there, a practical end to 0:24:33.619 --> 0:24:37.820 salutary neglect. All of a sudden, uh, these colonials are 0:24:37.820 --> 0:24:40.980 no longer going to have the kind of local autonomy 0:24:40.980 --> 0:24:44.180 they come to expect as a right as rights of Englishmen. 0:24:44.619 --> 0:24:48.820 So what happens now? Uh, I think the best answer 0:24:48.820 --> 0:24:54.620 by a 91 year old militia captain, Levi Prescott. And he, uh, 0:24:54.619 --> 0:24:58.820 was Massachusetts. He's a Lexington and Concord, uh, veteran. And 0:24:58.820 --> 0:25:00.700 he was asked why, you know, what was this all about? 0:25:00.740 --> 0:25:03.260 He said, well, I, I didn't use any stamps for 0:25:03.260 --> 0:25:05.580 the Stamp act. Forget the Tea act. I never read 0:25:05.580 --> 0:25:10.460 any of these radical Republican ideology, ideological things. We had 0:25:10.460 --> 0:25:14.500 always governed ourselves. We always meant to govern ourselves. And 0:25:14.500 --> 0:25:17.300 they meaning the British. They didn't mean we should. 0:25:17.900 --> 0:25:21.300 Mark was the entirety of the revolution motivated by this 0:25:21.300 --> 0:25:25.740 desire to return to self-governance that the colonies had enjoyed 0:25:25.740 --> 0:25:30.189 under earlier British salutary neglect, or did the motivation for 0:25:30.190 --> 0:25:32.429 the war change over time? 0:25:32.830 --> 0:25:36.030 I think there was enough of that feeling to. Certainly 0:25:36.030 --> 0:25:39.710 there was enough of that feeling to spark armed resistance. 0:25:40.230 --> 0:25:42.430 I don't know that there was enough of that feeling 0:25:42.470 --> 0:25:46.110 to maintain the war until 1783, and for a lot 0:25:46.109 --> 0:25:50.510 of folks, yes, it was. But, you know, the reasons 0:25:50.510 --> 0:25:53.710 that people initially go to war aren't necessarily the reasons 0:25:53.710 --> 0:25:58.670 that sustained them through a long and traumatic conflict. Unfortunately, 0:25:59.310 --> 0:26:03.070 war goes on. It tends to develop a momentum of 0:26:03.070 --> 0:26:07.830 its own and cycles of revenge and retribution set in. 0:26:07.830 --> 0:26:11.070 And the reasons you went to war somehow become less 0:26:11.070 --> 0:26:15.710 important because you're dealing with actual survival as time goes on. 0:26:15.710 --> 0:26:19.350 And we have to keep in mind that the war 0:26:19.350 --> 0:26:22.710 for independence was not only a war of major armies 0:26:22.710 --> 0:26:26.070 and major battles, that was a mere minority of the 0:26:26.109 --> 0:26:28.310 actual conflict. Most of it took place at the local 0:26:28.310 --> 0:26:35.750 level between, uh, irregular pickup groups, militia groups, uh, tribal groups, 0:26:35.750 --> 0:26:41.950 even families defending homesteads. When that kind of conflict takes place, uh, 0:26:41.950 --> 0:26:46.070 grander notions of liberty and so forth, uh, kind of 0:26:46.109 --> 0:26:52.510 fade away, uh, and their place taken by, uh, an 0:26:52.510 --> 0:26:57.630 existential struggle for survival. Mhm. Uh, there was an interesting 0:26:57.630 --> 0:27:02.350 comment by Lord Carlisle. In 1778, the British sent the 0:27:02.350 --> 0:27:06.430 Carlisle Commission to negotiate with Congress, saying that everything you 0:27:06.430 --> 0:27:10.230 objected to will get rid of. No one called it 0:27:10.550 --> 0:27:13.750 such at the time. But what Carlisle offered, essentially, we 0:27:13.750 --> 0:27:18.230 would call Commonwealth status today recognize the sovereign. But for 0:27:18.230 --> 0:27:21.350 all practical purposes you are independent. Your own laws, your 0:27:21.350 --> 0:27:27.480 own armed forces. Mhm. Well, Carlisle came up with a 0:27:27.480 --> 0:27:31.520 blank wall and he finally realized that it's too late. 0:27:31.560 --> 0:27:35.840 There's been too much blood, too much treasure, too much pride. 0:27:36.320 --> 0:27:39.919 And he recognized, and he said that as long as 0:27:39.960 --> 0:27:42.280 Washington has an army in the field, these people aren't 0:27:42.280 --> 0:27:45.000 going to quit. Mhm. And at that point, there was 0:27:45.040 --> 0:27:47.840 no more talking. It was just going to fight it out. 0:27:48.119 --> 0:27:52.360 How close did the Americans actually come to losing this battle? 0:27:52.359 --> 0:27:54.840 Was there ever a point when it was inevitable that 0:27:54.840 --> 0:27:56.719 they that they would win? Or was there was there 0:27:56.760 --> 0:27:57.840 this chance of loss? 0:27:57.880 --> 0:28:03.280 You know, there's there's it's impossible really. Historians have tried. 0:28:03.320 --> 0:28:06.399 There's been all kinds of of efforts to say, did 0:28:06.400 --> 0:28:10.920 the British really, given the resources available to the military, fiscal, 0:28:10.960 --> 0:28:15.080 diplomatic and otherwise, do they really stand a chance? I mean, 0:28:15.119 --> 0:28:20.880 at top strength, maybe 35,000 active troops fit for duty. 0:28:21.240 --> 0:28:24.439 I mean, think about 35000 in the expanse of just 0:28:24.440 --> 0:28:28.200 the Eastern American states, 35,000 would barely fill a Big 0:28:28.200 --> 0:28:32.040 Ten football stadium on a given weekend today. They were 0:28:32.040 --> 0:28:35.360 just stretched too thin, but let's assume that they had 0:28:35.600 --> 0:28:39.800 a reasonable chance. I think that chance disappeared after the 0:28:39.800 --> 0:28:44.120 campaign of 1776, when they had several chances to destroy 0:28:44.280 --> 0:28:50.400 Washington's army at Long Island. At Second Trenton, and they didn't. They? 0:28:51.080 --> 0:28:53.239 There were other chances, too. I think they stood a 0:28:53.240 --> 0:28:56.840 chance in the South in, uh, when they came back 0:28:56.840 --> 0:29:00.600 in strength in 1779, late in the year. But then 0:29:00.600 --> 0:29:05.000 in 1780, uh, they made appreciable gains in the South. 0:29:05.000 --> 0:29:08.479 And I think if Cornwallis had followed orders and really 0:29:08.480 --> 0:29:12.480 focused on bringing South Carolina back into line, maybe, maybe 0:29:12.480 --> 0:29:15.800 they could have rallied enough loyalist support to, to make 0:29:15.800 --> 0:29:17.920 a dent in the in the colonial cause and at 0:29:17.960 --> 0:29:23.210 least perhaps taken the South back. But For various reasons. 0:29:23.210 --> 0:29:25.850 These things did not pan out for the British. Let's 0:29:25.850 --> 0:29:29.690 borrow from tennis. Call them unforced errors and they could 0:29:29.730 --> 0:29:34.250 have done a classic error as Howe swept across new 0:29:34.250 --> 0:29:37.690 Jersey in the 1776 was before the Battle of Trenton. 0:29:37.850 --> 0:29:41.450 He offered pardon, and all you had to do was 0:29:41.490 --> 0:29:45.490 accept the pardon, read, you know, read, declare your allegiance 0:29:45.490 --> 0:29:49.170 to George the Third. Go home and stay peaceable. It's 0:29:49.410 --> 0:29:54.130 about 3000 people took him up on that. And then 0:29:55.170 --> 0:30:00.210 within days or weeks, as the British Army moved across 0:30:00.210 --> 0:30:06.610 new Jersey, disciplined, somehow collapsed. And there's explanations for that. And, uh, 0:30:06.970 --> 0:30:10.130 we try to explain it in the new book you mentioned, 0:30:10.690 --> 0:30:13.890 but they pillaged and plundered their way across the state. 0:30:13.890 --> 0:30:16.530 Rape was all too common. The town of Princeton was 0:30:16.530 --> 0:30:22.660 actually sacked. And all the goodwill that Hal had accrued, 0:30:22.700 --> 0:30:27.420 offering pardon and simply evaporated. And within weeks the new 0:30:27.420 --> 0:30:31.380 Jersey countryside, which had scattered the state government had scattered. 0:30:31.380 --> 0:30:34.980 The militia had melted away. I mean, rose in arms. 0:30:34.980 --> 0:30:40.420 You had a popular rising. And that was very, very, uh, costly. 0:30:40.540 --> 0:30:42.500 I mean, new Jersey was all but back in the 0:30:42.500 --> 0:30:45.540 British orbit, and they blew it. And then what happened 0:30:45.540 --> 0:30:49.540 to those 3000 who had taken the pardon? They were 0:30:49.860 --> 0:30:53.860 publicly identified in accepting the pardon, and they were ripe for, 0:30:53.860 --> 0:30:57.820 how should we phrase it, political reeducation. And they were 0:30:57.820 --> 0:31:04.940 re-educated with a vengeance. Patriot authorities came down hard on loyalists. 0:31:05.220 --> 0:31:08.020 Mark Lender with us here on the radio free Hillsdale, 0:31:08.020 --> 0:31:12.300 our mark. Were there any counter revolutionaries in the comedies? 0:31:12.580 --> 0:31:16.060 How important was it for the Patriots to suppress any 0:31:16.100 --> 0:31:18.020 of those loyalist efforts? 0:31:18.220 --> 0:31:21.980 Show me a revolution that survives and allows an opposition 0:31:21.980 --> 0:31:25.500 to become effective. I mean, you, the Vendée and the 0:31:25.500 --> 0:31:29.540 French Revolution, the revolutionaries put it down the the white 0:31:29.540 --> 0:31:32.940 armies that opposed the Bolsheviks. They were put down and 0:31:32.940 --> 0:31:35.540 they had to if the revolution was going to succeed. 0:31:36.020 --> 0:31:39.820 And our revolution was was really no different. Patriots understood 0:31:39.820 --> 0:31:44.820 that their enthusiasm. Many of their neighbors, family members didn't 0:31:44.820 --> 0:31:46.620 share it. I mean, there was a lot of loyalty 0:31:46.620 --> 0:31:50.420 to the Empire. And you establish your ascendancy by making 0:31:50.420 --> 0:31:55.900 sure that your opponents simply can't organize effectively and mount 0:31:55.900 --> 0:32:00.180 a counterrevolution. And the patriots struck hard and fast to 0:32:00.220 --> 0:32:02.500 make sure that that didn't happen. And that was a 0:32:02.500 --> 0:32:03.580 war long effort. 0:32:03.620 --> 0:32:04.060 Mhm. 0:32:04.900 --> 0:32:08.140 And the British were never able to cover loyalists to 0:32:08.180 --> 0:32:11.380 the extent that they could declare publicly against the revolution 0:32:11.380 --> 0:32:15.900 in any, any safety, any way, and certainly not in 0:32:15.940 --> 0:32:19.510 strength enough to mount an effective counter-revolution. It was brutal. 0:32:20.070 --> 0:32:22.990 It was absolute brutal. And terror is not too strong 0:32:23.030 --> 0:32:26.070 a word to describe what happened in many instances. 0:32:26.110 --> 0:32:29.230 Talking with Mark Edward Lender, the new book War Without Mercy, 0:32:29.230 --> 0:32:32.630 Liberty or Death in the American Revolution. A point made 0:32:32.630 --> 0:32:35.390 that local forces were left to fight according to their 0:32:35.390 --> 0:32:38.390 own rules, which quite often meant no rules whatsoever. 0:32:38.510 --> 0:32:42.990 Right. Uh, this was pretty grim. And one thing that 0:32:43.230 --> 0:32:46.750 my co-author was James Kirby Martin. That's our fourth book together. 0:32:46.750 --> 0:32:49.630 As a matter of fact, what we did was we 0:32:49.670 --> 0:32:51.990 we looked at some of the numbers that other historians 0:32:51.990 --> 0:32:56.270 had generated, particularly, uh, Howard Peckham, who actually tried to 0:32:56.310 --> 0:33:00.310 quantify in 1974 in the run up to the bicentennial 0:33:00.750 --> 0:33:04.830 of the Revolution. He tried to quantify, using graduate assistants 0:33:04.830 --> 0:33:08.550 and other research assistants, to scour the archives in the 0:33:08.550 --> 0:33:11.990 various states to quantify the number of military actions that 0:33:11.990 --> 0:33:15.310 took place. And he came up with a number of, uh, 0:33:15.710 --> 0:33:21.310 over 1500 land and naval actions. And of those 1300 0:33:21.350 --> 0:33:25.150 and change were land actions. Jim and I took a look, 0:33:25.390 --> 0:33:30.990 and about a hundred of those were 100 more, 100 less. 0:33:30.990 --> 0:33:33.950 But it was kind of an arbitrary decision, was a 0:33:33.950 --> 0:33:38.230 major battle. But our chief criteria was for actions that 0:33:38.230 --> 0:33:41.670 concerned the main American and British armies going head to 0:33:41.710 --> 0:33:44.590 head with one another, and that come with about 100 0:33:44.630 --> 0:33:47.830 of them. So you've got like 90% of the war 0:33:48.030 --> 0:33:51.750 that was fought at the local level, not combat between 0:33:51.750 --> 0:33:55.510 the main American and British armies. So who was doing 0:33:55.510 --> 0:33:59.670 the fighting? As I mentioned earlier, it was often ragtag 0:33:59.670 --> 0:34:06.710 pickup groups, organized militia loyalists against patriots on the frontiers, 0:34:06.990 --> 0:34:12.469 tribal groups fighting white settlers. Uh, we've got instances of 0:34:12.469 --> 0:34:18.799 families defending themselves on isolated farmsteads. The, uh, the fighting was, uh, 0:34:18.800 --> 0:34:24.200 all out. Mhm. People understood that you were fighting in 0:34:24.200 --> 0:34:27.719 a contest where you simply couldn't expect much quarter much 0:34:27.760 --> 0:34:30.680 mercy from your opponents. So why should you display it 0:34:30.680 --> 0:34:35.320 toward them? It got very messy indeed. And if anything, 0:34:35.600 --> 0:34:39.000 we know that Peckham's numbers were quite conservative. I mean, 0:34:39.239 --> 0:34:43.560 we looked at, uh, new Jersey, my native state, the 0:34:43.800 --> 0:34:49.240 number Peckham came up with was 250 and change actions, uh, 0:34:49.400 --> 0:34:52.680 in new Jersey. Well, new Jersey was located between the 0:34:52.680 --> 0:34:54.960 chief British garrison in New York City and the de 0:34:55.000 --> 0:34:57.920 facto rebel capital in Philadelphia. So you're right there. You know, 0:34:57.920 --> 0:35:01.200 you're going to be in trouble. Mhm. But, um, as 0:35:01.640 --> 0:35:05.680 a member of the new Jersey archives staff, while Peckham's 0:35:05.680 --> 0:35:09.160 research assistant was compiling numbers for him, was also working 0:35:09.160 --> 0:35:12.000 on his own compilation of what was going on in 0:35:12.000 --> 0:35:15.200 new Jersey and had much greater access to archival and 0:35:15.200 --> 0:35:20.640 other local sources. He came up with about 600 actions. 0:35:20.680 --> 0:35:23.880 I mean, more than double the number that Peckham found. 0:35:24.080 --> 0:35:27.560 And when we went through those, we found that about 0:35:27.560 --> 0:35:32.120 20 qualified as major American British armies going head to head. 0:35:32.160 --> 0:35:35.480 So it's again, about that 90% comes up. And we 0:35:35.480 --> 0:35:38.399 know that in new Jersey it was absolutely brutal. You 0:35:38.400 --> 0:35:41.320 had part of the northeastern part of the state across 0:35:41.320 --> 0:35:44.800 from New York City, became known as the neutral ground 0:35:44.800 --> 0:35:47.440 because nobody could control it. I mean, there was raid 0:35:47.440 --> 0:35:51.480 after raid counter raid after counter raid. Down south in 0:35:51.480 --> 0:35:54.520 the southern part of the state, Monmouth County, and below 0:35:55.760 --> 0:36:00.920 the local inhabitants, local patriots became enraged because the state 0:36:00.920 --> 0:36:05.320 simply could not stop loyalist incursions from from the coast. 0:36:06.239 --> 0:36:08.839 And they formed a group whose name says it all. 0:36:08.880 --> 0:36:13.730 The Association for retaliation. They fought a private war. The 0:36:14.170 --> 0:36:18.010 Patriot authorities frowned on it because they wanted a war 0:36:18.010 --> 0:36:22.370 conducted within legal boundaries, because that establishment was not a 0:36:22.370 --> 0:36:24.770 question of mercy. It was a question of legitimacy they 0:36:24.810 --> 0:36:27.969 were trying to establish. And while they frowned on it, 0:36:27.969 --> 0:36:31.049 did they try to stop it? No, no. They're having 0:36:31.050 --> 0:36:33.970 their cake and eating it too. Like, tut tut, don't 0:36:33.969 --> 0:36:38.570 do that. But nice job. On the other hand. So, uh, 0:36:39.010 --> 0:36:41.890 it's this local aspect of the war that I think 0:36:41.930 --> 0:36:45.649 accounts for a great deal of the violence associated with 0:36:45.650 --> 0:36:46.130 the war. 0:36:46.330 --> 0:36:51.850 With all these small scale skirmishes, private wars happening up 0:36:51.850 --> 0:36:55.850 and down. How did people find out about the status 0:36:55.850 --> 0:36:57.970 of the war? How did they find out how anything 0:36:57.969 --> 0:36:59.410 was going in the fight? 0:37:00.250 --> 0:37:02.609 You know, we have the benefit of 250 years of 0:37:02.610 --> 0:37:05.170 hindsight to look back and document all this stuff at 0:37:05.170 --> 0:37:09.130 the time. People frequently had no idea. I mean, uh, 0:37:09.130 --> 0:37:14.060 there were efforts at communication. They were irregular. Sometimes they 0:37:14.060 --> 0:37:17.300 were dangerous. I mean, you couldn't get couriers through certain 0:37:17.300 --> 0:37:22.660 areas and expect them to survive. We know that sometimes 0:37:22.660 --> 0:37:26.460 we're really important messages that American commanders were trying to 0:37:26.620 --> 0:37:28.580 get the word out. British commanders trying to get the 0:37:28.580 --> 0:37:31.580 word out. You sent more than one courier and by 0:37:31.580 --> 0:37:34.700 different routes and at different times, because you knew there 0:37:34.700 --> 0:37:37.780 was a pretty good chance that the message was not 0:37:37.780 --> 0:37:40.500 going to get through. Worse, it was going to be intercepted. 0:37:40.500 --> 0:37:43.900 And that was that was a real problem. So frequently 0:37:43.900 --> 0:37:47.819 people fought not knowing what was going on elsewhere, particularly 0:37:47.820 --> 0:37:51.020 on the frontiers. And sometimes when you found out what 0:37:51.020 --> 0:37:53.300 was going on, it didn't make any difference to you. 0:37:53.420 --> 0:37:58.940 A classic example. October of 1781. Cornwallis surrender at Yorktown, 0:37:59.500 --> 0:38:02.060 out on the frontiers. Did they care? They did not care. 0:38:02.060 --> 0:38:07.620 That war continued. Mhm. The Indian wars, uh, had settler 0:38:07.620 --> 0:38:10.180 forces back footed for a long, long time. They didn't 0:38:10.180 --> 0:38:15.020 end that until the 1790s. There's some pretty stiff fighting. 0:38:15.020 --> 0:38:20.860 Went on well after Yorktown out west. So communication was 0:38:20.900 --> 0:38:24.100 a real a real problem, even in the more settled east. 0:38:24.100 --> 0:38:26.420 But when you get out into the frontier areas, it 0:38:26.420 --> 0:38:29.700 could take a long, long time for people to learn 0:38:29.700 --> 0:38:33.020 what was going on. And then once you heard about it, 0:38:33.060 --> 0:38:36.500 it could be even longer to actually verify it. So 0:38:36.500 --> 0:38:40.900 this was, I mean, communications that we take for granted today. 0:38:40.980 --> 0:38:43.580 You simply could not take for granted. Mhm. In the 0:38:43.580 --> 0:38:44.460 18th century. 0:38:44.980 --> 0:38:48.540 Mark Edward Lender has written in a book about the 0:38:48.540 --> 0:38:52.500 Monmouth campaign called Fatal Sunday. For listeners who might not 0:38:52.500 --> 0:38:58.100 remember Monmouth from textbooks or their their school days. Tell 0:38:58.140 --> 0:39:00.900 us a little about what that was, when it was 0:39:00.940 --> 0:39:04.259 and why it needed the focus of an entire book. 0:39:04.300 --> 0:39:06.940 Well, this battle that was fought in the middle of 0:39:06.940 --> 0:39:12.830 the state, 1778, after, uh, the British had evacuated Philadelphia 0:39:12.830 --> 0:39:15.870 and after Washington had gone through the experience of the 0:39:15.870 --> 0:39:21.070 Valley Forge winter, it was the politics of the whole thing. 0:39:21.110 --> 0:39:24.470 What did this battle mean? Because, you know, the battle 0:39:24.469 --> 0:39:28.910 was technically we're talking about a tactical draw. Uh-uh. Henry Clinton, 0:39:28.910 --> 0:39:32.830 who replaced William Howe as British commander in chief. Uh, 0:39:33.030 --> 0:39:36.710 poor fellow. He was in Philadelphia. And, uh, you you 0:39:36.710 --> 0:39:39.430 get handed the top job with, along with orders saying, 0:39:39.430 --> 0:39:42.189 give up the only real prize the British had won 0:39:42.190 --> 0:39:45.709 in 1777. And and he finds out that he can't 0:39:45.710 --> 0:39:48.710 even make a complete evacuation because the Royal Navy simply 0:39:48.710 --> 0:39:51.430 didn't have the transports to to get the army down. 0:39:51.430 --> 0:39:55.150 So they you you packed up a lot of loyalists, uh, 0:39:55.150 --> 0:39:57.870 some military units, a lot of dependents and a lot 0:39:57.870 --> 0:40:00.350 of your equipment. But then everybody else has got to 0:40:00.350 --> 0:40:03.390 march across new Jersey, which is a pretty hostile place 0:40:03.390 --> 0:40:07.390 to the British by this time. What I found was 0:40:07.390 --> 0:40:13.790 that this was Washington's chance to redeem himself. He had 0:40:14.030 --> 0:40:18.670 done a brilliant job in reconstructing the army at Valley Forge, 0:40:18.670 --> 0:40:21.710 but he had had a very, very hard time early 0:40:21.710 --> 0:40:25.550 in the winter of 1778. It's been called the Conway Cabal. 0:40:25.590 --> 0:40:28.790 Poor Thomas Conway actually had relatively little to do with it. 0:40:28.790 --> 0:40:31.590 But let's face it, you had Congress doing its job. 0:40:31.590 --> 0:40:33.710 You had hired a general to win a war. And 0:40:33.710 --> 0:40:36.830 in 1777, it did not look like Washington was going 0:40:36.870 --> 0:40:42.390 to win that war. So the stakes for Washington at 0:40:42.390 --> 0:40:47.069 the Battle of Monmouth were certainly military, if you're going 0:40:47.110 --> 0:40:50.430 to collide with the main British Army. But they were political. 0:40:50.750 --> 0:40:54.430 If he had lost another campaign, I think Washington's political 0:40:54.830 --> 0:40:59.390 problems would have increased exponentially. And working with an archaeologist 0:40:59.390 --> 0:41:04.589 was great because the archaeology had not been completed when 0:41:04.590 --> 0:41:10.160 I'd originally written that manuscript and Gary Stone was posted 0:41:10.160 --> 0:41:14.000 at Monmouth Battlefield State Park as an archaeologist, and I 0:41:14.040 --> 0:41:17.200 held off because I wasn't going to write something up. 0:41:17.200 --> 0:41:21.520 And then the archaeology comes in. So wait a minute. And, uh, when, uh, 0:41:22.000 --> 0:41:25.640 it was pretty much done, uh, Gary had come up 0:41:25.640 --> 0:41:27.799 with some wonderful stuff. And the Arc is the team 0:41:27.800 --> 0:41:30.359 working at Monmouth had come up with some wonderful stuff 0:41:30.360 --> 0:41:35.280 and really did it didn't change the strategic look at it, but, uh, 0:41:35.360 --> 0:41:38.080 looking at the tactical level to figure out actually what happened, 0:41:38.080 --> 0:41:40.960 because Monmouth is generally considered one of the most complex 0:41:41.200 --> 0:41:45.760 and difficult to explain of revolutionary engagements. Uh, we straightened 0:41:45.760 --> 0:41:47.880 out a lot of stuff and we were able to 0:41:47.920 --> 0:41:48.480 write it up. 0:41:48.520 --> 0:41:51.799 Very neat. That book is Fatal Sunday, George Washington, The 0:41:51.800 --> 0:41:55.640 Monmouth Campaign and the Politics of Battle. The most recent book, 0:41:55.680 --> 0:41:59.200 War Without Mercy, Liberty or Death in the American Revolution. 0:41:59.440 --> 0:42:03.160 Mark Edward Lender, American History PhD, from Rutgers and professor 0:42:03.160 --> 0:42:06.680 emeritus of history at Kean University. Mark, thanks so much 0:42:06.680 --> 0:42:07.320 for joining us. 0:42:07.360 --> 0:42:09.640 Thank you very much, Scott. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. 0:42:09.760 --> 0:42:12.560 That will wrap up this edition of the Radio Free 0:42:12.600 --> 0:42:15.920 Hillsdale Hour. Our thanks to Jay Bhattacharya from the National 0:42:15.920 --> 0:42:19.280 Institutes of Health. We heard from his lecture Restoring Gold 0:42:19.280 --> 0:42:24.520 Standard Science. You can find the full lecture at Freedom library.hillsdale.edu. 0:42:24.880 --> 0:42:29.440 And Mark Edward Lender, co-author of the book Fatal Sunday. Remember, 0:42:29.440 --> 0:42:32.239 you can hear new episodes every week on this station. 0:42:32.280 --> 0:42:35.160 You also can find extended versions of some of our interviews, 0:42:35.200 --> 0:42:41.160 or listen any time to the podcast. Find it@podcast.hillsdale.edu or 0:42:41.160 --> 0:42:45.920 wherever you get your audio. Until next week, I'm Scott Bertram, 0:42:45.920 --> 0:42:49.520 and this has been the radio free Hillsdale Hour.