Conversations with Tyler

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  Annie Lowrey on the Time Tax, Fraud, and Rationing by Paperwork 16.09.2026 56dk

  Annie Lowrey's new book, The Time Tax, argues that the most regressive levy in American life is the hours each of us must spend on hold, in waiting rooms, and filling out forms a competent state would have pre-filled — roughly fifty a year on average, and far more if you're poor. Tyler spends much of this conversation pressing the opposite case, asking whether that bureaucracy is quietly serving a useful purpose by rationing knee surgeries that don't work, deterring fraud, or screening for immigrants with gumption. So Tyler and Annie hash it out over an hour, covering why TANF and other welfare programs are the worst offenders, the political economy of submerged benefits like the child tax credit, whether the postal service should be zeroed out over ten years the way Denmark did, whether the government should be nudging people out of rural areas, lessons from the COVID unemployment fraud, areas where the time tax is flat instead of regressive, which private sector time taxes are most onerous, whether AI agents will pay these taxes for us within five years, the logic of easy benefits plus randomized harsh audits, the case for less federalism, whether voting should be easier or harder, how the UBI studies changed her priors, where you can find the best moss in the world, her favorite example of Brutalist architecture, tattoos as permanent ephemera, Christianity's role in liberalism and the post-Christian right, how reporting beats tourism, the time tax of friendship, what she'll learn next, and more. Read a transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on YouTube. Recorded September 1st, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Annie on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: [email protected]  Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:00:58 - On taxing our time 00:19:47 - On private-sector time taxes  00:22:57 - On AI eliminating paperwork 00:25:03 - On immigration as a filter 00:28:49 - On reducing fraud 00:33:03 - On federalizing bureaucracy 00:35:12 - On breaking up New York 00:36:25 - On making voting easy 00:38:28 - On updating universal basic income 00:41:29 - On banning exotic pets 00:42:13 - On deserts and moss 00:43:18 - On beautiful brutalism 00:43:50 - On tattoo culture 00:44:38 - On Christianity after Christianity 00:48:29 - On escaping the global monoculture 00:51:42 - On the time tax of friendship 00:54:49 - On what comes next 00:55:43 - Outro
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  Jared Diamond on Leaders, Luck, and Irreplaceability 09.09.2026 52dk

  Is leadership overrated? That's one simple reading of what Jared Diamond argues in his new book. Asked by Tyler to name the least replaceable leader in human history, Jared declines to name one — not Christ, the Roman Empire having had prophets to spare — and observes that even Genghis Khan happened to be born at an auspicious moment for a conqueror of the steppes. Conditions ripen; somebody turns up. So which leaders do make a difference?   Tyler and Jared debate that question, including conditions what a religious founder needs to succeed, whether destructive leaders matter more than constructive ones, why individual leaders have mattered so little in Papua New Guinea, whether we undervalue preventers, how much Rachel Carson and the Resnicks really mattered, whether Botswana's success will endure, Jared's own place in intellectual history, and what he'd tell an ambitious 25-year-old about how to become consequential. They go on to cover whether New Guineans are smarter, his reasons for why the Industrial Revolution started in England, what he learned from Jim Robinson about natural experiments, why he's more optimistic about the environment than when he wrote Collapse, what he'd do about nuclear risk, the 189 bird species on his street in Los Angeles, why the MacArthur "genius grant" left him depressed for a week, why he's listening to one Bach cantata a week, what he hopes to work on as he enters his nineties, and more. Read a transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on YouTube. Recorded August 21st, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: [email protected]  Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:11 - On whether any leader is irreplaceable 00:21:35 - On his own replaceability 00:24:55 - On the decline of face-to-face skills 00:29:02 - On intelligence and genetics 00:32:57 - On why the Industrial Revolution began in England 00:36:38 - On environmental optimism 00:41:11 - On nuclear risk and the Dvorak keyboard 00:42:55 - On birdwatching 00:44:07 - On writing and productivity 00:47:06 - On what his parents gave him 00:49:51 - On what comes next 00:51:36 - Outro
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  Michael Moritz on Origin Stories, Exile, and Obsessive Curiosity 02.09.2026 41dk

  Michael Moritz has written books through every phase of his life: the first history of Apple and an account of Chrysler's near-death while he was a journalist at Time, a study of Alex Ferguson's Manchester United in the middle of his 38 years at Sequoia, and now Ausländer, a family memoir, after leaving the firm. Moritz calls himself a dilettante with too many interests, but listen to him on learning to paint in his 40s, or the questions he would ask a ten-year-old boy in a German village in 1890, and you may decide that unsatisfied curiosity is not a small thing to build a life on. Tyler and Michael discuss his childhood in Wales, where his love for visual arts came from, why he disappointed his Latin teacher, having Thanksgiving dinner with Philip Roth, why children don't interrogate their parents about their history, what he feels visiting Germany and why he now holds German citizenship, how a history major with no technical background talked his way into Sequoia, his unpublished Don Valentine profile, what people underrate about Steve Jobs, obsessives versus dilettantes, why capitalism was more ablaze in China than America, what funding the Booker Prize taught him about his own ignorance, how to improve San nonprofits, how an incurable cancer diagnosis changed his calendar, why Britain's stuck, what he'll learn next, and more. Read a transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on YouTube. Recorded July 21st, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: [email protected]  Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:04:57 - On living with difficult art 00:09:44 - On Jewish literature 00:13:00 - On why children don't interrogate their parents 00:15:54 - On returning to Germany 00:23:37 - On stumbling into venture capital 00:28:49 - On obsessives and dilettantes 00:33:03 - On supporting the Booker Prize 00:34:17 - On improving San Francisco's nonprofits 00:37:26 - On controlling your own calendar 00:38:43 - On why Britain is stuck 00:40:06 - On what comes next 00:41:10 - Outro
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  Luke Burgis on Mimetic Desire, Catholicism, and the Age of Social Contagion 19.08.2026 52dk

  Luke Burgis left Wall Street after two years, founded a few successful companies in his twenties, then walked away to spend three years in a Roman seminary on the path to the priesthood. He now runs the Cluny Institute and teaches at Catholic University. His book Wanting made René Girard legible to a general audience; the new one, The One and the Ninety-Nine, takes mimetic theory into the dynamics of self and crowd in an age of social contagion. He joined Tyler to discuss whether the age of pessimism is ending, why the Anglo world in particular seems so unhappy, whether Dostoevsky or Thomas Mann better diagnoses modernity, the kind of reader his own book would ruin, why he thinks AI will make social contagion weaker, what put him off consulting with Anthropic on Claude's constitution, what effective altruism misses, why men and women are drifting apart, what he'd fund in every American city, the case for reintroducing friction, whether a Gnostic reading of the lost sheep explains our moment, what Rod Dreher gets right about withdrawal, why Genoa is Italy's most underrated city, what confession times reveal about a church, why Italians seem tired of their Catholicism, why he didn't become a priest, where he differs from Ross Douthat, why exorcists appear to be on the rise, the sudden mimetic antisemitism on the right, the book his 23-year-old self would have hated, what he secretly admires about Silicon Valley, why Michigan never left him, what the original Cluny can teach a modern talent network, how he hopes to face his own death, what he'll do next, and more. Read a transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on YouTube. Recorded April 30th, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Luke on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: [email protected]  Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:05:08 - On overapplying mimetic theory 00:06:35 - On AI and social contagion 00:07:53 - On declining Anthropic's invitation 00:09:36 - On the widening gap between men and women 00:12:25 - On anti-mimetic postures, jazz, and porn 00:16:46 - On Genoa, Naples, and societal escape fantasies 00:18:31 - On Italian Catholicism 00:26:59 - On not becoming a priest 00:29:13 - On beauty, enchantment, and the Gnostic sheep 00:40:22 - On what Wall Street taught him 00:43:50 - On Michigan 00:45:12 - On the Cluny Institute 00:48:41 - On dealing with death and what else is next 00:51:21 - Outro Image credit: Kirth Bobb
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  Daron Acemoglu on Liberalism, Automation, and the Educated Elite 12.08.2026 55dk

  Daron Acemoglu returns for his second appearance with a new book, What Happened to Liberal Democracy?, which Tyler reads as an attempt to redefine and revitalize liberalism for our times. Where Daron's first visit was about how states and societies contend for the narrow corridor in which liberty survives, this one asks what liberals themselves got wrong, and the answer implicates the educated elite—that is to say, you. Tyler and Daron discuss what's wrong with social contract theories and Rousseau's general will, whether Acemoglu is more objectivist than Rorty, why he blames left liberalism's own establishment power for its collapse, what standard is left once you refuse to have a book of higher values, nondomination versus noninterference, who counts as working class, why automation alone will not lead to widespread prosperity, how he can call himself a free speech absolutist while wanting to regulate social media, why he worries we've given up on educating Americans, whether teachers' unions need to be reconstituted, what the life expectancy for an educated twenty year old is today, whether open-source models undercut the centralization worry, what pro-worker AI actually means, why the fertility crisis leaves him strangely close to a real business cycle position, whether AI will raise his own already prodigious paper output, why Armenia has disappointed economically, what he wants to learn next, and more. Read a transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on YouTube. Recorded July 15th, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Daron on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: [email protected]  Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:08:57 - On the working class vs. the elite 00:13:16 - On automation 00:22:33 - On free speech 00:27:22 - On immigration 00:31:08 - On artificial intelligence 00:50:36 - On Armenia 00:53:22 - On what comes next 00:54:51 - Outro Image credit: Bryce Vickmark
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  Julia Ioffe on Russian Women, Missing Men, and the Roots of Autocracy 05.08.2026 55dk

  Julia Ioffe left the USSR as a child and came back as an adult journalist to find that the confident, credentialed women she remembered from her Soviet childhood had largely been supplanted by those chasing marriage and domesticity instead. That disorienting reversal is the engine of her book Motherland, a National Book Award finalist that reconstructs modern Russian history almost entirely through its women. Her account, drawn from her own family's history as well as the archives, keeps returning to one plain observation: Soviet policy pushed women into the workforce, the medical schools, and even into combat, while asking so little of men that low expectations became self-fulfilling—and Russia is still living with the results. Julia joined Tyler to discuss why so many of Russia's great constructivist painters were women, why the tsarist government established women's medical courses in 1872, changing attitudes towards abortion and birth control in the 20th century, why the Soviet regime turned prudish, how Khrushchev's plan to "replace the dead" institutionalized single motherhood, Russian superwomen, why Jewish men were a prized commodity amid rampant antisemitism, the cultural significance of flowers, why a few Russian names still dominate, why Russian women think Western feminists have their priorities backwards, how gender attitudes and autocracy feed into each other, three underrated Russian novels, what she wants to write about next, and more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on YouTube.  Recorded April 7th, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Julia on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: [email protected] Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:06:38 - Bolshevik feminism 00:08:41 - Birth control, abortion, and prudery 00:14:48 - The Russian mating market 00:23:06 - Russian superwomen 00:32:02 - The importance of flowers 00:37:35 - Common Russian names 00:39:51 - Russian vs. American feminism 00:44:23 - Gender attitudes and Russian politics 00:49:54 - Russian novels 00:54:33 - Outro Photo credit: Max Avdeev
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  Andrew Graham-Dixon on Vermeer, a Forgotten Sect, and Underrated Artists 22.07.2026 56dk

  Andrew Graham-Dixon's new book, Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found, rests on the conviction that you cannot understand what's in a painting without knowing what its maker was thinking about. In Vermeer's case, that context includes a forgotten liberal sect — the Remonstrants and Collegiants, Christians without a church who believed peace would come through reading and toleration rather than a returning Messiah. Recover that world and a woman alone in a sunlit room is a radical image in a Europe where half of Germany had just died in war. If he's right, the label beside every Vermeer in every museum will one day have to change. Tyler and Andrew discuss whether it was inevitable we'd rediscover Vermeer, how that vanishingly rare sect left its fingerprints all over his life, why the Met has misread its own Allegory of the Catholic Faith, whether Vermeer painted for money or pointedly refused to, where the Gardner's stolen Concert might be, why Dutch music never blossomed as much as Dutch painting did, how the Church of England rivaled the Cultural Revolution in wiping out British art, whether you can still spot an English painting on sight, the love that saturates late Rembrandt and the mystery of his soaring print prices, the nail on the wall that proves two Vermeer paintings are a pair, why the French are to blame for George Stubbs' lack of status, whether we can still love Malevich, why Andrews calls recent Richter "almost like printing money," why female artists and antique textiles remain absurdly cheap, why nobody builds beautiful neighborhoods any longer, and much more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded April 7th, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Andrew on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: [email protected] Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:00:44 - The Mystery of Vermeer 00:12:53 - Dutch Music 00:15:51 - English Art 00:19:49 - Rembrandt 00:23:17 - Attributions 00:26:22 - Exhibitions and Restorations 00:30:05 - Underrated French Artists 00:35:16 - Howard Hodgkin 00:38:00 - Difficult-To-Love Artists 00:40:53 - Other Dutch Painters 00:44:20 - Contemporary Art 00:48:05 - Buying Art 00:50:39 - Neighborhood Aesthetics 00:54:39 - Advice for Aspiring Art Critics 00:56:14 - Outro Image Credit: Aliona Adrianova
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  Chase Koch on Principles, Music, and Overcoming Entropy 15.07.2026 54dk

  Chase Koch grew up receiving Sunday philosophy lessons from his father Charles and, by his own account, spent most of them half asleep while his sister supplied the answers. The principles didn't land until he lived them: throwing tennis matches as a bored teenager, getting shipped off to shovel manure at a feed yard twelve hours later, then spending five years battling Brazilian bureaucracy to build a fertilizer terminal that should have taken one. Today he is Executive Vice President of Origination and Partnerships, leader and donor to Stand Together, plays lead guitar in a band named for the law of entropy, and has a new book with his father on principle-driven leadership. Chase and Tyler discuss if any of his father's lessons never stuck, the guilt-trip letter his grandfather wrote three months after Charles was born, why Chase started throwing tennis matches, what Rafa's grit taught him about stoicism, who he admired most from the 1992 Dream Team, whether the Spurs should jettison De'Aaron Fox, the David Gilmour solo that hooked him at eleven, what drew him to jam bands, how he built a boom-box business out of his parents' garage, why his father interviewed Snoop on a Zoom call during Covid, why his band is named for the second law of thermodynamics, what it's like working with MrBeast, how Koch Inc has evolved, what he learned from Marc Andreessen, the philosophy behind hiring the "farm team," why he is teaching himself to code with Claude at his fourteen-year-old's urging, where he's traveling next, and much more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded June 16th, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: [email protected] Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:00:56 - Familial Influences 00:08:25 - Tennis and Basketball 00:15:00 - The Music Industry 00:28:36 - MrBeast 00:31:24 - The Evolution of Koch Industries 00:35:54 - The Midwest 00:44:37 - AI 00:49:01 - Politics 00:53:35 - Outro
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  Joel Mokyr on Clans, Corporations, and a Culture of Growth 08.07.2026 46dk

  Joel Mokyr co-won the 2025 economics Nobel for exploring the question that traces back to the beginning of economics: how did sustained economic growth suddenly become normal? For nearly all of human history, cleverness didn't compound. What changed, according to Mokyr, was twofold: first, you need to know why something works, so that one advance can seed the next; second, you need a culture willing to tolerate the disruption. His new book contrasts Europe with China, showing how Europeans learned to cooperate with people they weren't related to, in guilds, monasteries, cities, and universities, while China organized itself around the extended clan. One path led to internal stability and peace; the other, more restless and outward-looking, was the one that decided the world could always be made better. Tyler and Joel discuss European corporations vs. Chinese clans, why the Catholic Church became obsessed with cousin-marriage, how persistent cultural trends really are, why Chinese cities became so populous relative to Europe, why it took so long for European living standards to surpass China's, why sinified invaders kept getting swallowed by the dynasties they conquered, how geography kept Europe fragmented and China unified, where India fits into the story, why the Romans never made spectacles, why British soldiers stood two inches taller than the French, what powered the sudden rise of 19th-century German science, how disruptive winning a Nobel is, and much more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded February 20th, 2026. This episode was made possible through the support of the John Templeton Foundation. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: [email protected] Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:00:54 - Europe vs. China's Paths to Prosperity 00:10:22 - China's Growth 00:13:24 - Europe's Growth 00:18:56 - The Fall of Song China 00:21:56 - India 00:25:08 - Industrial Revolution 00:39:52 - 19th-Century German Science 00:43:37 - Being a Nobel Laureate 00:45:29 - Outro Photo Credit: Shane Collins
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  Joanne Paul on Thomas More and the Tudor World 24.06.2026 50dk

  Joanne Paul is a historian at the University of Sussex, author, and a go-to Tudor expert on YouTube. She tells Tyler she's drawn to the 16th century because it sits between the medieval and the modern, and because its paths not taken are a way of asking whether our own world had to turn out this way. Her biography Thomas More: A Life takes its subject in that spirit, refusing to reduce More to either martyr or monster. Tyler and Joanne discuss how More influenced Erasmus, what to make of Utopia, why fear drove More's persecution of heretics, how Holbein's portraits of More and Cromwell differ, what movie depictions get wrong about More, how his execution was viewed at the time, how the Tudor period paved the way for Shakespeare and the scientific revolution, the surprising social mobility of the period, how the City of London governed itself and where that clashed with the Crown, Joanne's upbringing in Canada and what drew her to English history, what she thinks sits beneath a lot of Britain's current stagnation, the subject of her next book, and much more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded February 19th, 2026. This episode was made possible through the support of the John Templeton Foundation. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Joanne on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: [email protected] Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:03:42 - More's Utopia 00:10:50 - Whether More Should be Admired 00:13:39 - Play and Movie Adaptations of More 00:19:25 - English Catholicism as the Reformation Approaches 00:22:29 - Shakespeare and the Growth of Education 00:26:08 - The Quality of Tudor Art 00:27:24 - Tolerance and Social Mobility in 16th Century England 00:32:49 - London's Governance 00:34:23 - Canada 00:38:12 - Choosing English History to Study 00:41:23 - Touring and Living in England 00:43:06 - Religion, Politics, and Economics in the UK 00:49:32 - Outro
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  Dave Baszucki on Roblox, Teen Entrepreneurs, and the Future of Play 17.06.2026 53dk

  Dave Baszucki is co-founder and CEO of Roblox, the user-generated gaming platform where all the games are built by the community itself. With over 100 million daily active users and projected revenue bookings of $7 billion this year, it is one of the largest gaming economies in the world—and one that has made millionaires out of teenage developers in Argentina, South Korea, and everywhere in between. Tyler and Dave explore why Roblox decided early against prioritizing advertising revenue, why Dave thinks the main competition of Roblox is its own execution speed rather than Fortnite, whether every mega platform inevitably becomes an everything app, how falling token costs will change the platform, why he insists all the games on Roblox are beautiful, whether Robux should have a floating exchange rate, why admitting you have kids under 13 on your platform turns out to be a competitive advantage, why he's skeptical of blanket social media bans, what his son's experience with bipolar disorder taught him about metabolic health, his two-year sabbatical between companies that involved a motorhome trip across North America and a stint hosting talk radio in Santa Cruz, why Mutiny on the Bounty remains one of his favorite books, what he'll learn next, and much more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded May 27th, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Dave on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: [email protected] Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:00:44 - Roblox by the Numbers 00:08:54 - Competition 00:12:13 - Everything Apps 00:19:50 - AI Language Translation 00:21:18 - Token Costs  00:24:01 - Beauty and Gaming 00:27:01 - Robux 00:29:28 - Social Media and Younger Audiences 00:40:56 - AI and Gaming 00:45:44 - Mutiny on the Bounty 00:47:38 - David's Earlier Companies 00:51:16 - Mentors 00:52:35 - Outro
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  Katja Hoyer on Weimar, the GDR, and the German Character 10.06.2026 1sa 1dk

  Katja Hoyer is a German-British historian who has made a career out of explaining Germany to the world—and, just as importantly, to Germans themselves. Born in East Germany in 1985 and now based in Britain, she has written acclaimed histories of the German Empire, the GDR, and most recently the Weimar Republic. Tyler and Katja discuss why communism made East Germans more loyal to the system while it bred dissidents in Poland and Hungary, how happy or unhappy life in the GDR actually was, Tyler's own bleak day-trip to East Berlin in 1984, the underrated literature of the GDR (Christa Wolf, Brigitte Reimann), whether Good Bye, Lenin! got the era right, why it's no coincidence that Richter and Polke came from the East, the strange coexistence of communist prudishness and Germany's nudist culture, what Merkel's East German background did and didn't give her as a chancellor, why East Germans remain dramatically underrepresented in leadership positions today, what makes Weimar the cultural and spiritual heart of Germany, why relatively few Jews ever settled there, how much the citizens of Weimar knew about Buchenwald, what actually killed the Weimar Constitution, how she'd rewrite the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler's citizenship problem, underrated German thinkers, the complacency behind Germany's current economic decline, which side of the Weißwurstäquator she'd choose to live on, and much more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded March 30th, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Katja on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: [email protected] Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:05:34 - East German Artistic Creations  00:10:55 - Angela Merkel's East German Background 00:14:08 - East German Underrepresentation Today 00:17:02 - East Germans vs. West Germans 00:20:32 - Goethe and Weimar's Cultural Heritage 00:27:09 - What Weimar Knew About Buchenwald 00:31:10 - Why the Weimar Constitution Failed 00:35:21 - Prussia, Bavaria, and Where Nazism Took Root 00:38:23 - Rewriting the Treaty of Versailles 00:39:59 - Historical Antisemitism in Germany 00:42:27 - Hitler's Citizenship problem 00:45:14 - Weimar's Best Cultural Creations 00:47:02 - The Most Underrated German Thinker 00:49:07 - Improving Weimar 00:52:58 - Germany's Economic Malaise 00:55:38 - Living in Britain as a German Historian 01:00:49 - Outro
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  Toby Wilkinson on Ptolemaic Egypt and the First Great Commercial Civilization 27.05.2026 45dk

  Toby Wilkinson is one of the world's leading Egyptologists, whose books have ranged across the full sweep of pharaonic history. His latest, The Last Dynasty: Ancient Egypt from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra, covers the 300-year Ptolemaic period — stranger and more modern-feeling than the Egypt of the pyramids, built around commerce and cosmopolitanism rather than divine kingship, and home to the greatest concentration of scientific talent the ancient world ever saw. Tyler and Toby cover how Alexander took over the empire almost without a fight, why Alexandria became the Manhattan of the ancient world, whether the era was as philosophically fertile as it was scientifically, whether your ancient doctor's visit had positive expected value, what Egypt was actually exporting and selling, whether living standards rose above subsistence or stayed Malthusian, how the ethnic divide between Greek rulers and Egyptian subjects shaped society, what constrained the Ptolemaic Empire from becoming the next Rome, whether Cleopatra has been overhyped, what Julius Caesar was really thinking when he sided with her over her brother, the new frontiers in archeology, whether Herodotus can be trusted, what ancient Egypt knew about Israel and India, when Egyptian jewelry peaked and why, what triggered the sudden emergence of civilization across the ancient world, why a six-year-old Tyler knew King Tut better than Napoleon, and much more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded March 23rd, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: [email protected] Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:04:29 - Intellectual Activity of Alexandria  00:11:07 - The Alexandrian Economy 00:14:36 - The Ptolemaic Empire 00:21:19 - Unanswered Questions in Ptolemaic Egypt 00:23:32 - Modern Alexandria and the Future of Archaeology 00:26:37 - Other Topics in Ancient Egypt 00:42:10 - Toby's Career 00:45:26 - Outro Photo Credit: Benjamin Frei
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  Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography 13.05.2026 55dk

  Bob Spitz has written major biographies of the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, and now the Rolling Stones — but also, somehow, Ronald Reagan and Julia Child. In rock, his credentials were hard won: he started out hustling gigs for an unknown Bruce Springsteen for six years, moved on to handling Elton John's American business, and spent long enough in the world to find himself jamming with Paul McCartney and chatting with Bob Dylan on a stoop in the Village. The Reagan and Julia Child books are harder to explain, and perhaps that's the point—Spitz seems to do his best work when he has no business writing the book at all. Tyler and Bob discuss how the Stones became so great so quickly, what they added to the blues, how their melodies stack up against the Beatles', whether Exile on Main Street deserves its canonical status, which songs are most underrated, what Charlie Watts actually got out of playing in a rock band, the rise and fall of Brian Jones, how the Stones outlasted nearly everyone, the influence of Mick's London School of Economics training, why popular music has lost its cultural influence, what we should still be asking Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, whether the Beatles' breakup was good for the world, how senile Reagan really was in his second term and whether he was ever truly a communist, how good a cook Julia Child actually was, his next book on Lennon's second act, and much more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded April 28th, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Bob on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: [email protected] Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:44 - The Sound of the Rolling Stones  00:05:25 - Underrated Rolling Stones Songs and Albums  00:09:06 - Charlie Watts and Brian Jones  00:11:18 - Art Colleges and Rock 'n' Roll 00:13:06 - The Stones' Stability  00:16:32 - Mick Jagger: Closet Economist?  00:17:53 - Pop Music's Lack of Relevance  00:20:10 - The Beatles  00:28:14 - Led Zeppelin  00:31:30 - Bruce Springsteen  00:36:20 - Bob Dylan  00:39:40 - Julia Child  00:42:29 - The Knicks  00:45:21 - Ronald Reagan  00:49:01 - Robert Caro  00:52:03 - Writing 00:55:00 - Outro
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  Craig Newmark on Institutional Maintenance, Giving Away Control, and the Internet We Were Promised (Live at 92NY) 29.04.2026 46dk

  Craig Newmark's career, in retrospect, looks like a series of deliberate subtractions: he kept Craigslist plain, stepped aside as CEO early on, gave his equity to his foundation, and now funds people and gets out of their way. His theory, arrived at gradually, is that recognizing your limitations and relying on your network is how you get more done. Tyler and Craig discuss why webpage design has gotten worse for 30 years, what Craig's "obsessive customer service disorder" taught him about human nature, why trusting people and maintaining a nine-second rule for scams aren't as contradictory as they sound, why roommate ads are a better way to find love, why Craigslist never added seller evaluations, why Leonard Cohen speaks to him more than Bob Dylan, what William Gibson's Neuromancer got right about the internet, why Jackson Lamb is now one of his role models, why large foundations lose accountability, what two painful Ivy League grants taught him philanthropy, what he gets from rescuing pigeons, the hard lesson he learned about confronting people who lie for a living, his favorite TV shows and movies, the one genuine luxury he can't go without, what he still needs to learn, and much more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded April 14th, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Craig on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: [email protected] Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:41 - Stepping Aside as CEO 00:04:20 - Customer Service and Social Skills 00:16:27 - Restaurants 00:18:06 - Music 00:19:27 - Science Fiction 00:20:14 - TV Shows 00:26:03 - Philanthropy 00:30:20 - Journalism 00:31:55 - Pigeons 00:32:50 - Entrepreneurship 00:35:09 - Craig's Personal Philosophy 00:37:37 - Major Regrets 00:39:17 - Audience Q&A 00:46:23 - Outro
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  Kim Bowes on the Economic Lives of Rome's Ninety Percent 15.04.2026 1sa 1dk

  Kim Bowes is an archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania whose book, Surviving Rome: The Economic Lives of the Ninety Percent, Tyler calls perhaps his favorite economics book of 2025. By sifting through the material remains of Roman life — shoes, bricks, ceramics, and the like — she uncovers a picture of ordinary Romans who could evidently afford to buy multiple sets of colorful clothes, use gold coins for daily transactions, and eat peppercorns sourced from thousands of miles away. This vast web of commerce, she argues, both bound the empire together and provided the tax base that kept it running — and when it unraveled, Rome unraveled with it. Tyler and Kim discuss what would surprise a modern visitor to a Roman elite home, what early Roman Christianity actually looked like on the ground, why Romans never developed formal economic reasoning, what decentralized money-lending reveals about the Roman state, whether there were anything like forward markets, why Romans continued to use coins even as the empire debased them, the economics of Roman slavery, whether Roman recipes taste any good, the Romans as hyper-scalers rather than inventors, what Rome made of China and Egypt, why Kim's not a fan of the Vesuvius challenge, the practicalities of landscape archaeology, how a vast belt of factories along the Tiber Valley went undiscovered until twenty years ago, where to go on a three-week tour of the Roman Empire, what she thinks is ultimately behind Rome's unraveling, and much more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded February 2nd, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: [email protected] Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:06 - Roman Housing 00:08:28 - What Early Roman Christians Actually Believed 00:16:29 - Roman Economic Thought 00:18:39 - Roman Banking and Money Practices 00:28:48 - The Economics of Roman Slavery 00:31:56 - What Held The Roman Empire Together 00:36:46 - Roman Cookery 00:39:17 - The Romans as Masters of Scale 00:42:05 - Rome's Contact with Asia 0043:59 - The Vesuvius Challenge 00:45:13 - Ancient Carthage and the Fall of Rome 00:49:43 - The Realities of Doing Archaeology 00:57:15 - Touring the Roman Empire 01:00:42 - Outro
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  Arthur Brooks on Reinvention, Religion, and the Science of Happiness 01.04.2026 59dk

  Click here to find Tyler's new generative book, The Marginal Revolution: Rise and Decline, and the Pending AI Revolution! Arthur Brooks reckons he's on the fourth leg of a spiral-shaped career: French horn player, economist, president of the American Enterprise Institute, and now Harvard professor and evangelist for the science of happiness. His new book, The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness, argues that happiness isn't a feeling but a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning — the macronutrients of happiness, he calls them — and that most of us are gorging on the wrong ones. Tyler, naturally, wants to know: what's the marginal value of a book on happiness, and what does spiral number five look like? Along the way, Tyler and Arthur cover how scarcity makes savoring possible and why knowing you'll die young sharpens the mind, what twin studies tell us about the genetics of well-being and why that's not actually depressing, the four habits of the genuinely happy, the placebo theory of happiness books, curiosity as an evolved positive emotion, the optimal degree of self-deception, why Arthur chose Catholicism rather than Orthodoxy, what the research says about accepting death, how he became an economist via correspondence school, AI's effect on think tanks, the future of classical music, whether Trumpism or Reaganism is the equilibrium state of American conservatism, whether his views on immigration have changed, what he and Oprah actually agree on, which president from his lifetime he most admires, Barcelona versus Madrid, what 60-year-olds are especially good at, why he's reading Josef Pieper, how he'll face death, and much more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded March 19th, 2026. This episode was made possible through the support of the John Templeton Foundation. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Arthur on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: [email protected] Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:10 - The Macronutrients of Happiness 00:07:54 - What Happiness Books are Worth 00:12:28 - The Habits of the Happiest People 00:14:27 - Why the Young Reject Happiness Advice 00:17:35 - Curiosity's Role in Happiness 00:20:22 - Self-Deception 00:22:04 - Facing Death 00:25:44 - Choosing a Religion 00:28:41 - Immigration 00:30:27 - The American Right Wing 00:33:55 - AI's Role in Happiness 00:37:12 - What Drives Generosity 00:38:37 - Oprah's Political Views 00:40:16 - Which Political Leaders Arthur Admires 00:41:59 - The Best French Horn Players 00:43:40 - Arthur's Spiral of Careers 00:48:20 - The Future of Think Tanks 00:49:50 - The Future of Classical Music 00:51:27 - Living in Spain 00:55:34 - Age and Peak Performance 00:56:12 - What Arthur Will Do Next 00:59:14 - Outro Image Credit: Jenny Sherman
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  Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together 25.03.2026 1sa 4dk

  Buy tickets for the live Conversations with Tyler recording with Craig Newmark at 92NY! Tyler calls Paul Gillingham's new book, Mexico: A 500-Year History, the single best introduction to the country's past—and one of the best nonfiction books of 2026. Paul brings both an outsider's eye and ground-level knowledge to Mexican history, having grown up in Cork — a place he'd argue gave him an instinctive feel for fierce local autonomy and land hunger —earning his doctorate on the Mexican Revolution under Alan Knight at Oxford, and doing his fieldwork in the pueblos of Guerrero. He and Tyler range across five centuries of Mexican history, from why Mexico held together after independence when every other post-colonial superstate collapsed, to why Yucatán is now one of the safest places on earth, what two leaders from Oaxaca tell us about Mexican politics, how Mexico avoided the military coups that plagued the rest of Latin America, what Cárdenas's land reform actually achieved versus what it promised, whether the ejido system held Mexico back, why Mexico worried too much about land and not enough about human capital, how Mexico's fertility rate fell below America's, why Guerrero has been violent for two centuries, why the new judicial reforms are a disaster, where to find the best food in Mexico and Manhattan, what a cache of illicit Mexican silver sitting on a ship in the English Channel has to do with his next book, and more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded February 27th, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: [email protected] Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:30 - Post-Independence Mexico 00:05:18 - Peace in Yucatán 00:6:54 - Quintana Roo 00:08:24 - Mexican Infrastructure 00:10:26 - Oaxaca 00:13:54 - Great Food Outside Cities 00:16:39 - Leaders from Coahuila 00:17:50 - Military Rule and Civil War in Mexico 00:21:47 - The Cárdenas Regime 00:24:03 - The Ejido System 00:25:49 - Human Capital 00:40:59 - Doing Mexican History as a Brit 00:42:43 - Guerrero 00:48:37 - Michoacán Violence 00:50:44 - Monterrey 00:52:40 - Judicial Reforms 00:54:44 - The Best Mexican Film, Music, and Novel 00:59:42 - The Best Trip Around Mexico 01:04:05 - Outro
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  Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy 18.03.2026 49dk

  Buy tickets for the live Conversations with Tyler recording with Craig Newmark at 92NY! Few living scholars can claim to have shaped how we read Machiavelli as decisively as Harvey Mansfield. His new book, The Rise and Fall of Rational Control, argues that Machiavelli didn't just write about politics—he invented the intellectual machinery of the modern world, starting with the concept of "effectual truth," which Mansfield credits as the seed of modern empiricism. At 93, after 61 years of teaching at Harvard, Mansfield remains cheerfully unimpressed by most of contemporary philosophy, convinced that the great books are self-sustaining, and that irony is what separates serious philosophy from the rest. Tyler and Harvey discuss how Machiavelli's concept of fact was brand new, why his longest chapter is a how-to guide for conspiracy, whether America's 20th-century wars refute the conspiratorial worldview, Trump as a Shakespearean vulgarian who is in some ways more democratic than the rest of us, why Bronze Age Pervert should not be taken as a model for Straussianism, the time he tried to introduce Nietzsche to Quine, why Rawls needed more Locke, what it was like to hear Churchill speak at Margate in 1953, whether great books are still being written, how his students have and haven't changed over 61 years of teaching, the eclipse rather than decline of manliness, and what Aristotle got right about old age and much more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded January 22nd, 2026. This episode was made possible through the support of the John Templeton Foundation. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: [email protected] Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Bumper 00:00:36 - Intro 00:01:20 - Machiavelli's "Effectual Truth" 00:05:56 - Conspiracy Theories 00:12:39 - The Vulgarity of Democracy 00:16:35 - The Future of Straussianism 00:34:30 - Why the Supply of Great Books has Dried Up 00:37:56 - Rational Control vs. Spontaneous Order 00:40:25 - Winston Churchill 00:43:30 - Students at Harvard 00:46:05 - Manliness 00:47:34 - Death and Politics 00:48:56 - Outro  Image Credit: Erin Clark via Getty Images
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  Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English 04.03.2026 59dk

  Sign up for the Chicago CWT Listener Meetup. Henry Oliver is the preeminent literary critic for non-literary nerds. His Substack, The Common Reader, has thousands of subscribers drawn in by Henry's conviction that great literature is where ideas "walk and talk amongst the mess of the real world" in a way no other discipline can match. Tyler, who has called Henry's book Second Act "one of the very best books written on talent," sat down with him to compare readings of Measure for Measure and range across English literature more broadly. Tyler and Henry trade rival readings of the play, debate whether Isabella secretly seduces Angelo, argue over whether the Duke's proposal is closer to liberation or enslavement, trace the play's connections to The Merchant of Venice and The Rape of Lucrece, assess the parallels to James I, weigh whether it's a Girardian play (Oliver: emphatically not), and parse exactly what Isabella means when she says "I did yield to him," before turning to the best way to consume Shakespeare, what Jane Austen took from Adam Smith, why Swift may be the most practically intelligent writer in English, how advertising really works and why most of it doesn't, which works in English literature are under- and overrated, what makes someone a late bloomer, whether fiction will deal seriously with religion again, whether Ayn Rand's villains are more relevant now than ever, and much more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded January 12th, 2026. This episode was made possible through the support of the John Templeton Foundation. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Henry on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: [email protected] Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:40 - What Shakespeare is really saying in Measure for Measure 00:29:17 - The best way to consume Shakespeare 00:32:26 - Jane Austen, Adam Smith, and Jonathan Swift 00:39:29 - Advertising that works 00:44:37 - Things that are under- and overrated in literature 00:51:24 - Late bloomers 00:58:36 - Outro  Image Credit: Sam Alburger