Conversations with Tyler

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.
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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

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.
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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

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.
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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

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.
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Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu
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

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
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Join our Discord
Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu
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