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What can Thomas Hardy’s tortured marriages teach us about love, obsession, and second chances? In this episode, biographer, novelist, and therapist Paula Byrne examines the intimate connections between life and literature, revealing how Hardy’s relationships with women shaped his portrayals of love and tragedy. Byrne, celebrated for her bestselling biographies of Jane Austen, Evelyn Waugh, and Barbara Pym, brings her unique perspective to explore the profound ways personal relationships, cultural history, and creative ambition intersect to shape some of the most enduring works in literary history.

Tyler and Paula discuss Virginia Woolf’s surprising impressions of Hardy, why Wessex has lost a sense of its past, what Jude the Obscure reveals about Hardy’s ideas about marriage, why so many Hardy tragedies come in doubles, the best least-read Hardy novels, why Mary Robinson was the most interesting woman of her day, how Georgian theater shaped Jane Austen’s writing, British fastidiousness, Evelyn Waugh’s hidden warmth, Paula’s strange experience with poison pen letters, how American and British couples are different, the mental health crisis among teenagers, the most underrated Beatles songs, the weirdest thing about living in Arizona, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded November 14th, 2024.

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In his landmark multi-volume biography of Stalin, Stephen Kotkin shows how totalitarian power worked not just through terror from above, but through millions of everyday decisions from below. Currently a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution after 33 years at Princeton, Kotkin brings both deep archival work and personal experience to his understanding of Soviet life, having lived in Magnitogorsk during the 1980s and seen firsthand how power operates in closed societies.

Tyler sat down with Stephen to discuss the state of Russian Buddhism today, how shamanism persists in modern Siberia, whether Siberia might ever break away from Russia, what happened to the science city Akademgorodok, why Soviet obsession with cybernetics wasn't just a mistake, what life was really like in 1980s Magnitogorsk, how modernist urban planning failed there, why Prokofiev returned to the USSR in 1936, what Stalin actually understood about artistic genius, how Stalin's Georgian background influenced him (or not), what Michel Foucault taught him about power, why he risked his tenure case to study Japanese, how his wife's work as a curator opened his eyes to Korean folk art, how he's progressing on the next Stalin volume, and much more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded November 13th, 2024.

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In this crossover episode with EconTalk, Tyler joins Russ Roberts for an in-depth exploration of Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate, a monumental novel often described as the 20th-century answer to Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

Russ and Tyler cover Grossman’s life and the historical context of Life and Fate, its themes of war, totalitarianism, freedom, and fate, the novel’s polyphonic structure and large cast of characters, the parallels between fascism and communism, the idea of “senseless kindness” as a counter to systemic evil, the symbolic importance of motherhood, the psychology of confession and loyalty under totalitarian systems, Grossman’s literary influences including Chekhov, Tolstoy, Dante, and Stendhal, individual resilience and moral compromises, the survival of the novel despite Soviet censorship, artificial intelligence and the dehumanization of systems, the portrayal of scientific discovery and its moral dilemmas, the ethical and emotional tensions in the novel, the anti-fanatical tone and universal humanism of the book, Grossman’s personal life and connections to its themes, and the novel's enduring relevance and complexity.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded November 4th, 2024.

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Neal Stephenson’s ability to illuminate complex, future-focused ideas in ways that both provoke thought and spark wonder has established him as one of the most innovative thinkers in literature today. Yet his new novel, Polostan, revisits the Soviet era with a twist, shifting his focus from the speculative technologies of tomorrow to the historical currents of the 1930s.

In Neal's second appearance, Tyler asks him why he sometimes shifts from envisioning the future to illustrating the past, the rise of history autodidacts, the implications of leaked secrets from the atomic age to today’s AI, the logistics of faking one’s death, why he still drafts novels in longhand, Soviet idealism among Western intellectuals, which Soviet achievements he admires, the lag in AR development, how LLMs might boost AR, whether social media is increasingly giving way to private group chats, his continuing influence on technologists, why AI-generated art might struggle to connect with readers, the primer from The Diamond Age in light of today’s LLMs, the prospect of AGI becoming an unnoticed background tool, what Neal believes the world really needs more of, what lies ahead in Polostan and the broader “Bomb Light” series, and more

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded October 9th, 2024.

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Christopher Kirchhoff is an expert in emerging technology who founded the Pentagon’s Silicon Valley office. He’s led teams for President Obama, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and CEO of Google. He’s worked in worlds as far apart as weapons development and philanthropy. His pioneering efforts to link Silicon Valley technology and startups to Washington has made him responsible for $70 billion in technology acquisition by the Department of Defense. He’s penned many landmark reports, and he is the author of Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley are Transforming the Future of War.

Tyler and Christopher cover the ascendancy of drone warfare and how it will affect tactics both off and on the battlefield, the sobering prospect of hypersonic weapons and how they will shift the balance of power, EMP attacks, AI as the new arms race (and who's winning), the completely different technology ecosystem of an iPhone vs. an F-35, why we shouldn't nationalize AI labs, the problem with security clearances, why the major defense contractors lost their dynamism, how to overcome the “Valley of Death” in defense acquisition, the lack of executive authority in government, how Unit X began, the most effective type of government commission, what he'll learn next, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded July 23rd, 2024.

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Musa al-Gharbi is a sociologist and assistant professor at Stony Brook University whose research explores how people think about, talk about, and produce shared knowledge about race, inequality, social movements, extremism, policing, and other social phenomena. His new book, We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite, examines the rise and fall of wokeness among America’s elites and explores the underlying social forces at play.

Tyler and Musa explore the rise and fall of the "Great Awokening" and more, including how elite overproduction fuels social movements, why wokeness tends to fizzle out, whether future waves of wokeness will ratchet up in intensity, why neuroticism seems to be higher on the political Left, how a great awokening would manifest in a Muslim society, Black Muslims and the Nation of Islam, why Musa left Catholicism, who the greatest sociologist of Islam is, Muslim immigration and assimilation in Europe, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded September 19th, 2024.

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Tom Tugendhat has served as a Member of Parliament since 2015, holding roles such as Security Minister and chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. Before entering Parliament, Tom served in in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also worked for the Foreign Office, helped establish the National Security Council of Afghanistan, and served as military assistant and principal adviser to the Chief of the Defense Staff.

Tyler and Tom examine the evolving landscape of governance and leadership in the UK today, touching on the challenges of managing London under the UK’s centralized system, why England remains economically unbalanced, his most controversial view on London's architecture, whether YIMBYism in England can succeed, the unique politics and history of Kent, whether the system of private schools needs reform, his pick for the greatest unselected prime minister, whether Brexit revealed a defect in the parliamentary system, whether the House of Lords should be abolished, why the British monarchy continues to captivate the world, devolution in Scotland and Northern Ireland, how learning Arabic in Yemen affected his life trajectory, his read on the Middle East and Russia, the Tom Tugendhat production function, his pitch for why a talented young person should work in the British Civil Service, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded October 9th, 2024.

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Photo Credit: This photo is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. 

Kyla Scanlon has made it her personal mission to bring economics education to a larger audience through social media. She publishes daily content across TikTok, YouTube, Substack, LinkedIn and more, explaining what is happening in the economy and why it is happening. Tyler calls her first book In This Economy? How Money & Markets Really Work a “good and bracing shock to those who have trained their memories on some weighted average of the more distant past.”

Tyler and Kyla dive into the modern state of economics education and a whole range of topics like if fantasy world building can help you understand economics, what she learned trading options at 16, why she opted for a state school over the Ivy League, lessons from selling 38 cars over summer break, introversion as an ingredient for social media success, if she believes in any conspiracy theories, Instagram scrolling vs TikTok scrolling, the decline of print culture, why people are seeking out cults, modern nihilism, how perspective can help with optimism, the death of celebrity and the rise of influencers, why econ education has gone backward, improving mainstream media, YIMBYism and real estate, nuclear pragmatism versus utopian geothermalists, investing advice for young people, why she thinks about the Great Depression more than Rome, creating the next Free to Choose, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded July 8th, 2024.

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Photo Credit: Rachel Woolf

Tobi Lütke is the CEO and co-founder of Shopify. 20 years ago, he was just a German coder who emigrated to Canada to launch some ecommerce platform with another German. Now he’s the world-renowned thought and tech leader who has revolutionized online shopping for billions. He’s also the creator of many open-source libraries like Liquid, Active Merchant, and the Typo weblog engine.

Tyler and Tobi hop from Germany to Canada to America to discuss a range of topics like how outsiders make good coders, learning in meetings by saying wrong things, having one-on-ones with your kids, the positives of venting, German craftsmanship vs. American agility, why German schooling made him miserable, why there aren’t more German tech giants, untranslatable words, the dividing line of between Northern and Southern Germany, why other countries shouldn’t compare themselves to the US, Canada’s lack of exports and brands, ice skating to work in Ottawa, how VR and AI will change retailing, why he expects to be “terribly embarrassed” when looking back at companies in the 2020s, why The Lean Startup is bad for retailers, how fantasy novels teach business principles, what he's learning next, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded July 23rd, 2024.

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Philip Ball is an award-winning science writer who has penned over 30 books on a dizzying variety of subjects. Holding degrees in chemistry from Oxford and physics from the University of Bristol, Ball's multidisciplinary background underpins his versatility. As a former editor at Nature for two decades and a regular contributor to a range of publications and broadcast outlets, Ball's work exemplifies the rare combination of scientific depth and accessibility, cementing his reputation as a premier science communicator.

Tyler and Philip discuss how well scientists have stood up to power historically, the problematic pressures scientists feel within academia today, artificial wombs and the fertility crisis, the price of invisibility, the terrifying nature of outer space and Gothic cathedrals, the role Christianity played in the Scientific Revolution, what current myths may stick around forever, whether cells can be thought of as doing computation, the limitations of The Selfish Gene, whether the free energy principle can be usefully applied, the problem of microplastics gathering in testicles and other places, progress in science, his favorite science fiction, how to follow in his footsteps, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded May 22nd, 2024.

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