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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.

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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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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.

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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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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.

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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 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.

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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

When Tyler called Joe Studwell's How Asia Works "perhaps my favorite economics book of the year" back in 2013, he wasn't alone: it became one of the most influential treatments of industrial policy ever written. Now Studwell has turned his attention to Africa with How Africa Works. Tyler calls it excellent, extremely well-researched, and essential reading, but does Studwell's optimism about the continent hold up under scrutiny?

Tyler and Joe explore whether population density actually solves development, which African countries are likely to achieve stable growth, whether Africa has a manufacturing future, why state infrastructure projects decay while farmer-led irrigation thrives, what progress looks like in education and public health, whether charter cities or special economic zones can work, and how permanent Africa's colonial borders really are. After testing Joe's optimism about Africa, Tyler shifts back to Asia: what Japan and South Korea will do about depopulation, why industrial policy worked in East Asia but failed in India and Brazil, what went wrong in Thailand, and what Joe will tackle next.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel.

Recorded January 23rd, 2026.

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Image Credit: Nick J.B. Moore

Andrew Ross Sorkin sees the crash of 1929 as a tale of excessive leverage and irrational speculation, but Tyler wonders: maybe those sky-high 1929 prices were actually justified given America's remarkable century ahead. Maybe the real problem was the "Negative Nellies" who panicked afterward rather than the speculators everyone blamed. For that matter, isn't 2008 looking less and less like a bubble with each passing year?

Tyler and Andrew debate whether those 1929 stock prices were justified, what Fed and policy choices might have prevented the Depression, whether Glass-Steagall was built on a flawed premises, what surprised Andrew most about the 1920s beyond the crash itself, how business leaders then would compare to today's CEOs, whether US banks should consolidate, how Andrew would reform US banking regulation, what to make of narrow banking proposals and stablecoins, whether retail investors should get access to private equity and venture capital, why sports gambling and new financial regulations won't make us much safer, how Andrew broke into the New York Times at age 18, how he manages his information diet, what he learned co-creating Billions, what he plans on learning about next, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel.

Recorded October 30th, 2025.

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Image Credit: Mike Cohen

Tyler considers Diarmaid MacCulloch one of those rare historians whose entire body of work rewards reading. This work includes his award-winning Cranmer biography, his sweeping histories of Christianity and the Reformation, and his latest on sex and the church, which demonstrates what MacCulloch calls the historian's true vocation: unsettling settled facts to keep humanity sane.

Tyler and Diarmaid explore whether monotheism correlates with monogamy, Christianity's early instinct towards egalitarianism, what the Eucharistic revolution reveals about the cathedral building boom, the role of Mary in Christianity and Islam, where Michel Foucault went wrong on sexuality, the significance of the clerical family replacing the celibate monk, why Elizabeth I—not Henry VIII—mattered most for the English Reformation, why English Renaissance music began so brilliantly but then needed to start importing Germans, whether Christianity needs hell to survive, what MacCulloch plans to do next, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel.

Recorded October 29th, 2025.

This episode was made possible through the support of the John Templeton Foundation.

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Image Credit: Barry Jones

At 22, Brendan Foody is both the youngest Conversations with Tyler guest ever and the youngest unicorn founder on record. His company Mercor hires the experts who train frontier AI models—from poets grading verse to economists building evaluation frameworks—and has become one of the fastest-growing startups in history.

Tyler and Brendan discuss why Mercor pays poets $150 an hour, why AI labs need rubrics more than raw text, whether we should enshrine the aesthetic standards of past eras rather than current ones, how quickly models are improving at economically valuable tasks, how long until AI can stump Cass Sunstein, the coming shift toward knowledge workers building RL environments instead of doing repetitive analysis, how to interview without falling for vibes, why nepotism might make a comeback as AI optimizes everyone's cover letters, scaling the Thiel Fellowship 100,000X, what his 8th-grade donut empire taught him about driving out competition, the link between dyslexia and entrepreneurship, dining out and dating in San Francisco, Mercor's next steps, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel.

Recorded October 16th, 2025.

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Timestamps

00:00:00 - Hiring poets to teach AI

00:05:29 - Measuring real-world AI progress

00:13:25 - Why rubrics are the new oil

00:18:44 - Enshrining taste in LLMs

00:22:38 - Turning society into one giant RL machine

00:26:37 - When AI will stump experts

00:30:46 - AI and employment

00:35:05 - Why vibes-based hiring fails

00:39:55 - Solving labor market matching problems

00:45:01 - Scaling the Thiel Fellowship

00:48:11 - A hypothetical gap year

00:50:31 - Donuts, debates, and dyslexia

00:56:15 - Dating and dining out

00:59:01 - Mercor's next steps