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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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.

Other ways to connect

• Follow us on X and Instagram
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• Follow Dave on X
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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

00:00:44 - 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.

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: 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