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.

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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

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.

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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

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.

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• 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