Category: Travel

My excellent Conversation with Toby Wilkinson

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Most of all, we cover Ptolemaic Egypt.  Here is part of the episode summary:

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.

Excerpt:

COWEN: Either technologically or institutionally, what is it that the Persians had that the Egyptians did not?

WILKINSON: The Persians had a pretty formidable army. Their military technology was certainly superior to the Egyptians at the time that they conquered Egypt originally in the 6th century BC. Like many empires, I suppose, throughout history, they overreached themselves. They overextended themselves, and they found it increasingly hard to hold together this empire stretching all the way from the Aegean to the borders of India. Bits of the empire started to fragment and pull away. Egypt had always had this very strong sense of its own identity. When it had a chance to throw off the Persian yoke, it took it.

COWEN: Let’s think about some of the achievements of Ptolemaic Egypt as an era. Infrastructure. What did they do that was most impressive?

WILKINSON: Build Alexandria. Alexandria the city was a new foundation established by Alexander the Great to bear his name. Unlike all previous ancient Egyptian cities, it was a city built from the outset for commerce. It was a city built on the Mediterranean coast with a great natural harbor, with facilities for loading and offloading ships. It had a great lighthouse guarding the entrance to its harbor, which became one of the wonders of the world. The whole city was really designed from the get-go as a great commercial center looking outwards to the Mediterranean, rather than inwards to the rest of Egypt.

COWEN: Canals, artificial lake. What else did they do?

WILKINSON: They built a city quite unlike anything previously seen in the valley of the river Nile. In fact, any inhabitant today of a modern city would recognize the grid iron pattern of streets. Streets intersecting at right angles, that was something completely unheard of until this point in Egypt with vast public buildings. This was the Manhattan of the ancient world, if you like, in scale, in grandeur, and in the level of commercial activity.

And:

EN: What were the main exports of the Alexandria region? What are they selling, making?

WILKINSON: Oh, the two big exports that account for the lion’s share of Egypt’s wealth at the time are gold and grain. Gold has been mined in Egypt for millennia up to this point, but it’s still the place in the ancient world that produces large quantities of gold. Of course, gold has always been a great currency of international commerce.

Then Egypt is famed as the breadbasket of the ancient world. It produces a superabundance of grain thanks to the fertility of the Nile and the benign climate. It produces more than it needed for its own consumption, by comparison with poorer agricultural regions in Greece and Asia Minor, which struggled to produce enough food. Yes, gold and grain were the absolute engine of Egyptian prosperity.

COWEN: There’s metalwork, there’s glass. What else is there, manufacturing, as we would call it today?

WILKINSON: Oh, yes. There’s a big ceramics industry, so producing not just pots, but terracotta statues and votive objects. There’s glassmaking, as you’ve said. There’s advanced metallurgy, goldsmithing, ironworking, copper and bronze foundries. There’s what we might call the decorative arts, so sculpture, painting. All of these things thrived in ancient Alexandria.

COWEN: Do they have living standards sustainably above subsistence, or is this a Malthusian equilibrium, where they get some wealth and then more people survive and the wage falls again, and it doesn’t get much above what is required to keep people alive?

Recommended, informative and interesting throughout.  And I am very happy to recommend all of Toby’s books, including his latest The Last Dynasty: Ancient Egypt from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra.

Detroit notes

by  Tyler Cowen in

It remains one of America’s most interesting cities, and now it is seeing a continuing comeback.  Downtown remains mostly empty of foot traffic, but I was stunned to see new office buildings and signs of budding prosperity.  It did not feel abandoned or hopeless.

Detroit Institute of Art is one of America’s best art museums, showing impeccable taste, though it is notable how much the picture donations simply disappear after some point in time.  This is a temple for those are skeptical about modern art, as you will not find it reprensented much here.  The American art, the Rembrandt Visitation, the Poussin Holy Family, the Breughel, and the huge Diego Rivera murals are all to die for.  The average quality of painting is high as well.

Baobab Fare, not too far from the museum, is a good Burundian (!) restaurant in town.

I was lucky enough to visit the General Motors research and development complex in Cranbrook, mostly designed by Eero Saarinen, due to the ingenuity of Dan Wang (it is mostly not open to the public).  Around 20,000 people work there, and it remains a temple of modernist architecture, perhaps anachronistic in effect but beautiful nonetheless.  I had not realized how strong the colors were, as that does not come through in the photos.

The Saarinen (papa Saarinen!) house in the Cranbrook Art Museum is perhaps the best Art Deco design I have seen.  The museum itself has excellent architecture, sculptures, and gardens, rather than being much of an art museum proper.

Here are good NYT photos of that part of the joy ride.

Overall a trip to the Detroit area is one of the very best American visits you can do, highly recommended, automobile required of course that is why they call it the Motor City.

The UAP report so far

by  Tyler Cowen in

I will stick with my earlier Free Press predictions:

The fact remains that, if you talk with insiders, they will confirm that the federal government faces some big mysteries. It seems that we have data on what appear to be craft that move very fast, have no visible means of propulsion, and can accelerate in a surprising manner. Radar, infrared, and other forms of data are cited to varying degrees, plus there are eyewitness pilot reports, broadly consistent with what our instruments are telling us.

And this:

Assuming a reasonable chunk of the data are declassified, I think we will simply see more of the same kind of material we’ve seen in the past: more data on entities that appear to move very quickly and in mysterious ways, but with no real explanations. We will see, as I’ve argued before, that the government itself does not know what is going on, and has been afraid to admit that. That may be the real “conspiracy” and why the veil of secrecy has been relatively difficult to pierce.

As of yesterday, there are plenty of additional videos of what seem to be glowing orbs moving fast and in unpredictable ways.  Or try this one.  Here is another weird one.  Or try this.  And another one, near military craft.  And what is this?

One thing we can conclude is that the debunkers, who have been suggesting this is all camera tricks, parallax issues, or people not understanding how videos work, are proven wrong in general, even though they are right about some particular cases.  On that point we can move on, as I have been arguing for some while.  Mick West is not your proper guide here.

Nonetheless we still do not know what it all means, and I do not see proof of anything in particular.

I also will stress my earlier point that we are not going to see alien bodies or alien technologies, or anything meaningful connected to Roswell.  That is sheer fantasy, or sometimes locos.

340 million hits in the first twelve hours?  More people will be believing in aliens in any case, I suspect.  Or will it be demons?

It is fashionable in the comments sections of blogs to call this topic a waste of time, but the serious people in the military and national security — most of whom do not cite alien presence — do not see it that way.

And they will be releasing more materials.  These materials are being released because some subsection of “the Deep State” wants to know what is going on.  As do I.

EU fact of the day

by  Tyler Cowen in

You do not hear this point made too often, yet it is true:

Very interesting new study finding that *even in large European cities*, in most places it is easier to access opportunities by car than by public transport arxiv.org/pdf/2604.01019 The exceptions are Paris, Zurich and the innermost parts of Milan and Barcelona

That is from Giulio Mattioli, citing the paper by Bruno Campenelli, et.al.  In turn via Joy Buchanan.

Self-driving vehicles and the cross-country drive

by  Tyler Cowen in

Following my post on cross-country driving, a reader asked me about this prospect but I suppose I am skeptical.

First, self-driving vehicles make it too easy to read a book or stare at your phone.  Driving yourself fixes your attention on what is unfolding before your eyes, and forces you to keep it there.  You might be bored for an hour, but you will catch periodic gems by always looking at the road before you and to the side.

Second, at least for a while self-driving vehicles will not be allowed to exceed speed limits.  Good luck with that.  A lot of America is marked at 25 mph when you can go 36 mph or maybe even 37 mph in a responsible manner.

Third, many of the best moments in cross-country driving come from the unexpected swerve — “hey, that looks interesting!”  And half of the time it is not.  Will the self-driving vehicle know when you might wish to swerve and pull over?

Fourth, there is something to be said for integrating the rhythms of your body with those of the car.  When you drive yourself, you feel the trip in a way the Waymo does not give you.  I would stress this point is a negative for most car trips, though perhaps not for a cross-country drive.  If you do not enjoy driving through the USA, maybe do not do the cross-country thing at all?  Walking through Paris or Istanbul remains a lovely alternative.

Automation and better AI might eventually solve or address some of those problems.  But the next available round of self-driving vehicles probably will not.

Driving cross-country

by  Tyler Cowen in

I have driven cross-country four times, at least if you count a 3/4 trip as valid.  I also have driving experience in virtually all states, including Hawaii and Alaska, neither of which would be part of typical cross-country travel.

I recommend this mode of transport highly, especially for the United States.  Here are a few observations:

No matter which route you take, so often Mexican food is your best option.

I most prefer the southern route, involving Memphis, Texas, and southern Utah/north rim of the Grand Canyon.  Do I have to tell you no major highways?

The extreme northern route is better than the middle route.  Visit Duluth.

The music you bring is essential.  While this will depend on your taste, in general try to have some regional music to match your route.  Dylan and also folk music sound good in most parts of the country.  CDs can be a better medium than online music for these trips.  Do not listen to music when you start your day’s drive, however, as you will end up burnt out.  Save it for after a few hours of driving.  Nor should you listen to too much high energy music.  Woody Guthrie is better than Led Zeppelin in this setting.

How much you should roll down car windows, vs. relying on air conditioning, is a critical decision.  The correct answer will depend on the route and time of year, but please do not screw this one up.  Usually I like windows down, but with raised windows you can hear the music better.

Salads in the Midwest can be good.

In Texas and Oklahoma you may see some amazing storms.  Texas is the best state for random food stops.

Use paper maps, GPS may bring you along too efficient a route.

Issues of children aside, optimal group size is two, no larger.  To avoid least common denominator effects.

You can do these trips at any pace you want, even an hour in a place can teach you a good deal.

You could do a trip simply by stopping in every interesting place in New Jersey, one of the smallest states.

I prefer Vermont to New Hampshire, at least for driving purposes.  I also prefer Montana to Wyoming, the latter for me being beautiful but somehow quite a boring state outside of Yellowstone?  You cannot spend too much time in Utah.

Oregon is one state where I never have been driving.  Is that a great loss?  I know only Portland there.

Driving cross country, or only parts of it, is the very best way to see America.

South African discussions

by  Tyler Cowen in

These days South Africa is one of the best places to go to have interesting conversations.  Obviously an English-fluent country does have many people following Trump, Islam in Europe, and so on.  But you can have so many conversations about quite different topics, topics that are hardly covered in other parts of the world.

Like South Africa.  But not only.  The southern part of Africa too.  People who live there are on the whole quite historically aware, since their history remains so influential on a day-to-day basis.  I recall being introduced to one person who is a “Huguenot,” as his ancestors came over with the 100 or so Huguenots who came to South Africa in the 1680s.  He is in fact a Huguenot.

Since the Gini coefficient of South Africa is about the same as the Gini coefficient of the world, South Africans are typically thinking about problems that are pretty close to the problems of the world as a whole.  That is not usually the case for say Americans or Brits.

Few South Africans will underrate the importance of Africa for the world’s future.

It is easy to get into conversations with people from Zimbabwe, Malawi, Congo, and sometimes Nigeria.  There are also readily accessible Jewish and Muslim communities, yet with perspectives different from what you might find elsewhere.

There is plenty of religion, if that is your interest.  Plenty of good music too, sometimes on the street.  An excellent arts scene, and past Kentridge probably you have not heard of any of the creators.  The art too gives you a lot to talk about.

All sorts of tribes and languages, many of which I had never heard of before.

The European parts of the citizenry have some pre-Enlightenment origins and overall do not seem incredibly Woke.   Your mileage there may vary, but again it is different from the educated classes in many other parts of the west.

Again for better or worse, but the “trad wife” phenomenon seems quite normal there, they might just use the word “wife.”

In some parts of the country, you can watch gentrification in reverse.

Most of all, South Africans have a finely-tuned sense of contingency.  Things for them could go pretty well, or they could go pretty badly.  Most people know that, and perhaps that is the greatest wisdom yet?  Many of the rest of us try to deny that.

Visiting South Africa makes so many things transparent, or at least less opaque.  Go!

Auden on Iceland

by  Tyler Cowen in

If you have no particular intellectual interests or ambitions and are content with the company of your family and friends, then life on Iceland must be very pleasant, because the inhabitants are friendly, tolerant, and sane.  They are genuinely proud of their country and its history, but without the least trace of hysterical nationalism.  I always found that they welcome criticism.  But I had the feeling, also, that for myself it was already too late.  We are all too deeply involved Europe to be able, or even to wish to escape.  Though I am sure you would enjoy a visit as much as I did, I think that, in the long run, the Scandinavian sanity would be too much for you, as it is for me.  The truth is, we are both only really happy living among lunatics.

That is from W.H. Auden and Louis MacNeice, Letters from Iceland, from 1937, which is one of the better travel books, if indeed that is what it is.

My excellent Conversation with Paul Gillingham

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Here is the episode summary:

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.

Excerpt:

COWEN: Now, after independence in 1821, why did not the rest of Mexico fragment the way Central America did a few years later, where it splits off from the Mexican empire? What determines the line? What sticks together with Mexico, and what does not?

GILLINGHAM: That’s a very good question because it’s one of the things that really makes Mexico stand out in that period, those histories, is that after independence, the rest of the Americas, you get a series of super-states. You get Gran Colombia, which is most of the Andes, and going across what’s now Venezuela. You get the United Provinces of the Rio Plate. These are huge, very difficult to conceive of super-states, and they fail within a decade. Elsewhere, you look at other post-colonial states, thinking particularly of India, within a couple of years, you’re fragmented and failed. Mexico doesn’t. Mexico actually stands up with the exceptions you put of Central America, which is formally part of it, in fact, but leaves within short order.

It’s one of these questions of what Álvaro Enrigue calls the miracle that Mexico exists. To explain it is a paradox. To make a try at it, I think that there is a common theme in Mexican history, which runs across most of those five centuries, which is a remarkable degree of hands-off government. It’s imposed. Mexico has a lot of mountains. It’s very difficult to rule from any central pole. Savvy governments, or governments with no choice, which are quite often the same thing, are very hands-off. Federalism is built into Mexico’s soul. I think that’s one of the reasons, from early on, Mexico actually out-punches the rest of the Americas in terms of sticking together as a territorial unit.

COWEN: As you know, in the early 19th century, there are rebellions in Yucatán, the Caste Wars, but Yucatán does not split off from Mexico. What keeps that together?

GILLINGHAM: Yucatán has always felt itself to be a different country, effectively, and that runs through to the present. You can see the cultural reasons, obviously, and the Maya and the other great, sophisticated urban culture of the 16th century and before. It makes sense that they should feel themselves very different from the rest of what becomes Mexico. In fact, it comes through in small but revealing ways. Back in the 20th century, people find themselves being asked whether they want a Yucatán beer or a foreign beer, and a foreign beer being anything in Mexico outside Yucatán.

Why doesn’t Yucatán leave? I think that it came extremely close. In fact, there’s a moment in the 1840s when Mexico and Texas form an alliance, and Texas is chartering warships out to Yucatán to try and prevent any naval incursions. Why on earth does Yucatán stay? I think it’s because of the absence of an alternative capital, because Yucatán is profoundly racially divided. It’s one of the few places in Mexico where you could say that really is a fairly stark racial divide. You have a plantocracy, in some ways, like the US South before the Civil War.

You’ve got a relatively small white plantocracy centered in Mérida. They have no interest whatsoever in leading an independent struggle. While the Maya achieve an underestimated level of sophistication as a state, it’s still not at the point where you would get, for more than a couple of years, a really joined-up independence movement spanning all races, all areas, and the entire peninsula.

Recommended, interesting and substantive throughout.  In the United States at least, Mexico remains a greatly underdiscussed nation.

An economic framework for space immigration

by  Tyler Cowen in

Large-scale, voluntary space settlement must be economically rational to be viable. Here, we deploy the Roy model, an economic model used to understand immigration, to illuminate the economic factors important for space settlement and develop qualitative understanding of robust features of space settlement that do not depend on the details of the space economy. We find that getting the cost of living in space down by approximately 2 orders of magnitude is necessary to generate a space population on the order of 1 million people and the typical net utility of immigrating will be on the order of this cost. In addition, if the space economy is driven by productive activities of space settlers and there is some correlation between Earth and space skills and income, space settlers are likely to be drawn from the upper tail of Earth income distribution. An ideal way to incentivize immigration by these high-skill, high-income individuals is to declare the space economy free of redistributive taxes. Alternatively, if space settlement is driven by an insurance policy on civilization involving monetary transfers from Earth to space settlers, the space settlers are likely to be drawn from the lower tail of Earth income distribution, and only minimal marginal income beyond the cost of living in space will be necessary to create positive net utility of immigrating for them. The usefulness of the Roy model is demonstrated by its flexibility in providing qualitative insight in these disparate situations.

That is from a new paper by Dorian S. Abbot and Anup Malani.

Rich Elliott on Cape Town (from my email)

by  Tyler Cowen in

Live in Cape Town long enough and you lose interest in the outside world. Visitors from more exciting cities start yawning at your dinner table, but I no longer care. They have no possible conception of the unbearable bliss of fine summer days when the sea is warm and the figs are ripe and you start the morning with a dive into a cool green rock pool, followed perhaps by coffee in one of those impossibly quaint cafes and a spot of light typing, if I can manage to ignore the drama outside my window – tides rising, whales blowing, birds diving, the boats coming back to Kalk Bay. The Contessa and I often walk down to meet them, come home with a fat Cape salmon or snoek. Come sundown, we set the fish to grill on an open fire, uncork a bottle of wine, and, yes, congratulate ourselves for living in the last corner of Africa that is immune to chaos and madness.