Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe
Conversations with Tyler
Conversations with Tyler
4.8 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 18 October 2023
⏱️ 60 minutes
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Summary
Jacob Mikanowski is the author of one of Tyler’s favorite books this year called Goodbye, Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land. Tyler and Jacob sat down to discuss all things Eastern Europe, including the differences between Eastern and Western European humor, whether Poles are smiling more nowadays, why the best Polish folk art is from the south, the equilibrium for Kaliningrad and the Suwałki Gap, how Romania and Bulgaria will handle depopulation, whether Moldova has an independent future, the best city to party in, why there are so few Christian-Muslim issues in Albania, a nuanced take on Orbán and Hungarian politics, why food in Poland is so good now, why Stanisław Lem hasn’t gotten more attention in the West, how Eastern Europe has changed his view of humanity, his ideal two week itinerary in the region, what he’ll do next, and more.
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Recorded September 5th, 2023.
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| 0:00.0 | Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, |
| 0:09.5 | bridging the gap between academic ideas and real world problems. |
| 0:13.6 | Learn more at mercatis.org. |
| 0:16.4 | For a full transcript of every conversation, enhanced with helpful links, visit Conversationswithtiler.com. |
| 0:26.6 | Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler. |
| 0:30.2 | I'm talking today with Jacob Mekanowski. |
| 0:33.0 | He is the author of one of my favorite books this year. |
| 0:35.8 | It is called Goodby Eastern Europe, an intimate history of a divided land. |
| 0:41.0 | He is also a well-known journalist. |
| 0:43.0 | He's published in the New York Times, Atlantic, Harper's, and many other places, |
| 0:47.2 | a historian who studied at UC Berkeley, and in general, and all around smart curious person. |
| 0:53.6 | Jacob, welcome. |
| 0:55.0 | Thanks so much for having me on. |
| 0:56.0 | It's a real pleasure. |
| 0:57.5 | If you had to generalize about the difference in senses of humor between Eastern Europe and |
| 1:02.5 | Western Europe, how would you put it? |
| 1:05.8 | The Eastern Europeans have a real sense of humor. |
| 1:08.8 | I don't know what Western European humor is, but a sense of the tragic, a sense of the absurd, |
| 1:13.3 | a sense of how those two go together. |
| 1:15.5 | I think that's a great question. |
| 1:19.4 | Finding laughter in the worst situations, finding a way to laugh at really dark things. |
| 1:25.8 | I think that's a feature of German-Jewish, your Ashkenazi humor, and I think it's found |
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