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Hello everyone. Today I'm here with Matt Yaglaseus. Matt needs no introduction,

but I should tell you all he has a new and excellent book out called One Billion Americans,

the Case for Thinking Bigger. Matt, welcome.

And to be here, how's it going?

Good. Now I take it as a common theme in your work that you believe in increasing returns to

scale, namely that the gains from interacting with other people typically outweigh the congestion

costs of having them around. And that's certainly consistent with your earlier book,

The Rent is 2 Dam High, right?

Yes, absolutely.

Now what views do you have that are inconsistent with the strong belief in increasing returns to scale?

It's a little bit attention with my personal preferences. People will sometimes say to me,

you know, well, it's easy for you to say this stuff. You like living this big city, you know,

bubble, blah. But I happen to have grown up in Manhattan, you know, the densest place in the

United States by far. I don't like it there that much. I've moved to smaller scale place. I like it

better. Anytime I visit a small town, I kind of think, I kind of like this. You know, I'm not,

...