There's gift I've ever received has to be a bike when I was younger, a pedal bike.

It was a sort of slick little road bike and I remember it was all like it was so it was all wrapped up

but it was so obvious what it was obviously because nothing shaped like a bike and had a little ribbon on it

and I was so guest. For that was a life changer and I'm still sort of big on cycling around my area now

so for that one change me a little.

Join in every sip with red carps now back at Starbucks.

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Hello and welcome to another episode of the weeds. I'm your host Dylan Matthews and instead of our usual Tuesday panel show

we're going to be doing a very special interview episode today with Chris Blatman who is a professor at the University of Chicago's

Harris School of Public Policy. Welcome Chris. Thanks for having me.

So Chris studies war and violence and he's written some of my favorite papers and recent sort of economics and political science

especially about sort of developing countries and problems related to war and violence in that context.

He also just released a book called Why We Fight that attempts to summarize what he's learned for lay audiences.

I just read it and it's it's really fantastic. I really recommend it to anyone who wants to think more systematically and seriously about conflict.

And since part of the book is about credibly signaling things I will say that I don't always say this when I do interviews with book authors.

So today we're going to talk a little bit about the book and about how Chris is broad framework for thinking about violence and what we can do to prevent violence.

So Chris I wanted to start with sort of organizing philosophy of the book. You start from a standpoint that is might be kind of surprising for a book about war,

which is that war usually is a bad idea. Usually isn't anybody's best interest. Most conflicts are resolved piece of the way.

And you explain sort of that organizing framework and and why you think that's important just as a baseline.

...