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EconTalk · Russ Roberts

Conversation, Interintellect, and Arcadia (with Anna Gat)

January 5, 2026·1 hr 22 min·5 clips
Anna Gatt explains why face-to-face conversations can feel like a fight, based on our animal instincts.
The center is conversation. Russ Roberts introduces Anna Gatt as founder and CEO of InterIntellect, a politically and intellectually open platform for people who want to think in public without needing permission first. Hosting matters, but it should not get heavy. Gatt pushes against the idea that public thought belongs only to professors, famous intellectuals, or people already stamped as serious. Theater gets the same treatment. Reading a role can be something anyone tries, or a break from another career. Arcadia carries much of the feeling here. Gatt talks about returning to the play for a second time, with one earlier reader taking a different role. Roberts meets that enthusiasm with his own memories. He has seen the play three times, remembers one ending, and even recalls the artwork on his daughter's copy. The play keeps opening new doors: science, historical truth, research, discovery, language, and playfulness all come up. Gatt says it is easy for lay audiences, but not because it is thin. It is generous to people willing to think with it. The ending turns practical and a little grave. Coordination is not the same as people meeting each other in thought. AI has limits here. It will not raise a barn, raise children, or carry the conversation that lets two people understand themselves differently. The final note is not quite nostalgia. It is a calm claim that being together still does something technology cannot do.

As heard by us

A measured conversation about public hosting, ideas, and AI's limits.

EconTalk uses its conversation with Anna Gatt to examine InterIntellect as a place for open discussion about ideas and politics. Gatt makes the strongest case for why hosting should not be limited to professors and famous intellectuals, and that argument gives the piece its main…

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Why you'd press play

For a slow, serious conversation about why open-ended talk still matters.

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