Luke Burgis on Mimetic Desire, Catholicism, and the Age of Social Contagion

Luke Burgis joins Tyler to discuss mimetic desire in the age of social media contagion, drawing on his books Wanting and The One and the Ninety-Nine. Their conversation ranges from why the Anglo world seems uniquely unhappy to why AI might actually weaken social contagion, and why Burgis declined to consult with Anthropic. Burgis brings a Catholic framework to bear on everything from the widening gap between men and women to the sudden rise of mimetic antisemitism on the right, offering a lens that treats desire itself as socially mediated rather than individually generated.