Joanne Paul is a historian at the University of Sussex, author, and a go-to Tudor expert on YouTube. She tells Tyler she's drawn to the 16th century because it sits between the medieval and the modern, and because its paths not taken are a way of asking whether our own world had to turn out this way. Her biography Thomas More: A Life takes its subject in that spirit, refusing to reduce More to either martyr or monster.
Tyler and Joanne discuss how More influenced Erasmus, what to make of Utopia, why fear drove More's persecution of heretics, how Holbein's portraits of More and Cromwell differ, what movie depictions get wrong about More, how his execution was viewed at the time, how the Tudor period paved the way for Shakespeare and the scientific revolution, the surprising social mobility of the period, how the City of London governed itself and where that clashed with the Crown, Joanne's upbringing in Canada and what drew her to English history, what she thinks sits beneath a lot of Britain's current stagnation, the subject of her next book, and much more.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel.
Recorded February 19th, 2026.
This episode was made possible through the support of the John Templeton Foundation.
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Timestamps:
00:00:00 - Intro
00:03:42 - More's Utopia
00:10:50 - Whether More Should be Admired
00:13:39 - Play and Movie Adaptations of More
00:19:25 - English Catholicism as the Reformation Approaches
00:22:29 - Shakespeare and the Growth of Education
00:26:08 - The Quality of Tudor Art
00:27:24 - Tolerance and Social Mobility in 16th Century England
00:32:49 - London's Governance
00:34:23 - Canada
00:38:12 - Choosing English History to Study
00:41:23 - Touring and Living in England
00:43:06 - Religion, Politics, and Economics in the UK
00:49:32 - Outro