It never fails: Whenever I attend an SFL event, I walk away richer. Emotionally, psychologically, and intellectually, there’s almost nothing that leaves me more fulfilled than these events do. Here’s my latest What I Learned column, from the 2025 and third annual Ukrainian Renaissance. And here are my previous columns from LibertyCon Europe 2024; from the Prometheus Fellowship Summit in Nairobi; and from LibertyCon International 2025.
I learned that an event space for hundreds of people can include a bomb shelter … and one with an artful roof, no less! (See cover photo.)
l learned that while global GDP is $100 trillion, only about $67 trillion of that comes from tangible assets. The rest comes from services, and governments tend to have a hard time calculating and understanding these kinds of intangible assets. (This, of course, is only one of the many things governments have a hard time with.)
I learned how Europeans play beer pong: with mandatory bouncing.
I learned how it feels to be woken up in the middle of the night by a roommate saying, “We have to go to the bomb shelter,” and shortly thereafter I learned how it feels to ignore that warning, and then a little after that, I learned how it feels to reawaken to an imagined, dream-state bomb blast.
I learned where Ludwig von Mises was born: Akademika Hnatyuka St, 13 in Lviv, and that there’s a plaque there (see photo above).
I learned that once upon a time, Albanians avoided taxes on Christians by “converting to Islam,” then continuing to drink alcohol and eat pork and practice Christianity like always. I learned that the Fraser Institute’s Human Freedom Index is generally a solid rule of thumb, but that it’s not hard for governments to manipulate by lying about data or optimizing for certain vanity metrics at the expense of other, more important ones, in the same way the Soviet Union tried to make itself look good by winning a lot of Olympic medals.
Speaking of the (former) Soviet Union, I learned that, while almost all Ukrainians want their country to prevail in the war with Russia, some still blame the Ukrainian state for a lot of their woes.
A reliable source (a Serbian) told me that Serbians used to push buses across the border into Slovenia because there was a gas shortage, while another reliable source (a Romanian) informed me that a Romanian election was recently canceled. Not sure how I missed that story.
I did NOT learn why the hotel that hosted our Studio Liberty communication workshop provided pencils instead of pens, but I invented a reason: They surely knew that one of the foundational texts of our movement is a pencil’s memoir … right? Right!? Nor did I learn what “full-scale invasion” means, or how it’s different from a half-scale or three-quarter-scale invasion, but I sure did hear that term a lot.
After that workshop, which led into the Difficult Dialogues colloquium, I learned what a bunch of brilliant students thought about the questions “Is the EU contributing to or impeding economic liberty?” and “What policy stance should powerful and influential countries generally adopt?” Meanwhile, those students learned from ME a few different approaches toward writing and editing, some of which I hope they’ll remember.
On the topic of brilliant students, I learned how to pronounce Nino Khadeveliani’s last name and how awesome she is, just before learning that Konstantinos Militsopoulos started working out again and now feels much happier. Right after that, I learned that Aquilino Alfaro has tried and had success with the keto diet.
I learned that Ahmad Pradany was interrogated on his way into the country but not on his way out, and I learned that Clément Bonnet eats burgers and fries with vinyl gloves on, so he can just dig right in and never have to worry about napkins, and that it’s … kind of a genius strategy, I think?
On Saturday afternoon, from the voice on the air raid sirens, I learned that I should take shelter, and that “your overconfidence is your weakness.” Also on Saturday afternoon, and with much more of a chuckle, I learned that OnlyFans has the most revenue per employee of any company worldwide.
Obviously, I learned how to say thank you in Ukrainian. Less obviously, I learned that entire Georgian sentences get crammed into one word.
I learned what FBAR is and how some people are getting around it, and I learned that Lviv is the European Youth Capital but I didn’t learn what that means, exactly. It was around then that I learned Lviv is also Ukraine’s main medical and rehabilitation hub, and I guess that’s self-explanatory.
I learned how to represent the five principles of libertarianism with items you can find in any random hotel (starting with a DO NOT DISTURB sign); I learned what Bliss Brain is (sounds cool), what Cuba and Hungary have in common, and how softly Tom Palmer pronounces his R’s.
And I learned that learned that Andre Rodrigues is a basketball coach, that Štěpán Kovář walks around pro-liberty events with the coolness and confidence of a man twice his age, that there’s a sentence in the Slovakian constitution guaranteeing free healthcare to all citizens, and I learned that, although Ukrainian Renaissance won’t end the war, it DID start over a few sour ales and that it DOES give people there something to look forward to and cherish. And if giving people who need it something to look forward to and cherish isn’t pretty much the whole point of living, then I’ll never learn what is.
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