You Don’t Know What You Want (And That’s the Problem) – Unpacking René Girard with Trevor Merrill
What if most of what you want — the job, the truck, the girl, the tattoo — isn’t really yours? In this episode, Paul sits down with Trevor Merrill, scholar, novelist, and director of Imitatio, to unpack the work of French thinker René Girard — the man Peter Thiel has credited with shaping his approach to leadership. Trevor breaks down two of Girard’s biggest ideas: mimetic desire (we imitate the desires of others more than we realize) and scapegoating (how groups — from ancient tribes to Twitter mobs — offload tension onto a single target). Along the way, Paul and Trevor get practical: how to avoid office politics, how to choose good models instead of flashy ones, why freshman year roommates become rivals, and how young men can build a life around something deeper than comparative advantage. It’s a conversation for any man trying to figure out what he actually wants — and who he should be listening to.
Trevor Merrill manages Imitatio, a program devoted to advancing René Girard’s mimetic theory, and has translated and edited several of Girard’s books. He’s a novelist (Minor Indignities, 2020; The Comforts of Exile, forthcoming September 2026), a co-producer of the documentary Things Hidden: The Life and Legacy of René Girard, and has taught French language and literature at Caltech for over a decade. He is currently translating a forthcoming biography of Girard for Stanford University Press. Trevor and his wife Carolyn converted to Catholicism (2015 and 2017, respectively) and have four children.
Resources & Books Mentioned
• Deceit, Desire, and the Novel — René Girard
• Violence and the Sacred — René Girard
• Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World — René Girard
• Wanting — Luke Burgess
• Clever as Serpents — (mimetic theory applied to management/office politics)
• Finding True Happiness — Fr. Robert Spitzer
• Aristotle’s Way — Edith Hall
• Documentary: Things Hidden: The Life and Legacy of René Girard
• Trevor Merrill’s novels: Minor Indignities (2020), The Comforts of Exile (forthcoming Sept. 2026)
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