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Conversations with Tyler

Mercatus Center at George Mason University

300 episodes

Tyler Cowen engages today's deepest thinkers in wide-ranging explorations of their work, the world, and everything in between. New conversations every other Wednesday. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Episodes page 3 of 6

  1. Githae Githinji on Life in Kenya

    · 45 min · Episode 195 · Bonus

    As a follow-up to the episode featuring Stephen Jennings, we're releasing two bonus conversations showing the daily life, culture, and politics of Nairobi and Kenya at large. This second installment features Githae…

  2. Harriet Karimi Muriithi on Life in Kenya

    · 43 min · Episode 194

    As a follow-up to the episode featuring Stephen Jennings, we're releasing two bonus conversations showing the daily life, culture, and politics of Nairobi and Kenya at large. This first installment features Harriet…

  3. Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities

    · 54 min · Episode 193

    Stephen and Tyler first met over thirty years ago while working on economic reforms in New Zealand. With a distinguished career that transitioned from the New Zealand Treasury to significant ventures in emerging…

  4. Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe

    · 1 h 00 min · Episode 192

    Jacob Mikanowski is the author of one of Tyler's favorite books this year called Goodbye, Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land. Tyler and Jacob sat down to discuss all things Eastern Europe, including…

  5. Re-release: Claudia Goldin on the Economics of Inequality

    · 50 min · Episode 133 · Bonus

    Harvard professor Claudia Goldin has made a name for herself tackling difficult questions. What was the full economic cost of the American Civil War? Does education increase or lessen income inequality? What causes the…

  6. Ada Palmer on Viking Metaphysics, Contingent Moments, and Censorship

    · 1 h 05 min · Episode 191

    Ada Palmer is a Renaissance historian at the University of Chicago who studies radical free thought and censorship, composes music, consults on anime and manga, and is the author of the acclaimed Terra Ignota sci-fi…

  7. Lazarus Lake on Endurance, Uncertainty, and Reaching One's Potential

    · 52 min · Episode 190

    Lazarus Lake is a renowned ultramarathon runner and designer. His most famous creation (along with his friend Raw Dog) is the Barkley Marathons, an absurdly difficult 100-mile race through the Tennessee wilderness that…

  8. Jerusalem Demsas on The Dispossessed, Gulliver's Travels, and Of Boys and Men

    · 1 h 03 min · Episode 189

    In this special episode, Tyler sat down with Jerusalem Demsas, staff writer at The Atlantic, to discuss three books: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, and Of Boys and Men by…

  9. Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game

    · 55 min · Episode 188

    A five-time World Chess Champion, Vishy became India's first grandmaster at age 18, spurring a chess revolution in the country. Now 53, he is still a world top ten player and has been India's number one ranked player…

  10. Celebrating Marginal Revolution's 20th Anniversary

    · 59 min · Episode 187

    When Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen launched Marginal Revolution in August of 2003, they saw attracting a few thousand academic-minded readers as a runaway success. To their astonishment, the blog soon eclipsed that…

  11. Paul Graham on Ambition, Art, and Evaluating Talent

    · 55 min · Episode 186

    Tyler and Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham sat down at his home in the English countryside to discuss what areas of talent judgment his co-founder and wife Jessica Livingston is better at, whether young founders…

  12. Noam Dworman on Stand-Up Comedy and Staying Open-Minded

    · 59 min · Episode 185

    Tyler sat down at Comedy Cellar with owner Noam Dworman to talk about the ever-changing stand-up comedy scene, including the perfect room temperature for stand-up, whether comedy can still shock us, the effect on…

  13. David Bentley Hart on Reason, Faith, and Diversity in Religious Thought

    · 56 min · Episode 184

    David Bentley Hart is an American writer, philosopher, religious scholar, critic, and theologian who has authored over 1,000 essays and 19 books, including a very well-known translation of the New Testament and several…

  14. Reid Hoffman on the Possibilities of AI

    · 1 h 02 min · Episode 183

    In his second appearance, Reid Hoffman joined Tyler to talk everything AI: the optimal liability regime for LLMs, whether there'll be autonomous money-making bots, which agency should regulate AI, how AI will affect…

  15. Noam Chomsky on Language, Left Libertarianism, and Progress

    · 51 min · Episode 182

    Noam Chomsky joins Tyler to discuss why Noam and Wilhelm von Humboldt have similar views on language and liberty, good and bad evolutionary approaches to language, what he thinks Stephen Wolfram gets wrong about LLMs,…

  16. Peter Singer on Utilitarianism, Influence, and Controversial Ideas

    · 52 min · Episode 181

    Peter Singer is one of the world's most influential living philosophers, whose ideas have motivated millions of people to change how they eat, how they give, and how they interact with each other and the natural world.…

  17. Seth Godin on Marketing, Meaning, and the Bibs We Wear

    · 55 min · Episode 180

    On good days, Seth Godin thinks about all the progress we're making on climate change. On bad days, he thinks about the problem of racing bibs. Though pieces of paper safety-pinned to runners' chests seem obviously…

  18. Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity

    · 53 min · Episode 179

    What's more intense than leading the IMF during a financial crisis? For Simon Johnson, it was co-authoring a book with fellow economist (and past guest) Daron Acemoglu. Written in six months, their book Power and…

  19. Kevin Kelly on Advice, Travel, and Tech

    · 52 min · Episode 178

    As the founding executive editor of Wired magazine and the author of several acclaimed books on technology and culture, Kevin Kelly has long been known for his visionary ideas and insights. But his latest work,…

  20. Anna Keay on Historic Architecture, Monarchy, and 17th Century Britain

    · 50 min · Episode 177

    Anna Keay is a historian who specializes in the cultural heritage of Great Britain. As the director of the Landmark Trust, she has overseen the restoration of numerous historical buildings and monuments, while also…

  21. Jessica Wade on Chiral Materials, Open Knowledge, and Representation in STEM

    · 56 min · Episode 176

    Jessica Wade is a physicist at Imperial College London who, while spending her day working on special carbon-based materials that can be used as semiconductors, has spent her nights writing nearly 2,000 Wikipedia…

  22. Jonathan GPT Swift on Jonathan Swift

    · 42 min · Episode 175

    In this conversation, Tyler uses ChatGPT to interview Jonathan Swift about his views on religion, politics, economics, and literature. GPT Swift discusses his support for the Church of Ireland, his shift from the Whigs…

  23. Tom Holland on History, Christianity, and the Value of the Countryside

    · 53 min · Episode 174

    Historian Tom Holland joined Tyler to discuss in what ways his Christianity is influenced by Lord Byron, how the Book of Revelation precipitated a revolutionary tradition, which book of the Bible is most foundational…

  24. Yasheng Huang on the Development of the Chinese State

    · 54 min · Episode 173

    Yasheng Huang has written two of Tyler's favorite books on China: Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics, which contrasts an entrepreneurial rural China and a state-controlled urban China, and The Rise and Fall of the…

  25. Brad DeLong on Intellectual and Technical Progress

    · 47 min · Episode 172

    Brad DeLong, professor of economics at UC Berkley, OG econ blogger, and Tyler's Harvard classmate, joins the show to discuss Slouching Towards Utopia, an economic history of the 20th century that's been nearly thirty…

  26. Glenn Loury on the Cover Story and the Real Story

    · 48 min · Episode 171

    Economist and public intellectual Glenn Loury joined Tyler to discuss the soundtrack of Glenn's life, Glenn's early career in theoretical economics, his favorite Thomas Schelling story, the best place to raise a family…

  27. Paul Salopek on Walking the World

    · 46 min · Episode 170

    Paul Salopek is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and National Geographic fellow who, at the age of 50, set out on foot to retrace the steps of the first human migrations out of Africa. The project, dubbed the "Out…

  28. Rick Rubin on Listening, Taste, and the Act of Noticing

    · 55 min · Episode 169 · Bonus

    Rick Rubin has been behind some of the most iconic and successful albums in music history, and his unique approach to production and artist development has made him one of the most respected figures in the industry.…

  29. Katherine Rundell on the Art of Words

    · 54 min · Episode 168

    Katherine Rundell is, in a word, enthusiastic. She's enthusiastic about John Donne. She's enthusiastic about walking along rooftops. She's enthusiastic about words, and stories, and food. She has often started her…

  30. Conversations with Tyler 2022 Retrospective

    · 53 min · Episode 167

    On this special year-in-review episode, Tyler and producer Jeff Holmes talk about the past year on the show, including which guests he'd like to have on in 2023, what stands out to him now about his conversation with…

  31. John Adams on Composing and Creative Freedom

    · 46 min · Episode 166

    Is classical music dying? For John Adams the answer is an emphatic no. Considered by Tyler to be America's greatest living composer, he may well be one of the people responsible for keeping it alive. John's…

  32. Jeremy Grantham on Investing in Green Tech

    · 40 min · Episode 165

    When it comes to fighting climate change Jeremy Grantham is optimistic about technology – but worried about timing. Known widely for his acuity in identifying bubbles, the British investor contends that the one created…

  33. Ken Burns on the Complications of History

    · 53 min · Episode 164

    When it comes to history—particularly American history—nothing is ever definitive, says documentarian Ken Burns. Much of his work has focused on capturing that history in film, but in his new book, Our America: A…

  34. Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody

    · 46 min · Episode 163

    Mary Gaitskill's knack for writing about the social and physical world with unapologetic clarity has led to her style being described both as "cold and brutal" and "tender and compassionate." Tyler considers her works…

  35. Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution

    · 53 min · Episode 162

    Reza Aslan doesn't mind being called a pantheist. In his own "roundabout spiritual journey" and study of the world's religions, which has led him to write books on Islam, the life of Jesus Christ, God, and most…

  36. Walter Russell Mead on the Past and Future of American Foreign Policy

    · 52 min · Episode 161

    A leading expert in foreign policy, Walter Russell Mead believes his lack of a PhD—and interest in actually going places—has helped him avoid academic silos and institutional groupthink that's rendered the field…

  37. Byron Auguste On Rewiring the U.S. Labor Market

    · 54 min · Episode 160

    When looking at the U.S. labor market, Byron Auguste sees too many job seekers screened out based on shallow signals like a bachelor's degree, and too few 'screened in' by directly demonstrating the skills needed for…

  38. Vaughn Smith on Life as a Hyperpolyglot

    · 50 min · Episode 159

    Vaughn Smith is fluent in eight languages but with a beginner's grasp of at least thirty-six (and counting). His talents are so remarkable that the Washington Post did a feature story on him and neuroscientists at MIT…

  39. Shruti Rajagopalan talks to Daniel Gross and Tyler about Identifying and Predicting Talent

    · 1 h 08 min · Episode 158

    How can one identify and predict talent? On a search to answer this question and others like it, Tyler Cowen joined venture capitalist and entrepreneur Daniel Gross to explore the art and science of finding talent in…

  40. Cynthia L. Haven on René Girard, Czeslaw Milosz, and Joseph Brodsky

    · 45 min · Episode 157

    As a little girl, Cynthia Haven loved reading classic works of literature. At sixteen, she began her career as a reporter. And years later, those two interests converged as they led her to interview and write books…

  41. William MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Moral Progress, and Cultural Innovation

    · 51 min · Episode 156

    When Tyler is reviewing grants for Emergent Ventures, he is struck by how the ideas of effective altruism have so clearly influenced many of the smartest applicants, particularly the younger ones. And William…

  42. Leopoldo López on Activism Under Autocratic Regimes

    · 49 min · Episode 155

    As an inquisitive reader, books were a cherished commodity for Leopoldo López when he was a political prisoner in his home country of Venezuela. His prison guards eventually observed the strength and focus López gained…

  43. Matthew Ball on the Metaverse and Gaming

    · 56 min · Episode 154

    Fighting fires meant a lot of downtime for Matthew Ball. Stationed at a forward operating base in the woods for two weeks at a time, he spent long hours amongst fellow firefighters with whom he shared little in common…

  44. Barkha Dutt on the Nuances of Indian Life

    · 52 min · Episode 153

    Growing up, Barkha Dutt was totally rootless. She spoke English, not her parent's Punjabi. She devoured Enid Blyton and studied English literature during college, but read few Indian novelists. She didn't even know her…

  45. Marc Andreessen on Learning to Love the Humanities

    · 51 min · Episode 152

    Like the frontier characters from Deadwood, his favorite TV show, Marc Andreessen has discovered that the real challenge to building in new territory is not in the practicalities of learning a trade, but in developing…

  46. Jamal Greene on Reconceiving Rights

    · 48 min · Episode 151

    What does it mean to uphold disability rights, or the right to economic liberty? What framework should be used when rights appear to conflict? Constitutional law expert Jamal Greene contends that the way Americans view…

  47. Tyler and Daniel Gross Talk Talent

    · 49 min · Episode 150

    If Tyler and Daniel's latest book can be boiled down into a single message, it would be that the world is currently failing at identifying talent, and that getting better at it would have enormous benefits for…

  48. Chris Blattman on War and Centralized Power

    · 48 min · Episode 149

    What causes war? Many scholars have spent their careers attempting to study the psychology of leaders to understand what incentivizes them to undertake the human and financial costs of conflict, but economist and…

  49. Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality

    · 53 min · Episode 148

    When it comes to the enormous reduction of income inequality during the 20th century, Thomas Piketty sees politics everywhere. In his new book, A Brief History of Equality, he argues the rising equality during the 19th…

  50. Roy Foster on Ireland's Many Unmade Futures

    · 59 min · Episode 147

    "The best history," says Roy Foster, "is written when we realize that people acted in expectation of a future that was never going to happen." While this is the case for many countries, it's especially true of…

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