Conversations with Tyler

By Mercatus Center at George Mason University

What's Conversations with Tyler about?

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.

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Conversations with Tyler episodes:

04.17.2024
Peter Thiel on Political Theology
In this conversation recorded live in Miami, Tyler and Peter Thiel dive deep into the complexities of political theology, including why it’s a concept we still need today, why Peter’s against Calvinism (and rationalism), whether the Old Testament should lead...
04.03.2024
Jonathan Haidt on Adjusting to Smartphones and Social Media
In The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt explores the simultaneous rise in teen mental illness across various countries, attributing it to a seismic shift from a "play-based childhood" to a "phone-based childhood" around the early 2010s. He argues that the...
03.27.2024
Fareed Zakaria on the Age of Revolutions, the Power of Ideas, and the Rewards of Intellectual Curiosity
Those who know Fareed Zakaria through his weekly column or CNN show may be surprised to learn he considers books the important way he can put new ideas in the world. But Fareed's original aspiration was to be an academic,...
03.20.2024
Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America
Marilynne Robinson is one of America's best and best-known novelists and essayists, whose award-winning works like Housekeeping and Gilead explore themes of faith, grace, and the intricacies of human nature. Beyond her writing, Robinson's 25-year tenure at the famed...
03.13.2024
Marc Andreessen on AI and Dynamism
In this interview, recorded at a16z’s 2024 American Dynamism Summit, Tyler and Marc Andreessen engage in a rapid-fire dialogue about the future of AI, including the biggest change we’ll see in the next five years, who will gain and lose...
03.06.2024
Marc Rowan on Financial Market Evolution and University Governance
Marc Rowan, co-founder and CEO of Apollo Global Management, joined Tyler to discuss why rising interest rates won't hurt Apollo's profitability, why liabilities have traditionally been the weak spot in insurance, why the concept of liquidity needs a rethink,...
02.21.2024
Masaaki Suzuki on Interpreting Bach
A conductor, harpsichordist, and organist, Masaaki Suzuki stands as a towering figure in Baroque music, renowned for his comprehensive and top-tier recordings of Bach's works, including all of Bach's sacred and secular cantatas. Suzuki's unparalleled dedication extends beyond Bach,...
02.07.2024
Ami Vitale on Photojournalism and Wildlife Conservation
Ami Vitale is a renowned National Geographic photographer and documentarian with a deep commitment to wildlife conservation and environmental education. Her work, spanning over a hundred countries, includes spending a decade as a conflict photographer in places like Kosovo, Gaza,...
01.24.2024
Rebecca F. Kuang on National Literatures, Book Publishing, and History in Fiction
Rebecca F. Kuang just might change the way you think about fantasy and science fiction. Known for her best-selling books Babel and The Poppy War trilogy, Kuang combines a unique blend of historical richness and imaginative storytelling. At just...
01.10.2024
Patrick McKenzie on Navigating Complex Systems
Few can measure the impact of a blog post they wrote, in the millions of dollars a year, but Patrick McKenzie has the receipts. His 2012 post on salary negotiation is read hundreds of thousands of times...
12.27.2023
Conversations with Tyler 2023 Retrospective
On this special year-in-review episode, Tyler and producer Jeff Holmes look back on the past year in the show and more, including the most popular and underrated episodes, the origins of the show as an occasional event series, the most...
12.13.2023
Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food
In her third appearance on the show, Chinese food expert Fuchsia Dunlop joins Tyler and a group of special guests to celebrate the release of Invitation to a Banquet, her new book exploring the history, philosophy, and techniques of...
11.29.2023
John Gray on Pessimism, Liberalism, and Theism
John Gray is a philosopher and writer renowned for his critical examination of liberalism, atheism, and the human condition. His unique perspective is shaped over a decades-long career, during which he has authored influential books on topics ranging from political...
11.15.2023
Jennifer Burns on Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand
Jennifer Burns is a professor of history at Stanford who works at the intersection of intellectual, political, and cultural history. She’s written two biographies Tyler highly recommends: her 2009 book, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right and...
11.08.2023
Brian Koppelman on TV, Movies, and Appreciating Art
Brian Koppelman is a writer, director, and producer known for his work on films like Rounders and Solitary Man, the hit TV show Billions, and his podcast The Moment, which explores pivotal moments in creative careers. Tyler and Brian sat down...
11.02.2023
Githae Githinji on Life in Kenya
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 Githinji, a Kikuyu elder and businessman working...
11.02.2023
Harriet Karimi Muriithi on Life in Kenya
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 Muriithi. Harriet is a 22-year-old hospitality professional living...
11.01.2023
Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities
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 economies, Stephen now focuses on developing new...
10.18.2023
Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe
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 the differences between Eastern and...
10.09.2023
Re-release: Claudia Goldin on the Economics of Inequality
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 gender pay gap—and how do you...
10.04.2023
Ada Palmer on Viking Metaphysics, Contingent Moments, and Censorship
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 series, among many other things....
09.20.2023
Lazarus Lake on Endurance, Uncertainty, and Reaching One’s Potential
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 only 17 people have ever finished in...
09.06.2023
Jerusalem Demsas on The Dispossessed, Gulliver's Travels, and Of Boys and Men
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 Richard V. Reeves....
08.30.2023
Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game
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 for 37...
08.23.2023
Celebrating Marginal Revolution's 20th Anniversary
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 goal, and within a decade had become...
08.09.2023
Paul Graham on Ambition, Art, and Evaluating Talent
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 have gotten rarer, whether he...
07.26.2023
Noam Dworman on Stand-Up Comedy and Staying Open-Minded
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 YouTube and TikTok, the transformation of...
07.12.2023
David Bentley Hart on Reason, Faith, and Diversity in Religious Thought
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 volumes of fiction. In this conversation, Tyler...
06.28.2023
Reid Hoffman on the Possibilities of AI
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 the media ecosystem and the communication of...
06.14.2023
Noam Chomsky on Language, Left Libertarianism, and Progress
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, whether he’s optimistic about the...
06.07.2023
Peter Singer on Utilitarianism, Influence, and Controversial Ideas
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. Peter joined Tyler...
05.31.2023
Seth Godin on Marketing, Meaning, and the Bibs We Wear
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 outdated, the bibs persist,...
05.17.2023
Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity
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 Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over...
05.03.2023
Kevin Kelly on Advice, Travel, and Tech
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, Excellent Advice for Living...
04.19.2023
Anna Keay on Historic Architecture, Monarchy, and 17th Century Britain
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 serving as a prolific author...
04.05.2023
Jessica Wade on Chiral Materials, Open Knowledge, and Representation in STEM
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 entries about underrepresented figures in science. That,...
03.29.2023
Jonathan GPT Swift on Jonathan Swift
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 to the Tories, and his opposition...
03.22.2023
Tom Holland on History, Christianity, and the Value of the Countryside
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 for Western liberalism, the political differences...
03.08.2023
Yasheng Huang on the Development of the Chinese State
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 EAST, which argues that Keju—China’s...
02.22.2023
Brad DeLong on Intellectual and Technical Progress
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 years in the making. Tyler...
02.08.2023
Glenn Loury on the Cover Story and the Real Story
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 in the US, the seeming worsening mental...
01.25.2023
Paul Salopek on Walking the World
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 of Eden...
01.18.2023
Rick Rubin on Listening, Taste, and the Act of Noticing
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. He joined Tyler...
01.11.2023
Katherine Rundell on the Art of Words
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 morning with a cartwheel and is currently learning to...
12.28.2022
Conversations with Tyler 2022 Retrospective
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 Sam Bankman-Fried...
12.14.2022
John Adams on Composing and Creative Freedom
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 contemporary classical music is...
11.30.2022
Jeremy Grantham on Investing in Green Tech
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 by our dependence on fossil fuels...
11.16.2022
Ken Burns on the Complications of History
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 Photographic History, his goal is to...
11.02.2022
Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody
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 The Mare, Veronica, and...
10.19.2022
Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution
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...

What's Conversations with Tyler about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Conversations with Tyler episodes:

Peter Thiel on Political Theology

Jonathan Haidt on Adjusting to Smartphones and Social Media

Fareed Zakaria on the Age of Revolutions, the Power of Ideas, and the Rewards of Intellectual Curiosity

Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Interpretation, Calvinist Thought, and Religion in America

Marc Andreessen on AI and Dynamism

Marc Rowan on Financial Market Evolution and University Governance

Masaaki Suzuki on Interpreting Bach

Ami Vitale on Photojournalism and Wildlife Conservation

Rebecca F. Kuang on National Literatures, Book Publishing, and History in Fiction

Patrick McKenzie on Navigating Complex Systems

Conversations with Tyler 2023 Retrospective

Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food

John Gray on Pessimism, Liberalism, and Theism

Jennifer Burns on Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand

Brian Koppelman on TV, Movies, and Appreciating Art

Githae Githinji on Life in Kenya

Harriet Karimi Muriithi on Life in Kenya

Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities

Jacob Mikanowski on Eastern Europe

Re-release: Claudia Goldin on the Economics of Inequality

Ada Palmer on Viking Metaphysics, Contingent Moments, and Censorship

Lazarus Lake on Endurance, Uncertainty, and Reaching One’s Potential

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

Vishy Anand on Staying in the Game

Celebrating Marginal Revolution's 20th Anniversary

Paul Graham on Ambition, Art, and Evaluating Talent

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

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

Reid Hoffman on the Possibilities of AI

Noam Chomsky on Language, Left Libertarianism, and Progress

Peter Singer on Utilitarianism, Influence, and Controversial Ideas

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

Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity

Kevin Kelly on Advice, Travel, and Tech

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

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

Jonathan GPT Swift on Jonathan Swift

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

Yasheng Huang on the Development of the Chinese State

Brad DeLong on Intellectual and Technical Progress

Glenn Loury on the Cover Story and the Real Story

Paul Salopek on Walking the World

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

Katherine Rundell on the Art of Words

Conversations with Tyler 2022 Retrospective

John Adams on Composing and Creative Freedom

Jeremy Grantham on Investing in Green Tech

Ken Burns on the Complications of History

Mary Gaitskill on Subjects That Are Vexing Everybody

Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution

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