Conversations with Tyler

By Mercatus Center at George Mason University

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 ... more

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The podcast currently has 303 episodes available.

Best of Conversations with Tyler

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Number 1: Luke Burgis on Mimetic Desire, Catholicism, and the Age of Social Contagion
Luke Burgis left Wall Street after two years, founded a few successful companies in his twenties, then walked away to spend three years in a Roman seminary on the path to the priesthood. He now runs the Cluny Institute and teaches at Catholic University. His book Wanting made René Girard legible to a general audience; the new one, The One and the Ninety-Nine, takes mimetic theory into the dynamics of self and crowd in an age of social contagion. He joined Tyler to discuss whether the age of pessimism is ending, why the Anglo world in particular seems so unhappy, whether Dostoevsky or Thomas Mann better diagnoses modernity, the kind of reader his own book would ruin, why he thinks AI will make social contagion weaker, what put him off consulting with Anthropic on Claude's constitution, what effective altruism misses, why men and women are drifting apart, what he'd fund in every American city, the case for reintroducing friction, whether a Gnostic reading of the lost sheep explains our moment, what Rod Dreher gets right about withdrawal, why Genoa is Italy's most underrated city, what confession times reveal about a church, why Italians seem tired of their Catholicism, why he didn't become a priest, where he differs from Ross Douthat, why exorcists appear to be on the rise, the sudden mimetic antisemitism on the right, the book his 23-year-old self would have hated, what he secretly admires about Silicon Valley, why Michigan never left him, what the original Cluny can teach a modern talent network, how he hopes to face his own death, what he'll do next, and more. Read a transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on YouTube. Recorded April 30th, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Luke on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: [email protected] Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:05:08 - On overapplying mimetic theory 00:06:35 - On AI and social contagion 00:07:53 - On declining Anthropic's invitation 00:09:36 - On the widening gap between men and women 00:12:25 - On anti-mimetic postures, jazz, and porn 00:16:46 - On Genoa, Naples, and societal escape fantasies 00:18:31 - On Italian Catholicism 00:26:59 - On not becoming a priest 00:29:13 - On beauty, enchantment, and the Gnostic sheep 00:40:22 - On what Wall Street taught him 00:43:50 - On Michigan 00:45:12 - On the Cluny Institute 00:48:41 - On dealing with death and what else is next 00:51:21 - Outro Image credit: Kirth Bobb
August 19, 202653min
Number 2: Daron Acemoglu on Liberalism, Automation, and the Educated Elite
Daron Acemoglu returns for his second appearance with a new book, What Happened to Liberal Democracy?, which Tyler reads as an attempt to redefine and revitalize liberalism for our times. Where Daron's first visit was about how states and societies contend for the narrow corridor in which liberty survives, this one asks what liberals themselves got wrong, and the answer implicates the educated elite—that is to say, you. Tyler and Daron discuss what's wrong with social contract theories and Rousseau's general will, whether Acemoglu is more objectivist than Rorty, why he blames left liberalism's own establishment power for its collapse, what standard is left once you refuse to have a book of higher values, nondomination versus noninterference, who counts as working class, why automation alone will not lead to widespread prosperity, how he can call himself a free speech absolutist while wanting to regulate social media, why he worries we've given up on educating Americans, whether teachers' unions need to be reconstituted, what the life expectancy for an educated twenty year old is today, whether open-source models undercut the centralization worry, what pro-worker AI actually means, why the fertility crisis leaves him strangely close to a real business cycle position, whether AI will raise his own already prodigious paper output, why Armenia has disappointed economically, what he wants to learn next, and more. Read a transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on YouTube. Recorded July 15th, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Daron on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: [email protected] Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:08:57 - On the working class vs. the elite 00:13:16 - On automation 00:22:33 - On free speech 00:27:22 - On immigration 00:31:08 - On artificial intelligence 00:50:36 - On Armenia 00:53:22 - On what comes next 00:54:51 - Outro Image credit: Bryce Vickmark
August 12, 202656min
Number 3: Julia Ioffe on Russian Women, Missing Men, and the Roots of Autocracy
Julia Ioffe left the USSR as a child and came back as an adult journalist to find that the confident, credentialed women she remembered from her Soviet childhood had largely been supplanted by those chasing marriage and domesticity instead. That disorienting reversal is the engine of her book Motherland, a National Book Award finalist that reconstructs modern Russian history almost entirely through its women. Her account, drawn from her own family's history as well as the archives, keeps returning to one plain observation: Soviet policy pushed women into the workforce, the medical schools, and even into combat, while asking so little of men that low expectations became self-fulfilling—and Russia is still living with the results. Julia joined Tyler to discuss why so many of Russia's great constructivist painters were women, why the tsarist government established women's medical courses in 1872, changing attitudes towards abortion and birth control in the 20th century, why the Soviet regime turned prudish, how Khrushchev's plan to "replace the dead" institutionalized single motherhood, Russian superwomen, why Jewish men were a prized commodity amid rampant antisemitism, the cultural significance of flowers, why a few Russian names still dominate, why Russian women think Western feminists have their priorities backwards, how gender attitudes and autocracy feed into each other, three underrated Russian novels, what she wants to write about next, and more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on YouTube. Recorded April 7th, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Julia on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: [email protected] Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:06:38 - Bolshevik feminism 00:08:41 - Birth control, abortion, and prudery 00:14:48 - The Russian mating market 00:23:06 - Russian superwomen 00:32:02 - The importance of flowers 00:37:35 - Common Russian names 00:39:51 - Russian vs. American feminism 00:44:23 - Gender attitudes and Russian politics 00:49:54 - Russian novels 00:54:33 - Outro Photo credit: Max Avdeev
August 05, 202656min
Number 4: Toby Wilkinson on Ptolemaic Egypt and the First Great Commercial Civilization
Toby Wilkinson is one of the world's leading Egyptologists, whose books have ranged across the full sweep of pharaonic history. His latest, The Last Dynasty: Ancient Egypt from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra, covers the 300-year Ptolemaic period — stranger and more modern-feeling than the Egypt of the pyramids, built around commerce and cosmopolitanism rather than divine kingship, and home to the greatest concentration of scientific talent the ancient world ever saw. Tyler and Toby cover how Alexander took over the empire almost without a fight, why Alexandria became the Manhattan of the ancient world, whether the era was as philosophically fertile as it was scientifically, whether your ancient doctor's visit had positive expected value, what Egypt was actually exporting and selling, whether living standards rose above subsistence or stayed Malthusian, how the ethnic divide between Greek rulers and Egyptian subjects shaped society, what constrained the Ptolemaic Empire from becoming the next Rome, whether Cleopatra has been overhyped, what Julius Caesar was really thinking when he sided with her over her brother, the new frontiers in archeology, whether Herodotus can be trusted, what ancient Egypt knew about Israel and India, when Egyptian jewelry peaked and why, what triggered the sudden emergence of civilization across the ancient world, why a six-year-old Tyler knew King Tut better than Napoleon, 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 March 23rd, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: [email protected] Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:04:29 - Intellectual Activity of Alexandria 00:11:07 - The Alexandrian Economy 00:14:36 - The Ptolemaic Empire 00:21:19 - Unanswered Questions in Ptolemaic Egypt 00:23:32 - Modern Alexandria and the Future of Archaeology 00:26:37 - Other Topics in Ancient Egypt 00:42:10 - Toby's Career 00:45:26 - Outro Photo Credit: Benjamin Frei
May 27, 202646min
Number 5: Michael Moritz on Origin Stories, Exile, and Obsessive Curiosity
Michael Moritz has written books through every phase of his life: the first history of Apple and an account of Chrysler's near-death while he was a journalist at Time, a study of Alex Ferguson's Manchester United in the middle of his 38 years at Sequoia, and now Ausländer, a family memoir, after leaving the firm. Moritz calls himself a dilettante with too many interests, but listen to him on learning to paint in his 40s, or the questions he would ask a ten-year-old boy in a German village in 1890, and you may decide that unsatisfied curiosity is not a small thing to build a life on. Tyler and Michael discuss his childhood in Wales, where his love for visual arts came from, why he disappointed his Latin teacher, having Thanksgiving dinner with Philip Roth, why children don't interrogate their parents about their history, what he feels visiting Germany and why he now holds German citizenship, how a history major with no technical background talked his way into Sequoia, his unpublished Don Valentine profile, what people underrate about Steve Jobs, obsessives versus dilettantes, why capitalism was more ablaze in China than America, what funding the Booker Prize taught him about his own ignorance, how to improve San nonprofits, how an incurable cancer diagnosis changed his calendar, why Britain's stuck, what he'll learn next, and more. Read a transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on YouTube. Recorded July 21st, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: [email protected] Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:04:57 - On living with difficult art 00:09:44 - On Jewish literature 00:13:00 - On why children don't interrogate their parents 00:15:54 - On returning to Germany 00:23:37 - On stumbling into venture capital 00:28:49 - On obsessives and dilettantes 00:33:03 - On supporting the Booker Prize 00:34:17 - On improving San Francisco's nonprofits 00:37:26 - On controlling your own calendar 00:38:43 - On why Britain is stuck 00:40:06 - On what comes next 00:41:10 - Outro
September 02, 202642min