Conversations with Tyler

Latest Episodes:

Mary Roach on Disgust, Death, and Danger (Live at Mason) Oct 18, 2017

Show notes

Legal writing was never Mary Roach's thing. She describes that short-lived stint as an inscrutable "bringing forth of multisyllabic words." Instead, she's forged a career by letting curiosity lead the way. The result has been a series of successful books — Grunt, Gulp, Spook, Stiff, and Bonk among them— that all reveal a specific sense of nonsensibility (and love for monosyllabic titles).

She joins Tyler Cowen for a conversation covering the full range of her curiosity, including fear, acclimating to grossness, chatting with the dead, freezing one's head, why bedpans can kill you, sex robots, Freud, thinking like an astronaut, the proper way to eat a fry, and why there's a Medicare reimbursement code for maggots.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded September 27th, 2017 Other ways to connect

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Larry Summers on Macroeconomics, Mentorship, and Avoiding Complacency (Live) Sep 20, 2017

Show notes

The economist, President Emeritus at Harvard University, and former Treasury Secretary joins Tyler to discuss innovation in higher education, Herman Melville, the Fed, Mexico, Russia, China, the Larry Summers production function, philanthropy and Larry's table tennis adventure in the summer Jewish Olympics.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded September 6th, 2017 Other ways to connect

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Dave Barry on Humor, Writing, and Life as a Florida Man Aug 16, 2017

Show notes

Though most know him first as a humor columnist, Dave Barry's career has spanned many forms of media, including books, movies, TV, and music. Driving this relentless output, says Barry, is the constant worry he'll find himself stuck in a rut — or worse — no longer funny. And do we even need professional comedians in an age where so many funny amateurs are readily available online?

Tyler and Dave discuss all these topics and more, including the weirdness of Peter Pan, what makes Florida special, how it felt to teach Roger McQuinn a lick on the guitar, and why business writing is so terrible.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

Recorded April 21st, 2017 Other ways to connect

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Dave Rubin on Digital Media, Crowdfunding, and Comedy (Live) Aug 02, 2017

Show notes

Today many YouTube channels have more influence than traditional TV shows. This fact is not lost on Dave Rubin, who started his talk show career in traditional media, but soon decided to strike out on his own. He now hosts The Rubin Report, which has half a million subscribers on YouTube and is financially backed by its fans on Patreon.

But the most important indicator of influence? All but one of Tyler's law and literature class had heard of Dave before this taping.

Recorded live at an event a few months ago, Dave and Tyler's conversation covers all this and more, including what Dave learned from his year abroad in Israel and his pick for the most underrated Star Wars movie.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

Recorded April 25th, 2017 Other ways to connect

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Atul Gawande on Priorities, Big and Small Jul 19, 2017

Show notes

The surgeon, researcher, and celebrated writer joined Tyler for a conversation on why Watson will never diagnose your illness, what George Church's narcolepsy teaches us about CRISPR, what's missing in medical education, Michael Crichton's cultural influence, Knausgård versus Ferrante, indie music, and the thing that makes Gawande "bawl like a baby."

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

Recorded June 12th, 2017 Other ways to connect

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Ben Sasse on the Space between Nebraska and Neverland (Live at Mason) Jun 28, 2017

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The US senator and former college president joined Tyler for a conversation on adolescence, adulthood, driving for Uber, loving Luther, hate-reading Rousseau, the decline of small towns, backpacking across Europe, America's peculiar fondness for age-segregation, and why his latest book contains so little sex.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded June 14th, 2017

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Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) Jun 21, 2017

Show notes

Edward Luce has a new book out about the rising crisis in Western liberalism, so naturally Tyler's first question to him dealt with James II and William of Orange. #gloriousrevolution

In this bonus audio recorded at a Mercatus event last week, Tyler and Edward discuss the ideas in his book and more, including future paths of liberalism, whether the current populism is an Anglo-American phenomenon or not, Modi's India, whether Kubrick, Hitchcock, and John Lennon are overrated or underrated, and what it's like to write speeches for Larry Summers.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

Recorded June 13th, 2017 Other ways to connect

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Jill Lepore on Traveling through Time Jun 14, 2017

Show notes

Is time like a line, a stretched out accordion, buried silos, or a flat circle? We concoct many ways to think about the relationship between the present and the past, but according to Jill Lepore one constant endures: "When you're writing history, you're always using your imagination."

The historian and New Yorker writer joins Tyler for a conversation on the Tea Party, Mary Pickford, Dickens in America, growing up watching TV (the horror), Steve Bannon's 19th century visage, the importance of friendship, the subversiveness of Stuart Little, and much more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

Recorded April 8th, 2017 Other ways to connect

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Tyler Cowen and Steve Davies talk Theresa May, Brexit, and Europe (Live) Jun 07, 2017

Show notes

The UK is holding a big election on June 8, so today we're bringing you some bonus audio on that topic featuring Tyler and Steve Davies of the London-based Institute of Economic Affairs.

They talk about how the general election could shape the terms of Brexit, how much further the EU and even the UK will splinter, the prospects for the European left-wing, and the populism underneath it all.

Note: this was recorded at event in late April shortly after May called for the snap election in June. Got it?

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

Recorded April 22nd, 2017 Other ways to connect

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Raj Chetty on Teachers, Social Mobility, and How to Find Answers to Big Questions May 24, 2017

Show notes

A high school teacher once told Raj Chetty he'd some day serve on the Federal Reserve Board. At the the time Raj thought the comment was silly, since he was busy working in the laboratory on staining techniques for electron microscopy and was set to become a biomedical scientist. About a decade later, however, and Chetty would become one of the youngest tenured economics professors at Harvard and would soon win both a John Bates Clark medal and a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship. Now at Stanford, he's one of the most-cited economists in the world.

Raj's conversation with Tyler spans that well-cited body of work and more, including social mobility, the value-add of kindergarten teachers, why corporations pay dividends, his love of Piano Guys, the most underrated US state, and why okra may have been the secret of his success.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

Recorded March 25th, 2017 Other ways to connect

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