To Tim Harford, mistakes are fascinating. “We often only understand how something works when it breaks,” he says, explaining why there’s such an emphasis on errors throughout his work. They also tend to make great stories, which can stoke the curiosity necessary to change minds. A former persuasive speaking champion, he was made an Officer of the O rder of the British Empire “for services to improving economic underst a nding,” which he’s achieved through appearances on the BBC , columns for the...
Feb 12, 2020•59 min•Ep. 87
In his new book , Ezra Klein argues that polarization in America has become centered on partisan political identities, which has subsumed virtually every form of identity, be it where we live, what team we root for, the church we attend, or any other. This stacked form of polarization thus carries much more weight and is activated by a wider range of conflicts than before. But is polarization really such a pressing concern ? If it’s all merged into one form of identity politics then aren’t we ju...
Jan 29, 2020•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 86
When Reid Hoffman creates a handle for some new network or system, his usual choice is “ Quixotic .” At an early age, his love of tabletop games inspired him to think of life as a heroic journey, where people come together in order to accomplish lofty things . This framing also prompted him to consider the rules and systems that gu ide society— and how you might improve them by identifying key points of leverage. At first , he thought he’d become an academic and work with ideas as one of those A...
Jan 15, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 85
This bonus episode features audio from the Holberg Debate in Bergen, Norway between Tyler and Slavoj Žižek held on December 7, 2019. They discuss the reasons Slavoj (still) considers himself a Communist, why he calls The Handmaid’s Tale “nostalgia for the present,” what he likes about Greta Thunberg, what Marx got right about the commodification of beliefs, his concerns about ecology and surveillance in communist states like China today, the reasons academia should maintain its ‘useless characte...
Jan 08, 2020•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 84
Want to support future conversations? Visit conversationswithtyler.com/donate . Long before Abhijit Banerjee won the 2019 economics Nobel with Michael Kremer and Esther Duflo, he was a fellow graduate student at Harvard wi th Tyler. For Tyler, Abhijit is one of the brightest economic minds he’s ever met , and “a brilliant theorist who decided the future was with empirical work .” But according to Abhijit , theory a nd practice go hand in hand: the real benefit of a randomized control trial isn’t...
Dec 30, 2019•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 83
Want to support future conversations? Visit conversationswithtyler.com/donate . For this special retrospective episode , producer Jeff Holmes sat down with Tyler to discuss the past year in conversations and more, including who was most challenging guest to prep for, the most popular—and the most underrated—conversation, a test of Tyler’s knowledge called “ Name That P roducti on F unction,” listene r questions from Twitter, how Ty ler has boosted his productivity in the past year , and whether ...
Dec 23, 2019•53 min
Want to support future conversations? Visit conversationswithtyler.com/donate . Esther Duflo’s advice to students? Spend time in the field. “ It's only through this exposure that you can learn how wrong most of your intuit ions are and preconceptions are,” she explains. For Duflo, it was time spent in the Soviet Union on the brink of collapse. While there she saw how Jeff Sachs used the tools of economics to advise policymakers on matters of crucial importance. To her it seemed like the best job...
Dec 18, 2019•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 82
What determines the economic, social, and political trajectories of nations? Why were settlers in colonies like Jamestown and Australia able to escape the extractive systems desired by their British masters, while colonial subjects in Barbados and Jamaica were not? In his latest book , Daron Acemoglu elevates the power of institutions over theories centering on human capital, culture, or geography. Institutions help strike the balance of power in the constant struggle between state and society, ...
Dec 04, 2019•55 min•Ep. 81
Over the past year Mark Zuckerberg has held a series of interviews themed around technology and society. This conversation with Tyler and Patrick is the last in that series, and covers why they think the study of progress is so important, including how it could affect biomedical research, the founding of new universities and foundations, building things fast, housing and healthcare affordability, the next four years of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and more. Read a full transcript enhanced wit...
Nov 27, 2019•1 hr 8 min
How do you survive seven years in solitary confinement? The gift of literacy is what saved Shaka Senghor. Reading, journaling, academic study, and writing books was a way to structure and survive an inhumane, mentally toxic environment. And after 19 years in total behind bars, he was finally able to apply that gift and create employment for himself as a writer and organizational leader upon rejoining society. Shaka joined Tyler to discuss his book Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death, and Redemption i...
Nov 20, 2019•1 hr•Ep. 80
Three years after her first appearance, Chinese food expert Fuchsia Dunlop joins Tyler to celebrate the release of her latest cookbook and talk all things food and China. This time the conversation was held over a special homestyle meal at Mama Chang , the newest restaurant from Chef Peter and Lisa Chang. Together with their daughter Lydia Chang, Fuchsia selected a menu to share with Tyler and a group of friends from the DC food scene. Each dish inspired new avenues for discussion, including the...
Nov 13, 2019•1 hr 17 min
To Ted Gioia, music is a form of cloud storage for preserving human culture. And the real cultural conflict, he insists, is not between “high brow” and “low brow” music, but between the innovative and the formulaic. Imitation and repetition deaden musical culture—and he should know, since he listens to 3 hours of new music per day and over 1,000 newly released recordings in a year. His latest book covers the evolution of music from its origins in hunter-gatherer societies, to ancient Greece, to ...
Nov 06, 2019•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 79
The one concept most valuable for understanding the news today might be Henry Farrell’s theory of weaponized interdependence. Whether it’s China’s influence over the NBA, the US ban of Huawei, or whether social media should be regulated on a global scale, Henry Farrell has played a key role articulating how global economic networks can enable state coercion. Tyler and Henry discuss these issues and more, including what a big tech breakup would mean for security and privacy, why political economi...
Oct 23, 2019•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 78
Ben Westhoff has written some of Tyler’s favorite books on everything from dive bars to the evolution of American rap music to how fentanyl is driving the opioid epidemic. So how does he get it done? Not from the outside in, by finding exotic experiences as he originally thought. Instead he found that it comes from the inside out: eating right, exercising, getting sleep, and journaling. Do those things, Ben says, and you’ll be in a much better position to notice the good stories happening all ar...
Oct 09, 2019•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 77
Markets, Alain Bertaud likes to say, are like gravity: they exist everywhere. But while urban planners are quite good at taking gravity into account, they tend to ignore market forces entirely in their designs, resulting in city development that too often fails to address the needs of their residents. Following the release of his recent book, Order Without Design: How Markets Shape Cities , Alain joined Tyler in New York City for a discussion of the politics affecting urban centers, his advice t...
Sep 25, 2019•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 76
A former war correspondent and UN ambassador, Samantha Power has had her share of tough assignments. But writing a memoir about it all is also a daunting prospect. The format itself is a challenge: how do you convince the reader you’re worth spending time with? How do you paint a relatable portrait without oversharing and losing your dignity? For Samantha the answer was settling upon a purpose for her memoir and ruthlessly cutting out everything not in service of that. Tyler and Samantha discuss...
Sep 11, 2019•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 75
As a graduate student, Hollis Robbins helped Henry Louis Gates, Jr. unravel a mystery about the provenance of a mid-19th century book. Robbins helped date the book by discovering allusions to popular literature of that period — her focus at the time. The realization that this perspective would bring valuable insight to other 19th century African American literature prompted her to make that her specialty. Now a dean at Sonoma Sate University, Robbins joined Tyler to discuss 19th-century life and...
Aug 28, 2019•50 min•Ep. 74
What sort of country would compel you to flee it, draw you back ten years later, then force you away yet again after two decades? Masha Gessen knows the answer all too well, having dedicated their career to writing and reporting about Russian society from both within and outside their native country. A true polymath, Gessen’s wide-ranging books and articles cover mathematics, history, human rights, counterterrorism, and much more. Masha joined Tyler in New York City to answer his many questions ...
Aug 14, 2019•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 73
Born to a Ghanaian father and British mother, Kwame Anthony Appiah grew up splitting time between both countries — and lecturing in many more — before eventually settling in America, where he now teaches philosophy at New York University. This, along with a family scattered across half-a-dozen countries, establishes him as a true cosmopolitan, a label Appiah readily accepts. Yet he insists it is nonetheless possible to be a cosmopolitan patriot, rooted in a place, while having obligations and in...
Jul 31, 2019•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 72
If you want to speculate on the development of tech, no one has a better brain to pick than Neal Stephenson. Across more than a dozen books, he’s created vast story worlds driven by futuristic technologies that have both prophesied and even provoked real-world progress in crypto, social networks, and the creation of the web itself. Though Stephenson insists he’s more often wrong than right, his technical sharpness has even led to a half-joking suggestion that he might be Satoshi Nakamoto, the sh...
Jul 17, 2019•55 min•Ep. 71
Going back and forth between Canada and Japan during his childhood sparked Eric Kaufmann’s interest in the question of identity. As a foreigner in an international school, he encountered young individuals from at least 60 other countries, and this made him think more about national identity and how people affiliate and interact with one another. Now as an academic, he explores how demographic changes — most notably caused by ethnic migration and assimilation — are the key to understanding Brexit...
Jul 03, 2019•56 min•Ep. 70
Before he became the Adam Smith of Googlenomics , Hal Varian spent decades as an academic economist, writing influential papers, a popular book about the information economy, and several textbooks that are still taught today. So how has his nearly twenty years in the business world affected what he’d write and teach now? Is learning Shephard’s lemma really that important anymore? Tyler asks Hal these questions and more: why aren’t there more second-priced auctions — or prediction markets? How ha...
Jun 19, 2019•57 min•Ep. 69
What are the virtues of forgiveness? Are we subject to being manipulated by data? Why do people struggle with prayer? What really motivates us? How has the volunteer army system changed the incentives for war? These are just some of the questions that keep Russ Roberts going as he constantly analyzes the world and revisits his own biases through thirteen years of conversations on EconTalk. Russ made his way to the Mercatus studio to talk with Tyler about these ideas and more. The pair examines w...
Jun 05, 2019•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 68
Ezekiel Emanuel is a reflection of his upbringing: a doctor for a father who loved to travel, a mother interested in policy and community activism, and all the competition and friendship that comes with growing up closely with two brothers. Put those together and you wouldn’t be surprised that the result is someone who has worked at both the highest levels of, medicine, policy and academia — though the intense interest in jam might surprise you. Do we overrate the importance of doctors? What’s t...
May 22, 2019•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 67
What is Karl Ove Knausgård’s struggle, exactly? The answer is simple: achieving total freedom in his writing. “It’s a space where I can be free in every sense, where I can say whatever, go wherever I want to. And for me, literature is almost the only place you could think that that is a possibility.” Knausgård’s literary freedom paves the way for this conversation with Tyler, which starts with a discussion of mimesis and ends with an explanation of why we live in the world of Munch’s The Scream ...
May 08, 2019•1 hr•Ep. 66
Margaret Atwood defines the Canadian sense of humor as “a bit Scottish,” and in this live conversation with Tyler, she loves to let her own comedic sensibilities shine. In addition to many other thoughts about Canada — it’s big after all — she and Tyler discuss Twitter, biotechnology, Biblical history, her families of patents, poetry, literature, movies, and feminism. Is it coincidence that Atwood started The Handmaid’s Tale in West Berlin during 1984? Does she believe in ghosts? Is the Western ...
Apr 24, 2019•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 65
Ed Boyden builds the tools and technologies that help researchers think about and treat the brain, an organ we still know surprisingly little about. When it comes to how our brains make decisions, form emotions, and exhibit consciousness, there is still a lot we can learn. But just as fascinating as the tools Boyden and his team build is the way in which they build them. Boyden employs a number of methods to design more useful tools, such as thinking backwards from the problem, hiring eclectic t...
Apr 10, 2019•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 64
In a recent Twitter thread , Emily Wilson listed some of the difficulties of translating Homer into English. Among them: “There aren’t enough onomatopoeic words for very loud chaotic noises” (#2 on the list), “It’s very hard to come up with enough ways to describe intense desire to act that don’t connote modern psychology” (#5), and “There is no common English word of four syllables or fewer connoting ‘person particularly favored by Zeus due to high social status, and by the way this is a very n...
Mar 27, 2019•56 min•Ep. 63
Raghuram Rajan thinks a lot about how to empower individuals, both at the community and international level. In his new book, Rajan draws upon experience both as an academic and policymaker to break down how the three pillars of society — the state, markets, and communities — interact with each other, and argues that we’re currently balancing this complex relationship wrong. How much has the U.S. actually fixed the financial system? Does India have the best food in the world? Why does China stru...
Mar 13, 2019•56 min•Ep. 62
Founders aren’t superheroes, says Sam Altman.They may play extreme sports, respond to emails within seconds, and start billion-dollar companies, but they are rarely the product of extraordinary circumstance. In fact, they tend to be solidly upper-middle class, reasonably smart, and with loving parents. So would Sam fund Peter Parker? What about Bruce Wayne? Tyler and Sam discuss these burning questions and more, including what’s wrong with San Francisco, Napoleon’s underrated skill, nuclear ener...
Feb 27, 2019•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 61
