Throughout his career, Paul Romer has enjoyed sampling and sifting through an ever-growing body of knowledge. He sometimes jokingly refers to himself as a random idea generator, relying on others to filter out the bad ones so his contributions are good. Not a bad strategy, as it turns out, for starting a successful business and winning a Nobel Prize. Just before accepting that Prize, he joined Tyler for a conversation spanning one filtered set of those ideas, including the best policies for grow...
Dec 05, 2018•53 min•Ep 55•Transcript available on Metacast Is John Nye the finest polymath in the George Mason economics department? Raised in the Philippines and taught to be a well-rounded Catholic gentleman, John Nye learned the importance of a rigorous education from a young age. Indeed, according to Tyler he may very well be the best educated among his colleagues, having studied physics and literature as an undergraduate before earning a masters and PhD in economics. And his education continues, as hes now hard at work mastering his fourth language...
Nov 21, 2018•59 min•Ep 54•Transcript available on Metacast The son of an economist, Eric Schmidt eschewed his fathers profession, first studying architecture before settling on computer science and eventually earning a PhD. Now one of the most influential technology executives in the world, he still however credits his interest in network economies and platforms for a large part of his success. In this live event hosted by Village Global in San Francisco, Tyler questioned Schmidt about underused management strategies, what Google learned after interview...
Nov 07, 2018•55 min•Ep 53•Transcript available on Metacast Not only is Ben Thompson's Stratechery frequently mentioned on MR, but such is Tyler's fandom that the newsletter even made its way onto the reading list for one of his PhD courses. Ben's based in Taiwan, so when he recently visited DC, Tyler quickly took advantage of the chance for an in-person dialogue. In this conversation they talk about the business side of tech and more, including whether tech titans are good at PR, whether conglomerate synergies exist, Amazon's foray into health care, why...
Oct 24, 2018•1 hr•Ep 52•Transcript available on Metacast In this special episode, Rob Wiblin of 80,000 Hours has the super-sized conversation he wants to have with Tyler about Stubborn Attachments. In addition to a deep examination of the ideas in the book, the conversation ranges far and wide across Tyler's thinking, including why we won't leave the galaxy, the unresolvable clash between the claims of culture and nature, and what Tyrone would have to say about the book, and more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Recorded September ...
Oct 16, 2018•3 hr 30 min•Transcript available on Metacast After winning the Nobel, Paul Krugman found himself at the "end of ambition," with no more achievements left to unlock. That could be a depressing place, but Krugman avoids complacency by doing what he's always done: following his curiosity and working intensely at whatever grabs him most strongly. Tyler sat down with Krugman at his office in New York to discuss what's grabbing him at the moment, including antitrust, Supreme Court term limits, the best ways to fight inequality, why he's a YIMBY,...
Oct 10, 2018•53 min•Ep 51•Transcript available on Metacast Political scientist Bruno Maes has built a career out of crossing the globe teaching, advising, writing, and talking to people. His recent book, born out of a six-month journey across Eurasia, is one of Tyler's favorites. So how does it feel to face Tyler's rat-a-tat curiosity about your life's work? For Bruno, the experience was "like you are a politician under attack and your portfolio is the whole of physical and metaphysical reality." Listen to this episode to discover how well Bruno defende...
Sep 26, 2018•58 min•Ep 50•Transcript available on Metacast Michele Gelfand is professor of psychology at the University of Maryland and author of the just-released Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World. In her conversation with Tyler, Michele unpacks the concept of tight and loose cultures and more, including which variable best explains tightness, the problem with norms, whether Silicon Valley has an honor culture, the importance of theory and history in guiding research, what Donald Trump gets wrong about negotiation,...
Sep 12, 2018•56 min•Ep 49•Transcript available on Metacast Claire Lehmann is the founding editor of Quillette, an online magazine dedicated to free thought and open inquiry. Founded in 2015, the magazine has already developed a large and growing readership that values Quillette's promise to treat all ideas with respect, even those that may be politically incorrect. As an Australian, Claire tells Tyler she doesn't think she could have started the magazine in America. Even in risk-loving San Fransisco, where this conversation took place, people are too af...
Aug 29, 2018•47 min•Ep 48•Transcript available on Metacast Michael Pollan has long been fascinated by nature and the ways we connect and clash with it, with decades of writing covering food, farming, cooking, and architecture. Pollan's latest fascination? Our widespread and ancient desire to use nature to change our consciousness. He joins Tyler to discuss his research and experience with psychedelics, including what kinds of people most benefit from them, what it can teach us about profundity, how it can change your personality and political views, the...
Aug 15, 2018•59 min•Ep 47•Transcript available on Metacast Perhaps no one else in the world more appreciates the challenges facing a better understanding of autism than Michelle Dawson. An autistic herself, she began researching her condition after experiencing discrimination at her job. "Because I had to address these legal issues and questions," she tells Tyler, "I did actually look at the autism literature, and suddenly I had information I could really work with. Suddenly there it was, this information that I was supposed to be too stupid to work wit...
Aug 01, 2018•54 min•Ep 46•Transcript available on Metacast At the intersection of programming, economics, cryptography, distributed systems, information theory, and math, you will find Vitalik Buterin, who has managed to synthesize insights across those fields into successful, real-world applications like Ethereum, which aims to decentralize the Internet. Tyler sat down with Vitalik to discuss the many things he's thinking about and working on, including the nascent field of cryptoeconomics, the best analogy for understanding the blockchain, his desire ...
Jul 18, 2018•53 min•Ep 45•Transcript available on Metacast Travel writer Juan Pablo Villarino had visited 90 countries before making the trek to exotic Arlington, Virginia for this chat with Tyler. Amazingly enough, this recording marked his first trip to the mainland United States, which is now the 91st country in an ever-expanding list. The world's best hitchhiker talks with Tyler about the joys of connecting with people, why it's so hard to avoid stereotypes (including of hitchhikers), how stamp collecting guides his trips, the darkest secrets of peo...
Jul 03, 2018•1 hr 1 min•Ep 44•Transcript available on Metacast Elisa New believes anyone can have fun reading a poem. And that if you really want to have a blast, you shouldn't limit poetry to silent, solitary reading - why not sing, recite, or perform it as has been the case for most of its history? The Harvard English professor and host of Poetry in America recently sat down with Tyler to discuss poets, poems, and more, including Walt Whitman's city walks, Emily Dickinson's visual art, T.S. Eliot's privilege, Robert Frost's radicalism, Willa Cather's wisd...
Jun 20, 2018•54 min•Ep 43•Transcript available on Metacast For two hours every morning, David Brooks crawls around his living room floor, organizing piles of research. Then, the piles become paragraphs, the paragraphs become columns or chapters, and the process-which he calls "writing"-is complete. After that he might go out and see some people. A lunch, say, with his friend Tyler. And the two will discuss the things they're thinking, writing, and learning about. And David will feel rejuvenated, for he is a social animal (as are we all). Then one day Da...
Jun 06, 2018•1 hr 23 min•Ep 42•Transcript available on Metacast Though what Taleb was really after was a discussion with Bryan Caplan (which starts at 51:50), the philosopher, mathematician, and author most recently of *Skin in the Game* also generously agreed to a conversation with Tyler. They discuss the ancient Phoenicians and Greco-Roman heritage of Lebanon, philology, genetics, the blockchain, driverless cars, the advantages of Twitter fights, how to think about religion, fancy food vs. Auntie Anne's pretzels, autodidactism, The Desert of the Tartar, wh...
May 23, 2018•2 hr 37 min•Ep 41•Transcript available on Metacast "No single paper is that good", says Bryan Caplan. To really understand a topic, you need to read the entire literature in the field. And to do the kind of scholarship Bryan's work requires, you need to cover multiple fields. Only that way can you assemble a wide variety of evidence into useful knowledge. But few scholars ever even try to reach the enlightened interdisciplinary plane. So how does he do it? Tyler explores Bryan's approach, including how to avoid the autodidact's curse, why his fa...
May 09, 2018•1 hr 12 min•Ep 40•Transcript available on Metacast When Balaji Srinivasan sat down for his conversation with Tyler he was the CEO of Earn.com. Today he is the CTO at Coinbase, which acquired his company in the intervening weeks (congrats Balaji!). But while his job title has changed, his passion remains the same: harnessing the power of the blockchain to launch a new generation of entrepreneurs, businesses, and entire markets. Balaji talks with Tyler about the potential of the blockchain and beyond, including how firewalls may become the new imm...
Apr 25, 2018•55 min•Ep 39•Transcript available on Metacast Is a written dialogue the best way to learn from philosopher Agnes Callard? If so, what does that say about philosophy? Is Platos Symposium about love or mere intoxication? If good people lived forever, would they be less bored than the bad people? Should we fear death? Is parenting undertheorized? Must philosophy rely on refutation? Should we read the classics? Is Jordan Petersons moralizing good? Should we take Socrates at his word? Is Hamlet a Cartesian? Are we all either Beethoven or Mozart ...
Apr 11, 2018•1 hr•Ep 38•Transcript available on Metacast Martina Navratilova is one of the greatest tennis players of all time. No one has won more matches than her thanks to an astonishing 87 percent win rate in a long and dominant career. In their conversation, she and Tyler cover her illustrious tennis career, her experience defecting from Czechoslovakia and later becoming a dual citizen, the wage gap in tennis competition and commentary, gender stereotypes in sports, her work regimen and training schedule, technological progress in tennis, her nee...
Mar 28, 2018•1 hr 6 min•Ep 37•Transcript available on Metacast Chris Blattmans made his career as a development economist by finding a place he likes and finding a reason to live there. Not a bad strategy considering the impact of the work hes done in Liberia, Uganda, and most recently, Colombia. He joins Tyler to talk about what hes learned from his work there, including the efficacy of cash transfers, the spread of violence and conflict, factory jobs as a social safety net, Botswanas underappreciated growth miracle, Battlestar Galactica, standing desks, h...
Mar 14, 2018•1 hr 1 min•Ep 36•Transcript available on Metacast If intros arent about introductions, then whats this here for? Is not including one a countersignal? Either way, youll enjoy this conversationand that says a lot about you. This episode was recorded live at Mason for econ grad students. If youre interested in learning economics with great professors like Robin and Tyler, check out these fellowships. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Recorded February 6th, 2018 Other ways to connect Follow us on Twitter and Instagram Follow Tyle...
Feb 28, 2018•1 hr 6 min•Ep 35•Transcript available on Metacast Is Matt Levine a modern-day Horace? Like Matt, Horace has a preoccupation with wealth and the law. Theres a playful humor as he segues from topic to topic. An ability to read Latin. And many of Horaces letters are about the length of a Bloomberg View column. QED, says Tyler. So Matt, the Latin teacher turned lawyer turned investment banker turned finance writer, recently joined Tyler for a conversation on Horace and more, including cryptocurrencies, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Nabakov, New York, U...
Feb 14, 2018•1 hr 6 min•Ep 34•Transcript available on Metacast At the beginning of their conversation, Tyler dubs Charles C. Mann a tlamatini, or he who knows things. And oh, the things he knows, effortlessly weaving together, history, anthropology, economics, and a half-dozen other disciplines into enthralling writing. And the latest book, *The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrows World*, is no exception, which Tyler calls one of the best overall frameworks for thinking about environmentalism and th...
Jan 31, 2018•56 min•Ep 33•Transcript available on Metacast Last year, Tyler asked his readers What Is the Strongest Argument for the Existence of God? and followed up a few days later with a post outlining why he doesnt believe in God. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat accepted the implicit challenge, responding to the second post in dialogic form and arguing that theism warrants further consideration. This in-person dialogue starts along similar lines, covering Douthats views on religion and theology, but then moves on to more earth-bound concerns,...
Jan 17, 2018•1 hr 25 min•Ep 32•Transcript available on Metacast Before writing a single word of his new book Artemis, Andy Weir worked out the economics of a lunar colony. Without the economics, how could the story hew to the hard sci-fi style Weir cornered the market on with The Martian? And, more importantly, how else can Tyler find out much a Cantonese meal would run him on the moon? In addition to these important questions of lunar economics, Andy and Tyler talk about the technophobic trend in science fiction, private space efforts, seasteading, cryptocu...
Dec 20, 2017•53 min•Ep 31•Transcript available on Metacast Tyler thinks Douglas Irwin has just released the best history of American trade policy ever written. So for this conversation Tyler went easy on Doug, asking softball questions like: Have tariffs ever driven growth? What trade exceptions should there be for national security, or cultural reasons? In an era of low tariffs, what margins matter most for trade liberalization? Do investor arbitration panels override national sovereignty? And, whats the connection between free trade and world peace? T...
Nov 29, 2017•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sujatha Gidla was an untouchable in India, but moved to the United States at the age of 26 and is now the first Indian woman to be employed as a conductor on the New York City Subway. In her memoir Ants Among Elephants, she explores the antiquities of her mother, her uncles, and other members of her family against modern Indias landscape. Through this book she redeemed the value of her familys memories, understanding her familys stories were not those of shame, but did reveal to the world the tr...
Nov 15, 2017•1 hr 3 min•Ep 30•Transcript available on Metacast What happens when a liberal and a libertarian get together? In the case of Steve Teles and Brink Lindsey, they write a book. And then Tyler separates them for a podcast interview about that book, prisoners dilemma style. How much inequality is due to bad policy? Is executive compensation to blame? How about higher education? And whats the implicit theory of governance in Bojack Horseman? Tyler wants to knowand so do you. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Recorded October 23rd, ...
Nov 01, 2017•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast Legal writing was never Mary Roachs thing. She describes that short-lived stint as an inscrutable bringing forth of multisyllabic words. Instead, shes forged a career by letting curiosity lead the way. The result has been a series of successful booksGrunt, 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 gr...
Oct 18, 2017•1 hr 16 min•Ep 29•Transcript available on Metacast 
