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 popularand the most underratedconversation, a test of Tylers 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 his bo...
Dec 23, 2019•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast Want to support future conversations? Visit conversationswithtyler.com/donate . Esther Duflos 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 in ...
Dec 18, 2019•1 hr 2 min•Ep 82•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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 cultureand 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 jazz,...
Nov 06, 2019•1 hr 3 min•Ep 79•Transcript available on Metacast The one concept most valuable for understanding the news today might be Henry Farrells theory of weaponized interdependence. Whether its Chinas 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 economics ...
Oct 23, 2019•1 hr 11 min•Ep 78•Transcript available on Metacast Ben Westhoff has written some of Tylers 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 youll be in a much better position to notice the good stories happening all arou...
Oct 09, 2019•1 hr 1 min•Ep 77•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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 youre 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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 periodher 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 li...
Aug 28, 2019•50 min•Ep 74•Transcript available on Metacast 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, Gessens 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 a...
Aug 14, 2019•1 hr 8 min•Ep 73•Transcript available on Metacast Born to a Ghanaian father and British mother, Kwame Anthony Appiah grew up splitting time between both countriesand lecturing in many morebefore 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 interest...
Jul 31, 2019•1 hr 2 min•Ep 72•Transcript available on Metacast 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, hes 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 hes more often wrong than right, his technical sharpness has even led to a half-joking suggestion that he might be Satoshi Nakamoto, the shad...
Jul 17, 2019•55 min•Ep 71•Transcript available on Metacast Going back and forth between Canada and Japan during his childhood sparked Eric Kaufmanns 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 changesmost notably caused by ethnic migration and assimilationare the key to understanding Brexit, Trump...
Jul 03, 2019•56 min•Ep 70•Transcript available on Metacast 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 hed write and teach now? Is learning Shephards lemma really that important anymore? Tyler asks Hal these questions and more: why arent there more second-priced auctionsor prediction markets? How have the...
Jun 19, 2019•57 min•Ep 69•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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 wouldnt be surprised that the result is someone who has worked at both the highest levels of, medicine, policy and academiathough the intense interest in jam might surprise you. Do we overrate the importance of doctors? Whats the im...
May 22, 2019•1 hr 2 min•Ep 67•Transcript available on Metacast What is Karl Ove Knausgrds struggle, exactly? The answer is simple: achieving total freedom in his writing. Its 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. Knausgrds 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 Munchs The Scream . Along ...
May 08, 2019•1 hr•Ep 66•Transcript available on Metacast 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 Canadaits big after allshe and Tyler discuss Twitter, biotechnology, Biblical history, her families of patents, poetry, literature, movies, and feminism. Is it coincidence that Atwood started The Handmaids Tale in West Berlin during 1984? Does she believe in ghosts? Is the Western commitment...
Apr 24, 2019•1 hr 15 min•Ep 65•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast In a recent Twitter thread , Emily Wilson listed some of the difficulties of translating Homer into English. Among them: There arent enough onomatopoeic words for very loud chaotic noises (#2 on the list), Its very hard to come up with enough ways to describe intense desire to act that dont 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 normal ord...
Mar 27, 2019•56 min•Ep 63•Transcript available on Metacast 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 societythe state, markets, and communitiesinteract with each other, and argues that were 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 struggle to...
Mar 13, 2019•56 min•Ep 62•Transcript available on Metacast Founders arent 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 whats wrong with San Francisco, Napoleons underrated skill, nuclear energy,...
Feb 27, 2019•1 hr 8 min•Ep 61•Transcript available on Metacast Jordan Peterson joins Tyler to discuss collecting Soviet propaganda, why hes so drawn to Jung, what the Exodus story can teach us about current events, his marriage and fame, what the Intellectual Dark Web gets wrong, immigration in America and Canada, his tendency towards depression, Tinders revolutionary nature, the lessons from The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, fixing universities, the skills needed to become a good educator, and much more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful l...
Feb 13, 2019•53 min•Ep 60•Transcript available on Metacast How did religious freedom emergeand why did it arrive so late? In their forthcoming book, fellow Mason economists Noel Johnson and Mark Koyama argue that while most focus on the role of liberal ideas in establishing religious freedom, it was instead institutional changesand the growth of state capacity in particularthat played the decisive role. In their conversation with Tyler, Johnson and Koyama discuss the long road to religious freedom and more, including the link between bad weather and Jew...
Jan 30, 2019•1 hr 16 min•Ep 59•Transcript available on Metacast As a writer of profiles, Larissa MacFarquhar is granted the privilege of listening to, learning from, and sharing the stories of extraordinary thinkers like Derik Parfit, Noam Chomsky, Hilary Mantel, and Paul Krugman. And shes often drawn to write about the individual thinking behind extreme altruism, dementia care, and whether to stay in a small town. Motivating her is a desire to place readers inside someones head: to see what they see and to think how they think. In their dialogue, Larissa an...
Jan 16, 2019•1 hr•Ep 58•Transcript available on Metacast Before she ever studied them as an academic, Rebecca Kukla was fascinated by cities. Growing up in the middle of Toronto, she spent her days walking the city and noticing the way people and place interact. That fascination stayed with her, and motion, embodiment, and place has become a subtle through line in both her professional philosophy and personal interests. In her conversation with Tyler, Kukla speaks about the impossibility of speaking as a woman, curse words, gender representation and g...
Jan 02, 2019•1 hr 1 min•Ep 57•Transcript available on Metacast If you enjoy Conversation with Tyler, consider making a year-end donation at ConversationsWithTyler.com/donate . All gifts will support the shows production, including future live podcast recordings like this one. You might be surprised by what occupies Daniel Kahnemans thoughts. You seem to think that I think of bias all the time, he tells Tyler. I really dont think of bias that much. These days, noise might be the concept most on Kahnemans mind. A forthcoming book, coauthored with Cass Sunstei...
Dec 19, 2018•1 hr 9 min•Ep 56•Transcript available on Metacast 
