Conversations with Tyler

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 podcasts.

Julia Ioffe on Russian Women, Missing Men, and the Roots of Autocracy 08/05/2026

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 enhanced with helpful links, or watch the on YouTube. Recorded April 7th, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on and Follow on X Follow on X Join our Email us: Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts . 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 /episode/index/show/cowenconvos/id/42315960

Andrew Graham-Dixon on Vermeer, a Forgotten Sect, and Underrated Artists 07/22/2026

Andrew Graham-Dixon on Vermeer, a Forgotten Sect, and Underrated Artists Andrew Graham-Dixon’s new book, Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found, rests on the conviction that you cannot understand what's in a painting without knowing what its maker was thinking about. In Vermeer's case, that context includes a forgotten liberal sect — the Remonstrants and Collegiants, Christians without a church who believed peace would come through reading and toleration rather than a returning Messiah. Recover that world and a woman alone in a sunlit room is a radical image in a Europe where half of Germany had just died in war. If he's right, the label beside every Vermeer in every museum will one day have to change. Tyler and Andrew discuss whether it was inevitable we'd rediscover Vermeer, how that vanishingly rare sect left its fingerprints all over his life, why the Met has misread its own Allegory of the Catholic Faith, whether Vermeer painted for money or pointedly refused to, where the Gardner's stolen Concert might be, why Dutch music never blossomed as much as Dutch painting did, how the Church of England rivaled the Cultural Revolution in wiping out British art, whether you can still spot an English painting on sight, the love that saturates late Rembrandt and the mystery of his soaring print prices, the nail on the wall that proves two Vermeer paintings are a pair, why the French are to blame for George Stubbs' lack of status, whether we can still love Malevich, why Andrews calls recent Richter "almost like printing money," why female artists and antique textiles remain absurdly cheap, why nobody builds beautiful neighborhoods any longer, and much more. Read a enhanced with helpful links, or watch the on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded April 7th, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on and Follow on X Follow on X Join our Email us: Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts . Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:00:44 - The Mystery of Vermeer 00:12:53 - Dutch Music 00:15:51 - English Art 00:19:49 - Rembrandt 00:23:17 - Attributions 00:26:22 - Exhibitions and Restorations 00:30:05 - Underrated French Artists 00:35:16 - Howard Hodgkin 00:38:00 - Difficult-To-Love Artists 00:40:53 - Other Dutch Painters 00:44:20 - Contemporary Art 00:48:05 - Buying Art 00:50:39 - Neighborhood Aesthetics 00:54:39 - Advice for Aspiring Art Critics 00:56:14 - Outro Image Credit: Aliona Adrianova /episode/index/show/cowenconvos/id/42174480

Chase Koch on Principles, Music, and Overcoming Entropy 07/15/2026

Chase Koch on Principles, Music, and Overcoming Entropy Chase Koch grew up receiving Sunday philosophy lessons from his father Charles and, by his own account, spent most of them half asleep while his sister supplied the answers. The principles didn’t land until he lived them: throwing tennis matches as a bored teenager, getting shipped off to shovel manure at a feed yard twelve hours later, then spending five years battling Brazilian bureaucracy to build a fertilizer terminal that should have taken one. Today he is Executive Vice President of Origination and Partnerships, leader and donor to Stand Together, plays lead guitar in a band named for the law of entropy, and has a new book with his father on principle-driven leadership. Chase and Tyler discuss if any of his father’s lessons never stuck, the guilt-trip letter his grandfather wrote three months after Charles was born, why Chase started throwing tennis matches, what Rafa’s grit taught him about stoicism, who he admired most from the 1992 Dream Team, whether the Spurs should jettison De’Aaron Fox, the David Gilmour solo that hooked him at eleven, what drew him to jam bands, how he built a boom-box business out of his parents’ garage, why his father interviewed Snoop on a Zoom call during Covid, why his band is named for the second law of thermodynamics, what it’s like working with MrBeast, how Koch Inc has evolved, what he learned from Marc Andreessen, the philosophy behind hiring the “farm team,” why he is teaching himself to code with Claude at his fourteen-year-old’s urging, where he’s traveling next, and much more. Read a enhanced with helpful links, or watch the on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded June 16th, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on and Follow on X Join our Email us: Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts . Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:00:56 - Familial Influences 00:08:25 - Tennis and Basketball 00:15:00 - The Music Industry 00:28:36 - MrBeast 00:31:24 - The Evolution of Koch Industries 00:35:54 - The Midwest 00:44:37 - AI 00:49:01 - Politics 00:53:35 - Outro /episode/index/show/cowenconvos/id/42094075

Joel Mokyr on Clans, Corporations, and a Culture of Growth 07/08/2026

Joel Mokyr on Clans, Corporations, and a Culture of Growth Joel Mokyr co-won the 2025 economics Nobel for exploring the question that traces back to the beginning of economics: how did sustained economic growth suddenly become normal? For nearly all of human history, cleverness didn't compound. What changed, according to Mokyr, was twofold: first, you need to know why something works, so that one advance can seed the next; second, you need a culture willing to tolerate the disruption. His new book contrasts Europe with China, showing how Europeans learned to cooperate with people they weren't related to, in guilds, monasteries, cities, and universities, while China organized itself around the extended clan. One path led to internal stability and peace; the other, more restless and outward-looking, was the one that decided the world could always be made better. Tyler and Joel discuss European corporations vs. Chinese clans, why the Catholic Church became obsessed with cousin-marriage, how persistent cultural trends really are, why Chinese cities became so populous relative to Europe, why it took so long for European living standards to surpass China’s, why sinified invaders kept getting swallowed by the dynasties they conquered, how geography kept Europe fragmented and China unified, where India fits into the story, why the Romans never made spectacles, why British soldiers stood two inches taller than the French, what powered the sudden rise of 19th-century German science, how disruptive winning a Nobel is, and much more. Read a enhanced with helpful links, or watch the on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded February 20th, 2026. This episode was made possible through the support of the John Templeton Foundation. Other ways to connect Follow us on and Follow on X Join our Email us: Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts . Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:00:54 - Europe vs. China's Paths to Prosperity 00:10:22 - China’s Growth 00:13:24 - Europe’s Growth 00:18:56 - The Fall of Song China 00:21:56 - India 00:25:08 - Industrial Revolution 00:39:52 - 19th-Century German Science 00:43:37 - Being a Nobel Laureate 00:45:29 - Outro Photo Credit: Shane Collins /episode/index/show/cowenconvos/id/41997200

Joanne Paul on Thomas More and the Tudor World 06/24/2026

Joanne Paul on Thomas More and the Tudor World Joanne Paul is a historian at the University of Sussex, author, and a go-to Tudor expert on YouTube. She tells Tyler she's drawn to the 16th century because it sits between the medieval and the modern, and because its paths not taken are a way of asking whether our own world had to turn out this way. Her biography Thomas More: A Life takes its subject in that spirit, refusing to reduce More to either martyr or monster. Tyler and Joanne discuss how More influenced Erasmus, what to make of Utopia, why fear drove More's persecution of heretics, how Holbein's portraits of More and Cromwell differ, what movie depictions get wrong about More, how his execution was viewed at the time, how the Tudor period paved the way for Shakespeare and the scientific revolution, the surprising social mobility of the period, how the City of London governed itself and where that clashed with the Crown, Joanne’s upbringing in Canada and what drew her to English history, what she thinks sits beneath a lot of Britain's current stagnation, the subject of her next book, and much more. Read a enhanced with helpful links, or watch the on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded February 19th, 2026. This episode was made possible through the support of the John Templeton Foundation. Other ways to connect Follow us on and Follow on X Follow on X Join our Email us: Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts . Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:03:42 - More’s Utopia 00:10:50 - Whether More Should be Admired 00:13:39 - Play and Movie Adaptations of More 00:19:25 - English Catholicism as the Reformation Approaches 00:22:29 - Shakespeare and the Growth of Education 00:26:08 - The Quality of Tudor Art 00:27:24 - Tolerance and Social Mobility in 16th Century England 00:32:49 - London’s Governance 00:34:23 - Canada 00:38:12 - Choosing English History to Study 00:41:23 - Touring and Living in England 00:43:06 - Religion, Politics, and Economics in the UK 00:49:32 - Outro /episode/index/show/cowenconvos/id/41748930

Dave Baszucki on Roblox, Teen Entrepreneurs, and the Future of Play 06/17/2026

Dave Baszucki on Roblox, Teen Entrepreneurs, and the Future of Play Dave Baszucki is co-founder and CEO of Roblox, the user-generated gaming platform where all the games are built by the community itself. With over 100 million daily active users and projected revenue bookings of $7 billion this year, it is one of the largest gaming economies in the world—and one that has made millionaires out of teenage developers in Argentina, South Korea, and everywhere in between. Tyler and Dave explore why Roblox decided early against prioritizing advertising revenue, why Dave thinks the main competition of Roblox is its own execution speed rather than Fortnite, whether every mega platform inevitably becomes an everything app, how falling token costs will change the platform, why he insists all the games on Roblox are beautiful, whether Robux should have a floating exchange rate, why admitting you have kids under 13 on your platform turns out to be a competitive advantage, why he's skeptical of blanket social media bans, what his son's experience with bipolar disorder taught him about metabolic health, his two-year sabbatical between companies that involved a motorhome trip across North America and a stint hosting talk radio in Santa Cruz, why Mutiny on the Bounty remains one of his favorite books, what he’ll learn next, and much more. Read a enhanced with helpful links, or watch the on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded May 27th, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on and Follow on X Follow on X Join our Email us: Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts . Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:00:44 - Roblox by the Numbers 00:08:54 - Competition 00:12:13 - Everything Apps 00:19:50 - AI Language Translation 00:21:18 - Token Costs 00:24:01 - Beauty and Gaming 00:27:01 - Robux 00:29:28 - Social Media and Younger Audiences 00:40:56 - AI and Gaming 00:45:44 - Mutiny on the Bounty 00:47:38 - David’s Earlier Companies 00:51:16 - Mentors 00:52:35 - Outro /episode/index/show/cowenconvos/id/41669770

Katja Hoyer on Weimar, the GDR, and the German Character 06/10/2026

Katja Hoyer on Weimar, the GDR, and the German Character Katja Hoyer is a German-British historian who has made a career out of explaining Germany to the world—and, just as importantly, to Germans themselves. Born in East Germany in 1985 and now based in Britain, she has written acclaimed histories of the German Empire, the GDR, and most recently the Weimar Republic. Tyler and Katja discuss why communism made East Germans more loyal to the system while it bred dissidents in Poland and Hungary, how happy or unhappy life in the GDR actually was, Tyler's own bleak day-trip to East Berlin in 1984, the underrated literature of the GDR (Christa Wolf, Brigitte Reimann), whether Good Bye, Lenin! got the era right, why it's no coincidence that Richter and Polke came from the East, the strange coexistence of communist prudishness and Germany's nudist culture, what Merkel's East German background did and didn't give her as a chancellor, why East Germans remain dramatically underrepresented in leadership positions today, what makes Weimar the cultural and spiritual heart of Germany, why relatively few Jews ever settled there, how much the citizens of Weimar knew about Buchenwald, what actually killed the Weimar Constitution, how she’d rewrite the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler’s citizenship problem, underrated German thinkers, the complacency behind Germany's current economic decline, which side of the Weißwurstäquator she'd choose to live on, and much more. Read a enhanced with helpful links, or watch the on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded March 30th, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on and Follow on X Follow on X Join our Email us: Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts . Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:05:34 - East German Artistic Creations 00:10:55 - Angela Merkel’s East German Background 00:14:08 - East German Underrepresentation Today 00:17:02 - East Germans vs. West Germans 00:20:32 - Goethe and Weimar’s Cultural Heritage 00:27:09 - What Weimar Knew About Buchenwald 00:31:10 - Why the Weimar Constitution Failed 00:35:21 - Prussia, Bavaria, and Where Nazism Took Root 00:38:23 - Rewriting the Treaty of Versailles 00:39:59 - Historical Antisemitism in Germany 00:42:27 - Hitler’s Citizenship problem 00:45:14 - Weimar’s Best Cultural Creations 00:47:02 - The Most Underrated German Thinker 00:49:07 - Improving Weimar 00:52:58 - Germany’s Economic Malaise 00:55:38 - Living in Britain as a German Historian 01:00:49 - Outro /episode/index/show/cowenconvos/id/41590445

Toby Wilkinson on Ptolemaic Egypt and the First Great Commercial Civilization 05/27/2026

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 enhanced with helpful links, or watch the on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded March 23rd, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on and Follow on X Join our Email us: Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts . 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 /episode/index/show/cowenconvos/id/41429350

Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography 05/13/2026

Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography Bob Spitz has written major biographies of the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, and now the Rolling Stones — but also, somehow, Ronald Reagan and Julia Child. In rock, his credentials were hard won: he started out hustling gigs for an unknown Bruce Springsteen for six years, moved on to handling Elton John's American business, and spent long enough in the world to find himself jamming with Paul McCartney and chatting with Bob Dylan on a stoop in the Village. The Reagan and Julia Child books are harder to explain, and perhaps that's the point—Spitz seems to do his best work when he has no business writing the book at all. Tyler and Bob discuss how the Stones became so great so quickly, what they added to the blues, how their melodies stack up against the Beatles', whether Exile on Main Street deserves its canonical status, which songs are most underrated, what Charlie Watts actually got out of playing in a rock band, the rise and fall of Brian Jones, how the Stones outlasted nearly everyone, the influence of Mick's London School of Economics training, why popular music has lost its cultural influence, what we should still be asking Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, whether the Beatles' breakup was good for the world, how senile Reagan really was in his second term and whether he was ever truly a communist, how good a cook Julia Child actually was, his next book on Lennon’s second act, and much more. Read a enhanced with helpful links, or watch the on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded April 28th, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on and Follow on X Follow on X Join our Email us: Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts . Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:44 - The Sound of the Rolling Stones 00:05:25 - Underrated Rolling Stones Songs and Albums 00:09:06 - Charlie Watts and Brian Jones 00:11:18 - Art Colleges and Rock ‘n’ Roll 00:13:06 - The Stones' Stability 00:16:32 - Mick Jagger: Closet Economist? 00:17:53 - Pop Music's Lack of Relevance 00:20:10 - The Beatles 00:28:14 - Led Zeppelin 00:31:30 - Bruce Springsteen 00:36:20 - Bob Dylan 00:39:40 - Julia Child 00:42:29 - The Knicks 00:45:21 - Ronald Reagan 00:49:01 - Robert Caro 00:52:03 - Writing 00:55:00 - Outro /episode/index/show/cowenconvos/id/41268695

Craig Newmark on Institutional Maintenance, Giving Away Control, and the Internet We Were Promised (Live at 92NY) 04/29/2026

Craig Newmark on Institutional Maintenance, Giving Away Control, and the Internet We Were Promised (Live at 92NY) Craig Newmark's career, in retrospect, looks like a series of deliberate subtractions: he kept Craigslist plain, stepped aside as CEO early on, gave his equity to his foundation, and now funds people and gets out of their way. His theory, arrived at gradually, is that recognizing your limitations and relying on your network is how you get more done. Tyler and Craig discuss why webpage design has gotten worse for 30 years, what Craig's "obsessive customer service disorder" taught him about human nature, why trusting people and maintaining a nine-second rule for scams aren't as contradictory as they sound, why roommate ads are a better way to find love, why Craigslist never added seller evaluations, why Leonard Cohen speaks to him more than Bob Dylan, what William Gibson's Neuromancer got right about the internet, why Jackson Lamb is now one of his role models, why large foundations lose accountability, what two painful Ivy League grants taught him philanthropy, what he gets from rescuing pigeons, the hard lesson he learned about confronting people who lie for a living, his favorite TV shows and movies, the one genuine luxury he can't go without, what he still needs to learn, and much more. Read a enhanced with helpful links, or watch the on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded April 14th, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on and Follow on X Follow on X Join our Email us: Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts . Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:41 - Stepping Aside as CEO 00:04:20 - Customer Service and Social Skills 00:16:27 - Restaurants 00:18:06 - Music 00:19:27 - Science Fiction 00:20:14 - TV Shows 00:26:03 - Philanthropy 00:30:20 - Journalism 00:31:55 - Pigeons 00:32:50 - Entrepreneurship 00:35:09 - Craig’s Personal Philosophy 00:37:37 - Major Regrets 00:39:17 - Audience Q&A 00:46:23 - Outro /episode/index/show/cowenconvos/id/41051395

Kim Bowes on the Economic Lives of Rome's Ninety Percent 04/15/2026

Kim Bowes on the Economic Lives of Rome's Ninety Percent Kim Bowes is an archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania whose book, Surviving Rome: The Economic Lives of the Ninety Percent, Tyler calls perhaps his favorite economics book of 2025. By sifting through the material remains of Roman life — shoes, bricks, ceramics, and the like — she uncovers a picture of ordinary Romans who could evidently afford to buy multiple sets of colorful clothes, use gold coins for daily transactions, and eat peppercorns sourced from thousands of miles away. This vast web of commerce, she argues, both bound the empire together and provided the tax base that kept it running — and when it unraveled, Rome unraveled with it. Tyler and Kim discuss what would surprise a modern visitor to a Roman elite home, what early Roman Christianity actually looked like on the ground, why Romans never developed formal economic reasoning, what decentralized money-lending reveals about the Roman state, whether there were anything like forward markets, why Romans continued to use coins even as the empire debased them, the economics of Roman slavery, whether Roman recipes taste any good, the Romans as hyper-scalers rather than inventors, what Rome made of China and Egypt, why Kim’s not a fan of the Vesuvius challenge, the practicalities of landscape archaeology, how a vast belt of factories along the Tiber Valley went undiscovered until twenty years ago, where to go on a three-week tour of the Roman Empire, what she thinks is ultimately behind Rome’s unraveling, and much more. Read a enhanced with helpful links, or watch the on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded February 2nd, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on and Follow on X Join our Email us: Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts . Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:06 - Roman Housing 00:08:28 - What Early Roman Christians Actually Believed 00:16:29 - Roman Economic Thought 00:18:39 - Roman Banking and Money Practices 00:28:48 - The Economics of Roman Slavery 00:31:56 - What Held The Roman Empire Together 00:36:46 - Roman Cookery 00:39:17 - The Romans as Masters of Scale 00:42:05 - Rome’s Contact with Asia 0043:59 - The Vesuvius Challenge 00:45:13 - Ancient Carthage and the Fall of Rome 00:49:43 - The Realities of Doing Archaeology 00:57:15 - Touring the Roman Empire 01:00:42 - Outro /episode/index/show/cowenconvos/id/40875085

Arthur Brooks on Reinvention, Religion, and the Science of Happiness 04/01/2026

Arthur Brooks on Reinvention, Religion, and the Science of Happiness to find Tyler's new generative book, The Marginal Revolution: Rise and Decline, and the Pending AI Revolution! Arthur Brooks reckons he’s on the fourth leg of a spiral-shaped career: French horn player, economist, president of the American Enterprise Institute, and now Harvard professor and evangelist for the science of happiness. His new book, The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness, argues that happiness isn't a feeling but a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning — the macronutrients of happiness, he calls them — and that most of us are gorging on the wrong ones. Tyler, naturally, wants to know: what's the marginal value of a book on happiness, and what does spiral number five look like? Along the way, Tyler and Arthur cover how scarcity makes savoring possible and why knowing you'll die young sharpens the mind, what twin studies tell us about the genetics of well-being and why that's not actually depressing, the four habits of the genuinely happy, the placebo theory of happiness books, curiosity as an evolved positive emotion, the optimal degree of self-deception, why Arthur chose Catholicism rather than Orthodoxy, what the research says about accepting death, how he became an economist via correspondence school, AI's effect on think tanks, the future of classical music, whether Trumpism or Reaganism is the equilibrium state of American conservatism, whether his views on immigration have changed, what he and Oprah actually agree on, which president from his lifetime he most admires, Barcelona versus Madrid, what 60-year-olds are especially good at, why he's reading Josef Pieper, how he'll face death, and much more. Read a enhanced with helpful links, or watch the on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded March 19th, 2026. This episode was made possible through the support of the John Templeton Foundation. Other ways to connect Follow us on and Follow on X Follow on X Join our Email us: Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts . Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:10 - The Macronutrients of Happiness 00:07:54 - What Happiness Books are Worth 00:12:28 - The Habits of the Happiest People 00:14:27 - Why the Young Reject Happiness Advice 00:17:35 - Curiosity’s Role in Happiness 00:20:22 - Self-Deception 00:22:04 - Facing Death 00:25:44 - Choosing a Religion 00:28:41 - Immigration 00:30:27 - The American Right Wing 00:33:55 - AI’s Role in Happiness 00:37:12 - What Drives Generosity 00:38:37 - Oprah’s Political Views 00:40:16 - Which Political Leaders Arthur Admires 00:41:59 - The Best French Horn Players 00:43:40 - Arthur’s Spiral of Careers 00:48:20 - The Future of Think Tanks 00:49:50 - The Future of Classical Music 00:51:27 - Living in Spain 00:55:34 - Age and Peak Performance 00:56:12 - What Arthur Will Do Next 00:59:14 - Outro Image Credit: Jenny Sherman /episode/index/show/cowenconvos/id/40688795

Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together 03/25/2026

Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together for the live Conversations with Tyler recording with Craig Newmark at 92NY! Tyler calls Paul Gillingham’s new book, Mexico: A 500-Year History, the single best introduction to the country's past—and one of the best nonfiction books of 2026. Paul brings both an outsider's eye and ground-level knowledge to Mexican history, having grown up in Cork — a place he'd argue gave him an instinctive feel for fierce local autonomy and land hunger —earning his doctorate on the Mexican Revolution under Alan Knight at Oxford, and doing his fieldwork in the pueblos of Guerrero. He and Tyler range across five centuries of Mexican history, from why Mexico held together after independence when every other post-colonial superstate collapsed, to why Yucatán is now one of the safest places on earth, what two leaders from Oaxaca tell us about Mexican politics, how Mexico avoided the military coups that plagued the rest of Latin America, what Cárdenas's land reform actually achieved versus what it promised, whether the ejido system held Mexico back, why Mexico worried too much about land and not enough about human capital, how Mexico's fertility rate fell below America's, why Guerrero has been violent for two centuries, why the new judicial reforms are a disaster, where to find the best food in Mexico and Manhattan, what a cache of illicit Mexican silver sitting on a ship in the English Channel has to do with his next book, and more. Read a enhanced with helpful links, or watch the on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded February 27th, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on and Follow on X Join our Email us: Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts . Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:30 - Post-Independence Mexico 00:05:18 - Peace in Yucatán 00:6:54 - Quintana Roo 00:08:24 - Mexican Infrastructure 00:10:26 - Oaxaca 00:13:54 - Great Food Outside Cities 00:16:39 - Leaders from Coahuila 00:17:50 - Military Rule and Civil War in Mexico 00:21:47 - The Cárdenas Regime 00:24:03 - The Ejido System 00:25:49 - Human Capital 00:40:59 - Doing Mexican History as a Brit 00:42:43 - Guerrero 00:48:37 - Michoacán Violence 00:50:44 - Monterrey 00:52:40 - Judicial Reforms 00:54:44 - The Best Mexican Film, Music, and Novel 00:59:42 - The Best Trip Around Mexico 01:04:05 - Outro /episode/index/show/cowenconvos/id/40608730

Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy 03/18/2026

Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy for the live Conversations with Tyler recording with Craig Newmark at 92NY! Few living scholars can claim to have shaped how we read Machiavelli as decisively as Harvey Mansfield. His new book, The Rise and Fall of Rational Control, argues that Machiavelli didn't just write about politics—he invented the intellectual machinery of the modern world, starting with the concept of "effectual truth," which Mansfield credits as the seed of modern empiricism. At 93, after 61 years of teaching at Harvard, Mansfield remains cheerfully unimpressed by most of contemporary philosophy, convinced that the great books are self-sustaining, and that irony is what separates serious philosophy from the rest. Tyler and Harvey discuss how Machiavelli's concept of fact was brand new, why his longest chapter is a how-to guide for conspiracy, whether America's 20th-century wars refute the conspiratorial worldview, Trump as a Shakespearean vulgarian who is in some ways more democratic than the rest of us, why Bronze Age Pervert should not be taken as a model for Straussianism, the time he tried to introduce Nietzsche to Quine, why Rawls needed more Locke, what it was like to hear Churchill speak at Margate in 1953, whether great books are still being written, how his students have and haven't changed over 61 years of teaching, the eclipse rather than decline of manliness, and what Aristotle got right about old age and much more. Read a enhanced with helpful links, or watch the on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded January 22nd, 2026. This episode was made possible through the support of the John Templeton Foundation. Other ways to connect Follow us on and Follow on X Join our Email us: Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts . Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Bumper 00:00:36 - Intro 00:01:20 - Machiavelli’s "Effectual Truth" 00:05:56 - Conspiracy Theories 00:12:39 - The Vulgarity of Democracy 00:16:35 - The Future of Straussianism 00:34:30 - Why the Supply of Great Books has Dried Up 00:37:56 - Rational Control vs. Spontaneous Order 00:40:25 - Winston Churchill 00:43:30 - Students at Harvard 00:46:05 - Manliness 00:47:34 - Death and Politics 00:48:56 - Outro Image Credit: Erin Clark via Getty Images /episode/index/show/cowenconvos/id/40517800

Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English 03/04/2026

Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English for the Chicago CWT Listener Meetup. Henry Oliver is the preeminent literary critic for non-literary nerds. His Substack, The Common Reader, has thousands of subscribers drawn in by Henry’s conviction that great literature is where ideas "walk and talk amongst the mess of the real world" in a way no other discipline can match. Tyler, who has called Henry's book Second Act "one of the very best books written on talent," sat down with him to compare readings of Measure for Measure and range across English literature more broadly. Tyler and Henry trade rival readings of the play, debate whether Isabella secretly seduces Angelo, argue over whether the Duke's proposal is closer to liberation or enslavement, trace the play's connections to The Merchant of Venice and The Rape of Lucrece, assess the parallels to James I, weigh whether it's a Girardian play (Oliver: emphatically not), and parse exactly what Isabella means when she says "I did yield to him," before turning to the best way to consume Shakespeare, what Jane Austen took from Adam Smith, why Swift may be the most practically intelligent writer in English, how advertising really works and why most of it doesn't, which works in English literature are under- and overrated, what makes someone a late bloomer, whether fiction will deal seriously with religion again, whether Ayn Rand's villains are more relevant now than ever, and much more. Read a enhanced with helpful links, or watch the on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded January 12th, 2026. This episode was made possible through the support of the John Templeton Foundation. Other ways to connect Follow us on and Follow on X Follow on X Join our Email us: Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts . Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:40 - What Shakespeare is really saying in Measure for Measure 00:29:17 - The best way to consume Shakespeare 00:32:26 - Jane Austen, Adam Smith, and Jonathan Swift 00:39:29 - Advertising that works 00:44:37 - Things that are under- and overrated in literature 00:51:24 - Late bloomers 00:58:36 - Outro Image Credit: Sam Alburger /episode/index/show/cowenconvos/id/40303820

Joe Studwell on Africa, Asia, and What Development Actually Requires 02/18/2026

Andrew Ross Sorkin on Market Bubbles, Banking Rules, and the Real Lessons of 1929 02/04/2026

Diarmaid MacCulloch on Christianity, Sex, and Unsettling Settled Facts 01/21/2026

Brendan Foody on Teaching AI and the Future of Knowledge Work 01/07/2026

Brendan Foody on Teaching AI and the Future of Knowledge Work At 22, Brendan Foody is both the youngest Conversations with Tyler guest ever and the youngest unicorn founder on record. His company Mercor hires the experts who train frontier AI models—from poets grading verse to economists building evaluation frameworks—and has become one of the fastest-growing startups in history. Tyler and Brendan discuss why Mercor pays poets $150 an hour, why AI labs need rubrics more than raw text, whether we should enshrine the aesthetic standards of past eras rather than current ones, how quickly models are improving at economically valuable tasks, how long until AI can stump Cass Sunstein, the coming shift toward knowledge workers building RL environments instead of doing repetitive analysis, how to interview without falling for vibes, why nepotism might make a comeback as AI optimizes everyone's cover letters, scaling the Thiel Fellowship 100,000X, what his 8th-grade donut empire taught him about driving out competition, the link between dyslexia and entrepreneurship, dining out and dating in San Francisco, Mercor’s next steps, and more. Read a enhanced with helpful links, or watch the on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded October 16th, 2025. Other ways to connect Follow us on and Follow on X Follow on X Join our Email us: Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts . Timestamps 00:00:00 - Hiring poets to teach AI 00:05:29 - Measuring real-world AI progress 00:13:25 - Why rubrics are the new oil 00:18:44 - Enshrining taste in LLMs 00:22:38 - Turning society into one giant RL machine 00:26:37 - When AI will stump experts 00:30:46 - AI and employment 00:35:05 - Why vibes-based hiring fails 00:39:55 - Solving labor market matching problems 00:45:01 - Scaling the Thiel Fellowship 00:48:11 - A hypothetical gap year 00:50:31 - Donuts, debates, and dyslexia 00:56:15 - Dating and dining out 00:59:01 - Mercor's next steps /episode/index/show/cowenconvos/id/39629295

Conversations with Tyler 2025 Retrospective 12/23/2025

Alison Gopnik on Childhood Learning, AI as a Cultural Technology, and Rethinking Nature vs. Nurture 12/17/2025

Alison Gopnik on Childhood Learning, AI as a Cultural Technology, and Rethinking Nature vs. Nurture Help us keep the conversations going in 2026. to Conversations with Tyler today. Alison Gopnik is both a psychologist and philosopher at Berkeley, studying how children construct theories of the world from limited data. Her central insight is that babies learn like scientists, running experiments and updating beliefs based on evidence. But Tyler wonders: are scientists actually good learners? It's a question that leads them into a wide-ranging conversation about what we've been systematically underestimating in young minds, what’s wrong with simple nature-versus-nurture frameworks, and whether AI represents genuine intelligence or just a very sophisticated library. Tyler and Alison cover how children systematically experiment on the world and what study she’d run with $100 million, why babies are more conscious than adults and what consciousness even means, episodic memory and aphantasia, whether Freud got anything right about childhood and what's held up best from Piaget, how we should teach young children versus school-age kids, how AI should change K-12 education and Gopnik's case that it's a cultural technology rather than intelligence, whether the enterprise of twin studies makes sense and why she sees nature versus nurture as the wrong framework entirely, autism and ADHD as diagnostic categories, whether the success of her siblings belies her skepticism about genetic inheritance, her new project on the economics and philosophy of caregiving, and more. Read a enhanced with helpful links, or watch the on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded October 30th, 2025. Other ways to connect Follow us on and Follow on X Follow on X Join our Email us: Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts . Timestamps 00:00:00 - How children—and scientists—learn 00:14:35 - Consciousness, episodic memories, and aphantasia 00:23:06 - Freud’s and Piaget’s theories about childhood 00:27:49 - Twin studies and nature vs. nurture 00:39:33 - Teaching strategies for younger vs. older children 00:44:07 - AI's ability to generate novel insights 00:53:57 - What Autism and ADHD diagnoses do and don’t reveal 00:58:02 - The success of the Gopnik siblings Photo Credit: Rod Searcey /episode/index/show/cowenconvos/id/39432785

Gaurav Kapadia on New York City, Investing, and Contemporary Art 12/10/2025

Gaurav Kapadia on New York City, Investing, and Contemporary Art Help us keep the conversations going in 2026. to Conversations with Tyler today. Gaurav Kapadia has deliberately avoided publicity throughout his career in investing, which makes this conversation a rare window into how he thinks. He now runs XN, a firm built around concentrated bets on a small number of companies with long holding periods. However, his education in judgment began much earlier, in a two-family house in Flushing that his parents converted into a four-family house. It was there where a young Gaurav served as de facto landlord, collecting rent and negotiating late payments at age 10. That grounding now expresses itself across an unusual range of domains: Tyler invited him on the show not just as an investor, but as someone with a rare ability to judge quality in cities, talent, art, and more with equal fluency. Tyler and Gaurav discuss how Queens has thrived without new infrastructure, what he'd change as “dictator” of Flushing, whether Robert Moses should rise or fall in status, who's the most underrated NYC mayor, what's needed to attract better mayoral candidates, the weirdest place in NYC, why he initially turned down opportunities in investment banking for consulting, bonding with Rishi Sunak over railroads, XN's investment philosophy, maintaining founder energy in investment firms and how he hires to prevent complacency, AI's impact on investing, the differences between New York and London finance, the most common fundraising mistake art museums make, why he collects only American artists within 20 years of his own age, what makes Kara Walker and Rashid Johnson and Salman Toor special, whether buying art makes you a better investor, his new magazine Totei celebrating craft and craftsmanship, and much more. Read a enhanced with helpful links, or watch the on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded October 8th, 2025. Other ways to connect Follow us on and Follow on X Follow on X Join our Email us: Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts . Timestamps 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:32 - Queens and NYC’s geography 00:08:36 - New York City mayors and electoral politics 00:13:22 - Building a career in investing 00:18:50 - XN’s investment philosophy 00:24:35 - Maintaining founder energy in investment firms 00:30:45 - The sociology of finance in NYC, London, and UAE 00:32:21 - How AI is reshaping investing 00:36:53 - Museum operations 00:42:21 - Favorite artists 00:50:39 - Tastes in art and how the canon will evolve 00:57:22 - Totei, a new venture /episode/index/show/cowenconvos/id/39344725

Dan Wang on What China and America Can Learn from Each Other 12/03/2025

Dan Wang on What China and America Can Learn from Each Other Help us keep the conversations going in 2026. to Conversations with Tyler today. Dan Wang argues that China is a nation of engineers while America is a nation of lawyers, and this distinction explains everything from subway construction to pandemic response to why Chinese citizens will never have yards with dogs. His prescription: America should become 20% more engineering-minded to fix its broken infrastructure, while China needs to be 50% more lawyerly so the Communist Party can stop strangling individual rights and the creative impulses of its people. But would a more lawyerly China constrain state power, or just create new tools for oppression? And aren’t the American suburbs actually sterling achievements where the infrastructure works quite well? Tyler and Dan debate whether American infrastructure is actually broken or just differently optimized, why health care spending should reach 35% of GDP, how lawyerly influences shaped East Asian development differently than China, China’s lack of a liberal tradition and why it won't democratize like South Korea or Taiwan did, its economic dysfunction despite its manufacturing superstars, Chinese pragmatism and bureaucratic incentives, a 10-day itinerary for Yunnan, James C. Scott's work on Zomia, whether Beijing or Shanghai is the better city, Liu Cixin and why volume one of The Three-Body Problem is the best, why contemporary Chinese music and film have declined under Xi, Chinese marriage markets and what it's like to be elderly in China, the Dan Wang production function, why Stendhal is his favorite novelist and Rossini's Comte Ory moves him, what Dan wants to learn next, whether LLMs will make Tyler's hyper-specific podcast questions obsolete, what flavor of drama their conversation turned out to be, and more. Read a enhanced with helpful links, or watch the on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded October 31st, 2025. Other ways to connect Follow us on and Follow on X Follow on X Join our Email us: Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts . Timestamps 00:00:00 - American infrastructure and suburban life 00:05:18 - American vs. Chinese infrastructure buildouts... 00:12:25 - And health care investment 00:17:52 - Chinese suburbs 00:20:10 - The existing lawyerly influence in East Asia 00:25:12 - China’s lack of a liberal tradition 00:29:35 - Why China’s won’t democratize 00:33:49 - China’s economic disfunction 00:38:44 - China’s expansionism 00:41:55 - Chinese pragmatism and bureaucratic incentives 00:46:50 - Chinese cities and regional culture 00:59:44 - James C. Scott, Zomia, and elite culture 01:06:27 - A 10-day Yunnan itinerary 01:11:57 - On Chinese arts, literature, and cultural expression 01:18:23 - The Dan Wang production function 01:30:34 - Tyler’s grand strategy, or lack thereof /episode/index/show/cowenconvos/id/39243880

Cass Sunstein on Liberalism and Rights in the Age of AI 11/26/2025

Blake Scholl on Supersonic Flight and Fixing Broken Infrastructure - Live at the Progress Conference 11/19/2025

Donald S. Lopez Jr. on Buddhism 11/12/2025

Sam Altman on Trust, Persuasion, and the Future of Intelligence - Live at the Progress Conference 11/05/2025

Jonny Steinberg on South African Crime and Punishment, the Mandelas' Marriage, and the Post-Apartheid Era 10/28/2025

Jonny Steinberg on South African Crime and Punishment, the Mandelas' Marriage, and the Post-Apartheid Era Tyler considers Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage one of the best books of the last decade, and its author Jonny Steinberg one of the most underrated writers and thinkers—in North America, at least. Steinberg's particular genius lies in getting uncomfortably close to difficult truths through immersive research—spending 350 hours in police ride-alongs, years studying prison gangs and their century-old oral histories, following a Somali refugee's journey across East Africa—and then rendering what he finds with a novelist's emotional insight. Tyler and Jonny discuss why South African police only feel comfortable responding to domestic violence calls, how to fix policing, the ghettoization of crime, how prison gangs regulate behavior through century-old rituals, how apartheid led to mass incarceration and how it manifested in prisons, why Nelson Mandela never really knew his wife Winnie and the many masks they each wore, what went wrong with the ANC, why the judiciary maintained its independence but not its quality, whether Tyler should buy land in Durban, the art scene in Johannesburg, how COVID gave statism a new lease on life, why the best South African novels may still be ahead, his forthcoming biography of Cecil Rhodes, why English families weren't foolish to move to Rhodesia in the 1920s, where to take an ideal two-week trip around South Africa, and more. Read a enhanced with helpful links, or watch the on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded September 29th, 2025. Other ways to connect Follow us on and Follow on X Join our Email us: Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts . Timestamps: 00:00:40 – Policing and crime in South Africa 00:11:15 – Prison culture 00:22:04 – Nelson and Winnie Mandela’s marriage 00:24:47 – Was Winnie Mandela just a bad person? 00:29:20 – Nelson Mandela’s masks 00:32:04 – Mandela’s legacy and the ANC 00:36:51 – Reasons for optimism in South Africa 00:50:58 – His forthcoming biography of Cecil Rhodes 00:55:15 – Where to visit in South Africa /episode/index/show/cowenconvos/id/38808435

George Selgin on the New Deal, Regime Uncertainty, and What Really Ended the Great Depression 10/15/2025

John Amaechi on Leadership, the NBA, and Being Gay in Professional Sports 10/01/2025

Conversations with Tyler

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