Conversations with Tyler

Mercatus Center Podcasts
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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.

  1. Sam Altman on Trust, Persuasion, and the Future of Intelligence - Live at the Progress Conference

    3 DGN GELEDEN

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

    Register for the Austin listener meetup Sam Altman makes his second appearance on the show to discuss how he's managing OpenAI's explosive growth, what he's learned about hiring hardware people, what makes roon special, how far they are from an AI-driven replacement to Slack, what GPT-6 might enable for scientific research, when we'll see entire divisions of companies run mostly by AI, what he looks for in hires to gauge their AI-resistance, how OpenAI is thinking about commerce, whether GPT-6 will write great poetry, why energy is the binding constraint to chip-building and where it'll come from, his updated plan for how he'd revitalize St. Louis, why he's not worried about teaching normies to use AI, what will happen to the price of healthcare and hosing, his evolving views on freedom of expression, why accidental AI persuasion worries him more than intentional takeover, the question he posed to the Dalai Lama about superintelligence, and more. Recorded live at the Progress Conference, hosted by the Roots of Progress Institute. Special thanks to Big Think for the video production. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded October 17th, 2025. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Sam on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Photo Credit: Jeremi Rebecca

    55 min
  2. Jonny Steinberg on South African Crime and Punishment, the Mandelas' Marriage, and the Post-Apartheid Era

    28 OKT

    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 full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded September 29th, 2025. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. 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

    52 min
  3. George Selgin on the New Deal, Regime Uncertainty, and What Really Ended the Great Depression

    15 OKT

    George Selgin on the New Deal, Regime Uncertainty, and What Really Ended the Great Depression

    George Selgin has spent over four decades thinking about money, banking, and economic history, and Tyler has known him for nearly all of it. Selgin's new book False Dawn: The New Deal and the Promise of Recovery, 1933–1947 examines what the New Deal actually accomplished—and failed to accomplish—in confronting the Great Depression.  Tyler and George discuss the surprising lack of fiscal and monetary stimulus in the New Deal, whether revaluing gold was really the best path to economic reflation, how much Glass-Steagall and other individual parts of the New Deal mattered, Keynes' "very sound" advice to Roosevelt, why Hayek's analysis fell short, whether America would've done better with a more concentrated banking sector, how well the quantity theory of money holds up, his vision for a "night watchman" Fed, how many countries should dollarize, whether stablecoins should be allowed to pay interest, his stake in a fractional-reserve Andalusian donkey ownership scheme, why his Spanish vocabulary is particularly strong on plumbing, his ambivalence about the eurozone, what really got America out of the Great Depression, and more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded September 26th, 2025. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow George on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Photo Credit: Richie Downs

    1u 9m
  4. John Amaechi on Leadership, the NBA, and Being Gay in Professional Sports

    1 OKT

    John Amaechi on Leadership, the NBA, and Being Gay in Professional Sports

    John Amaechi is a former NBA forward/center who became a chartered scientist, professor of leadership at Exeter Business School, and New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, It's Not Magic: The Ordinary Skills of Exceptional Leaders, argues that leadership isn't bestowed or innate, it's earned through deliberate skill development. Tyler and John discuss whether business culture is defined by the worst behavior tolerated, what rituals leadership requires, the quality of leadership in college basketball and consulting, why Doc Rivers started some practices at midnight, his childhood identification with the Hunchback of Notre Dame and retreat into science fiction, whether Yoda was actually a terrible leader, why he turned down $17 million from the Lakers, how mental blocks destroyed his shooting and how he overcame them, what he learned from Jerry Sloan's cruelty versus Karl Malone's commitment, what percentage of NBA players truly love the game, the experience of being gay in the NBA and why so few male athletes come out, when London peaked, why he loved Scottsdale but had to leave, the physical toll of professional play, the career prospects for 2nd tier players, what distinguishes him from other psychologists, why personality testing is "absolute bollocks," what he plans to do next, and more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded September 15th, 2025. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow John on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here.

    1 u
  5. Steven Pinker on Coordination, Common Knowledge, and the Retreat of Liberal Enlightenment

    24 SEP

    Steven Pinker on Coordination, Common Knowledge, and the Retreat of Liberal Enlightenment

    Steven Pinker returns to Conversations with Tyler with an argument that common knowledge—those infinite loops of "I know that you know that I know"—is the hidden infrastructure that enables human coordination, from accepting paper money to toppling dictators. But Tyler wonders: if most real-world coordination works fine without recursively looping (a glance at a traffic circle), if these models break down with the slightest change in assumptions, and if anonymous internet posters are making correct but uncomfortable truths common knowledge when society might function better with noble lies, is Pinker's theory really capturing how coordination works—and might we actually need less common knowledge, not more? Tyler and Steven probe these dimensions of common knowledge—Schelling points, differential knowledge, benign hypocrisies like  a whisky bottle in a paper bag—before testing whether rational people can actually agree (spoiler: they can't converge on Hitchcock rankings despite Aumann's theorem), whether liberal enlightenment will reignite and why, what stirring liberal thinkers exist under the age 55, why only a quarter of Harvard students deserve A's, how large language models implicitly use linguistic insights while ignoring linguistic theory, his favorite track on Rubber Soul, what he'll do next, and more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded September 12th, 2025. This episode was made possible through the support of the John Templeton Foundation. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Steven on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here.

    46 min
  6. David Commins on Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, and the Future of the Gulf States

    17 SEP

    David Commins on Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, and the Future of the Gulf States

    David Commins, author of the new book Saudi Arabia: A Modern History, brings decades of scholarship and firsthand experience to explain the kingdom's unlikely rise. Tyler and David discuss why Wahhabism was essential for Saudi state-building, the treatment of Shiites in the Eastern Province and whether discrimination has truly ended, why the Saudi state emerged from its poorer and least cosmopolitan regions, the lasting significance of the 1979 Grand Mosque seizure by millenarian extremists, what's kept Gulf states stable, the differing motivations behind Saudi sports investments, the disappointing performance of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology despite its $10 billion endowment, the main barrier to improving its k-12 education, how Yemen became the region's outlier of instability and whether Saudi Arabia learned from its mistakes there, the Houthis' unclear strategic goals, the prospects for the kingdom's post-oil future, the topic of David's next book, and more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded August 22nd, 2025. This episode was made possible through the support of the John Templeton Foundation. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here.

    51 min
  7. Seamus Murphy on Photographing Patterns Across Cultures

    3 SEP

    Seamus Murphy on Photographing Patterns Across Cultures

    Seamus Murphy is an Irish photographer and filmmaker who has spent decades documenting life in some of the world's most challenging places—from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan to Nigeria's Boko Haram territories. Having left recession-era Ireland in the 1980s to teach himself photography in American darkrooms, Murphy has become that rare artist who moves seamlessly between conflict zones and recording studios, creating books of Afghan women's poetry while directing music videos that anticipated Brexit. Tyler and Seamus discuss the optimistic case for Afghanistan, his biggest fear when visiting any conflict zone, how photography has shaped perceptions of Afghanistan, why Russia reminded him of pre-Celtic Tiger Ireland, how the Catholic Church's influence collapsed so suddenly in Ireland, why he left Ireland in the 1980s, what shapes Americans impression of Ireland, living part-time in Kolkata and what the future holds for that "slightly dying" but culturally vibrant city, his near-death encounters with Boko Haram in Nigeria, the visual similarities between Michigan and Russia, working with PJ Harvey on Let England Shake and their travels to Kosovo and Afghanistan together, his upcoming film about an Afghan family he's documented for thirty years, and more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded August 21st, 2025. Help keep the show ad free by donating today! Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here.

    55 min
  8. David Brooks on Audacity, AI, and the American Psyche (Live at 92NY)

    20 AUG

    David Brooks on Audacity, AI, and the American Psyche (Live at 92NY)

    David Brooks returns to the show with a stark diagnosis of American culture. Having evolved from a Democratic socialist to a neoconservative to what he now calls "the rightward edge of the leftward tendency," Brooks argues that America's core problems aren't economic but sociological—rooted in the destruction of our "secure base" of family, community, and moral order that once gave people existential security. Tyler and David cover why young people are simultaneously the most rejected and most productive generation, smartphones and sex, the persuasiveness of AI vs novels, the loss of audacity, what made William F. Buckley and Milton Friedman great mentors, why academics should embrace the epistemology of the interview, the evolving status of neoconservatism, what Trump gets right, whether only war or mass movements can revive the American psyche, what will end the fertility crisis, the subject of his book, listener questions, and much more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded July 22nd, 2025. This episode was made possible through the support of the John Templeton Foundation. Help keep the show ad free by donating today! Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow David on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Photo Credit: Vladimir Kolesnikov/Michael Priest Photography

    1u 10m
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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.

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