Conversations with Tyler

I have listened to every single podcast, at least once. My horizons have been expanded, my knowledge increased, my life changed. It is simply the best podcast anywhere.

Congrats on the amazing podcast!!

The podcast universe is overpopulated. But Tyler is one of the early entrants, so perhaps he is a pioneer of sorts. But there is so much variety and so many hidden gems that Tyler seems dated and predictable. Even though he tries to surprise us with his abrupt shifts in tone and questioning somehow no one can believe that he is actually probing deep into his guests’ contradictions or trying to catch the guest on their weak side. Everyone is on this silly game. I think of his recent interview with the British journalist, John Gray. Tyler treated him with a reverence that one would assign to John Rawls or Robert Nozick or Ronald Dworkin. But that’s the thing: Gray is a journalist trying to pass himself off as a political theorist. You have to have lived in Britain to know that Gray is a poseur. Tyler even gets close to pinning him down early in the conversation where Gray mouths platitudes about young people and their beliefs and wriggles out of questions that should be followed through. This is proof: Gray and Cowen are in a sense kindred spirits. Really just entertainers!

It’s not as much conversations with Tyler as it is more choppy interviews with Tyler. There’s no flow. It’s not organic or natural as a conversation. The material is ok but Tyler comes off as aristocratic