Conversations with Tyler

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.

  1. Gregory Clark on Social Mobility, Migration, and Assortative Mating (Live at Mercatus)

    3 DAYS AGO

    Gregory Clark on Social Mobility, Migration, and Assortative Mating (Live at Mercatus)

    How much of your life’s trajectory was set in motion centuries ago? Gregory Clark has spent decades studying social mobility, and his findings suggest that where you land in society is far more predictable than we like to think. Using historical data, surname analysis, and migration patterns, Clark argues that social mobility rates have remained largely unchanged for 300 years—even across radically different political and economic systems. He and Tyler discuss why we should care about relative mobility vs growing the size of the pie, how physical mobility does and doesn’t matter, why England was a meritocracy by 1700, how assortative mating affects economic and social progress, why India industrialized so late, a new potential explanation why Britain’s economic performance has been lukewarm since WWI, Malthusian societies then and now, whether a “hereditarian” stance favors large-scale redistribution or a free-market approach, the dynamics of assimilation within Europe and the role of negative selection in certain migrations, the challenge of accurately measuring living standards, the neighborhood-versus-family debate over what drives mobility, whether we need datasets larger than humanity itself to decode the genetics of social outcomes, and much more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video. Recorded February 5th, 2025. Help keep the show ad free by donating today! Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Gregory 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: Chris Williams, Zoeica Images

    1h 23m
  2. Joe Boyd on the Birth of Rock, World Music, and Being There for Everything

    JAN 22

    Joe Boyd on the Birth of Rock, World Music, and Being There for Everything

    Sign Up for the Boston Listener Meet Up Joe Boyd was there when Dylan went electric, when Pink Floyd was born, and when Paul Simon brought Graceland to the world. But far from being just another music industry insider, Boyd has spent decades exploring how the world's musical traditions connect and transform each other. His new book And the Roots of Rhythm Remain, is seventeen years in the making, and is in Tyler’s words “the most substantive, complete, thorough, and well-informed book on world music ever written.” From producing Albanian folk recordings to discovering the hidden links between Mississippi Delta blues and Indian classical music, Boyd's journey reveals how musical innovation often emerges when traditions collide. He joins Tyler to discuss why Zulu music became politically charged in South Africa, what makes Albanian choral music distinct from Bulgarian polyphony, what it was like producing Toots and the Maytals, his role in the famous "Dueling Banjos" scene in Deliverance, his work with Stanley Kubrick on A Clockwork Orange, his experiences with Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd, how he shaped R.E.M.'s sound on Fables of the Reconstruction, what really happened when Dylan went electric at Newport, how the Beatles integrated Indian music, what makes the Kinshasa guitar sound impossible to replicate, and how he maintains his collection of 6,000 vinyl LPs and 30,000 CDs, what he’ll do next, and more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video. Recorded December 27th, 2024. 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.

    1h 1m
  3. Scott Sumner on Monetary Rules, Blooming Late, and the Death of Cinema

    JAN 8

    Scott Sumner on Monetary Rules, Blooming Late, and the Death of Cinema

    Scott Sumner didn't follow the typical path to economic influence. He nearly lost his teaching job before tenure, did his best research after most academics slow down, and found his largest audience through blogging in his 50s and 60s, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Yet this unconventional journey led him to become one of the most influential monetary thinkers of the past two decades. Scott joins Tyler to discuss what reading Depression-era newspapers revealed about Hitler's rise, when fiat currency became viable, why Sweden escaped the worst of the 1930s crash, whether bimetallism ever made sense, where he'd time-travel to witness economic history, what 1920s Hollywood movies get wrong about their era, how he developed his famous maxim "never reason from a price change," whether the Fed can ever truly follow policy rules like NGDP targeting, if Congress shapes monetary policy more than we think, the relationship between real and nominal shocks, his favorite Hitchcock movies, why Taiwan's 90s cinema was so special, how Ozu gets better with age, whether we'll ever see another Bach or Beethoven, how he ended up at the University of Chicago, what it means to be a late bloomer in academia, and more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video. Recorded December 27th, 2024. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Scott 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.

    1h 8m
  4. Paula Byrne on Thomas Hardy’s Women, Jane Austen’s Humor, and Evelyn Waugh’s Warmth

    12/11/2024

    Paula Byrne on Thomas Hardy’s Women, Jane Austen’s Humor, and Evelyn Waugh’s Warmth

    Donate to Conversations with Tyler Give Crypto Other Ways to Give What can Thomas Hardy’s tortured marriages teach us about love, obsession, and second chances? In this episode, biographer, novelist, and therapist Paula Byrne examines the intimate connections between life and literature, revealing how Hardy’s relationships with women shaped his portrayals of love and tragedy. Byrne, celebrated for her bestselling biographies of Jane Austen, Evelyn Waugh, and Barbara Pym, brings her unique perspective to explore the profound ways personal relationships, cultural history, and creative ambition intersect to shape some of the most enduring works in literary history. Tyler and Paula discuss Virginia Woolf’s surprising impressions of Hardy, why Wessex has lost a sense of its past, what Jude the Obscure reveals about Hardy’s ideas about marriage, why so many Hardy tragedies come in doubles, the best least-read Hardy novels, why Mary Robinson was the most interesting woman of her day, how Georgian theater shaped Jane Austen’s writing, British fastidiousness, Evelyn Waugh’s hidden warmth, Paula’s strange experience with poison pen letters, how American and British couples are different, the mental health crisis among teenagers, the most underrated Beatles songs, the weirdest thing about living in Arizona, and more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video. Recorded November 14th, 2024. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Paula 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
  5. Stephen Kotkin on Stalin, Power, and the Art of Biography

    12/04/2024

    Stephen Kotkin on Stalin, Power, and the Art of Biography

    Donate to Conversations with Tyler Give Crypto Other Ways to Give In his landmark multi-volume biography of Stalin, Stephen Kotkin shows how totalitarian power worked not just through terror from above, but through millions of everyday decisions from below. Currently a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution after 33 years at Princeton, Kotkin brings both deep archival work and personal experience to his understanding of Soviet life, having lived in Magnitogorsk during the 1980s and seen firsthand how power operates in closed societies. Tyler sat down with Stephen to discuss the state of Russian Buddhism today, how shamanism persists in modern Siberia, whether Siberia might ever break away from Russia, what happened to the science city Akademgorodok, why Soviet obsession with cybernetics wasn't just a mistake, what life was really like in 1980s Magnitogorsk, how modernist urban planning failed there, why Prokofiev returned to the USSR in 1936, what Stalin actually understood about artistic genius, how Stalin's Georgian background influenced him (or not), what Michel Foucault taught him about power, why he risked his tenure case to study Japanese, how his wife's work as a curator opened his eyes to Korean folk art, how he's progressing on the next Stalin volume, and much more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video. Recorded November 13th, 2024. 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.

    1h 26m
  6. Russ Roberts on Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate

    11/25/2024

    Russ Roberts on Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate

    In this crossover episode with EconTalk, Tyler joins Russ Roberts for an in-depth exploration of Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate, a monumental novel often described as the 20th-century answer to Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Russ and Tyler cover Grossman’s life and the historical context of Life and Fate, its themes of war, totalitarianism, freedom, and fate, the novel’s polyphonic structure and large cast of characters, the parallels between fascism and communism, the idea of “senseless kindness” as a counter to systemic evil, the symbolic importance of motherhood, the psychology of confession and loyalty under totalitarian systems, Grossman’s literary influences including Chekhov, Tolstoy, Dante, and Stendhal, individual resilience and moral compromises, the survival of the novel despite Soviet censorship, artificial intelligence and the dehumanization of systems, the portrayal of scientific discovery and its moral dilemmas, the ethical and emotional tensions in the novel, the anti-fanatical tone and universal humanism of the book, Grossman’s personal life and connections to its themes, and the novel's enduring relevance and complexity. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video. Recorded November 4th, 2024. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Russ 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.

    1h 2m
4.8
out of 5
2,276 Ratings

About

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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