Conversations with Tyler

The son of an economist, Eric Schmidt eschewed his father’s profession, first studying architecture before settling on computer science and eventually earning a PhD. Now one of the most influential technology executives in the world, he still however credits his interest in network economies and platforms for a large part of his success.  In this live event hosted by Village Global in San Francisco, Tyler questioned Schmidt about underused management strategies, what Google learned after interviewing one job candidate sixteen times, his opinion on early vs. late Picasso, the best reform in corporate governance, why we might see a bifurcation of the Internet, what technology will explode in the the next 10 years, the most underrated media source, and more. Transcript and links: https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/eric-schmidt-tyler-cowen-google-ec33aa3e6dae Follow Eric: www.twitter.com/ericschmidt Follow Tyler: www.twitter.com/tylercowen More CWT goodness: Facebook: www.facebook.com/cowenconvos/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/cowenconvos Email: www.mercatus.org/newsletters

Not only is Ben Thompson's Stratechery frequently mentioned on MR, but such is Tyler's fandom that the newsletter even made its way onto the reading list for one of his PhD courses. Ben's based in Taiwan, so when he recently visited DC, Tyler quickly took advantage of the chance for an in-person dialogue.  In this conversation they talk about the business side of tech and more, including whether tech titans are good at PR, whether conglomerate synergies exist, Amazon's foray into health care, why anyone needs an Apple Watch or an Alexa, growing up in small-town Wisconsin, his pragmatic book-reading style, whether MBAs are overrated, the prospects for the Milwaukee Bucks, NBA rule changes, the future of the tech industries in China and India, and why Taiwanese breakfast is the best breakfast. Transcript and links: https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/ben-thompson-tyler-cowen-stratechery-amazon-google-facebook-4bd230276a14 Follow Ben: www.twitter.com/benthompson Follow Tyler: www.twitter.com/tylercowen Subscribe to Stratechery: https://stratechery.com/membership/ More CWT goodness: Facebook: www.facebook.com/cowenconvos/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/cowenconvos Email: www.mercatus.org/newsletters

In this special episode, Rob Wiblin of 80,000 Hours has the super-sized conversation he wants to have with Tyler about Stubborn Attachments. In addition to a deep examination of the ideas in the book, the conversation ranges far and wide across Tyler's thinking, including why we won't leave the galaxy, the unresolvable clash between the claims of culture and nature, and what Tyrone would have to say about the book, and more. If you liked this interview, be sure to subscribe to Rob's 80,000 Hours podcast, which features in-depth interviews about the world's most pressing problems with Philip Tetlock, Bryan Caplan, Nick Beckstead and many more: https://80000hours.org/podcast/ Order Stubborn Attachments from Stripe Press here: https://press.stripe.com/ Transcript and links: https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/tyler-cowen-robert-wiblin-stubborn-attachments-80000-hours-podcast-359aa62aa8ab Follow Rob: www.twitter.com/robertwiblin Follow Tyler: www.twitter.com/tylercowen More CWT goodness: Facebook: www.facebook.com/cowenconvos/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/cowenconvos Email: www.mercatus.org/newsletters

After winning the Nobel, Paul Krugman found himself at the "end of ambition," with no more achievements left to unlock. That could be a depressing place, but Krugman avoids complacency by doing what he's always done: following his curiosity and working intensely at whatever grabs him most strongly. Tyler sat down with Krugman at his office in New York to discuss what's grabbing him at the moment, including antitrust, Supreme Court term limits, the best ways to fight inequality, why he's a YIMBY, inflation targets, congestion taxes, trade (both global and interstellar), his favorite living science fiction writer, immigration policy, how to write well for a smart audience, new directions for economic research, and more. Transcript and links: https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/tyler-cowen-paul-krugman-economics-bipartisanship-politics-254dcee15b98 Follow Paul: www.twitter.com/paulkrugman Follow Tyler: www.twitter.com/tylercowen More CWT goodness: Facebook: www.facebook.com/cowenconvos/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/cowenconvos Email: www.mercatus.org/newsletters

Political scientist Bruno Maçães has built a career out of crossing the globe teaching, advising, writing, and talking to people. His recent book, born out of a six-month journey across Eurasia, is one of Tyler's favorites.  So how does it feel to face Tyler's rat-a-tat curiosity about your life's work? For Bruno, the experience was "like you are a politician under attack and your portfolio is the whole of physical and metaphysical reality."  Listen to this episode to discover how well Bruno defended that expansive portfolio, including what's missing from liberalism, Obama's conceptual foreign policy mistake, what economists are most wrong about, how to fall in love with Djibouti, stagnation in Europe, the diversity of Central Asia, Hitchcock's perfect movie, China as an ever-growing global force, the book everyone under 25 should read, the creativity of Washington, D.C versus Silicon Valley, and more. Get Bruno's latest book: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/305712/the-dawn-of-eurasia/9780241309254.html Transcript and links: https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/bruno-ma%C3%A7%C3%A3es-tyler-cowen-eurasia-adventure-liberalism-81e4d51340d0 Follow Bruno: www.twitter.com/MacaesBruno Follow Tyler: www.twitter.com/tylercowen More CWT goodness: Facebook: www.facebook.com/cowenconvos/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/cowenconvos Email: www.mercatus.org/newsletters

Michele Gelfand is professor of psychology at the University of Maryland and author of the just-released Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World. In her conversation with Tyler, Michele unpacks the concept of tight and loose cultures and more, including which variable best explains tightness, the problem with norms, whether Silicon Valley has an honor culture, the importance of theory and history in guiding research, what Donald Trump gets wrong about negotiation, why MBAs underrate management, the need to develop cultural IQ, and why mentorship should last a lifetime. Want to get your hands on a signed copy of Tyler's new book Stubborn Attachments before it hits bookstands on October 16th? Rate and review Conversations with Tyler on Apple Podcasts! If you've already rated and reviewed Conversations with Tyler, you can rate any of the Mercatus podcasts and still be entered to win, including Macro Musings, Mercatus Policy Download, and the Hayek Program Podcast: https://get.mercatus.org/podcastcontest/ Transcript and links: https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/michele-gelfand-tyler-cowen-psychology-tightness-looseness-culture-82b573e40d8f Order Michele's new book: https://www.amazon.com/Rule-Makers-Breakers-Culture-Wires/dp/1501152939 Follow Michele: www.twitter.com/MicheleJGelfand Follow Tyler: www.twitter.com/tylercowen More CWT goodness: Facebook: www.facebook.com/cowenconvos/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/cowenconvos Email: www.mercatus.org/newsletters

Claire Lehmann is the founding editor of Quillette, an online magazine dedicated to free thought and open inquiry. Founded in 2015, the magazine has already developed a large and growing readership that values Quillette's promise to treat all ideas with respect, even those that may be politically incorrect. As an Australian, Claire tells Tyler she doesn't think she could have started the magazine in America. Even in risk-loving San Fransisco, where this conversation took place, people are too afraid to speak their minds. "You celebrate entrepreneurs and courage in making money and that kind of thing, but there is a general timidity when it comes to expressing one's honest views about things," she tells Tyler. "I find that surprising, and particularly among people who are risk-taking in all sorts of other domains." She and Tyler explore her ideas about the stifling effect of political correctness and more, including why its dominant form may come from the political right, how higher education got screwed up, strands of thought favored by the Internet and Youtube, overrated and underrated Australian cities, Aussie blokes, and more. Transcript and links: https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/claire-lehmann-tyler-cowen-political-correctness-social-norms-australian-culture-e52e2c08c629 Follow Claire: www.twitter.com/clairlemon Follow Tyler: www.twitter.com/tylercowen More CWT goodness: Facebook: www.facebook.com/cowenconvos/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/cowenconvos Email: www.mercatus.org/newsletters

Michael Pollan has long been fascinated by nature and the ways we connect and clash with it, with decades of writing covering food, farming, cooking, and architecture. Pollan's latest fascination? Our widespread and ancient desire to use nature to change our consciousness.  He joins Tyler to discuss his research and experience with psychedelics, including what kinds of people most benefit from them, what it can teach us about profundity, how it can change your personality and political views, the importance of culture in shaping the experience, the proper way to integrate it into mainstream practice, and - most importantly of all - whether it's any fun.  Plus his latest thoughts on feeding the world, GMOs, and writing well. Transcript and links: https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/michael-pollan-tyler-cowen-nature-euphoria-food-22145fd728a2 Follow Michael: www.twitter.com/michaelpollan Follow Tyler: www.twitter.com/tylercowen More CWT goodness: Facebook: www.facebook.com/cowenconvos/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/cowenconvos Email: www.mercatus.org/newsletters

Perhaps no one else in the world more appreciates the challenges facing a better understanding of autism than Michelle Dawson. An autistic herself, she began researching her condition after experiencing discrimination at her job. "Because I had to address these legal issues and questions," she tells Tyler, "I did actually look at the autism literature, and suddenly I had information I could really work with. Suddenly there it was, this information that I was supposed to be too stupid to work with." And so she continued reading papers - lots and lots of papers - and is now an influential researcher in her own right. For Michelle, the best way to understand autism is to think of it as atypical information processing. Autistic brains function differently, and these highly varied divergences lead to biases and misunderstanding among typical thinkers, including autism researchers. In her conversation with Tyler, she outlines the current thinking on autism, including her ideas about cognitive versatility and optionality, hyperlexia and other autistic strengths, why different tests yield wildly different measures of IQ among autistics, her 'massive bias' against segregating autistics, how autistic memory is different, why sometimes a triangle is just a freaking triangle, and more. Transcripts and links: www.medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/tyler-cowen-michelle-dawson-autism-research-dsm-f2a41b326e76 Follow Michelle: twitter.com/autismcrisis Follow Tyler: twitter.com/tylercowen More CWT goodness: Facebook: www.facebook.com/cowenconvos/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/cowenconvos Email: www.mercatus.org/newsletters

At the intersection of programming, economics, cryptography, distributed systems, information theory, and math, you will find Vitalik Buterin, who has managed to synthesize insights across those fields into successful, real-world applications like Ethereum, which aims to decentralize the Internet. Tyler sat down with Vitalik to discuss the many things he's thinking about and working on, including the nascent field of cryptoeconomics, the best analogy for understanding the blockchain, his desire for more social science fiction, why belief in progress is our most useful delusion, best places to visit in time and space, how he picks up languages, why centralization's not all bad, the best ways to value crypto assets, whether P = NP, and much more. *** Do you have a world-changing idea like Vitalik? The Mercatus Center is launching a new fellowship and grant program called Emergent Ventures to support transformational thinkers and doers. Listen to Tyler talk about the new project on the latest Mercatus Policy Download: https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/podcasts/07172018/tyler-cowen-announces-emergent-ventures?utm_source=marketing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=cwtrelease And click here to learn more: https://www.mercatus.org/emergentventures?utm_source=marketing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=cwtrelease *** Transcripts and links: https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/vitalik-buterin-tyler-cowen-cryptocurrency-blockchain-tech-3a2b20c12c97 Follow Vitalik: https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin Follow Tyler: https://twitter.com/tylercowen More CWT goodness: Facebook: www.facebook.com/cowenconvos/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/cowenconvos Email: www.mercatus.org/newsletters

Travel writer Juan Pablo Villarino had visited 90 countries before making the trek to exotic Arlington, Virginia for this chat with Tyler. Amazingly enough, this recording marked his first trip to the mainland United States, which is now the 91st country in an ever-expanding list.   The world's best hitchhiker talks with Tyler about the joys of connecting with people, why it's so hard to avoid stereotypes (including of hitchhikers), how stamp collecting guides his trips, the darkest secrets of people he's gotten rides from, traveling and writing books with his wife, the cause of violence in the Americas, finding the emotional heart of a journey, where he's going next, and more. Transcripts and links: https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/tyler-cowen-juan-villarino-travel-hitchhiking-culture-c4e69e38d622 Keep up with Juan's travels on Instagram: www.instagram.com/acrobatadelcamino Get his book: https://juanvillarino.com/get-the-book/ More CWT goodness: Facebook: www.facebook.com/cowenconvos/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/cowenconvos Email: www.mercatus.org/newsletters

Elisa New believes anyone can have fun reading a poem. And that if you really want to have a blast, you shouldn't limit poetry to silent, solitary reading  - why not sing, recite, or perform it as has been the case for most of its history? The Harvard English professor and host of Poetry in America recently sat down with Tyler to discuss poets, poems, and more, including Walt Whitman's city walks, Emily Dickinson's visual art, T.S. Eliot's privilege, Robert Frost's radicalism, Willa Cather's wisdom, poetry's new platforms, the elasticity of English, the payoffs of Puritanism, and what it was like reading poetry with Shaquille O'Neal. Transcripts and links: https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/tyler-cowen-elisa-new-poetry-dickinson-frost-30258652438e Check out Elisa's show on PBS: www.poetryinamerica.org/ More CWT goodness: Facebook: www.facebook.com/cowenconvos/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/cowenconvos Email: www.mercatus.org/newsletters

For two hours every morning, David Brooks crawls around his living room floor, organizing piles of research. Then, the piles become paragraphs, the paragraphs become columns or chapters, and the process - which he calls "writing" - is complete. After that he might go out and see some people. A lunch, say, with his friend Tyler. And the two will discuss the things they're thinking, writing, and learning about. And David will feel rejuvenated, for he is a social animal (as are we all). Then one day David will be asked by Tyler to come on his show, and perform this act publicly. To talk about his love for Bruce Springsteen, being a modern-day Whig, his "religious bisexuality," covenants vs. contracts, today's answer to the "Fallows Question," why failure is overrated, community and loneliness, the upside of being invaded by Canada, and much more. And though he will be intimidated, David will oblige, and the result is here for you to enjoy. Transcripts and links: www.medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/david-brooks-tyler-cowen-religion-plurality-loneliness-new-york-times-diversity-eb051a4b47cc Follow David Brooks: www.twitter.com/nytdavidbrooks More CWT goodness: Facebook: www.facebook.com/cowenconvos/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/cowenconvos Email: www.mercatus.org/newsletters

Though what Taleb was really after was a discussion with Bryan Caplan (which starts at 51:50), the philosopher, mathematician, and author most recently of *Skin in the Game* also generously agreed to a conversation with Tyler.  They discuss the ancient Phoenicians and Greco-Roman heritage of Lebanon, philology, genetics, the blockchain, driverless cars, the advantages of Twitter fights, how to think about religion, fancy food vs. Auntie Anne's pretzels, autodidactism, The Desert of the Tartar, why Taleb refused to give a book tour, inverse role models, why math isn't just a young man's game, and more. Transcript with Tyler: https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/tyler-cowen-nassim-nicholas-taleb-skin-in-the-game-black-swan-104620da8a57 Transcript with Bryan: https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/bryan-caplan-nassim-taleb-tyler-cowen-higher-education-college-fc4b845fe30e Follow the thinkers: www.twitter.com/nntaleb www.twitter.com/bryan_caplan www.twitter.com/tylercowen More CWT goodness: Facebook: www.facebook.com/cowenconvos Twitter: www.twitter.com/cowenconvos Email: www.mercatus.org/newsletters

"No single paper is that good", says Bryan Caplan. To really understand a topic, you need to read the entire literature in the field. And to do the kind of scholarship Bryan's work requires, you need to cover multiple fields. Only that way can you assemble a wide variety of evidence into useful knowledge. But few scholars ever even try to reach the enlightened interdisciplinary plane. So how does he do it? Tyler explores Bryan's approach, including how to avoid the autodidact's curse, why his favorite philosopher happens to be a former classmate, what Tolstoy has that science fiction lacks, the idea trap, most useful wrong beliefs, effective altruism, Larry David, what most economics papers miss about the return to education, and more. Conversations with Tyler fans - we want to hear from you! Fill out this quick survey to help us find other people like you who will love the show. Not only will you be helping us out, but you’ll also have the chance to win a special gift from Tyler: www.mercatus.org/survey Transcripts and links: www.medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/bryan-caplan-tyler-cowen-parenting-education-psychology-employment-579df84d4fc5 Follow Bryan Caplan: www.twitter.com/bryan_caplan More CWT goodness: Facebook: www.facebook.com/cowenconvos/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/cowenconvos Email: www.mercatus.org/newsletters