Conversations with Tyler

08/01/2025

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 our blind spots, when fiat currency became viable, whether bimetallism ever made sense, 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, 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, and his experience as a late-bloomer.

Monetary policy is like watching Ozu films: it rewards patience

31/12/2024

Time is running out to support the podcast before the end of the year! Thank you to those who have already donated. We are looking forward to more conversations in 2025.

Update: We've hit our fundraising goal thanks to your incredible support! We are overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of our listeners and are grateful for your contributions. Thank you! Rest assured, your additional contributions will continue to directly support the production of the show. All spots for....

25/12/2024

Merry Christmas! On this special year-in-review episode, Tyler and producer Jeff Holmes look back on the past year in the show, field listener questions, review Tyler’s pop culture picks from 2014, and mull over ideas for what to call all you listeners.

Should our fanbase be known as “The Overrated”?

11/12/2024

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.

And does Paul McCartney still sound Scouse?

04/12/2024

New episode! 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.

Is power made in palaces or kitchens?

03/12/2024

It’s ! A donation in any amount helps us continue exploring the minds and methods of today's top thinkers. It's a chance to give back to the show that has enriched so many listeners' lives.

Thank you for being part of the Conversations with Tyler podcast community. Consider us in your Giving Tuesday plans and donate now to keep the conversations going.

Thanks to you, Conversations with Tyler continues to grow, giving us the opportunity to share unique and insightful conversations with more people than ever before. The podcast has been downloaded millions of times and featured some of the best thinkers and doers in the world, including Patrick McKe...

25/11/2024

New ep! 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.

In this crossover episode with EconTalk, Tyler joins Russ Roberts to discuss Grossman's 20th-century epic on war, freedom, and humanity

13/11/2024

New ep! In Neal Stephenson's second appearance, Tyler asks him why he sometimes shifts from envisioning the future to illustrating the past, the rise of history autodidacts, the implications of leaked secrets from the atomic age to today’s AI, the logistics of faking one’s death, why he still drafts novels in longhand, Soviet idealism among Western intellectuals, which Soviet achievements he admires, the lag in AR development, how LLMs might boost AR, whether social media is increasingly giving way to private group chats, his continuing influence on technologists, why AI-generated art might struggle to connect with readers, the prospect of AGI becoming an unnoticed background tool, what Neal believes the world really needs more of, what lies ahead in Polostan and the broader “Bomb Light” series, and more.

Could an AI novel ever truly engage us?

30/10/2024

New ep! Christopher Kirchhoff and Tyler cover the ascendancy of drone warfare and how it will affect tactics both off and on the battlefield, the sobering prospect of hypersonic weapons and how they will shift the balance of power, EMP attacks, AI as the new arms race (and who's winning), the completely different technology ecosystem of an iPhone vs. an F-35, why we shouldn't nationalize AI labs, the problem with security clearances, why the major defense contractors lost their dynamism, how to overcome the “Valley of Death” in defense acquisition, how Unit X began, the most effective type of government commission, what he'll learn next, and more.

Does the rise of autonomous weapons make the world safer or more dangerous?

18/10/2024

Thanks so much to everyone who came to our listener meetup in Los Angeles this week! It was an incredibly fun event. What city should we go to next?

Special thanks to for spending some time with us and for being a good sport when asked to interview Tyler for a portion of the evening!

16/10/2024

New ep! Tyler and Musa al-Gharbi explore the rise and fall of the "Great Awokening" and more, including how elite overproduction fuels social movements, why wokeness tends to fizzle out, whether future waves of wokeness will ratchet up in intensity, how a great awokening would manifest in a Muslim society, Black Muslims and the Nation of Islam, why Musa left Catholicism, who the greatest sociologist of Islam is, Muslim immigration and assimilation in Europe, and more.

How do past social justice waves help explain wokeness today?

09/10/2024

New episode! Tom Tugendhat joins Tyler to examine the evolving landscape of governance in the UK today, including his pick for the greatest unselected prime minister, whether Brexit revealed a defect in the parliamentary system, how learning Arabic in Yemen affected his life trajectory, his read on the Middle East and Russia, his pitch for why a talented young person should work in the British Civil Service, and more.

To do: build houses, fix trains, and don’t rush to abolish the House of Lords

02/10/2024

New episode! Kyla Scanlon and Tyler dive into the modern state of economics education and a whole range of topics like if fantasy world-building can help you understand economics, what she learned trading options at 16, why she opted for a state school over the Ivy League, lessons from selling 38 cars over summer break, introversion as an ingredient for social media success, if she believes in any conspiracy theories, Instagram scrolling vs TikTok scrolling, the decline of print culture, why people are seeking out cults, modern nihilism, how perspective can help with optimism, the death of celebrity and the rise of influencers, why econ education has gone backward, improving mainstream media, YIMBYism and real estate, nuclear pragmatism versus utopian geothermalists, investing advice for young people, why she thinks about the Great Depression more than Rome, creating the next Free to Choose, and more.

For economics beginners, she walks the walk and talks the Tok

18/09/2024

New ep! Tobi Lütke and Tyler hop from Germany to Canada to America to discuss a range of topics like how outsiders make good coders, learning in meetings by saying wrong things, having one-on-ones with your kids, the positives of venting, German craftsmanship vs. American agility, why German schooling made him miserable, why there aren’t more German tech giants, the dividing line between Northern and Southern Germany, why other countries shouldn’t compare themselves to the US, Canada’s lack of exports and brands, ice skating to work in Ottawa, how VR and AI will change retailing, why he expects to be “terribly embarrassed” when looking back at companies in the 2020s, why The Lean Startup is bad for retailers, how fantasy novels teach business principles, what he's learning next, and more.

The German word for “started the online shopping revolution” is Tobi Lütke.

13/09/2024

On last week's episode, Tyler and science writer Philip Ball explored the challenges of modern science, including how well scientists have stood up to power historically, the ethics of artificial wombs and population decline, the terrifying nature of outer space and Gothic cathedrals, the role Christianity played in the Scientific Revolution, what current myths may stick around forever, whether cells can be thought of as doing computation, the limitations of The Selfish Gene, progress in science, and more.

A science writer so prolific he can’t even name all his books

21/08/2024

In his second appearance on the show, Nate Silver and Tyler tackle how coin flips solve status quo bias, gambling’s origins in divination, what kinds of betting Nate would ban, why he’s been limited on several of the New York sports betting sites, whether poker players make for good employees, running and leaving FiveThirtyEight, why funky batting stances have disappeared, AI’s impact on sports analytics, the most underrated NBA statistic, the stupidest risks Tyler and Nate would take, prediction markets, and how many monumental political decisions have been done under the influence of drugs.

Poker and politics? Not that different.

07/08/2024

New episode! Paul Bloom and Tyler explore whether psychologists understand day-to-day human behavior any better than normal folk, how babies can tell if you’re a jerk, at what age children have the capacity to believe in God, why the trend in religion is toward monotheism, the morality of getting paid to strangle cats, whether disgust should be built into LLMs, the possibilities of AI therapists, the best test for a theory of mind, why people overestimate Paul’s (and Tyler’s) intelligence, why flattery is undersupplied, why we should train flattery and tax empathy, Carl Jung, Big Five personality theory, Principles of Psychology by William James, the social psychology of the Hebrew Bible, his most successful unusual work habit, what he’ll work on next, and more.

It’s 2024. Do you know where your children are at? Psychologically?

24/07/2024

Alan Taylor is Tyler's pick for one of the greatest living historians. His many books cover the early American Republic, American westward expansion, the War of 1812, slavery in Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, the revolutionary settlements in Maine, and more.

One of America’s best living historians spills the tea on the early American Republic.