Conversations with Tyler

03/04/2025

Conversations with Tyler visits Anthropic! Last week, Tyler sat down with Jack Clark for an episode diving deep into AI and AI policy. Later, they continued the discussion in a thought-provoking fireside chat. Stay tuned for the episode dropping in May!

02/04/2025

Sheilagh Ogilvie has spent decades examining the institutional structures that shaped European economic history, challenging conventional wisdom about everything from guilds to marriage patterns. In her conversation with Tyler, she reveals how studying pandemic responses from the Black Death to COVID-19 provides a unique lens for understanding deeper truths about institutional effectiveness and social constraints.

Tyler and Sheilagh discuss the economic impacts of historical pandemics, the “happy story” of the Black Death and why it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, the history of variolation and how entrepreneurs created vaccination franchises in 18th-century England, why local communities typically managed epidemics better than central authorities, the dastardly nature of medieval guilds, the European marriage pattern and its disputed contribution to economic growth, when sustained economic growth truly began in England, why the Dutch Republic stagnated despite its early success, whether she agrees with Greg Clark’s social mobility hypothesis, her experience and conducting “anthropological fieldwork” on English social customs, the communitarian norms she encountered while living in Germany, her upcoming research project on European serfdom, and more.

What 700 years of pandemic responses reveal about institutional effectiveness

19/03/2025

What happens when a liberal thinker shifts his attention from polarization to economic abundance? Ezra Klein’s new book with Derek Thompson, Abundance, argues for an agenda of increased housing, infrastructure, clean energy, and innovation. But does abundance clash with polarization—or offer a way through it?

Politics Got Weird—Can Abundance Make It Normal Again?

06/03/2025

We were delighted to have Jennifer Pahlka in the studio earlier this week to record an episode of Conversations with Tyler and host a lunch with her and some of our scholars! Jen’s episode will be dropping next month 👀

05/03/2025

New ep! Scientists ignored airborne disease for centuries—why?

Carl Zimmer joins Tyler to explain why even the smartest people resisted what now seems obvious and what else we might be missing.

They discuss why it took so long for the WHO and CDC to acknowledge COVID-19 was airborne, whether ultraviolet lamps can save us from the next pandemic, how effective masking is, the best theory on the anthrax mailings, the chance of extraterrestrial life in our solar system, what Lee Cronin’s “assembly theory” could mean for defining life itself, the use of genetic information to inform decision-making, the strangeness of the Flynn effect, and what Carl learned about politics from growing up as the son of a New Jersey congressman.

From the mysteries of airborne disease to the search for extraterrestrial life, what are we missing about the unseen world around us?

19/02/2025

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 has 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 instead of just 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, Malthusian societies then and now, the dynamics of assimilation within Europe, 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 more.

How much does your surname predict your economic fate?

10/02/2025

Thank you to everyone who braved the snow storm and joined us at yesterday for our listener meetup in Boston!

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05/02/2025

Economist Gregory Clark stopped by for a live Conversations with Tyler recording for staff. Stay tuned for his episode set to release in two weeks on February 19!

05/02/2025

For Ross Douthat, phenomena like UFO sightings and the simulation hypothesis don’t challenge religious belief—they demonstrate how difficult it is to escape religious questions entirely. His new book, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious makes the case for religious faith in an age of apparent disenchantment.

In his third appearance on Conversations with Tyler, Ross joined Tyler to discuss what getting routed by Christopher Hitchens taught him about religious debate, why the simulation hypothesis resembles ancient Gnostic religion, what Mexican folk Catholicism reveals about spiritual intermediaries, his evolving views on papal authority in the Francis era, what UFO sightings might tell us about supernatural reality, why he’s less apocalyptic than Peter Thiel about the Antichrist, and why he’s publishing a fantasy novel on Substack before AI potentially transforms creative writing.

And what UFOs might tell us about supernatural reality

22/01/2025

New episode! Legendary music producer Joe Boyd was there when Dylan went electric, when Pink Floyd was born, and when Paul Simon brought Graceland to the world. 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, seventeen years in the making, is in Tyler's words “the most substantive, complete, thorough, and well-informed book on world music ever written.”

When your synthesizer breaks the phone system (and other tales from a life in music)

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?