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.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 7
- Latest publication
- Sep 9, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 8, 2026
Latest episodes
Jared Diamond on Leaders, Luck, and Irreplaceability (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Is leadership overrated? That's one simple reading of what Jared Diamond argues in his new book . Asked by Tyler to name the least replaceable leader in human history, Jared declines to name one — not Christ, the Roman Empire having had prophets to spare — and observes that even Genghis Khan happened to be born at an auspicious moment for a conqueror of the steppes. Conditions ripen; somebody turns up. So which leaders do make a difference? Tyler and Jared debate that question , including condit
Michael Moritz on Origin Stories, Exile, and Obsessive Curiosity (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Michael Moritz has written books through every phase of his life: the first history of Apple and an account of Chrysler's near-death while he was a journalist at Time , a study of Alex Ferguson's Manchester United in the middle of his 38 years at Sequoia, and now Ausländer , a family memoir, after leaving the firm. Moritz calls himself a dilettante with too many interests, but listen to him on learning to paint in his 40s, or the questions he would ask a ten-year-old boy in a German village in 1
Daron Acemoglu on Liberalism, Automation, and the Educated Elite (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Daron Acemoglu returns for his second appearance with a new book, What Happened to Liberal Democracy? , which Tyler reads as an attempt to redefine and revitalize liberalism for our times. Where Daron's first visit was about how states and societies contend for the narrow corridor in which liberty survives, this one asks what liberals themselves got wrong, and the answer implicates the educated elite—that is to say, you. Tyler and Daron discuss what's wrong with social contract theories and Rous
Julia Ioffe on Russian Women, Missing Men, and the Roots of Autocracy (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Julia Ioffe left the USSR as a child and came back as an adult journalist to find that the confident, credentialed women she remembered from her Soviet childhood had largely been supplanted by those chasing marriage and domesticity instead. That disorienting reversal is the engine of her book Motherland , a National Book Award finalist that reconstructs modern Russian history almost entirely through its women. Her account, drawn from her own family's history as well as the archives, keeps return
Andrew Graham-Dixon on Vermeer, a Forgotten Sect, and Underrated Artists (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Andrew Graham-Dixon's new book, Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found , rests on the conviction that you cannot understand what's in a painting without knowing what its maker was thinking about. In Vermeer's case, that context includes a forgotten liberal sect — the Remonstrants and Collegiants, Christians without a church who believed peace would come through reading and toleration rather than a returning Messiah. Recover that world and a woman alone in a sunlit room is a radical image in a Europe whe
Publishing over time
Last 90 days. Choose a month to open its work.
Recurring subjects
Named in the text we hold. One piece can cover several.
Audience
No verified audience measurement yet.
About this data
Counts cover the work we have indexed. Tone needs enough text and a confident classification. Excerpts and episode notes are not full articles or transcripts.
Identity or attribution wrong? Suggest a correction.