Conversations with Tyler

How can one identify and predict talent? On a search to answer this question and others like it, Tyler Cowen joined venture capitalist and entrepreneur Daniel Gross to explore the art and science of finding talent in their new book Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World . In a panel discussion hosted by Shruti Rajagopalan, Cowen and Gross discuss the applicatio...

As a little girl, Cynthia Haven loved reading classic works of literature. At sixteen, she began her career as a reporter. And years later, those two interests converged as they led her to interview and write books about three writers and thinkers whom she also came to call mentors: René Girard, Czeslaw Milosz, and Joseph Brodsky.  Cynthia joined Tyler to discuss what she's gleaned from each of th...

When Tyler is reviewing grants for Emergent Ventures, he is struck by how the ideas of effective altruism have so clearly influenced many of the smartest applicants, particularly the younger ones. And William MacAskill, whom Tyler considers one of the world's most influential philosophers, is a leading light of the community. William joined Tyler to discuss why the movement has gained so much trac...

As an inquisitive reader, books were a cherished commodity for Leopoldo López when he was a political prisoner in his home country of Venezuela. His prison guards eventually observed the strength and focus López gained from reading. In an attempt to stifle his spirit, the guards confiscated his books and locked them in a neighboring cell where he could see but not access them. But López didn't let...

Fighting fires meant a lot of downtime for Matthew Ball. Stationed at a forward operating base in the woods for two weeks at a time, he spent long hours amongst fellow firefighters with whom he shared little in common except for their love of the outdoors. The skills he gained working towards mutual goals with those he had little else in common with has translated well to his career as a strategis...

Growing up, Barkha Dutt was totally rootless. She spoke English, not her parent's Punjabi. She devoured Enid Blyton and studied English literature during college, but read few Indian novelists. She didn't even know her caste. This has opened her up to criticism as being a progressive elite who is out of touch with her heritage, and challenged her to be especially thoughtful in the way she examines...

Like the frontier characters from Deadwood , his favorite TV show, Marc Andreessen has discovered that the real challenge to building in new territory is not in the practicalities of learning a trade, but in developing a savviness for what makes people tick. Without understanding the deep patterns of human behavior, how can you know what to build, or who should build it, or how? For Marc, that mea...

What does it mean to uphold disability rights, or the right to economic liberty? What framework should be used when rights appear to conflict? Constitutional law expert Jamal Greene contends that the way Americans view rights—as fundamental, inflexible, and universal—is at odds with how the rest of the world conceives of them, and even with how our own founders envisaged them. In his new book, How...

If Tyler and Daniel's latest book can be boiled down into a single message, it would be that the world is currently failing at identifying talent, and that getting better at it would have enormous benefits for organizations, individuals, and the world at large. In this special episode of Conversations with Tyler , Daniel joined Tyler to discuss the ideas in their book on how to spot talent better,...

What causes war? Many scholars have spent their careers attempting to study the psychology of leaders to understand what incentivizes them to undertake the human and financial costs of conflict, but economist and political scientist Chris Blattman takes a different approach to understanding interstate violence. He returns for his second appearance on Conversations with Tyler to discuss his researc...

When it comes to the enormous reduction of income inequality during the 20th century, Thomas Piketty sees politics everywhere. In his new book, A Brief History of Equality , he argues the rising equality during the 19th and 20th centuries has its roots not in deterministic economic forces but in the movements to end aristocratic and colonial societies starting at the end of the 18th century. Drawi...

"The best history," says Roy Foster, "is written when we realize that people acted in expectation of a future that was never going to happen." While this is the case for many countries, it's especially true of Ireland—the land of The Troubles, of colonization, of revolution and reforms. This sympathy within his scholarship sets Foster's work apart. Not content to simply document the facts of what...

A prolific translator, author, and former professor of creative writing, Lydia Davis's motivation for her life's work is jarringly simple: she just loves language. She loves short, sparkling sentences. She loves that in English we have Anglo-Saxon words like "underground" or Latinate alternatives like "subterranean." She loves reading books in foreign languages, discovering not only their content...

Whether it's scaling an arbitrage opportunity or launching an ambitious philanthropic project, Sam Bankman-Fried has set himself apart. In just a few years, he's not only made billions trading crypto, but also become a leading practitioner of effective altruism, with the specific aim of making lots of money in order to donate most of it to high-impact causes. He joined Tyler to discuss the Sam Ban...

How do you go about writing a book on an era that is, for many, recent history? When Chuck Klosterman set out to write his new book, The Nineties , he wasn't interested in representing it as a misremembered era or forcing a retrospective view into modern ideology. Rather than finding overlooked signposts that signaled events to come, he says, he wanted to capture what it actually felt like to expe...

Venture capital powered the tech revolution, but what powers venture capital? With his in-depth knowledge and coverage of the sector you'd be forgiven for thinking Sebastian Mallaby is a veteran of the Silicon Valley scene. The author of several books on finance and economics, Sebastian takes pride in understanding his subjects intimately (perhaps too intimately, if you ask his critics). His lates...

From psychedelics to cyberculture, hippie communes to commercial startups, and the Whole Earth Catalog to the Long Now Foundation, Stewart Brand has not only been a part of many movements—he was there at the start. Now 83, he says he doesn't understand why older people let their curiosity fade, when in many ways it's the best time to set off on new intellectual pursuits. Tyler and Stewart discuss...

In this special crossover special with EconTalk , Tyler interviews Russ Roberts about his new life in Israel as president of Shalem College. They discuss why there are so few new universities, managing teams in the face of linguistic and cultural barriers, how Israeli society could adapt to the loss of universal military service, why Israeli TV is so good, what American Jews don't understand about...

Is genius born or made? For Croatian-born classical guitarist Ana Vidović the answer is both. Born into a musical family, she began playing guitar at five and was quickly considered a prodigy. But she's seen first-hand how that label can trap young talents into complacency, stifling their full development. She's also had to navigate changing business models and new technologies, learning for insta...

Want to support the show? Visit donate.mercatus.org/podcasts . On this special year-in-review episode, Tyler and producer Jeff Holmes talk about the past year on the show, including one episode's appearance on Ancient Aliens , Tyler's picks for most underrated guests, how his 2021 predictions fared from last year's retrospective, further reflections on the most downloaded—and most polarizing—episo...

Want to support the show? Visit donate.mercatus.org/podcasts When Ray Dalio was 23, President Nixon announced that the United States would no longer be adhering to the gold standard for American currency. Clerking on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Dalio expected to see chaos—but instead stocks soared. Curious to understand this phenomenon, he began to read about similar events in 1933,...

The most challenging part of being a biographer for Ruth Scurr is finding the best form to tell a life. "You can't go in there with a workmanlike attitude saying, 'I'm going to do cradle to grave.' You've got to somehow connect and resonate with the life, and then things will develop from that." Known for her innovative literary portraits of Robespierre and John Aubrey, Scurr's latest book follows...

Baltimore native David Rubenstein is a founding figure in private equity, a prolific philanthropist, and author. From leveraged buyouts to his patriotic philanthropy to his leadership roles within institutions like the Smithsonian, Kennedy Center, and the National Gallery of Art, David has spent much of his life evaluating what makes institutions—and people—succeed. He joined Tyler to discuss what...

When the audience for visual art expanded from small circles of artists and collectors into broader culture, the way art was experienced shifted from aesthetics to explanation. Art, it became thought, should be about something. But David Salle rebukes this literal-mindedness: according to him, what we think and feel when reacting to a piece of art is more authoritative than what's written on the l...

Stan McChrystal has spent a long career considering questions of risk, leadership, and the role of America's military, having risen through the Army's ranks ultimately to take command of all US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, a force representing 150,000 troops from 45 countries. Retiring as a four-star general in 2010, he has gone on to lecture at Yale and launched the McChrystal Group, where he...