Conversations with Tyler

Afleveringen

1. Liaquat Ahamed on Financial Crises, Gold, and the Lessons of 1873

   14 oktober 2026 · 45 min

   Afspelen
   Liaquat Ahamed has spent years making central bankers into compelling characters. His 2009 book Lords of Finance won the Pulitzer Prize for its account of the bankers whose decisions helped cause the Great Depression; his new book, 1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World, tells a stranger story — a severe deflationary crisis that barely dented global growth but poisoned politics for a generation. Tyler pushes him hard on the central puzzle of those two books — why did one financial crisis derail the world, while another left growth almost untouched? Lees meer

   Tyler and Liaquat start with that puzzle before moving through Gladstone's startlingly self-interested bet on Egyptian bonds, Bismarck's role in destroying bimetallism and deflating the world economy for two decades, whether a global silver or symmetallic standard could have worked, Britain's fateful decision to re-peg the pound to gold in 1926, Hjalmar Schacht's transformation from the economist who stabilized Weimar's currency to opportunist collaborator with the Nazi regime, Montagu Norman's spiritualist beliefs, why the 1920s produced such a creative cultural moment, lessons from the IMF on Ireland's housing bubble and Pakistan's two dozen bailouts, what went wrong in the eurozone crisis, Britain's baffling modern stagnation, and finally to his own restless career and what he wants to write next.

   Read a transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on YouTube.

   Recorded July 28th, 2026.

   Other ways to connect

   Follow us on X and Instagram

   Follow Tyler on X

   Sign up for our newsletter

   Join our Discord

   Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu

   Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here.

   Timestamps:

   00:00:00 - Intro

   00:01:13 - On 1873 vs. the Great Depression

   00:15:32 - On bimetallism and the gold standard

   00:21:32 - On the 1920s and Weimar hyperinflation

   00:29:29 - On Ireland, Pakistan, and the Eurozone cris…

2. Luis Garicano on Spain, Europe, and the Future of Work

   30 september 2026 · 51 min

   Afspelen
   Luis Garicano has one of the more unusual résumés in economics: trained at the University of Chicago Booth School under Gary Becker, Kevin Murphy, and Sherwin Rosen, he left academia for a stint as a member of the European Parliament before returning to research, now at the London School of Economics for a second time. His new book, Messy Jobs, co-authored with Jin Li and Yanhui Wu, argues that AI won't cause mass unemployment for a surprising reason: it will make jobs messier, not simpler, and messiness is precisely what AI struggles with. Lees meer

   Tyler and Luis start their conversation with Spain — housing, NIMBYism, and the productivity crisis; Spanish literature and why the Civil War still looms so large; and what Chicago taught Luis about party discipline in European politics. Then to the EU's unanimity problem, capital markets, and Denmark's flexicurity model; a round of overrated-versus-underrated on Rosalía, Penélope Cruz, and Sgt. Pepper's; and finally into Messy Jobs — why retraining programs fail, whether AI's leisure dividend has arrived, and whether Spain could ever achieve AI sovereignty.

   Read a transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on YouTube.

   Recorded July 28th, 2026.

   Other ways to connect

   Follow us on X and Instagram

   Follow Tyler on X

   Follow Luis on X

   Sign up for our newsletter

   Join our Discord

   Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu

   Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here.

   Timestamps:

   00:00:00 - Intro

   00:01:05 - On Spain's housing and political paralysis

   00:11:08 - On Spanish literature and the Civil War

   00:16:52 - On Basque and Catalan public finance

   00:18:59 - On party discipline and political selection

   00:22:03 - On the EU's unanimity problem

   00:28:47 - On flexicurity and European labor rigidity

   00:30:24 - Overrated vs. underrated

   00:33:12 - On the future of Spanish language

   00:35:01 - On why AI won't cause mass unemployment

   00:48:38 - On what's next

   00:50:11 - O…

3. Gita Gopinath on Trade, Currencies, and Economic Transformation

   23 september 2026 · 56 min

   Afspelen
   Gita Gopinath has spent the last several years inside the room where the world's monetary plumbing gets fixed — or doesn't. As first deputy managing director of the IMF and, before that, the Fund's chief economist, she worked on sovereign debt restructuring, followed Argentina's disinflation up close, and built her academic reputation on ideas like dollar dominance and the dominant currency paradigm. Now back at Harvard launching a new Global Economics Lab, her conversation with Tyler ranges from why exchange rates don't adjust the way models predict, to what stablecoins really cost, to whether AI's growth dividend will show up on schedule. Lees meer

   Tyler and Gita discuss why trade balances are only weakly related to real exchange rates, before turning to Argentina, Milei's fiscal discipline, the peso, and dollarization. Then they discuss whether economists got the euro wrong; whether trade imbalances with China are really the problem; stablecoins, CBDCs, and the Treasury market; and whether AI will ease the debt burden, cause stagflation, or transform economics itself. Finally, they turn to her family's Kerala roots: why the state keeps electing communists, the relationship between matriarchy and social indicators, single-sex education, and what she's building next.

   Read a transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on YouTube.

   Recorded August 27th, 2026.

   Other ways to connect

   Follow us on X and Instagram

   Follow Tyler on X

   Follow Gita on X

   Sign up for our newsletter

   Join our Discord

   Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu

   Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here.

   Timestamps:

   00:00:00 - Intro

   00:00:57 - On why currencies don't adjust the way models predict

   00:15:46 - On Argentina after triple-digit inflation

   00:26:05 - On living with the euro

   00:28:50 - On China's problematic surpluses

   00:34:02 - On digital currencies

   00:39:33 - On AI and the productivity question

   00:48:51 - On why Kerala keeps …

4. Annie Lowrey on the Time Tax, Fraud, and Rationing by Paperwork

   16 september 2026 · 56 min

   Afspelen
   Annie Lowrey's new book, The Time Tax, argues that the most regressive levy in American life is the hours each of us must spend on hold, in waiting rooms, and filling out forms a competent state would have pre-filled — roughly fifty a year on average, and far more if you're poor. Tyler spends much of this conversation pressing the opposite case, asking whether that bureaucracy is quietly serving a useful purpose by rationing knee surgeries that don't work, deterring fraud, or screening for immigrants with gumption. Lees meer

   So Tyler and Annie hash it out over an hour, covering why TANF and other welfare programs are the worst offenders, the political economy of submerged benefits like the child tax credit, whether the postal service should be zeroed out over ten years the way Denmark did, whether the government should be nudging people out of rural areas, lessons from the COVID unemployment fraud, areas where the time tax is flat instead of regressive, which private sector time taxes are most onerous, whether AI agents will pay these taxes for us within five years, the logic of easy benefits plus randomized harsh audits, the case for less federalism, whether voting should be easier or harder, how the UBI studies changed her priors, where you can find the best moss in the world, her favorite example of Brutalist architecture, tattoos as permanent ephemera, Christianity's role in liberalism and the post-Christian right, how reporting beats tourism, the time tax of friendship, what she'll learn next, and more.

   Read a transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on YouTube.

   Recorded September 1st, 2026.

   Other ways to connect

   Follow us on X and Instagram

   Follow Tyler on X

   Follow Annie on X

   Sign up for our newsletter

   Join our Discord

   Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu

   Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here.

   Timestamps:

   00:00:00 - Intro

   00:00:58 - On taxing our time

   00:19:47 - On private-sector time t…

5. Jared Diamond on Leaders, Luck, and Irreplaceability

   9 september 2026 · 52 min

   Afspelen
   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? Lees meer

   Tyler and Jared debate that question, including conditions what a religious founder needs to succeed, whether destructive leaders matter more than constructive ones, why individual leaders have mattered so little in Papua New Guinea, whether we undervalue preventers, how much Rachel Carson and the Resnicks really mattered, whether Botswana's success will endure, Jared's own place in intellectual history, and what he'd tell an ambitious 25-year-old about how to become consequential. They go on to cover whether New Guineans are smarter, his reasons for why the Industrial Revolution started in England, what he learned from Jim Robinson about natural experiments, why he's more optimistic about the environment than when he wrote Collapse, what he'd do about nuclear risk, the 189 bird species on his street in Los Angeles, why the MacArthur "genius grant" left him depressed for a week, why he's listening to one Bach cantata a week, what he hopes to work on as he enters his nineties, and more.

   Read a transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on YouTube.

   Recorded August 21st, 2026.

   Other ways to connect

   Follow us on X and Instagram

   Follow Tyler on X

   Sign up for our newsletter

   Join our Discord

   Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu

   Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here.

   Timestamps:

   00:00:00 - Intro

   00:01:11 - On whether any leader is irreplaceable

   00:21:35 - On his own replaceability

   00:24:55 - On the decline of face-to-face skills

   00:29:02 - On intelligence …

6. Michael Moritz on Origin Stories, Exile, and Obsessive Curiosity

   2 september 2026 · 42 min

   Afspelen
   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 1890, and you may decide that unsatisfied curiosity is not a small thing to build a life on. Lees meer

   Tyler and Michael discuss his childhood in Wales, where his love for visual arts came from, why he disappointed his Latin teacher, having Thanksgiving dinner with Philip Roth, why children don't interrogate their parents about their history, what he feels visiting Germany and why he now holds German citizenship, how a history major with no technical background talked his way into Sequoia, his unpublished Don Valentine profile, what people underrate about Steve Jobs, obsessives versus dilettantes, why capitalism was more ablaze in China than America, what funding the Booker Prize taught him about his own ignorance, how to improve San nonprofits, how an incurable cancer diagnosis changed his calendar, why Britain's stuck, what he'll learn next, and more.

   Read a transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on YouTube.

   Recorded July 21st, 2026.

   Other ways to connect

   Follow us on X and Instagram

   Follow Tyler on X

   Sign up for our newsletter

   Join our Discord

   Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu

   Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here.

   Timestamps:

   00:00:00 - Intro

   00:04:57 - On living with difficult art

   00:09:44 - On Jewish literature

   00:13:00 - On why children don't interrogate their parents

   00:15:54 - On returning to Germany

   00:23:37 - On stumbling into venture capital

   00:28:49 - On obsessives and dilettantes

   00…

7. Luke Burgis on Mimetic Desire, Catholicism, and the Age of Social Contagion

   19 augustus 2026 · 52 min

   Afspelen
   Luke Burgis left Wall Street after two years, founded a few successful companies in his twenties, then walked away to spend three years in a Roman seminary on the path to the priesthood. He now runs the Cluny Institute and teaches at Catholic University. His book Wanting made René Girard legible to a general audience; the new one, The One and the Ninety-Nine, takes mimetic theory into the dynamics of self and crowd in an age of social contagion. Lees meer

   He joined Tyler to discuss whether the age of pessimism is ending, why the Anglo world in particular seems so unhappy, whether Dostoevsky or Thomas Mann better diagnoses modernity, the kind of reader his own book would ruin, why he thinks AI will make social contagion weaker, what put him off consulting with Anthropic on Claude's constitution, what effective altruism misses, why men and women are drifting apart, what he'd fund in every American city, the case for reintroducing friction, whether a Gnostic reading of the lost sheep explains our moment, what Rod Dreher gets right about withdrawal, why Genoa is Italy's most underrated city, what confession times reveal about a church, why Italians seem tired of their Catholicism, why he didn't become a priest, where he differs from Ross Douthat, why exorcists appear to be on the rise, the sudden mimetic antisemitism on the right, the book his 23-year-old self would have hated, what he secretly admires about Silicon Valley, why Michigan never left him, what the original Cluny can teach a modern talent network, how he hopes to face his own death, what he'll do next, and more.

   Read a transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on YouTube.

   Recorded April 30th, 2026.

   Other ways to connect

   Follow us on X and Instagram

   Follow Tyler on X

   Follow Luke on X

   Sign up for our newsletter

   Join our Discord

   Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu

   Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here.

   Timestamps:

   00:00:00 - Intro

   00:05:…

8. Daron Acemoglu on Liberalism, Automation, and the Educated Elite

   12 augustus 2026 · 56 min

   Afspelen
   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. Lees meer

   Tyler and Daron discuss what's wrong with social contract theories and Rousseau's general will, whether Acemoglu is more objectivist than Rorty, why he blames left liberalism's own establishment power for its collapse, what standard is left once you refuse to have a book of higher values, nondomination versus noninterference, who counts as working class, why automation alone will not lead to widespread prosperity, how he can call himself a free speech absolutist while wanting to regulate social media, why he worries we've given up on educating Americans, whether teachers' unions need to be reconstituted, what the life expectancy for an educated twenty year old is today, whether open-source models undercut the centralization worry, what pro-worker AI actually means, why the fertility crisis leaves him strangely close to a real business cycle position, whether AI will raise his own already prodigious paper output, why Armenia has disappointed economically, what he wants to learn next, and more.

   Read a transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on YouTube.

   Recorded July 15th, 2026.

   Other ways to connect

   Follow us on X and Instagram

   Follow Tyler on X

   Follow Daron on X

   Sign up for our newsletter

   Join our Discord

   Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu

   Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here.

   Timestamps:

   00:00:00 - Intro

   00:08:57 - On the working class vs. the elite

   00:13:16 - On automation

   00:22:33 - On free speech

   00:27:22 - On immigration

   00:31:08 - On artificial intelligen…

9. Julia Ioffe on Russian Women, Missing Men, and the Roots of Autocracy

   5 augustus 2026 · 55 min

   Afspelen
   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 returning to one plain observation: Soviet policy pushed women into the workforce, the medical schools, and even into combat, while asking so little of men that low expectations became self-fulfilling—and Russia is still living with the results. Lees meer

   Julia joined Tyler to discuss why so many of Russia's great constructivist painters were women, why the tsarist government established women's medical courses in 1872, changing attitudes towards abortion and birth control in the 20th century, why the Soviet regime turned prudish, how Khrushchev's plan to "replace the dead" institutionalized single motherhood, Russian superwomen, why Jewish men were a prized commodity amid rampant antisemitism, the cultural significance of flowers, why a few Russian names still dominate, why Russian women think Western feminists have their priorities backwards, how gender attitudes and autocracy feed into each other, three underrated Russian novels, what she wants to write about next, and more.

   Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on YouTube.

   Recorded April 7th, 2026.

   Other ways to connect

   Follow us on X and Instagram

   Follow Tyler on X

   Follow Julia on X

   Sign up for our newsletter

   Join our Discord

   Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu

   Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here.

   Timestamps:

   00:00:00 - Intro

   00:06:38 - Bolshevik feminism

   00:08:41 - Birth control, abortion, and prudery

   00:14:48 - The Russian mating mar…

10. Andrew Graham-Dixon on Vermeer, a Forgotten Sect, and Underrated Artists

    22 juli 2026 · 57 min

    Afspelen
    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 where half of Germany had just died in war. If he's right, the label beside every Vermeer in every museum will one day have to change. Lees meer

    Tyler and Andrew discuss whether it was inevitable we'd rediscover Vermeer, how that vanishingly rare sect left its fingerprints all over his life, why the Met has misread its own Allegory of the Catholic Faith, whether Vermeer painted for money or pointedly refused to, where the Gardner's stolen Concert might be, why Dutch music never blossomed as much as Dutch painting did, how the Church of England rivaled the Cultural Revolution in wiping out British art, whether you can still spot an English painting on sight, the love that saturates late Rembrandt and the mystery of his soaring print prices, the nail on the wall that proves two Vermeer paintings are a pair, why the French are to blame for George Stubbs' lack of status, whether we can still love Malevich, why Andrews calls recent Richter "almost like printing money," why female artists and antique textiles remain absurdly cheap, why nobody builds beautiful neighborhoods any longer, and much more.

    Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel.

    Recorded April 7th, 2026.

    Other ways to connect

    Follow us on X and Instagram

    Follow Tyler on X

    Follow Andrew on X

    Sign up for our newsletter

    Join our Discord

    Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu

    Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Ce…

Alle 304 afleveringen →