Shaka Senghor on Incarceration, Identity, and the Gift of Literacy
How do you survive seven years in solitary confinement? The gift of literacy is what saved Shaka Senghor. Reading, journaling, academic study, and writing books was a way to structure and survive an i...
20 Nov 20191h
Lunch with Fuchsia Dunlop at Mama Chang (Bonus)
Three years after her first appearance, Chinese food expert Fuchsia Dunlop joins Tyler to celebrate the release of her latest cookbook and talk all things food and China. This time the conversation wa...
13 Nov 20191h 16min
Ted Gioia on Music as Cultural Cloud Storage
To Ted Gioia, music is a form of cloud storage for preserving human culture. And the real cultural conflict, he insists, is not between "high brow" and "low brow" music, but between the innovative and...
6 Nov 20191h 3min
Henry Farrell on Weaponized Interdependence, Big Tech, and Playing with Ideas
The one concept most valuable for understanding the news today might be Henry Farrell's theory of weaponized interdependence. Whether it's China's influence over the NBA, the US ban of Huawei, or whet...
23 Okt 20191h 11min
Ben Westhoff on Synthetic Drugs, Dive Bars, and the Evolution of Rap
Ben Westhoff has written some of Tyler's favorite books on everything from dive bars to the evolution of American rap music to how fentanyl is driving the opioid epidemic. So how does he get it done? ...
9 Okt 20191h
Alain Bertaud on Cities, Markets, and People
Markets, Alain Bertaud likes to say, are like gravity: they exist everywhere. But while urban planners are quite good at taking gravity into account, they tend to ignore market forces entirely in thei...
25 Sep 20191h 20min
Samantha Power on Learning How to Make a Difference
A former war correspondent and UN ambassador, Samantha Power has had her share of tough assignments. But writing a memoir about it all is also a daunting prospect. The format itself is a challenge: ho...
11 Sep 20191h 6min
Hollis Robbins on 19th Century Life and Literature
As a graduate student, Hollis Robbins helped Henry Louis Gates, Jr. unravel a mystery about the provenance of a mid-19th century book. Robbins helped date the book by discovering allusions to popular ...
28 Aug 201950min
