Samantha Power on Learning How to Make a Difference

The US senator and former college president joined Tyler for a conversation on adolescence, adulthood, driving for Uber, loving Luther, hate-reading Rousseau, the decline of small towns, backpacking across Europe, America's peculiar fondness for age-segregation, and why his latest book contains so little sex. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video. Recorded June 14th, 2017 Other ways to connect Follow us on Twitter and Instagram Follow Tyler on Twitter Follow Ben on Twitter Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu Subscribe at our newsletter page to have the latest Conversations with Tyler news sent straight to your inbox.

28 Juni 20171h 21min

Edward Luce has a new book out about the rising crisis in Western liberalism, so naturally Tyler's first question to him dealt with James II and William of Orange. #gloriousrevolution In this bonus audio recorded at a Mercatus event last week, Tyler and Edward discuss the ideas in his book and more, including future paths of liberalism, whether the current populism is an Anglo-American phenomenon or not, Modi's India, whether Kubrick, Hitchcock, and John Lennon are overrated or underrated, and what it's like to write speeches for Larry Summers. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Recorded June 13th, 2017 Other ways to connect Follow us on Twitter and Instagram Follow Tyler on Twitter Follow Ed on Twitter Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu Subscribe at our newsletter page to have the latest Conversations with Tyler news sent straight to your inbox.

21 Juni 201754min

Is time like a line, a stretched out accordion, buried silos, or a flat circle? We concoct many ways to think about the relationship between the present and the past, but according to Jill Lepore one constant endures: "When you're writing history, you're always using your imagination." The historian and New Yorker writer joins Tyler for a conversation on the Tea Party, Mary Pickford, Dickens in America, growing up watching TV (the horror), Steve Bannon's 19th century visage, the importance of friendship, the subversiveness of Stuart Little, and much more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Recorded April 8th, 2017 Other ways to connect Follow us on Twitter and Instagram Follow Tyler on Twitter Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu Subscribe at our newsletter page to have the latest Conversations with Tyler news sent straight to your inbox.

14 Juni 20171h 8min

The UK is holding a big election on June 8, so today we're bringing you some bonus audio on that topic featuring Tyler and Steve Davies of the London-based Institute of Economic Affairs. They talk about how the general election could shape the terms of Brexit, how much further the EU and even the UK will splinter, the prospects for the European left-wing, and the populism underneath it all. Note: this was recorded at event in late April shortly after May called for the snap election in June. Got it? Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Recorded April 22nd, 2017 Other ways to connect Follow us on Twitter and Instagram Follow Tyler on Twitter Follow Steve on Twitter Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu Subscribe at our newsletter page to have the latest Conversations with Tyler news sent straight to your inbox.

7 Juni 201723min

A high school teacher once told Raj Chetty he'd some day serve on the Federal Reserve Board. At the the time Raj thought the comment was silly, since he was busy working in the laboratory on staining techniques for electron microscopy and was set to become a biomedical scientist. About a decade later, however, and Chetty would become one of the youngest tenured economics professors at Harvard and would soon win both a John Bates Clark medal and a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship. Now at Stanford, he's one of the most-cited economists in the world. Raj's conversation with Tyler spans that well-cited body of work and more, including social mobility, the value-add of kindergarten teachers, why corporations pay dividends, his love of Piano Guys, the most underrated US state, and why okra may have been the secret of his success. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Recorded March 25th, 2017 Other ways to connect Follow us on Twitter and Instagram Follow Tyler on Twitter Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu Subscribe at our newsletter page to have the latest Conversations with Tyler news sent straight to your inbox.

24 Maj 20171h 2min

The chess grandmaster, political activist, and author joins Tyler for a conversation on artificial intelligence, Russia, Putin, how education must change, favorite cities for chess, the most likely challenger to Magnus Carlsen, Tolstoy v. Dostoevsky, the benefits of pressure for performance, and why we should speed up our search for new frontiers and challenges. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Recorded April 29th, 2017 Other ways to connect Follow us on Twitter and Instagram Follow Tyler on Twitter Follow Garry on Twitter Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu Subscribe at our newsletter page to have the latest Conversations with Tyler news sent straight to your inbox.

10 Maj 20171h 7min

A few months ago, Tyler asked Patrick Collison, CEO of Stripe, to be on the show. Patrick agreed, but only under the condition that the be the one to do the interviewing. Thus, what follows is the conversation Patrick wanted to have with Tyler, not the one you wanted to have. Happily Patrick stayed true to the spirit of Conversations with Tyler, and their dialogue covers a wide range of topics including the the benefits of diverse monocultures, the state of macroeconomics, Donald Trump, the amazing economics faculty at GMU, Peter Thiel, Brian Eno, Thomas Schelling, why Twitter is underrated, and — most pressing of all — why Marginal Revolution is so strange looking. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Recorded January 25th, 2017 Other ways to connect Follow us on Twitter and Instagram Follow Tyler on Twitter Follow Patrick on Twitter Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu Subscribe at our newsletter page to have the latest Conversations with Tyler news sent straight to your inbox. Photo credit: JD Lasica

12 Apr 20171h 33min

Journalist, author, and podcaster Malcolm Gladwell joins Tyler for a conversation on Joyce Gladwell, Caribbean identity, satire as a weapon, Daniel Ellsberg and Edward Snowden, Harvard's under-theorized endowment, why early childhood intervention is overrated, long-distance running, and Malcolm's happy risk-averse career going from one "fur-lined rat hole to the next." Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video. Recorded February 27th, 2017 Other ways to connect Follow us on Twitter and Instagram Follow Tyler on Twitter Follow Malcolm on Twitter Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu Subscribe at our newsletter page to have the latest Conversations with Tyler news sent straight to your inbox.

15 Mars 20171h 32min