Conversations with Tyler

Archaeologist Kim Bowes reveals how ordinary Romans lived through material evidence — shoes, ceramics, coins — showing a vast, interconnected commercial network that bound the empire together and funded its expansion. Her book Surviving Rome challenges the elite-focused historical narrative by examining pottery shards, trade routes, and daily transactions to reconstruct the economic lives of the 90 percent who kept Rome running. Tyler and Kim explore how this commerce unraveled with the empire, why Romans never developed formal economic theory despite their sophistication, and what landscape archaeology reveals about Roman factories, Christianity, and the practical realities of imperial life.

Click here to find Tyler's new generative book, The Marginal Revolution: Rise and Decline, and the Pending AI Revolution!

Buy tickets for the live Conversations with Tyler recording with Craig Newmark at 92NY! Tyler calls Paul Gillingham's new book, Mexico: A 500-Year History, the single best introduction to the country's past—and one of the best nonfiction books of 2026.

Buy tickets for the live Conversations with Tyler recording with Craig Newmark at 92NY! Few living scholars can claim to have shaped how we read Machiavelli as decisively as Harvey Mansfield.

Sign up for the Chicago CWT Listener Meetup. Henry Oliver is the preeminent literary critic for non-literary nerds.

When Tyler called Joe Studwell's How Asia Works "perhaps my favorite economics book of the year" back in 2013, he wasn't alone: it became one of the most influential treatments of industrial policy ever written. Now Studwell has turned his attention to Africa with How Africa Works.

Andrew Ross Sorkin sees the crash of 1929 as a tale of excessive leverage and irrational speculation, but Tyler wonders: maybe those sky-high 1929 prices were actually justified given America's remarkable century ahead.

Tyler considers Diarmaid MacCulloch one of those rare historians whose entire body of work rewards reading.

At 22, Brendan Foody is both the youngest Conversations with Tyler guest ever and the youngest unicorn founder on record.

Help us keep the conversations going in 2026. Donate to Conversations with Tyler today.

Help us keep the conversations going in 2026. Donate to Conversations with Tyler today. Alison Gopnik is both a psychologist and philosopher at Berkeley, studying how children construct theories of the world from limited data.

Help us keep the conversations going in 2026. Donate to Conversations with Tyler today. Gaurav Kapadia has deliberately avoided publicity throughout his career in investing, which makes this conversation a rare window into how he thinks.

Help us keep the conversations going in 2026. Donate to Conversations with Tyler today.

Cass Sunstein is one of the most widely cited legal scholars of all time and among the most prolific writers working today. This year alone he has five books out, including Imperfect Oracle on the strengths and limits of AI and On Liberalism: In Defense of Freedom.

Blake Scholl is one of the leading figures working to bring back civilian supersonic flight. As the founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic, he's building a new generation of supersonic aircraft and pushing for the policies needed to make commercial supersonic travel viable again.

Register for the Austin listener meetup Donald S. Lopez Jr. is among the foremost scholars of Buddhism, whose work consistently distinguishes Buddhist reality from Western fantasy.

Register for the Austin listener meetup Sam Altman makes his second appearance on the show to discuss how he's managing OpenAI's explosive growth, what he's learned about hiring hardware people, what makes roon special, how far they are from an AI-driven replacement to Slack, what GPT-6 might enable

Alison Gopnik on how children learn, what AI can learn from children, and why the nature vs. nurture debate is wrongly framed. Children are the best learners in the known universe — and understanding how they learn could transform AI.

Tyler considers Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage one of the best books of the last decade, and its author Jonny Steinberg one of the most underrated writers and thinkers—in North America, at least.

George Selgin has spent over four decades thinking about money, banking, and economic history, and Tyler has known him for nearly all of it.

Cass Sunstein on how AI challenges liberal rights frameworks. When algorithms make decisions about hiring, lending, and criminal justice, traditional rights concepts (due process, equal protection) need updating for a world of automated judgment.

Donald Lopez on Buddhism — its history, philosophy, and Western reception. Lopez challenges the popular Western image of Buddhism as a 'scientific religion' compatible with secular humanism. The real Buddhism is stranger and more radical than the Western version.

John Amaechi is a former NBA forward/center who became a chartered scientist, professor of leadership at Exeter Business School, and New York Times bestselling author.

Steven Pinker returns to Conversations with Tyler with an argument that common knowledge—those infinite loops of "I know that you know that I know"—is the hidden infrastructure that enables human coordination, from accepting paper money to toppling dictators.

David Commins, author of the new book Saudi Arabia: A Modern History, brings decades of scholarship and firsthand experience to explain the kingdom's unlikely rise.

Seamus Murphy is an Irish photographer and filmmaker who has spent decades documenting life in some of the world's most challenging places—from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan to Nigeria's Boko Haram territories.

David Brooks returns to the show with a stark diagnosis of American culture.

In his third appearance on Conversations with Tyler, Nate Silver looks back at past predictions, weighs how academic ideas such as expected utility theory fare in practice, and examines the world of sports through the lens of risk and prediction.

Annie Jacobsen has a favorite word for America's nuclear doctrine: madness.

David Brooks on the American character, moral formation, and why relationships matter more than achievement. Brooks's journey from achievement-obsessed columnist to relationship-focused moral philosopher.

Nate Silver on On the Edge and how poker players, traders, and other professional risk-takers think differently. Silver argues that the 'River' (risk-taking rationalists) and the 'Village' (consensus-following institutionalists) need each other.

Jonathan Rauch on the threats to liberal democracy from Christian nationalism and other illiberal movements. Rauch argues that the Constitution of Knowledge — the epistemic institutions that produce shared truth — is as important as the political Constitution.

Doug Irwin — the leading historian of American trade policy — on tariffs, protectionism, and why history shows that trade barriers usually harm the countries that impose them.

Chris Arnade — former Wall Street trader turned walker of American back roads. His book Dignity documented the forgotten people of abandoned America. Walking reveals what data misses about communities.

Scott Sumner on monetary policy, blooming late intellectually, and the art of cinema. Sumner didn't become influential until his 50s — when his blog made NGDP targeting a serious policy idea. A conversation about patience, influence, and aesthetic taste.

Tyler Cowen and producer Jeff Holmes look back on 2024's 30 episodes. Most popular, most underrated, and most controversial episodes. Cowen reflects on what makes great conversations and how his interviewing style has evolved.

Daron Acemoglu fresh off winning the Nobel Prize in Economics. Tyler probes his views on institutions, AI governance, and whether economics has lost its way. One of CWT's most important episodes.

Stephen Kotkin on his landmark multi-volume biography of Stalin. One of the best CWT episodes ever. Kotkin explains how a mediocre student from Georgia became the most powerful dictator in history through institutional mastery, not ideology.

Stephen Kotkin discusses his landmark multi-volume biography of Stalin — how totalitarian power worked through millions of everyday decisions, the relationship between individual agency and structural forces, and what living in the Soviet Union as a scholar taught him about how people survive under tyranny.

Christopher Kirchhoff discusses how the US military innovates (and fails to innovate), the drone revolution in Ukraine, and why bureaucratic organizations struggle to adopt technologies that threaten existing power structures.

Kyla Scanlon on making economics accessible through social media. She coined 'vibecession' — the disconnect between positive economic data and negative economic sentiment. Cowen probes how she manages a massive following while maintaining analytical rigor.

Historian Alan Taylor reframes the American Revolution as a continental civil war rather than a simple independence movement. The revolution divided families, communities, and nations in ways the founding mythology obscures.

Henry Oliver on his research into late bloomers — people who achieve breakthrough success after conventional prime. The cult of precocity ignores that some of the greatest achievements come from people over 40.

Coleman Hughes on colorblindness as a moral and practical ideal. Cowen explores Hughes's views on race, jazz, philosophy, and the tension between individual identity and group belonging.

Peter Thiel on political theology — why secular politics inevitably takes on religious structures. Thiel argues that modern political movements (progressivism, libertarianism, environmentalism) are secularized religions, with their own eschatologies and heresies.

Peter Thiel returns for a live conversation on political theology — Carl Schmitt's resurgence, why Thiel opposes Calvinism and rationalism, whether the Old Testament leads to wokeness, and how AI disrupts the relationship between wordcels and shape rotators.

Jonathan Haidt on The Anxious Generation and how smartphone-based childhood is rewiring young brains. The most contentious CWT episode of 2024. Cowen pushes back hard on Haidt's causal claims while acknowledging the correlational evidence.

Fareed Zakaria discusses Age of Revolutions, why books remain his most important medium despite hosting CNN's flagship foreign affairs show, and how the current moment of populist upheaval compares to previous revolutionary periods.

Marilynne Robinson on Genesis, Calvinist theology, and the American character. Robinson argues that the Bible is the most underread book in the West — people who dismiss it haven't actually engaged with it. Genesis as literature and philosophy.

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson discusses Genesis, the American character, the decline of mainline Protestantism, and why she believes contemporary culture has lost its capacity for wonder.

Fareed Zakaria on his book Age of Revolutions and the recurring pattern of revolutionary change across centuries. Revolutions in technology, economics, and politics follow similar patterns — and understanding the pattern helps navigate the current one.

Marc Andreessen on AI optimism and American dynamism. Recorded at a16z's 2024 American Dynamism Summit. Andreessen argues against AI regulation and for maximizing technological progress as the path to human flourishing.

Ami Vitale on her journey from war photographer to wildlife conservationist. After covering conflict in over 100 countries, she found that hope stories are as important as crisis stories. Conservation photography as a form of moral responsibility.

Jonathan Haidt discusses The Anxious Generation — his argument that the transition from play-based to phone-based childhood is causing an epidemic of teen mental health problems. Cowen pushes back on the causal claims.

Rebecca F. Kuang on publishing five novels by age 27. Her novel Babel explores how translation can be a tool of empire. Cowen probes her disciplined creative process, influences, and views on the publishing industry.

Patrick McKenzie on building internet businesses, living in Japan, and the hidden complexity of payments infrastructure. Few people can trace the impact of a blog post to millions of dollars — McKenzie has the receipts.