Conversations with Tyler 2024 Retrospective

Hello everyone, and thank you all for listening to Conversations with Tyler. Of all the different things in my job that I do, it's the one I enjoy the most and that means the most to me. A special thanks for all of those of you out there who have supported us financially. Just a reminder that it is not too late to support us still for this calendar year. We very much greatly appreciate anything you're able to do. I look forward to seeing you all in future Conversations with Tyler. Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems. Learn more at mercatus.org. For a full transcript of every conversation, enhanced with helpful links, visit conversationswithtyler.com.

Hello everyone and welcome to the 2024 Conversations with Tyler Retrospective, where we look back at past episodes, take listener questions, review Tyler's pop culture picks from 2014 in this case, and cover numerous other topics besides. I'm Jeff Holmes. I'm one of the producers of Conversations with Tyler. And of course, I'm joined with the man himself, Tyler.

Welcome. Hello, Jeff. Thank you for having me on the show.

My pleasure. So we did 30 episodes this year, Tyler. It's not a record, but, you know, it's a, it's a pretty full slate when you look over this list of episodes. How do you feel about it?

Well, and there's the new podcast with Alex Tabarrok.

That's right.

So it's a lot of episodes. I thought we had a very good year. You know, each year you think, oh, well, it's not going to be that good this year, but this was very good. Only a few-week episodes.

Yes. And we'll get into underrated episodes and most popular. But I'm glad you mentioned the Marginal Revolution podcast. We just released the last episode of season 1 this, this morning that we're recording this. Give the listeners a sense of season 1 of the Marginal Revolution podcast, what you and Alex are hoping to do. Why should they check it out?

We had, what, 7 episodes? So it's all economics, unlike Conversations with Tyler Cowen. Either one of us interviews the other. We go back and forth. And Alex and I have worked together now for about 35 years. So we have a good sense of each other, good rapport, and we just dive into economics. And a bit like Conversations with Tyler, we talk as we would talk to each other pretty much. So it's like a window into actual conversations.

Yeah. For me, an alternate title of it was going to be GMU Lunch, because I think it captures the spirit of you two Sometimes with a group of other professors who are just like-minded folks going out and having lunch and talking about—

There's more shrieking at lunch because you have Bryan Kaplan and Robin Hanson there, but it's like the calm version of GMU lunch, the calm cooperative version.

And Alex on his post on the options pricing theory episode today also asked people to comment with ideas for season 2. So if you want to propose a topic for season 2 of the Marginal Revolution podcast, head over to the Marginal Revolution blog. And find that post and leave a comment there.

And just to be clear, Conversations with Tyler will continue as it has been, and we hope to do even more episodes. So no basic change in this product.

Yeah. All right. So returning to CWT, let's go over top episodes. So first, top by download. I know the answer, you don't. But if you— as you look over the 29 episodes, it's 30 including this one. Which one do you think was our most downloaded episode this year? And we're talking about just audio downloads. We're not counting YouTube.

Well, to paraphrase Peter Thiel, I'll say never bet against Peter Thiel. He likes to say never bet against Elon Musk. So I think Peter typically is the most downloaded episode for many people. And that's my pick.

And that bet pays off. He is number one. He broke the first day, first week listening records for the show. Actually, several people broke listening records, but he's He's on top.

John Haidt would be my number 2 pick, which was contentious. People love fights, arguments, debate, different from a lot of the other episodes, hot topics. John took that all in very good spirits.

Yeah. Jonathan Haidt is number 2.

So you're 2 for 2.

Do you want to try to round out the top 5 or maybe the top 3? I think they're pretty predictable through the top 3.

I think I'm just guessing here, but Marc Andreessen is always a good pick. To be a top download. Am I right?

You're wrong because keep in mind that was not— that was a panel audio.

Oh, that's right.

Of the A16Z event. So we can— that's not a full-on conversation with Tyler episode. So he did not make the top 5. What would be another guess?

Hmm. Kyla Scanlan. I don't know. After that, it's hard for me to say. Nate Silver, I guess, would be my guess. Toby Lutke.

Nate Silver. Nate Silver. You threw out a couple of names. You were edging a little bit, but I'm going to take Nate Silver. That was number 3. And then rounding out the top 5, number 4 was Patrick McKenzie, number 5 was Paul Bloom. So all of those are very close, you know, within, you know, maybe 1,000 downloads of each other. So we got—

we're pleasing people too much. Is that the lesson?

Maybe so. I sent out an email to our newsletter about this, and I think, you know, you have to say it's a little predictable. It only gets maybe a little eclectic towards the end, but this was very much fan service, I think, these top 5. So it would be nice to see maybe a less well-known person crack cracking that top 5, but something for us to aspire to next year. Moving on to underrated episodes. So episodes that weren't necessarily breaking download records, but are still very, very good. You could think of them as a personal favorite. I've got my picks. Do you want to throw out a couple?

Well, one underrated episode was Masaki Suzuki. Mm-hmm. Because most people don't know enough about Bach to really love what he said.

Yeah.

Plus he had an accent that may hurt downloads a bit. But that one I was very fond of. Fareed Zakaria, you got to see the real Fareed. Even his son loved the episode. I don't know how many downloads it got, but it has to be underrated. Michael Nielsen. Most are underrated. Tom Tugendhat, who did not make it to be head of the Conservative Party, but someday still might and certainly ought to be.

Yeah, those are good picks. Masaaki Suzuki was a fan mention as well, a favorite of my wife's. So check that one out if you haven't. I would also throw out Stephen Kotkin. So pretty recent episode. Kotkin performed very well.

That's one of the best episodes of all time.

But it clearly just established itself in the pantheon. You know, going, you think about like Lazarus Lake in the past or Richard Prum, which are some of my favorites. Just as soon as you listen to it, it's a clear favorite. If you check out the YouTube comments, many people are commenting that it's their favorite Stephen Kotkin interview.

And people are still listening, so that will climb in the numbers. And Paula Byrne was a tremendous episode.

Paula Byrne was another pick of mine. I definitely— that one just released last week, but it's definitely tracking low. And I would say, look, you've got like, you've got Hardy's marriages, why they fell apart, couples counseling. I mean, what's not to love about listening to someone who does couples therapy? And also the story of the poison pen letters and how she flushed out this, you know, maybe jealous academic who was harassing her via very cleverly written letters and mailing them to her and other people.

That's just the funniest CWT episode of all time, I think. And she's the one who's funny, not me.

Yes. Producer Sam Alberger told me after the recording that it's probably the most he's heard you laugh in an episode, and he was cracking up as well during it. So check that one out. The last one I had was Alan Taylor. I joke because I feel like Alan Taylor is also squarely in the CWT kind of interest, area of interest. I mean, it's history, and this episode covers like Revolutionary War history, War of 1812. We've got a lot of males, I think a lot of dads, and what dad doesn't love military history? Speaking as a dad. So check out Alan Taylor. Another one I'll throw out that was mentioned by fans was Kyla Scanlan. So she wasn't like a— I'm not sure if she cracked the top 10, but she was mentioned by fans and people particularly appreciated how she kind of turned the tables on you and it ended up being an interview of you almost as much as it was an interview of Kyla.

Great rapport and charisma. And she, of course, is a big star and will continue to climb.

Absolutely. So those were my picks. Listeners, if you have yours, you can still send them in. Let me know. I'm always curious to hear which ones spoke to people.

I liked the Christopher Kirchhoff episode and how he never said the word, um, you know, you might edit out an, um, here and there with Christopher. You don't need to edit.

Mm-hmm.

It's just, psh, you get it.

Yeah.

Word for word.

Yeah. I love that episode. For me, it was something I know very little about. So it was one of those doors—

And this is military technology for those of you who don't know. Yes. Yeah.

So the world of procurement and defense and defense technology is not something I know a lot about. So it is one of those just big door-opening episodes, or it was for me at least, of—

And becoming increasingly important, I'm sorry to say. Absolutely. But it has to.

Absolutely. All right. Let's jump into some listener questions. We have a lot.

So we had this one guy who wrote a long document of like very good, very detailed questions to me. And he sent it to you.

Yes. His name is David Kramer. I picked, I've got 3 questions I pulled out. He probably has, I don't know, 30 questions. They're all very good. We'll link to it in the transcript. First question from David Kramer. I know you think that cinema is the great art medium of the 20th century. Do you think there's a chance for video games to eclipse that? He asked a couple questions about video games, and I like something we don't talk about on the show a lot, but it's something I think about too.

On their current trajectory, I don't see that happening. I even have people in video games telling me that the seminal games are now all a bit old and it's becoming more derivative. So there's something about video games. It's too context-specific to the person playing it. And doing it. And it doesn't quite manage to generate narrative and vision in a way that is intersubjectively understandable where it could become part of the canon. So I'll say no on that one.

But you don't play video games.

No. And they've had a lot of time to establish themselves aesthetically. And again, the numbers on usage, revenue, you know, everything off the charts, that one cannot deny. But in these other areas, I don't really see that they're climbing or have established much of anything.

Well, one way you could think about the success of video games is how, how vibrant the subcultures are around video games. And one thing that I get immense joy from is, is particularly on YouTube is there are so many subgenres of criticism or analysis on YouTube about video games. And I think there's something very, for me, very resonant about today where, for instance, there's YouTube channels that just take a look at these big virtual worlds that are created in video games and they say, where do all the rivers go? And they try to map the river systems or they try to map the power infrastructure. And there's this feeling you can get where as you're exploring these worlds, you're always kind of wondering, was this intentional or was this an accident? And it can give you a weird feeling of, you know, almost the transcendental or something that you're walking around kind of wondering, you know, was this touched by the creator? And I find so many of those subgenres so interesting interesting, even if I never play the games myself. And I think actually the criticisms and the analysis that you see is really high quality in a way that I don't think many people appreciate outside of video games.

But I would sooner say that shows the growth of YouTube criticism as an amazing genre, which it is. So in classical music, there can be recordings that sell 300, 400 copies at most.

Yeah.

And then the number of people who listen to someone doing the critical review of the recording can be tens or even hundreds of thousands.

Yeah.

And that's weird, right? Mm-hmm. But I think that's the future. Are there any people who do critical reviews of CWTs on YouTube? Is that a genre yet?

I haven't encountered it, but I heartily encourage it.

Which sweater did Tyler bring this time would be the start. And they talk about all the weird little things.

Yes.

In the episode.

Yeah. I would subscribe to that channel.

It would get more listens than an actual episode, perhaps. Right?

Possibly so. I think it touches on some of the things that we've mentioned even with LLMs and like EconGoat, the site that we created last year where we published your book and had this AI companion where, you know, the more and more you can engage with the thing without consuming the thing. So it might be the criticism on YouTube, or it might be that you ask the LLM to kind of give you the summary and you might get more value out of the derivative product than the product itself.

How about YouTube criticisms of LLMs giving you derivative summaries?

Yeah, we'll, uh, we'll just keep following that all the way down. Okay. Second question from David Kramer, which cultural code once cracked caused the strongest update for you, either from admiration to horror or vice versa?

Well, that's going to be something when you're young, right? Almost certainly. So when I moved to Germany, when I was, I guess, 22 years old to spend a year there.. And I had hardly ever been abroad before. I'd been to Oxford and London, but in a way that doesn't count, and just had to live there. And that was incredible. And every day there were new puzzles to think about and figure out. And I would say in the mid-'80s, West Germany then, as we called it, was at a kind of peak. That is, you could go there and wonder, was this a better country, better way of life than the United States? And you wouldn't be sure. You wouldn't really ask that question today. I mean, Germany is in trouble in a number of regards, but that was just a fantastic year and the most thought-provoking year of my life. And it was all about cultural codes. I also leased a car and drove around a lot to Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, of course, other places.

Oh, I haven't, I hadn't heard that part of that. You leased a car?

Well, the dollar was very strong back then, right? It was right before it plummeted. So when I started in Germany, it was like 3.45 marks to the dollar, which people now will forget, but that was an incredible exchange rate, like 2x for the dollar what it should have been by PPP.

Last question from David Kramer, which major branch of traditional art do you have the least native, or I think I would say intrinsic appreciation for?

Well, if by art that includes music, I think Renaissance music I'm more skeptical of than many people. I think it's not until Monteverdi that music truly starts to reach its peaks, that the means are just too limited. And I really quite like or even love William Byrd, Palestrina. At the end of the day, for me in music, there is a break with Monteverdi and then Bach, or I just think it attains much higher levels.

Yeah.

And a number of people I know will wince to hear me say this.

Yeah.

But it is my view.

I just recommended some Renaissance church music to someone. It's one I feel like I actually have higher than normal or higher than average appreciation for, which feels weird for me to say that. I don't feel like I have a deep appreciation of many genres of music, but thanks to— and I think you just linked to this again— but thanks to the game, I mentioned this on the podcast at least a couple of times, but thanks to, I think it was Civilization IV, I was playing that game and they play a lot of Renaissance music during the Renaissance period of the game.

Which composers did they play?

A lot of choral works. Which I— Yeah, that's a good— Some of it, like Misera, which I find really transportive.

That's a very good work.

Yeah, the music in general is very good, but I actually, a friend of mine was asking for some recommendations and I said, check these out. One listener, Tom, emailed and just had a bunch of questions about demographics and kind of analytic stuff, which I can answer. So, you know, how many people bail on episodes? On average, people listen to about two-thirds of the episodes. So when you aggregate everyone's drop-off, on average, people are listening to about two-thirds of the episode, which is pretty good. And that's been very stable for many years. Delta between like most popular and least popular. YouTube is changing this. Certainly the algorithm drives, you know, virality or popularity more on YouTube than the podcast. So if you just talk about audio downloads, The delta is not large. You know, you might have a 20 or 30% difference in downloads between, in say, the first week or first month between Peter Thiel, who was number one this year, and, you know, the middle of the pack. Even at the bottom of the pack, it's not much more of that. On YouTube, it can be, you know, 10 times as many downloads just because once you get caught up in the algorithm on YouTube, it sweeps you away. So right now, someone like Stephen Kotkin has you know, 10 times the views of Paula Byrne just because Kotkin took off like wildfire and not as many people checking out Paula Byrne. Success rate in getting potential guests to accept, you know, probably like 80%, probably like implicitly it's the people we don't ask because we don't have an in with them or we don't sort of know how to reach them that would raise that failure rate higher. But for the most part, when we actually get in touch with someone, they say yes. There are a few exceptions to that.

Is it hopeless to try Magnus again?

Someone asked about Magnus. We've gotten very close. I mean, I think in front of him, I think he's seen it, or is that your impression? I'm not sure.

Or his father has, which probably is more useful, perhaps. I don't know.

But yeah, we can certainly try again.

Let's try again with Magnus. I'm willing to fly to him.

If you, Magnus, if you're hearing this.

He's not hearing it.

If someone.

I'm hearing him, but he's not hearing this.

If someone knows Magnus, has a connection, please let us know. Similarly with Paul McCartney. Someone was asking about Paul McCartney.

That's the true long shot.

I don't think we've gotten anywhere near Paul McCartney, but if you happen to know Paul, you know, let us— put us in touch. Put us in touch. We're more than happy to have him on. How often do we get solicitations from people hoping to be guests? Now it's like every day. And I'm sure you get some to your email. We get some to the generic.

Every weekday for sure. Yeah.

To the CWT email.

And they're typically boring. There's, here's my new book, and you must think this is a hot topic because corporate America is talking about it.

Right.

Here's my new book on the impact of tech on America's youth or something. Just very cliché generic topics.

Yeah, nothing against the people pitching them, but they're usually not at all targeted to this show. And so they're kind of going for more of a topical business or news podcast than us specifically. If the person is actually targeting us more specifically and it's clear they're actually— they've actually done a little bit of homework about the show, I will definitely look at it and take a closer look at the guest. But when it's a generic one, I don't even— I don't even spend a second on it. I delete it immediately. I know that's tough. I know when you're pitching lots of shows, that's—

that's tough to do, but But they should make a case that the person is an impressive polymath, even if they've done nothing and have no book. Yeah. That we would consider.

Yeah.

Or the person has done something very strange. I mean, perhaps with their, their body, like we're trying to get this woman who has climbed Mount Everest more than anyone else.

Right.

We should try her again. I know she didn't respond, but I don't think it's a waste of time.

All right. How would you rate the current development of your previous ideas that you've popularized on the blog? How have subsequent events vindicated or called into question ideas such as the Great Stagnation, average is over, state capacity, libertarianism? That's from GK.

Well, the Great Stagnation, I think, was seen as radical when I stated it in 2011. It's now widely considered to have been true. I think it's over. Not everyone thinks it's over. I think with AI and advances in biomedical science, it ended a few years ago. But I think that one turned out very well, basically. Average Is Over is a story in the works. Will artificial intelligence boost or lower income inequality? That we don't know yet. But the predictions I made in my book Average Is Over, that AI would be the next big thing and it would all be about how well can you work with AI, That's done very, very well. So I think I deserve more credit for those predictions, in fact. And state capacity libertarianism, I still hear the phrase all the time. Like Vivek once reached out to me a few months ago and he said, oh, I love state capacity libertarianism. Let's meet and talk about this. Now we'll see what comes of that. But when I wrote that post, I was convinced like this was going nowhere and it's still a thing. So I'm not saying it's a thing that will succeed. But I think as libertarianism more narrowly has scattered and diffused, it's one of the strands that's still alive. So I'm hopeful.

Another question. You are in a sense both an insider and an outsider to the econ profession. What parts of the profession do you feel are most underrated and most overrated?

I think I'm mainly just an outsider, not an insider.

Mm-hmm.

The thing that is most overrated is just entry barriers in terms of bureaucratization are higher and higher. You have to have gone to a very good undergraduate school, have letters of recommendation from highly credible people, maybe have done a pre-doc, and that's ruining it for people. I know at least 5, like, truly talented individuals who were teenagers at first thought they wanted to become economists, then learned what was involved. And just thought, I'll never really quite be able to get anything done going this path. And now they're all doing other things. And in no case do I feel like I should be nagging them, telling them, oh, you really should have done economics. They probably shouldn't have. So that's the biggest problem. Many people are aware of it, but it's one of these, I'm aware of it and not going to do anything about it sorts of issues.

Yeah.

Now what's most underrated I don't know. I mean, the quality of the median paper is pretty high. I don't know if it's underrated, but just the standards and the care you have to put into it. But that's related to the entry barriers being higher. So it's a trade-off. I think economics is a lot less fun and actually less impactful than it used to be. The Biden administration relied much less on economists than the Obama administration did. Trump, we'll see what happens, but I would bet against academic economists being highly influential there. Yeah. Maybe in very indirect roundabout ways, but not in the standard sense that they're given credit and invited in on the red carpet. Mm-hmm. So as a profession, I mean, we're losing status and influence, and that should be a radical wake-up call. And I don't see that we're heeding it. We're doubling down on previous strategies, and we're gonna regret that. A lot more economists should be doing podcasts is one way to put it. And why should they not be excellent at it if they're smart people who have things to say? They have plenty of experience giving seminars, teaching. They should be great at doing podcasts. A lot of them are not, frankly, looking back at past history, but that itself tells you something.

Relatedly, another question from Steve. How should places such as the Mercatus Center measure success? He talks about the Cato Institute. When their report, they list a bunch of their outputs, op-eds, congressional meetings, so on., but how do you map that to your mission?

Well, every nonprofit does and should create reports and metrics, but ultimately my view is if you've really succeeded, you know it without measuring it.

Mm-hmm.

And it's just obvious. So, I mean, take Ralph Nader. I don't agree with a lot of what Ralph Nader did, but he's, I think, still around and he had a big impact. And I could go out and measure Ralph Nader in different ways, but I don't need to. Peter Singer. Has Peter Singer gotten his way on most issues? I would say no. But has he made many more people vegetarians and probably influenced pro-animal legislation? I would say definitely yes. And I've never measured that. So it's when you don't need to measure that you have real successes.

What are our successes, say, in the past year at Mercatus that you think you just know it without, without having to measure it? We've changed minds, changed behaviors or attitudes.

Well, it depends what you mean by the phrase at Mercatus. So Hester Pierce, used to work here. She studied crypto for us. She has since become a commissioner at the SEC. Due to her heroic efforts, crypto is still alive and well. It's a Hester triumph, not a Mercatus in the narrow sense triumph, but that's exactly the kind of thing we should be trying to do. Someone said on Twitter recently that there's— it was Joe Lonsdale— there's no limit to what you can achieve if you're willing not to get much credit for it. And I think that should be our attitude. To some extent, it is our attitude.

And what would Mercatus be without its people? To paraphrase someone else. All right. Which guests have had the biggest impact on you in the past year? That's from Alan Wright.

I don't know. Impact on me?

Maybe even in your research.

The collective set of guests take up most of my time. That's impact. But you couldn't pin that on any one guest.

Who is the most—

Masaki Suzuki invited me to his Handel's Messiah concert on December 20th, and I'm going to go.

Okay.

So that's impact, and I'm sure it will be magnificent.

That's wonderful. Who is your most difficult prep, you think, looking over this list this year?

Most difficult prep? Oh, it's probably Stephen Kotkin. That took the most reading. And then Alan Taylor. They're the two historians. Almost always historians are the hardest. But another difficult prep was Philip Ball, who wrote so many books on science. Science you can't prep for. History, you can just read more books.

Yeah.

And if you're an economist, you know some history anyway through economic history, but a body of work in science, it's like, oh, do I start reading a biology text or something? So he was hard as well.

Another reason Kotkin and Alan Taylor are underrated then is you've got to make Tyler's prep worth it. All right.

Well, I learned more from doing those people. So say when I did Joseph Stiglitz, I had already read his major pieces, indeed many of his minor pieces over the years. It hardly took any prep, but I learned less too.

Another guest that's had a big impact on you, Rick Rubin, this is related to that. If you were a DJ in a different life, what kind of music would you play and where would you perform? Also, what would— same question for DJ Tyrone. That's from Bart de Roos.

Well, I love music of all sorts. I've done some DJing for Rick and I played for him a lot of what is Miss named world music, but from different countries such as Madagascar or pygmy music or, you know, Algerian rap or whatever. I love playing Paul McCartney for people. I feel I know that area very well. We have an episode coming up with Ian Leslie and he'd better be ready because I'm ready. I don't need to prep for him. He has this new book coming out on John Lennon and Paul McCartney. I feel I've never been more ready for an episode. I think good DJing, you should surprise people and mix in a lot of different things.

And what—

and Tyrone would feel the same way.

But what would his artist be?

Maybe he'd just play atonal music for people, but Tyler would do that too. So Tyler and Tyrone merge when it comes to music.

Tyler has a little more empathy for the group, I think.

I'm not sure about that.

Any update on Yonas, the person in Ethiopia you supported?

He and his wife had another baby. The war is over in the immediate sense. Their food problems have been alleviated. He does not have enough money to complete his house, which is a big problem for him. They're back on their feet, but it's very tough. And tourist demand for the business he wanted to create has not materialized because of the war. Mm-hmm. He's performed very admirably, but Ethiopia has let him down, I would say.

I think you commented at the time it was more difficult than it should have been to get him the money. When you supported him, it required some jumping through hoops. Is that still the case?

I now have an electronic payments network set up. The first time I used it, my bank canceled my account. I had to go in person because it does look sketchy to be sending just a single transfer to Ethiopia all of a sudden.

Yeah.

And I think that's resolved, but I'm afraid the next time I send, they'll cancel my account again. So I don't know. We'll see. Payments in the United States is still screwed up. Stripe has done amazing work. I hope they keep on going. I'm pretty sure they will, but it still all needs fixing.

All right. Question from DB. Respectfully and in a spirit of good intention.

Uh-oh.

It's not as bad as you think. Why is it that you seem to dislike measures to make practical cycling in cities safer and more comfortable? So you've had a number of posts where you, you kind of say that the idea that people— I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I would summarize you is you think it's without evidence, you know, installing bike lanes and these things, the ROI is not there to you. Is that fair?

Correct. As far as I can tell from the numbers I've seen, use of DC bike lanes has been declining. I suspect it's not the future. It's a relatively slow and late 19th century mode of transport. If you look at downtown Washington, it's much harder to drive around in. I get that's partly by design, but there is a real economic cost to that. And the bike lanes are mostly empty. It does seem to work for much of Manhattan. I think one should be an empiricist. I know Amsterdam and Copenhagen quite well. It works great there. Houston decided not to do it. That was almost certainly the correct decision. So one should be an empiricist. And I think bike lanes are by the people I come into contact with, very much overrated. If you ask the simple question, where's the cost-benefit analysis that adds up all the costs? I never see it. No one has ever sent me one, ever. And I did a long post. There were a large number of comments. People would say things like, oh, you dummy, don't you see Copenhagen's a great city? Yes, it is. It's worked well there. But at the margin, how many American cities should make big investments in this direction? I still want to see the cost-benefit analysis and no one's coming up with it.

All right.

And if you send me one that is serious in taking all the costs into account, including the cost of the land, I will read it and indeed review it. But some kind of partial, oh, here's a few people who are better off because we put bike lanes in. I'll look at it, but no, I'm not going to review that. And that's what people have been sending me.

You published your list of the best new books of the year, and we'll get to those, at least for 2014. What about the best new ideas? That's from Bob Ewing.

Do we have new ideas? I mean, generative AI, you wouldn't quite call it a new idea, but it has reached new peaks and the very best models, obviously, O1 Pro for GPT is right now the best model and it's just astonishing. It beats humans at most things today, or is it yesterday? The new Google video model came out. I haven't played around with it yet. People say it's incredible. So those are the new ideas that matter. And the rest is often people just spinning their wheels. It's not a great time for like new ideas in books. The new ideas are all stuff also in biomedicine. And it's just been incredible, mind-blowing.

You've said before that the best ideas are the things people do. They're embedded in the projects people do. So like LLMs would be one.

But that's a recent development. So say 10, 15 years ago, you had all these new semi-popular, semi-serious science economics books. A lot of them had new ideas. You could say Jared Diamond started that trend. It now seems to me mostly over. Those books seem a bit flat at the moment. And yeah, we're waiting for people to reinvent the book. We tried our own version of that. Thank you again for your help with GOAT, econgoat.ai. Those are the new ideas or doing things.

Well, what about— maybe we're stretching what's an idea, but versus, say, an initiative. But in the policy world, we have DOGE. Would you count that as a new idea?

I'm all for it. I hope it succeeds, but I don't think it's a new idea. If you read David Stockman's old book, The Triumph of Politics, they tried a version of that in the first term of the Reagan administration. It didn't work. They're trying it again. I think they'll try harder and with the benefit of knowledge of failures in the meantime. But no, I don't see it as a new idea.

Okay. Well, we're, we're also going to have Jennifer Palka on to talk more about that in the new year. So look out for that one.

And settling Mars is not a new idea.

Right.

Let's root for it, but it'll be tough and it's not new.

All right. What supplements do you take? How do you feel about the life extension projects that are out and about? That's from Nicholas Krauss.

I drink mineral water. Does that count as a supplement.

Why not?

I don't take a lot of medications, right? I don't take medications in general. I'm skeptical. I think life expectancy will continue to increase slowly. My guess is there's some natural limit due to the brain at somewhere between 100 and 120. And I don't see how you repair the brain without replacing who is the person. So I don't think individuals can live forever. Mm-hmm. But to get to the point where large numbers of people who buckle their seatbelts live well into their 90s, I expect we're on the way to doing that right now. Your kids might be able to expect to live well into their 90s, for instance.

How long would you like to live in an ideal world in your body?

As long as I can. As long as there is history to follow, I won't be bored.

Mm-hmm.

So I'm not worried about that.

I'm the same way. Some people say, no, I don't want to live forever because then all of your people around you presumably will start dying unless they're just also, I guess, buckling their seatbelts and taking the same non-supplements you are.

Bye-bye. I mean, I already know a lot of people have passed away. It's terrible, but I've kept on going.

Yeah. I don't know.

I like life. And I have a lot of new friends also. You have to, you know, as you get older, you need to make real efforts to make and keep new friends. But you can do it. Like Rick Rubin or Noam Dorman, they're like pretty new friends for me.

Yeah. To me, to be maybe a little glib, it's sort of like not getting a new pet because your old pet died and just being a little fatalistic of like, I'm not going to bring joy into my life because that joy might end. I don't know. If there's anyone out there who can help me with this, I'd love to live longer than, than say 80 or 90.

A lot of Emergent Ventures winners are working on this. My guess is they'll simply help us live to 100, which is still a great investment. But many of them think aging is a specific thing that can be stopped or reversed or cured like you can cure a disease. I hope they're right. We've made bets on them. But if you just ask me what I think, I do think there's an upper limit that is more or less at where the oldest living people live to today. Which is like about 110, perhaps. Maybe we can get that up to 120. Mm-hmm.

Listener PK asks, how do you invest your own money?

Buy, hold, and diversify. I do very little. I don't sell things. Don't really rebalance as I save more, buy more stuff. And that's it. There's nothing interesting about that story. I don't think I can beat the market and I don't try to.

I'm wondering if he's If they, I should say, are also asking this question because of your challenge to people to short the market if they're bearish on things, have you ever yourself taken out a financial position that kind of bet on your belief in that way?

I've never shorted anything. Note that my wife works for the SEC, so I'm not allowed to short anything legally. In fact, a lot of individual stocks I can't buy. All I can do, it's in fact what I want to do anyway, but is buy, hold, and diversify. But I have no degrees of freedom in this, so make of that what you will. And I'm optimistic. I don't wanna short the market even if I could.

Okay, let's move on to pop culture picks. So for many, many years on The Marginal Revolution, you've been listing your favorite nonfiction, fiction, movies from the year. It's tradition on this show to look back a decade ago, so in this case 2014, and look at your picks.

I always forget to prep for this, and I oughta know by now. I'm silly.

So 2014 also coincides. I joined Mercatus in October 2014. So the snake is kind of eating the tail here where up to now these picks have been before I joined Mercatus and before CWT got started. But next year when we do this, CWT will have begun. Perhaps that will be reflected in the list. Now, starting with nonfiction, there are a lot. There are way too many, I think, to go by one by one. So let me just mention the ones where there is some connection with CWT. So interestingly, one of the books you mentioned was Stephen Kotkin's Stalin Volume 1. So that was one of the greatest biographies of all time.

Yeah, an incredible achievement.

We got Adam Tooze's The Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of World Order, 1916-1931. You say it starts low, but after about 13% becomes fascinating, especially about the internal politics in Germany and Russia.

I must have read that on Kindle if I said 13%.

So there you go. We've got Tooze and Kotkin on there. Tooze was on, I think, in 2020. Other books that you mentioned, I can't— there are probably maybe 30 books listed here, but we have Piketty's Second Machine Age. Tim Harford had a book. Megan McCurtil's Upside It Down. Lane Kenworthy on social democracy. These are all people that are kind of in your network, you say. Fourth Revolution by John Micklethwaite. Daniel Dresner, The System Worked. Frank Buckley, Why the Canadian System of Government is Better. Russ Roberts, How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life. So there's another CWB.

I'm not sure the Frank Buckley book has held up well.

Okay.

Chrystia Freeland just resigned as we're recording, and Trudeau is very unpopular, and Canada is still in a recession. Now, is that due to their system of government? You can debate, but I suspect Frank himself might revisit that claim.

Other books, I'll run through them. You can interrupt me if something jumps out at you. Jürgen Osterhamel, The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the 19th Century.

I'd love to read more from him, but it seems to me that book probably took him 30 years, and I wonder when the next one is coming.

You said it was long, exhausting, and wonderful. Christopher Hale, Massacre in Malaya, or Malaya. Howard Island and Michael W. Jennings, Walter Benjamin and Critical Life. The very Rev. John Drury, Music at Midnight: The Life and Poetry of George Herbert.

That was a great book. That might have been the best book of that year. Everyone should read that.

John Kay, Midnight's Descendants: A History of South Asia Since Partition. Alice Goffman, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City.

She got in trouble for that book. People claimed she got too close to her subjects or was involved in whatever. I don't want to repeat allegations, but it's become quite controversial.

Okay. Many others, but I'll end on this one that I missed, another CWT connection. You mentioned Tom Holland's translation of Herodotus's Histories.

And he was a great guest and has an amazing podcast.

He does. They are a force of nature, often the number one podcast in the UK. And I think, you know, probably top, you know, whatever, maybe top 25, top 100 in the US.

They're a model for Alex for the Marginal Revolution podcast. In fact, he listens to them a lot.

Yes, I love them too. I know he went to a live show and they, they can sell out venues. And I also thought about, well, maybe we should just try to call your podcast The rest is economics and, uh, just join their family. But we went with Marginal Revolution instead. Okay. Let's, there are many more. You can check the post listeners if you want some other ones, but let's move on to fiction. Michael Faber, The Book of Strange New Things. Faber.

My wife loved that book. She asked me about it like a day ago or two days ago. Yeah. Great book. I still think about it.

I read that one on your recommendation and enjoyed it. Emmanuel Carrère. Carrère. I'm not sure if I'm saying that right. Limonov: The Outrageous Adventures of the Radical Soviet Poet Who Became a Bum in New York, a Sensation in France, and a Political Antihero in Russia.

He's done very well. We should consider him as a guest. About a week ago, I read his new book about the trials of the Islamic terrorists in France. That's excellent. He's just racking up successes.

André Neumann, Talking to Ourselves.

Mm, not ringing a bell with me. Must not have stuck.

Javier Cercas, or Cercas, Outlaws and Novel.

Oh, sure, Cercas. He's a great Spanish writer. Very good. Again, he has a number of important books, not that well known in the English-speaking world. Quality.

Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

And he had a book this year that Henry Oliver just reviewed. Again, he's done very well. Someone also we should consider having as a guest.

Hassam Blossom, The Corpse Exhibition and the Other Stories of Iraq.

Yeah, hasn't stuck with me. But let's do Richard Flanagan.

Okay, Richard Flanagan. Andy Weir, The Martian.

Incredible guest, great book.

Yes.

And he's still on a roll and I'm dying for the next one.

I am very excited. So I read Project Hail Mary a year or two ago. I thought that book was excellent.

Agree.

It's like The Martian, but Better even. But better because there's more of a plot than just a thought exercise, which is what people loved about The Martian is this extended thought exercise. It's got that in Project Hail Mary, but also a really exciting narrative. They're making a movie. I think Lord and Miller are attached to it. Lord and Miller are known for their kind of comedy. I'm very excited to see how that one turns out.

So I feel I'm picking good authors, actually, people who have held up and done even better.

Last one, Jeffrey Hill, Broken Hierarchies and Poems, 1952 to 2012.

He passed away, I think, a few years ago. He's a brilliant conceptual poet. I'm not sure one goes back to him, but I'm not sure one needs to. Strong thinker and writer.

All right. Those are your fiction picks. Let's move on to best movies. You say kicking it off, I found this to be a diffuse year in movies, one where old style mainline releases lost their grip. And open up the market for more quality and diversity. My cinematic self came away from the year quite happy, yet without a clear favorite or a definite sense of which movies will last the ages. Well, let's see how well they've aged over 10 years. The Invisible Woman, the secret, which is about the secret love life of Charles Dickens. You remember that one?

Excellent movie. I was thinking I should watch it again.

Particle Fever.

Particle Fever. Was that the documentary?

It's a science documentary about the Hadron Collider.

Yeah. Dripping to watch, probably out of date, but good background. Yeah, I'd still recommend it.

Le Weekend, a brutal tale of a vacation and a marriage collapsing.

Gotta be strong to watch that one. But for some people, yes, go ahead.

Under the Skin, the Scarlett Johansson movie.

Incredible, right? And it's held up very well. It's become a famous movie and book.

The Lunchbox.

That's the Indian one.

Yes.

About logistics in India. Way ahead of its time. And showing you what India is good at accomplishing. So highly instructive movie and a lot of fun.

Viola, an Argentinian take on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. You remember that one?

Yeah. There are more good Shakespeare movies than people think, but the good ones are all really weird. Like Chimes at Midnight or the one with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes where they do Romeo and Juliet with Haitian voodoo. So yeah, that's another one.

A Touch of Sin. This is a Chinese movie.

It's become an all-time classic, maybe the greatest Chinese movie ever made. I can't pronounce his name, but it's what, Z-H-A-N-G-K-E? It's an absolutely must-watch on the big screen if you can.

Godzilla. This was the one with like Bryan Cranston was the lead. There's been so many Godzilla movies, but this one was just called Godzilla.

I try to see them all. I never regret it. I can't quite defend them. But that itself tells you something about aesthetics.

Yeah, this is the one directed by Gareth Edwards.

I don't know which one I meant. But again, I've never regretted seeing a single Godzilla movie in my entire life.

Transformers 4.

That's the great one. Again, it has become iconic. It's just action every moment, visually complex, highly inventive, and is underrated by serious film critics. And I don't like the other Transformers movies. They're just silly, but not 4.

I know, I know. You're making me want to watch Transformers 4. I never— I dropped out on the Transformers series.

You were rational. Yet the world will surprise us sometimes.

Obvious Child.

Oh, give me some more context.

Let me find—

it's a Paul Simon song, Obvious Child. That comes to mind too quickly and it blocks the movie from my mind.

It's a romantic comedy. Written and directed by Gillian Robespierre. Stars Jenny Slate, Gaby Hoffman, David Cross.

Mm, not sure. Okay.

Ilo Ilo, a movie from Singapore about a Filipina immigrant.

Excellent film and a good look at the other side of Singaporean life that people don't always see.

The One I Love. This is a movie starring Mark Duplass and Elizabeth Moss. It's kind of an— it's an indie movie where they go to— this is kind of a hard movie to summarize, but as I recall, they're in a— they're in kind of a vacation home together and realize that they're interacting with like clones of their partner.

Yeah, she's very good in that. It's an interesting film.

I'm probably botching that summary a little bit, but it's very good. I also checked that one out. Skeleton Twins.

Skeleton Twins. Give me some context. Context matters.

Human LLM. Who cares? Let me be your human LLM. Another American comedy. I don't know this one by name either, but this starred Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig. Twins Milo and Maggie have an unexpected reunion after a set of near tragedies.

Comedies I tend to forget, but I don't mean that as a criticism of comedies. And you can't really rewatch them. You just watch them once and then forget about it. That's optimal.

Lucy, your second Scarlett Johansson movie.

Yeah, she is amazing.

Fury. That's the World War II tank movie with Brad Pitt.

I like World War II movies. That's one of the good ones. Yeah.

I watched—

Blitz was the one this year.

I watched it. I watched Fury in the past year, enjoyed it. And again, for all my, you know, military dads out there, if you haven't checked out Fury, that is a great World War II movie. Interstellar. There's been some commentary because of the tank.

I don't like that anymore. I think it's a bit unwatchable. I know it's the iconic movie for men. It's all over Twitter. Tech people love it. I don't think Christopher Nolan's a good movie maker. I know that's heresy, but it's all too excess. And there's, it's not really tinged with actual drama for the most part, only in some scenes. So I'm going to nix that one.

But you're, you're, are you throwing out the baby with the bathwater?

Yeah, I'm going to throw it all out. The baby, the bathwater. The tub. Let's just throw it all out.

Is this just like Oppenheimer? You've got just a bad taste in your mouth with Oppenheimer. And I mean, surely it's not all bad with Nolan.

Mark Andreessen promises me that Tenet makes sense. He's probably correct. It might be a great movie.

Uh-huh.

I might try it again, but I don't know. I think there's some way in which there's just too much on the screen. And it, it's not properly cinematic somehow.

Hmm. I have a soft spot for Interstellar. I totally get the criticisms of Interstellar, particularly that it kind of all collapses into love being like a force of nature, like gravity is, which I know for sci-fi focus is just not, not what you want.

And it's just too parasitic on its own special effects.

But I do appreciate just on a production level, I appreciate Nolan. I think you're underrating the craftsmanship of those films, even from just a production design approach. I think they're very good.

I agree with that, but it matters less to me. And I guess I'll never be a guest on this show now.

You say you picked Fury No. 1 summing up, and along with A Touch of Sin, you say both of them need to be seen on a large screen.

Touch of Sin is really the one that has become a big deal.

You include a TV pick. You say modern Orthodox Jewish dating show Shrugim.

Yeah, Shrugim, which is incredible. It's now massively popular. I feel very good about that pick. Highly recommended. And the problem with a lot of romance today is where does the drama come from? You know, they could just sleep with each other too quickly, or if someone needs to divorce, it just happens.

Yeah.

So Victorian literature had solutions to these problems.

Right.

And Srugim, which covers modern Orthodox in contemporary Israel, has solutions as well. It's a great, great TV show. I'd say one of the best ever made. And if you like it, you'll like it right away. It's not one of these, you need to sit through 3 episodes and then make up your mind.

So looking back over nonfiction fiction, I didn't, you know, I'm not sure if you picked music. I didn't see it, but apologies if I missed the music picks, but if you go to MR, you can, you can look at the date archives and find out for yourself. Looking back over these lists, how do you think they've aged?

I'm biased, but I think extremely well. And I think that was a great year for many things. It wasn't a great year for the resumption of high-speed economic growth, or maybe not technological progress, but it was a calm, stagnation-rich year where people were remarkably creative.

Mm-hmm. Very good.

And aesthetics.

All right. Let us move on to something new for us this year. So you have another document in front of you, actually several. Several documents. We have asked listeners to send us ideas for a name that we can use to describe the collective fan base. And basically there's a functional reason for this of like when we address emails to folks instead of Dear Listener, we, we kind of want to have a name for everyone. So Dear Blank, you know, Taylor Swift fans are called Swifties. We're interested in developing our own version of that. We got a bunch of suggestions. I would ask you to browse this list. We're going to narrow it down to a shortlist and then ask folks to vote on it. I'll start reading off some of these and you can tell me if any jump out to you. We have the underrated or underrateds.

How about the overrated?

So there are every variation. So there's the correctly rated.

Winner's curse holds, like we're pursuing them as an audience. Uh-huh. And that's winner's curse for us. Like we've bid too much for their loyalty. So we must be overrating them would be the simple economic argument.

So it has to be the overrated. Tyler Wright's—

none of these should have my name in it.

I agree. I actually, I love some of them, but I think it's against the spirit of the show that it use your name.

It's about the guests more than anything else.

But I would say, but just to name some of the ones that do include your names, I love Cowenauts. That just, that just rolls off the tongue.

Infowars maybe is good because that, if anything binds our listeners, it might be that.

I like Infowars. There's the, you know, CW Tears.

There is no one else will know what that means, right?

Yeah. The tycoons again, if we use your name, the marginal revolutionaries. Well, I think we have to save that for the other podcast. Let's see if there's any other ones I really liked.

I'll say infowars if it's up to me. Yeah, maybe it's up to them.

It'll be up to them. Some of these I don't understand, but I appreciate people's effort. The stubbornly attached. How do you feel about the stubbornly attached?

If only, if you tell me a lot, stop listening at two-thirds of the way through, maybe the stubbornly not fully attached. Yeah. Yes.

Unfortunately, also a little difficult to use as a salutation in email. Dear, dear, the stubbornly attached. It doesn't quite do what we need it to, but I appreciate that one. Whoever said that.

I like it though. I like the spirit and that it's not about me. Yeah.

I think the conversationalists.

It's a little too general. It would apply to too many things. I think it's also a movie. Gene Hackman. I don't know.

It's also Straussian for us because we don't actually have conversations. This is probably the closest we get to a conversation on, on CWT. All right. Well, the list is going to be quite narrowed down since I, and I totally agree with this. We should not have variants of your name in there. So if you haven't sent in a suggestion already, send it in. We'll narrow it down to a shortlist and then we'll ask people to vote. But I think there are some, there are some good ones in here. All right. Last bit of business we need to do before we take our leave for the year is we are currently running our end of year campaign and people can give financially to support the show. One of the incentives we offered was a shout out. So if you gave more than $250 or more to the show, I'm going to give you your shout out and we thank you very much. So here's all the folks who gave us who donated to the CWT end-of-year campaign this year and qualified for this incentive. Eric Ward, Chris Masillo, Dave Padula, Carl Muth, Drew Natenshown, Alan Goldhammer, Philip K., Dave Rappa, Christian Fiedler, Joe Krause, Ethan Horsfall, David Kemp, Adam Shapiro, Chris Lehman, Jake Chinnitz, Ben Stein, Roman Yatsaki, Anish Peter, Samuel Cohn, Ethan, Monreal Jackson, Howard Ye, Chad Wonderling, Ely Yu. Thank you all very, very much for your donations.

I thank you all as well. Truly.

People have been very generous this year with their donations. We really appreciate it.

People who suggest questions, they're very valuable.. So thank you to all of them as well.

Yeah. And you can email in at any time, reach out to us, reach out to Tyler with guest ideas and, and your questions. We're happy to receive them. Lastly, let me thank some folks from the show.

And thanks to you, Jeff, for being producer and overseer of all of this among your other responsibilities.

It's my favorite thing to do. This episode is always my favorite thing to do this year. So it's always a treat and it's, it's great. It's very gratifying. People now tell me that this is one of their favorite episodes of the year because it gives them a kind of a recommendation for episodes they may have missed, among other things. So I love doing this. I love being here. I'm glad I made it. There is a sickness everywhere all around us. We're in the studio by ourselves because folks are dropping like flies, but they're not dropping.

They're just sidelined.

They're, they're recumbent on a, on a sofa, you know, hopefully recovering. But thanks to your health regimen and mine, evidently we've, we've made it here today.

I was in India, so I'm very healthy. Dallas and Sam are great. I'm going to thank them in advance. They're great to work with. They put up with me.

Dallas and Sam do most of the work on the show besides Tyler. I just get to slide in and do fun things like this. In addition to Dallas and Sam who produce the show, there's Jen Whistler, Karen Plant, Christina Behe, Haley Larson, Mary Horan, Ashley Schiller, Serena Dibb. And of course there's many others at Mercatus who contributed as well this year. So thank you all very much.

And when I say like, let's do more, all of you are always game and that's phenomenal. It's not that easy to work with people who are like that and who really mean it. Let's do more. And Jeff, let's do more.

All right. Let's do more. Let's do more in 2025. And if I don't see you listeners before then, I'll see you at the end of 2025 and we'll see how we did. Thank you, Tyler.

Looking forward to the next year. Thank you, Jeff. Thanks for listening to Conversations with Tyler. You can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. If you like this podcast, please consider giving us a rating and leaving a review. This helps other listeners find the show. On Twitter, I'm @TylerCowen and the show is @CowenConvos. Until next time, please keep listening and learning.