Going Big with Tyler Cowen, the Information Billionaire: The Future Belongs to the Non-Complacent

Well, we're seeing a world where very small units, sometimes working with AI, I would add, can have immense influence just through reach. And if you're like a single YouTuber, you could have an incredible audience and influence. So I think there's some key mechanisms right now working against size mattering. But I think a mistake people make is that we all like to be surrounded by other people who are sort of happy with us, happy with how things are going. And that's a bad frame of mind to be in. If everyone around you is happy with how things are going, it's probably terrible. There's not, not enough things being shaken up. It's not that you should alienate people on purpose to think you're all of a sudden successful. That won't work. But success, you know, whether it's Apple with Steve Jobs or OpenAI or the Beatles or the Chicago Bulls with Michael Jordan, so many examples. When you look at them pretty closely, there's a lot of strife and conflict.

Welcome to the Going Big Podcast. I'm your host, Kevin Gentry, and this is the place where we celebrate bold moves and big ideas. Each week I sit down with inspiring leaders, entrepreneurs, and changemakers who are making a significant impact in their careers and in their communities. Whether you're looking to level up your leadership, pursue your passion, or just get inspired to take your next big leap, this is where those stories come to life. Now, if you're listening on iTunes, YouTube, or anywhere else you tune into podcasts, be sure to hit that subscribe button so you'll never miss an episode. Now let's dive in to what it means to truly go big.

Well, welcome back to another episode of the Going Big Podcast. I'm your host, I'm Kevin Gentry, and I am very pleased to welcome back for a return performance, Dr. Tyler Cowen. Uh, as many of our listeners know, uh, Dr. Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen is, uh, perhaps the most influential academic economist of our time. He is a cultural commentator. He is an enormously prolific author. A blogger, columnist, and podcaster. And I would also suggest he is one of the most influential thinkers in the world today, which we're going to really draw the benefit from in this conversation. Uh, I asked our audience who they would like to have back, and Tyler, you won with flying colors. And so for this encore today, I'd like to ask you essentially 3 different categories of questions. And the first is, who is Tyler Cowen? I don't know whether you've ever really addressed that in a manner like this before. The next will be, what insights do you have from your experience that you would help our audience think about going big? When we spoke the last time, you really were helpful in terms of how we should think about taking risks, Thinking about artificial intelligence, how to really maximize talent, just thinking about things in a consequential nature. And then the final category is looking into the future. How would you, you would advise us all to think about going big in a truly transformational way? So we're going to cover some big stuff, but I know that you can answer. We never talk about these things ahead of time because I know you like to just go. Which is awesome. And so I think we're going to have fun today. Thanks for joining us.

Happy to be here. Great to see you, Kevin. Do we start with who is Tyler Cowen?

Yes, but I'm going to ask it in this way. Suppose that— yeah. Yes. Suppose that you are at like a— let's say I invite you to a family gathering of my family and they're not as informed perhaps about what you do in the academic world. How would you introduce yourself? Let's say you're on an airline flight and the passenger next to you says, what do you do? How do you answer that question?

I try to discourage people from talking to me on the plane, although it turns out the year before I had a wonderful conversation with a guy who works for Merkur, which is the company, an AI company in San Francisco. And they're the company that most rapidly got to the $400 million mark., and they just had a new raise a few days ago. And at 22 years old, the 3 co-founders are the youngest self-made billionaires ever. And I did a podcast with one of them out in San Francisco, and it's because of the guy I sat next to on the plane flying back from France.

That's amazing. So, but what did you, how did that conversation happen? Did he ask you, what do you do? And what did you say?

No, he knew who I was. He looked at me and he said, you're Tyler Cowen. So I didn't have to explain to him at all. Those are the easy cases, right? And we just talked about AI for quite a while.

And obviously— What do you normally say? What do you say to— let's say you went back home or something and people were not as well-versed in this and they say, what, Tyler, what do you do?

If I want to choke off conversation, I'll just say I'm an economist, right? And that usually works pretty well.

Fair.

If I want to be kind of sharp, I'll say, well, I'm an information billionaire seeking to be an information trillionaire. And then people do ask more because that just confuses them. But I think that's in fact a pretty good answer. So I'm very curious and I like to gather and organize information about all sorts of topics. I love to travel, economics, of course, the arts, music, many things. And if there's so many billionaires in the world, if you thought like, are there a comparable number of information billionaires? I like to think I might be one of them, but of course we have no trillionaires in the world. And on the money front, that's a nice aspiration to have, and I have it on the information front, but I'm pretty sure I will really not come that close to attaining it.

All right. Fascinating. Well, you've piqued everybody's interest, but here's the funny thing, and, uh, I asked ChatGPT, I really pressed, who exactly is Tyler Cowen and how would you, ChatGPT, describe Tyler? And this is what I got. Tyler Cowen is a restless intellect in perpetual motion, an economist, public thinker, and cultural omnivore who refuses to stay in one lane. He's best known as the co-founder of the blog Marginal Revolution and as a professor at George Mason University, but his influence stretches far beyond academia. Tyler has spent decades exploring how ideas, incentives, and culture shape the world, from ethnic dining and development economics to philanthropy and artificial intelligence. But his superpower is the synthesis. He spots where patterns others miss and translates them into practical wisdom for others, for how to think, act, and live ambitiously in an age of rapid change. But in short, If curiosity were a market, Tyler Cowen would be the most bullish investor. All right. How do you react to that?

That's a good answer. And it's pretty close to what I said, right?

It is.

That's pretty amazing. And I asked Claude and Claude also focused on the curiosity piece, which I thought was really interesting.

You wonder at which point you and I are not needed to do these podcasts. It will be our avatars.

I know. No, we have a lot to ask about now.

Maybe it's our avatars right now. There's a clone of my voice and I cannot distinguish it from my own.

That's right. Maybe I'm not with Tyler Cowen. Well, we've got a lot to talk about with respect to artificial intelligence. So, okay, if you would, let's go back to the beginning a little bit. Tell us, tell this audience where you were born, where you grew up. I've got some follow-up questions about your early academic career and then where you are today. But just give us a sense for you.

Growing up, I was born in Hudson County, New Jersey, in Kearney, into an Irish-American family that was originally working class. But my father did well, and eventually we became what I call upper, upper middle class. But I've lived in both of those worlds. I've lived in New Zealand, Germany, Mexico. I ended up getting a PhD from Harvard in 1987. I've now been at George Mason University and director of Mercatus really a long time. I think that's 28 years. I'm not even sure exactly. And we've known each other about that long. And, uh, I try to be in perpetual motion and not really let up trying to improve myself and what I know and strengthening my sense of curiosity.

All right. So you went to So, I mean, you're very bright, prodigious. You were a child chess champion in New Jersey at a relatively young age. Why did you decide to go to George Mason University? I mean, at that time, the early 1980s, it was not the number one place to go. George Mason is a solid university today, but on the line with Harvard? Not quite. So what was the path to go to George Mason undergrad? Why did you study economics? And then I'll come back to the Harvard piece and then going back to George Mason.

Well, there's a few reasons for going to George Mason, and they're all weird. The first was that I was interested in something called Austrian economics and its relation to what is better known as free market economics. And George Mason was the place to do that. But that alone was not sufficient. I also thought, I suppose pretty arrogantly, that if I just had a lot of free time, I could teach myself more than I would learn at other places. And George Mason, because it was relatively easy, gave me the freedom to do that. And then finally, this was a huge factor, the notion of having to live in a dorm in a normal 4-year college, I just found to be such a prospective torture with people smoking, doing drugs, loud music, drinking, who knows, like, There's the sex, that's a plus, but the rest is all a huge negative. And the notion that I could live in an apartment and own a car and have an actual life as an autonomous human being for 4 years, I found so much more appealing than the alternate existence that I just wanted to do it. So those 3 reasons stacked together clinched it.

That's amazing. I forgot, of course, George Mason did not have much in the way of residential dorms at that point. I mean, it was still so new. All right. How in the world were you exposed to Austrian economics as a teenager enough to want to pursue an educational career attached to that?

Well, two different independent things happened at the same time. The first is my father brought home something called the Freeman, put out by Foundation for Economic Education, which then was a vehicle for those ideas. And I heard they very recently just restarted., but also I would go to the public library and just pull books off the shelf and read them. So I was doing that at the same time, and I read Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, and I read Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, and those had a huge impact on me. So those two things together got me excited. And keep in mind, this is a world where communism was a big deal, and I thought correctly, in my view, that to prevent or limit how much the rest of the world would become communist, socialist. Was the top priority, and economics seemed like a very good vehicle for doing that. So I thought it was the most important thing for me to be doing.

All right, so you were effectively growing up in New Jersey in the 1970s, uh, compared to today, pretty bleak in some ways. We didn't necessarily think it was bleak, although we weren't—

no, it was great. It was not bleak.

What, what influences did you have as well at that time about music or popular culture or sports. Just give us some perspective, 'cause I'm gonna tap back into that a little bit later too.

Well, I was a big baseball and basketball fan, so I would go to plenty of Mets games. I first saw the New York Knicks in 1972, saw Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, all the greats many times. That was fantastic. So sports were a big thing, but going to New York, of course, chess tournaments, but Museum of Modern Art. I saw an incredible number of concerts. I saw Vladimir Horowitz there. Like, I can't believe I saw Horowitz once. It cost me $60, which adjusted for inflation was a lot of money, but I'm so glad I had the gumption to shell out to get a good seat. And there was just always something going on. The best bookstores then were in New York City, and I kept on going, but New Jersey also had this culture somewhat reflected in the TV show The Sopranos. But Bruce Springsteen music, it was a bit rebellious and earthy, and I think it was a very good background to have. It's sometimes said if you leave New Jersey, all other places look beautiful, but you grew up surrounded by high human capital and you got the best of both worlds. So I think it was a great place to be. Cool.

All right. So you went to George Mason and then you liked economics enough that you wanted to get a PhD, presumably at some point you decided, hey, maybe I should either teach or at least study this more. Why did you choose Harvard?

It was the most prestigious school, and it was a school that offered me the best financial deal, and it was a place for people with broader interests than would go to MIT or for that matter Chicago. And it seemed like obviously the correct choice. I think in retrospect it was. And I thought I would learn a lot there, which I did. I wouldn't say I, I loved it, uh, but there I was all of a sudden, and it was necessary, especially after George Mason, for me to go to a top, top reputation school. So I did it and I still didn't live in a dorm, you know, again, apartment, car, everything. It was great. Still, I've never given that up.

Well, I think that perhaps begs a question about sort of substance versus certification, and, and maybe that's in and of itself Debatable about how I might classify this, but I don't know how well known it is to those who are listening, but George Mason University has the strongest Austrian economics program, free market economics program, has for a long time, and it's only gotten stronger. Two Nobel Prize winners in economics. Um, uh, you went to Harvard that didn't have necessarily that, but Harvard does have the prestige in the world. It's, I'm sure, you know, Oxford, Harvard, number one in terms of just sort of that certification. How important do you think— because I'm going to turn a little bit later to more of these insights, but just right now, how— what's the trade-off between the sort of substance of what you learned at George Mason and the certification you got by going to Harvard?

Most people should go to the best school they can and pursue the certification. And I don't think that's really changed. You could say I was foolhardy, but if you can do George Mason and Harvard, The Harvard to the outside world trumps the George Mason, and that's fine. But can you get into Harvard after George Mason? I was fortunate enough to have a number of articles published under my own name in refereed journals as an undergraduate and not working as someone's research assistant. I just did them. That was then, and even still now, highly unusual. Uh, and that made all the difference. So that was kind of freak luck that that panned out for me, but it did.

Well, how did you end up going back to George Mason to teach economics?

Well, my first academic job was at University of California, Irvine, where I had great colleagues, fantastic weather, uh, better Asian food than around here. And that was a very rewarding experience for me. But ultimately, I missed the East Coast. Uh, Irvine was great, and it's still a very good school, and there are ways in which I miss it. And I had excellent undergraduate students. Uh, but people there, it's just different. It's almost like a different country. It felt to me like they didn't have a sense of humor. I had too much New Jersey in my blood. And the idea that there's this Northeast Mid-Atlantic seaboard stretching like at least from Boston to DC, or there's like Portland, Maine, there's Richmond. That's an agglomeration, I think, without equal in the world still to this day. And to live in that is just worth a great deal to me. And you're closer to Europe, you're closer to Latin America. George Mason, I was very interested in for the reasons I had already been, but the location really was decisive, I would say, just where I would be living.

All right, so Tyler, you and I met in the late 1990s. You had been tapped to lead the new Mercatus Center, you had already been involved in public choice, a lot of things. You were well-known. You had written, if I recall correctly, already on the— In Praise of Commercial Culture. You were writing or had written about The Economics of Fame. Kind of where were you at that point in your life?

So this, I think, was 1988 or '89, and I was primarily doing refereed journal articles aiming for academic credibility. And getting tenure, which I had by my second year at Irvine. But still, that was my orientation, was playing the academic game and just trying to learn a lot about how economic science works and those institutions work. And I was very, very focused on that, worked very hard on that all the time. And that went well for me. And I was starting to get interested. I hadn't done it yet, but in writing books. For a more popular audience, but still academic books primarily. But it was very early in my career.

Well, all right. So I know then, if I recall correctly, you obviously, you already had this deeper interest in music. I remember when you had like thousands of CDs and you had this interest in culture. You would, you subscribe to Variety. You had this interest in sports. How did that begin? Was that a— was that big? Did that become deeper as a product of your research in fame and culture, or vice versa, or both?

Well, a lot of sports faded away just due to time. I still enjoy the NBA. I'll go see games when I can. I saw Steph Curry out in San Francisco for the first time recently. That was incredible. Very glad I had the chance to do that because he's 37 years old. But the rest, it feeds on itself. The more you know, the more you want to learn, the more interesting it all becomes, like many things. But it's especially true, I think, for music and the visual arts. And your ear, your eye become much better as you learn more and you learn new and different styles. And there's just no end to that process. In economic theory, in contrast, I feel I know the main mechanisms that have been discovered. New ones don't come along very often, if at all, these days. So I don't put very much time into learning more economic theory. I do put a lot of time into learning what you'd call new empirical results from economic studies, but they're not really new ideas. They're just people measuring things in new and better ways. And you learn about the world, but you don't wake up the next morning knowing some economics you hadn't known before. Oh, that to me is a bit of a bummer, but it's just how things are. But it means at the margin, a lot of other areas you'll find more interesting than just doing more economic theory.

So if I recall correctly, at this time, late 1990s, early 2000s, when we were working together, you were lecturing, you were writing, but then you started going into even greater interest. Maybe these were already there, but you, you introduced me to ethnic dining. Yeah, maybe I didn't need you to tell me about Indian food or Thai food, but certainly I wouldn't have ever had the raw cubes of beef at an Ethiopian restaurant or tried Haitian food or Uyghur food or Yemeni food without your prodding. So you had this interest. And by the way, in that process, I will never forget how you became suddenly the Washington, D.C.'s foremost expert in this area. I will never forget that interview radio interview on the Diane Rehm Show where you were with the Washingtonian and Washington Post food critics, and they kind of looked down their nose at you at the beginning, and then you immediately demonstrated a far superior knowledge to them on, on food. But that was one area, and then you're doing more in the area of commercial culture, and you're teaching at George Mason, and then you took on blogging. You were one of the first. I remember you're giving a presentation, you pulled in some other early bloggers to talk about to an audience. This is blogging. What was going on there, if you can remember?

Well, I think you remember a bunch of things that I don't so well. You know, the food thing is funny. When I was a kid, I was a very dogmatic little New Jersey boy, and I would eat only hamburgers. Like, pizza was too exotic for me. I didn't like pizza. And somehow I did a complete flip. I think it was the year I lived in Germany. I, I like German food quite a bit. I think it's underrated, but you still can't just eat it every day. And I started experimenting over there and then it just never ended. I think a big problem food critics have, at least local food critics, is they don't travel much. They're not paid that much, and they're often tied to doing their jobs locally, which is understandable, but they haven't been to the countries they're writing about. And I had been, all the more now, but even earlier, to a large number of these countries and had those foods in many different regions of the countries. So I just had this huge natural advantage because I could travel more. It's still a problem with, you know, saying like non-Michelin food critics, they just haven't been to many places, even in the US, they haven't necessarily been around. So if I spend maybe like half my time on the road, Uh, you understand food much better, but not always the good side of food either, cuz you're given all kinds of meals that you would never be forced to eat if you could just stay at home and control your own destiny. Now, blogging Eugene Volokh got me into that. I'm very grateful still to Eugene. Uh, I was first blogging for him, then decided pretty quickly I should have my own blog with Alex Tabarrok that would mainly be economics, but it's turned out to be everything. Uh, and there was no grand plan there. I just thought writing on the internet was very likely to succeed and I would learn more doing it and I should be doing it. But I way underestimated how big it would become. I thought it would be a big deal if we someday had 5,000 readers and that we might have 10 to 20 times that more, or some days even more, you know, hadn't even occurred to me like, oh, maybe someday we'll have 5,000 readers. That would be insanely wonderful.

Well, all right. To your credit, you started Marginal Revolution, you and Alex Tabarrok, and it's by far the most influential economics blog, but it's not— I mean, very, very well read, uh, uh, cited. Uh, you've stuck with it. Uh, that may be a lesson in and of itself. This, this, well, my re— the reason I'm taking, uh, the listeners through this journey about you, there's a method to my madness because I think We can draw a lot of insights about going big from some of this, which actually leads to this next point. And I reached out to a number of your colleagues and asked them about what makes you so particularly influential and effective and special. And this is one. Tyler's greatest contribution is that he's always trying new things, innovating, and always staying ahead of the curve on platforms as a public intellectual, like blogging, like podcasting, videos, et cetera. So I'm not, I wasn't kind of baiting you into this, but it is true. You always are trying to kind of stay on and this curiosity point that ChatGPT and Claude said that you are always the one who was pursuing this intellectual curiosity. Is that, I mean, how key has that been to your own personal growth? And I'll just say this, you know, when I remember you as a, very influential and effective professor at George Mason, but you've gone much beyond that. When others would have just accepted that sort of career track, you've decided constantly to innovate and do more things. Tell us a bit about that.

It's important to be ambitious. I know that sounds trivial, but it's remarkable how many people are not. They achieve some point and just stop there. I think that's 98 or 99% of people, certainly in academia. Uh, it's also been important that I've stuck with things. So I've blogged literally every single day for, I think it's more than 22 years now, maybe 23 years. I've lost track, but just to keep on doing it and stay in the game. Again, it sounds like a trivial point, but people typically do not do that. So my podcast Conversations with Tyler Cowen, we're now entering the 10th year. And I've managed over the last year, I think, to 2x or approximately the number of episodes we do. So that's trying to, not just more, but more is better. And the more episodes you do, the more you know for other episodes. So I hope that makes it better. And, uh, one thing I observed, I was chatting with a friend of mine about this lately, the number of people who start things and then they go crazy in some way. Is really quite high. And simply having the wherewithal not to go crazy with some wacky theory or some conspiracy or some whatever, there's very high returns to not going crazy. And we know a number of people, I won't name them, they have gone crazy, like talented people, right? And we know a bunch of people who haven't gone crazy. And it's such a huge difference.

Well, sadly, you're right. A lot of people, just brilliant people who've gone crazy, as you say. And you're right, these people we know, but let's hope you and I don't, or we'll just hope our avatars take over. All right. So this is, this is awesome. By the way, I cannot resist. You talked about the ethnic dining. You remember taking me to the Haitian restaurant in, in Fort Lauderdale. Do you remember that story?

Correct. It was a good meal.

It was superb. So the story was, I asked you, we were arriving around dinnertime, where should we go? And, uh, you said either Haitian or Cuban. I said, why those? You said, well, the rental car people are going to be either Haitian or Cuban, we'll just ask them. You always ask the local person where to go. We went and it was a crazy experience. Uh, it was— there's no markings of this place being a restaurant. Uh, it was a very sketchy neighborhood.

And this is like before Yelp, before GPS, just to be clear, right? Like, you just have a car And you're just like, "What do we do?" You know?

Well, it worked out really well. And I remember that you gave a talk to, I think, an international conference of chefs, and you described me as your very conservative friend. But I also remember you're asking me if I was uncomfortable at the dinner. And I said that I didn't think I would take my wife there, but I enjoyed it. And we spent $8 each on two magnificent meals. So thank you for that curiosity. You pushed me out of my comfort zone.

I recall you had a white shirt on.

We both had suits on. We both were dressed. I don't know whether we had neckties. We drove up in this, this rental car. And I think the proprietors of this space that, that ended up being a restaurant thought we were coming from the INS or the IRS or the health department. Which part was worse, right? They were not that thrilled to see us, but that's another story. All right. So podcasting, you made the jump to podcasting. You mentioned it. Another friend of yours told me last night in a message that I didn't know this, that you try to read virtually everything that your guests have produced. You really do a lot of research. I want to talk about your lessons from reading in a separate question, but you had Sam Altman recently. You started with Peter Thiel. You had some really amazing guests. How were you thinking and how do you think about podcasting and what you're trying to do today with that?

I like to use it as a way to meet people, to learn about who they are. The mission of the podcast is to show or teach other people how to appreciate others. So the goal is to bring out the best in everyone. But that does, that does involve difficult, sharp questions. They're not hostile. It's never, you idiot, why did you do or say that? But you try to challenge them in such a way where at the end of it all, they look impressively good. Usually that succeeds, but not always. So there's this element of drama for the audience. Well, how's it going to go with Tyler Cowen and this person? And they don't know. So the fact that a few of them are bad episodes, I sometimes think is good because if they were all superlative, there would be less drama. And it is like walking a tightrope if you're a guest. Questions are really hard. You have a chance to shine. You have a chance to crash and burn. Uh, I found more and more people want to do it. So for this reason, it's a kind of ultimate challenge, like running those ultramarathons. And, uh, yeah, it's great fun for me. It's not a source of income for me, to be clear, at all. Uh, there's no ads, no, I'm not paid. It's just a great thing to do.

Well, I'm so glad you encouraged me to do it, uh, as we're doing it right now. And I've met so many new and interesting people, had so many phenomenal conversations, had many, had many conversations as a product of those who have listened to podcasts. You and I are doing this again. We have a reason to be connected. We could go on and on and on and on. All right, we're gonna jump to chapter 2 and draw these insights, and you've already tipped to a number of items that we can go into much more deeply. But I just want to close this sort of chapter with another of your colleagues I reached out to and said, you know, the natural tendency of any intellectual or even ideological project is to look inward. But Tyler always encourages those around him to look outward and think bigger. How important— I mean, have we— do you think we've generally described your life up to this point? How— let's put a bow on it for those listening. Who is Tyler Cowen as a result of all that you've shared from growing up in New Jersey to going to George Mason and Harvard, to leading the Mercatus Center, but then also doing the blogging, the podcast, the ethnic dining, everything else. Tell us a little bit more.

Well, Tyler Cowen is the guy who says he's not really the one to judge this, but if you ask GPT-5 or Claude, I'm willing to accept them as the adjudicator and judge, and you all have access to that. So that's the way to go.

All right. Okay. So now I'd like to take what you've just shared and for the benefit of our audience and selfishly for my benefit as well, I'd like to try out some insights from you based on your experiences and your accumulated wisdom. So first, one thing that has come out from this, from the Going Big podcast, now there are two big factors that kind of rose to the surface that my guests have said have been so key in going big. The first is finding your gift, finding the way you can contribute, figuring out both your passion, but your talent, what you can do. What in your sense, how important is that? To going big and in your life, take it, take it from the example of your own life in terms of what you've ultimately pursued.

It's essential and it's important to have courage and not be afraid to double down on what you can do, even if what other people are doing is different and not to copy them. In my case, my most fundamental ability is the ability to read very fast. So even a person of comparable background or education, I might read 5 to 10 times faster than they do. And sometimes people don't believe this. That's fine, whatever, you know, but I can. So the more of my life I've structured around that ability, the better things have gone for me. Now, at first it might seem like quite useful, but not really that practical. But the more you think about it and work on it, like being able to read everything a person did for the podcast and make the episode super challenging. There's really a lot you can do with it once you spend your whole life working on developing that skill. So people should have their own version of that based on what they're good at.

Okay. But on that particular point, I'm so glad you brought it up. We didn't cover it in your sort of bio, but you read like a vacuum cleaner. I mean, and, and you— I've seen you just take like a suitcase of books or a bag of books. And I know you're not doing it for effect because, well, after a while, that would be kind of ridiculous to do if you're doing it for effect. You really do consume just tremendous amounts of stuff, uh, books in that way. Are there any tips that you might have for how we should read a book? I know you're, you're, you're on your own thing, but, but any tips?

I was born a hyperlexic. And if you're not born that way, I don't really have tips. I'm sure there's some things you can do to read better or faster. But I'm the opposite of the person you should go to. I'm like Wemby, Wembyana, Victor Wembyana, who was born very tall. Oh, Victor, any tips on how I can dunk the basketball? Like, don't ask Victor. He's just shooting downwards.

But if I recall correctly, you've suggested that you just don't dwell on every word or every sentence. You just kind of scan to get the point. Is that right? Is that a, that's a terrible oversimplification.

I would put it differently. The more books you've read, the more you can look at a book and understand which parts you need to read closely and which parts you already know. And that means you read the book much more quickly, but you also read it better because you know where to focus. So people used to think, oh, I just didn't absorb much or anything from the things I read, but my podcast episodes are live., and there's no editing. Uh, we edit out a cough, but we don't edit the content so people can judge for themselves what they think is or is not my command of the material. But I hear much, much less than I used to, like, oh, you don't understand any of what you read because there's like a taped proof of, you know, something or other.

Well, okay, so it's one thing to read like a direct mail letter pretty quickly, but can you read Delftsevsky pretty quickly too?

Fiction, if I have not read it before, is much harder, and I read it somewhat more quickly than other people, but not phenomenally more quickly.

Got it. Okay.

Because you don't know what's happening. Now, if I've read it before, then it's— we're back to the other scenario. But just a new novel that I haven't read, I'm only somewhat faster as a reader.

Well, it's still an amazing gift. Okay, so you've utilized that gift, right? Second point is mentors. Your advice last year when I talked to you about mentors actually kind of set in motion what ended up being the big, big lesson from the podcast. So many people talk about the extraordinary importance of mentors. So let's just accept mentors are important. What advice would you have based on your experience about how we should identify, pursue, recruit mentors?

That's a big topic, and I have a whole book coming out on this topic.

Is that right?

It will be called—

You did the one on talent a while back. Is that— this is different?

This is a sequel to Talent. Talent is on spotting talented people. This is on developing the talent of people. So it's a big topic worthy of a whole book. I'll just make one remark, and that is, if you are somewhat older and successful, There's a tendency to think you don't need mentors anymore, but you still do. You should probably have 30 or 40 mentors as well as your mentees. And a lot of them will be younger people who are in touch with things you're less in touch with, and you will learn from them a lot. And the fact that you're older and successful, it does mean you can attract quality people who are both your mentors and mentees. And think of mentoring as a kind of ecosystem. Where you participate on both ends, and you will do best from this whole process when you understand you always, at all ages, should be involved at both ends.

Well, that's a great insight. My friend Tom Smith is 97. I've interviewed him on the Going Big podcast, and he jokes that he just likes to hang around younger guys, which is obviously hard not to when you're 97. But he has that same kind of curiosity you do, and I think maybe that's necessary. But that's a terrific insight. We just think mentors are older sages because of accumulated wisdom. Great. Yeah, but everybody has wisdom in a particular different area. And so we just— you just want to tap that. Is that right?

That's right. So your 24-year-old mentor, let's say it's an AI or maybe in podcasting, helps keep you fresh and young. I find interesting in my life that when I was young, I hung around with all people who were older. And now that I'm older, at age 63, I almost completely hang around with people who are much younger. There was never quite this point in the middle where I hung around with people my own age. I just slipped from one to the other.

Well, on that point, so, you know, we, we tend to be tribal in nature and hang around people like us. And unfortunately, some of the trends are that we live in these, you know, communities, gated communities, other places that are just there's so much similarity and you lose your edge, in my judgment. And I think maybe your attitude about ethnic dining and being in a place like Washington, D.C. and all the travel that you do and your attitude about mentors keeps you on that. But how important is it that we get beyond our comfort zone? You touched on that earlier, but add to that if you would.

Well, for me, it's travel. There are always new problems to solve. You're typically a novice most places you go, maybe not in London, uh, but things you need to figure out, new curiosities are aroused. You're exposed to new foods or new books or new musics or whatever. And, uh, it's how you stay young mentally. I'm not saying it's the right way to do it for everyone, or maybe some people can't, they don't, they have family commitments or don't have the resources. But it's been, you know, one of the most important things in my whole career is always to be going around. And then you just start putting the pieces of the world together. Not that you think you understand it. I'd say in a way you end up more mystified, but you're just mystified at a deeper level of complexity compared to where you started.

Well, if you would offer some advice or insights even more about just travel. You can, if you want to comment about ethnic dining or something like that, that's great. But travel. Tyler, the first time I went to New York City, I was probably in my 30s because we were working together. I hadn't been to New York City ever before. And you took it upon yourself to sort of show me New York City in a few hours. And you took me into a Japanese bakery and said, "Look, just try this." And thank you for doing that. And it does, I think, it is an element of taking us out of our comfort zone. It's changed my attitude about a lot of these things, including travel. So if you would amplify that a bit for the benefit of those listening.

I know you were just in Berlin. It's great to have a local or semi-local to take you around. Do not stay in a resort no matter what. I don't care what you can afford. Visit second and third-tier cities of a country. Try to get into the countryside. A lot of it is context dependent. But let serendipity kick in. Don't just always do the same thing. So if you love riding horses, it's fine to ride horses to someplace you go, but do some other things as well. Go with different and changing groups of other people also is a great way to travel and you get to know the people. I had a 4.5-day trip to northern Ghana recently in August. And it was with a group of 4, and I'm guessing, uh, one person in the group was 40, and the others were, I'm guessing, below 35, and then there was me. We had a fantastic time. We learned a lot about Ghana. I learned a lot about them. They're all super smart and super interesting, and that was just a great experience. And will that group of us ever do a trip again? I mean, I guess the odds are no. Maybe, like, we all would, would like to repeat it. It may not work out. But the next trip, you know, maybe you will be with some other group or maybe just with my wife or, you know, it depends. But that should vary also if you can.

Well, thank you. And by the way, when I went to Berlin, thanks to the help of AI and your urging, Ann and I went to Poznań, Poland for the day. And that was just a very different experience. And we had a local person, you know, show us the things that made Poznań, especially unique, including those special croissants that are there. They're not really like French croissants, but you know what I mean.

I love crossing borders.

Yeah. And then, and yes, and, and, you know, Anne and I like wine and we decided to go to Walla Walla, Washington, and that totally transformed our view of so much. And, you know, don't just go to Napa or Sonoma, go to someplace like Walla Walla, which has, you know, I don't know, you, you, you're, you're very good at encouraging others to think in that way. All right. Next question. Complacency versus risk-taking. You mentioned it earlier when you became, you began blogging, you were one of the first podcasts, a lot of these different things. You took risks. And I mean, some would just be concerned about maybe their academic or professional reputation. Well, gee, if I do this, that I kind of fall flat or embarrass myself, it's not going to set me back. Um, tell us a little bit more about what you would urge because you told us the last time we were together on this podcast that in your judgment, most people are naturally complacent because they want to play it safer. I think I understood that correctly. Tell us more about what you would advise on risk-taking.

I don't know if it's advice so much. Like most people, they just don't want not to be complacent. And if that's who they are and how they are, I'm not really looking to talk them out of it. I would say, if you think you can or want to be different, I'm happy to try to give tips, but probably most people should be more or less the way they are. Like, it's tried and true for them. Um, and if I think of my own different things I've done, I don't think it's so much an appetite for risk. I once said to someone, they asked me, should I write a book? And I said, if you feel like, like you, you need to sneeze or you have an illness and you need to write the book to get rid of the illness or the urge to sneeze, you should write the book. Otherwise you shouldn't. And like the risk maybe shouldn't enter the calculation because ideally you want a version of the thing you're doing that's not very risky. I'm like that too. So when I started blogging, It doesn't cost you money to do. Would it have hurt my reputation if it went badly? I don't know. Like, people just forget a lot of things about you. Like, maybe it wouldn't have. Maybe it was this very low-risk thing to do. But I didn't think about it that way either. I just had this itch or this urge, and I'm like, well, I've got to satisfy this urge. We'll do it. And I did it. Uh, I ended up doing what I think was actually a very low-risk version of it. Not by design. It just turned out not to be that risky. So I'm not sure risk is always the right category. It's what you feel you need to do and whether you're willing to think and act big enough to strive for that higher level of ambition. But a lot of people shouldn't.

All right. Well, to wrap up this last chapter, this second chapter, until we run to the final and third chapter, In terms of going big in a business, but especially I would say in a nonprofit, I'd like your opinion because you've talked about sort of the bureaucracy of philanthropy, the bureaucracy of, you know, big organizations. And we have this notion to go big, we have to do it in a bigger way, and a bigger way will mean success. And in many ways, for example, Harvard University is successful because of— it's not just its— it was being the first in the United States and, and the certification that's associated with its accomplishment, but because the sort of big comprehensive complex nature of it. In fact, George Mason University today is judged in part by its relative success because of its growth. But growth is not always a good thing if it leads to bureaucracy or perhaps less risk-taking Comments on that.

Well, we're seeing a world where very small units, sometimes working with AI, I would add, can have immense influence just through reach. And if you're like a single YouTuber, you could have an incredible audience and influence. So I think there's some key mechanisms right now working against size mattering. But I think a mistake people make is that we all like to be surrounded by other people who are sort of happy with us, happy with how things are going. And that's a bad frame of mind to be in. If everyone around you is happy with how things are going, it's probably terrible. Uh, there's not, not enough things being shaken up. It's not that you should alienate people on purpose to think you're all of a sudden successful. That won't work. But success, you know, whether it's Apple with Steve Jobs or OpenAI or the Beatles or the Chicago Bulls with Michael Jordan, so many examples. When you look at them pretty closely, there's a lot of strife and conflict, and that's also a sign of success. So I would just say to people, don't feel too good about the other people around you feeling good.

Does that guide the nature of how you approach some of your podcast conversations, or maybe even more importantly, why you're such a big advocate for free speech and your decision to go on with the free press and things like that? Is that key?

Yes. So I see these terrible attacks on Bari Weiss on Twitter, more than I can keep track of, and I look at them and I think, well, she must be doing something right. Now there's people with other points of view who are attacked, and I don't agree with them the way I might agree with Barry on many things, but I still look at that and I think like, well, okay, like they're doing something, they're getting somewhere. And Free Press, I think, is an A+ example of that.

Awesome. Well, to add to the authenticity of what we're doing and to underscore that we're not avatars, unless you have the dog avatar, we're making this very special.

So thank you very much.

That's a real dog.

It's leaf-blowing season, which is the dread of all people who work on their sofas.

Yes, the leaf blowers were just here just before we started. So, all right. The final chapter—

gosh, could you pull Spinoza away?

—is thinking into the future.

The dog is named Spinoza. Spinoza.

Shocking that it would be a name like Spinoza. Okay, Tyler, here are the big, sort of big, profound, going big, looking into the future, transformational questions. You were the first person who told me years ago, hey, this AI, this artificial intelligence stuff, it's going to be profound and it's beyond your wildest imagination. What can you say about what we, how we, what we can expect just even in the next few years, much less the next 5 to 10, in terms of artificial intelligence and how it will radically change our world?

I think no one knows, but I would point this out. If you asked the best AI a year ago how many Rs are in the word strawberry, it would have said 2 rather than 3. This year, AIs are sometimes winning gold medals in math Olympiads. That's basically a 1-year difference. What will the next year bring, or the year after that? I don't think anyone really can tell you, but there's no reason per se to think progress will stop. Certainly it might slow down. There's different barriers, energy costs, regulations, but this is a very powerful technology. It's still getting better. The people who know the most about it and who have seen advanced models are quite bullish on it. So I would just say, realize it will change everything in your life if it hasn't already, and be ready for that by keeping current on what's happening.

All right. So that's the follow-up question. How should those listening tap its power productively?

Just get it. Pay for the best and most expensive version. It's still not that much. It's worth it. And play around with it and use it for your issues. It's not hard to figure out. You can ask the thing itself how to use it. It has all sorts of features, like on GPT-5, I use this new feature called Pulse. A lot of people don't know about it yet. It's very new. So you just give it instructions, like I'm going to Japan soon. So I said, every day, send me new articles on the economy of Japan. I want to read them for prep. I go to bed at night, I wake up, there's a new pile of articles summarized very well, I might add. On what's new in the economy of Japan. It does the sort of the research for me. It's incredible. Better than a human RA would do it. And I'm talking like a PhD-level human RA. And that's something people don't even know about yet. It's just amazing. So just work with it. Have some friends who work with it. If you can be in a chat group of people working with it, you'll pick up things, you'll learn things. It's changing all the time. You know, your knowledge of it is never really set. You always have to keep up.

But it's fun to do. Should we be afraid? And are you afraid of the future with AI?

I don't know if afraid is the right word. I would say a lot of things that I've enjoyed doing, it can now do better than I can. So I need to change what I do. I give more talks, I do more podcasts, I do more travel and personal appearances. The AI cannot do any of that. Do I find it sometimes psychologically hard to deal with that it can answer so many economics questions better than I can? I do, frankly. But at the end of the day, I treat it as something to learn from and improve myself with. And you get up, dust off your pants, and it's like, well, here's a new challenge. You know, let's see how this is going to go and approach it with, you know, bravery, ambition, and I would say fortitude above all else.

All right. What about the future with respect to biomedicine and other continued scientific innovations? How do you and Spinoza feel about that?

I think AI and just other advances as well, but AI is part of them, will over the next 40 years cure most things that kill us. That's pretty profound. So Like your kids are likely to live to, I don't know, age 98, whatever's the age of death from old age for them, barring accidents. And that's an incredible advance for mankind that most of us will die of old age. And it's not right around the corner the way you sometimes read, but again, over something like 40 years, like how old is your oldest daughter now?

Our oldest son is 29. Our daughter's 26.

Okay, so 29. So if these are all in place by 70 and some are in place along the way, his chance of hitting 98 is really very good. Maggie's chance, you know, slightly better yet. You and I may be out of luck. We're like the last generation that perhaps didn't quite make it, but we may see some of those gains before our number is called, right? Indeed. So, Just, oh, at some point people won't die from cancer. It'll be a manageable problem the way maybe HIV/AIDS is right now, but it probably won't kill you. And I just think we'll tackle everything and beat it back.

Well, you're very optimistic, obviously, about the power of all these technological innovations to take us into the future. You know, people are naturally always kind of conflicted about the disruption and creative destruction, but What about the future of freedom?

I don't know. I see there's more war in the world. Russia, Ukraine, Middle East, possibly China, Taiwan. Wars are the great enemy of freedom. It's not a problem I have solutions to. There are just bad, strong, evil countries out there. And I think the future of freedom is very much up for grabs, but it will be up to us. We have a lot of resources, intellectual, spiritual, material, otherwise. There's a lot of talent in the world. Most people in the world are pretty good and want to live good lives. That's a big factor in our favor, but still no guarantees.

And what do you see about the future of things, big institutions like education, especially higher education and even government, as they continue to grow in terms of complexity, bureaucracy, and control. But do you see, related to the natural power of innovation, some of those being disrupted too?

They'll both be massively disrupted, and I would say more like a 10-year timeline. The bio stuff takes a long time. There's experiments, there's clinical trials, there's FDA approval. But I think a lot of parts of our economy will just be very, very different within 10 years. Because of AI and related technologies. And that includes education. It's already the case. I can learn from AI better than from most people.

It is amazing. All right.

I don't have to ask my colleagues most of the questions I have.

Well, you're supposed to meet new people and, and, and be exposed to new things. AI may take you in a different direction.

This is why travel is all the more important.

Absolutely. All right. So I'm guessing from all this, you remain pretty optimistic about the future.

I think so. But I think we're at what is called a hinge moment in time where a lot is at stake and a lot of it could go very badly, including in America. We have big fiscal problems. We show no signs of handling them. Our global influence is on the wane. If someone says they're nervous, I don't try to talk them out of it. I think they're right to be nervous. But again, the thing to do is get up and approach it all with ambition and courage and fortitude and see through the best set of outcomes one can. Well, Tyler, these all—

these conversations are always fascinating, and I appreciate your indulging me as you have over lunch from time to time, especially over ethnic food. Here's the final question. Uh, you and your wife have grandchildren now. If you could give advice to those grandchildren today, I know they're very young, in a way that they would totally absorb and internalize that advice. So in an analogous way, for the benefit of our listeners, what advice would you give to those grandchildren about how they could go big in their lives by leading and living a life of purpose and meaning?

Well, at their current ages, the advice is do what your parents say. In some later set of ages, it's rebel against your parents. They need to have done both. All right.

Well, then you're going to have to do better though, by giving us a strong takeaway for the benefit of our audience. With all that you've just shared today, what's the one big, big going big that you would offer that we should think about to keep us motivated, to keep us experimenting, to keep us curious, we'll say, in the manner that ChatGPT described is at the base of your success?

I think ambition is just very, very important in life and to somehow realize that in fact you have the liberty and the license to have a lot more ambition than you thought, and no one actually will stop you from doing that, is a revelation to people once they grasp it. And more people can and should grasp it. And we could in this world have a lot more ambition. It's simply there for the taking, like fruit on a tree.

Well, Tyler, it's always great to be with you. Thank you for joining us again on another episode of the Going Big podcast, and look forward to the the next one.

Good to chat with you, Kevin.

Thanks for tuning in to the Going Big podcast.

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