Conversations with Tyler

By: Mercatus Center at George Mason University
  • Summary

  • Tyler Cowen engages today’s deepest thinkers in wide-ranging explorations of their work, the world, and everything in between. New conversations every other Wednesday. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
    Show More Show Less
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2
Episodes
  • Paula Byrne on Thomas Hardy’s Women, Jane Austen’s Humor, and Evelyn Waugh’s Warmth
    Dec 11 2024

    Donate to Conversations with Tyler

    Give Crypto

    Other Ways to Give

    What can Thomas Hardy’s tortured marriages teach us about love, obsession, and second chances? In this episode, biographer, novelist, and therapist Paula Byrne examines the intimate connections between life and literature, revealing how Hardy’s relationships with women shaped his portrayals of love and tragedy. Byrne, celebrated for her bestselling biographies of Jane Austen, Evelyn Waugh, and Barbara Pym, brings her unique perspective to explore the profound ways personal relationships, cultural history, and creative ambition intersect to shape some of the most enduring works in literary history.

    Tyler and Paula discuss Virginia Woolf’s surprising impressions of Hardy, why Wessex has lost a sense of its past, what Jude the Obscure reveals about Hardy’s ideas about marriage, why so many Hardy tragedies come in doubles, the best least-read Hardy novels, why Mary Robinson was the most interesting woman of her day, how Georgian theater shaped Jane Austen’s writing, British fastidiousness, Evelyn Waugh’s hidden warmth, Paula’s strange experience with poison pen letters, how American and British couples are different, the mental health crisis among teenagers, the most underrated Beatles songs, the weirdest thing about living in Arizona, and more.

    Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

    Recorded November 14th, 2024.

    Other ways to connect

    • Follow us on X and Instagram
    • Follow Tyler on X
    • Follow Paula on X
    • Sign up for our newsletter
    • Join our Discord
    • Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu
    • Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here.
    Show More Show Less
    55 mins
  • Stephen Kotkin on Stalin, Power, and the Art of Biography
    Dec 4 2024

    Donate to Conversations with Tyler

    Give Crypto

    Other Ways to Give

    In his landmark multi-volume biography of Stalin, Stephen Kotkin shows how totalitarian power worked not just through terror from above, but through millions of everyday decisions from below. Currently a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution after 33 years at Princeton, Kotkin brings both deep archival work and personal experience to his understanding of Soviet life, having lived in Magnitogorsk during the 1980s and seen firsthand how power operates in closed societies.

    Tyler sat down with Stephen to discuss the state of Russian Buddhism today, how shamanism persists in modern Siberia, whether Siberia might ever break away from Russia, what happened to the science city Akademgorodok, why Soviet obsession with cybernetics wasn't just a mistake, what life was really like in 1980s Magnitogorsk, how modernist urban planning failed there, why Prokofiev returned to the USSR in 1936, what Stalin actually understood about artistic genius, how Stalin's Georgian background influenced him (or not), what Michel Foucault taught him about power, why he risked his tenure case to study Japanese, how his wife's work as a curator opened his eyes to Korean folk art, how he's progressing on the next Stalin volume, and much more.

    Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

    Recorded November 13th, 2024.

    Other ways to connect

    • Follow us on X and Instagram
    • Follow Tyler on X
    • Sign up for our newsletter
    • Join our Discord
    • Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu
    • Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here.
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 26 mins
  • Russ Roberts on Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate
    Nov 25 2024

    In this crossover episode with EconTalk, Tyler joins Russ Roberts for an in-depth exploration of Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate, a monumental novel often described as the 20th-century answer to Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

    Russ and Tyler cover Grossman’s life and the historical context of Life and Fate, its themes of war, totalitarianism, freedom, and fate, the novel’s polyphonic structure and large cast of characters, the parallels between fascism and communism, the idea of “senseless kindness” as a counter to systemic evil, the symbolic importance of motherhood, the psychology of confession and loyalty under totalitarian systems, Grossman’s literary influences including Chekhov, Tolstoy, Dante, and Stendhal, individual resilience and moral compromises, the survival of the novel despite Soviet censorship, artificial intelligence and the dehumanization of systems, the portrayal of scientific discovery and its moral dilemmas, the ethical and emotional tensions in the novel, the anti-fanatical tone and universal humanism of the book, Grossman’s personal life and connections to its themes, and the novel's enduring relevance and complexity.

    Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

    Recorded November 4th, 2024.

    Other ways to connect

    • Follow us on X and Instagram
    • Follow Tyler on X
    • Follow Russ on X
    • Sign up for our newsletter
    • Join our Discord
    • Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu
    • Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here.
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 2 mins

What listeners say about Conversations with Tyler

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.