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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.

Nov 12, 2025

Register for the Austin listener meetup

Donald S. Lopez Jr. is among the foremost scholars of Buddhism, whose work consistently distinguishes Buddhist reality from Western fantasy. A professor at the University of Michigan and author of numerous essential books on Buddhist thought and practice, he's spent decades...


Nov 5, 2025

Register for the Austin listener meetup

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


Oct 28, 2025

Tyler considers Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage one of the best books of the last decade, and its author Jonny Steinberg one of the most underrated writers and thinkers—in North America, at least. Steinberg's particular genius lies in getting uncomfortably close to difficult truths through...


Oct 15, 2025

George Selgin has spent over four decades thinking about money, banking, and economic history, and Tyler has known him for nearly all of it. Selgin's new book False Dawn: The New Deal and the Promise of Recovery, 1933–1947 examines what the New Deal actually accomplished—and failed to accomplish—in confronting...


Oct 1, 2025

John Amaechi is a former NBA forward/center who became a chartered scientist, professor of leadership at Exeter Business School, and New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, It's Not Magic: The Ordinary Skills of Exceptional Leaders, argues that leadership isn't bestowed or innate, it's earned through...