Podcast Episodes

Donald S. Lopez Jr. on Buddhism

Episode 260

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Donald S. Lopez Jr. is among the foremost scholars of Buddhism, whose work consistently distinguishes Buddhist reality from Western fantasy. A professor at th…

Published on 10 hours ago

Sam Altman on Trust, Persuasion, and the Future of Intelligence - Live at the Progress Conference

Episode 259

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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…

Published on 1 week ago

Jonny Steinberg on South African Crime and Punishment, the Mandelas' Marriage, and the Post-Apartheid Era

Episode 258

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, a…

Published on 2 weeks, 1 day ago

George Selgin on the New Deal, Regime Uncertainty, and What Really Ended the Great Depression

Episode 257

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 Promis…

Published on 4 weeks ago

John Amaechi on Leadership, the NBA, and Being Gay in Professional Sports

Episode 256

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 Mag…

Published on 1 month, 1 week ago

Steven Pinker on Coordination, Common Knowledge, and the Retreat of Liberal Enlightenment

Episode 255

Steven Pinker returns to Conversations with Tyler with an argument that common knowledge—those infinite loops of "I know that you know that I know"—is the hidden infrastructure that enables human c…

Published on 1 month, 2 weeks ago

David Commins on Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, and the Future of the Gulf States

Episode 254

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

Published on 1 month, 3 weeks ago

Seamus Murphy on Photographing Patterns Across Cultures

Episode 253

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

Published on 2 months, 1 week ago

David Brooks on Audacity, AI, and the American Psyche (Live at 92NY)

Episode 252

David Brooks returns to the show with a stark diagnosis of American culture. Having evolved from a Democratic socialist to a neoconservative to what he now calls "the rightward edge of the leftward t…

Published on 2 months, 3 weeks ago

Nate Silver on Life's Mixed Strategies

Episode 251

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

Published on 2 months, 4 weeks ago