Conversations with Tyler

Tyler Cowen is one of those rare economists who reads everything, listens to everything, and somehow remembers all of it. His interview show, produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, brings on guests from wildly different fields -- novelists, scientists, tech founders, historians, chefs -- and finds the economics hiding underneath. Cowen does not lob softballs. He is famous for his rapid-fire questioning style that catches guests off guard, pushing past rehearsed talking points into genuinely interesting territory. One episode you will hear him grilling a Nobel laureate about monetary policy, the next he is asking a food critic about supply chains in regional Mexican cuisine. With over 280 episodes and a 4.8-star rating from nearly 2,500 reviews, the show has built a loyal audience that appreciates intellectual range without pretension. Episodes run about an hour and drop biweekly, each one accompanied by a full transcript on the Mercatus website. Cowen runs Marginal Revolution, one of the most-read economics blogs on the internet for two decades, and the podcast feels like an extension of that same restless curiosity. If you want conversations that treat economics as a lens for understanding everything rather than a narrow technical discipline, this is the show. Fair warning: you will end up with a very long reading list.