Tyler Cowen
Undertone
Introduction
The host interviews Tyler Cowen about talent evaluation in relation to the success of podcast episodes and the challenges of predicting success in winner-take-all markets.
Tyler and I talk about nearly everything.
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Timestamps
(0:00:00) Intro
(0:00:28) Identifying talent on Tyler’s podcast
(0:03:48) Why are follow up questions overrated?
(0:04:21) Tyler’s preferred guest career stage
(0:05:16) Optimal frequency for recording podcasts
(0:05:50) Tyler’s podcast prep
(0:07:39) Importance of in-person episodes
(0:09:56) What would Tyler ask Paul McCartney
(0:10:16) When to read literature in translation
(0:13:31) Tyler on Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche
(0:15:39) Elena Ferrante and the importance of pseudonyms
(0:17:17) Misreading literature
(0:17:56) Will literature get better in the next 10 years?
(0:19:21) Watching complex film
(0:22:14) Enjoying art
(0:23:08) Jonathan Swift and Peter Thiel
(0:24:45) Crude comedy
(0:25:28) Can we trust elites in the internet age?
(0:26:44) Generational theories of politics
(0:27:57) Religious thinkers and Tyler’s implicit theology
(0:29:33) What did Tyler get from Plato at a young age?
(0:30:51) Why are Shakespeare, Proust, and Melville in a league of their own?
(0:31:32) Fernando Pessoa
(0:31:59) Implications of demand sloping down
(0:33:22) Innovation in governance structures
(0:36:14) Should business leaders study the greats?
(0:38:36) GDP growth from today’s AI models
(0:40:35) LessWrong and worries about AI
(0:41:46) Feminized societies in times of chaos
(0:43:17) Fernand Braudel
(0:43:52) Best argument against NGDP targeting
(0:47:06) AI business models
(0:48:19) What is a bubble?
(0:49:33) Where are there too few Emergent Ventures applications?
(0:50:09) Unsolved problems in economics
(0:51:27) Immigration policy
(0:52:56) If Tyler wasn’t an economist
(0:53:50) Would Tyler go to Burning Man?
(0:54:33) The MR Universe
(0:55:32) Tyler’s equanimity
(0:57:15) Tyrone
(0:59:27) Joyce Carol Oates and Susan Sontag
(1:04:45) Wasting time
(1:04:54) Bach’s productivity
(1:05:29) Competitors to MR
(1:07:51) New Jersey and The Sopranos
(1:11:56) Rapid fire - what Tyler learned from different people
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Links
- New Yorker on Joyce Carol Oates
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