Most of all, Tyler Cowen talks like he writes. Every piece of repetitive, mediocre writing advice (the sort of thing aimed at dreamers on the lunch-hour rather than actual aspiring writers) says you should write like you talk. Cowen does the opposite. Most people talk boring. And write boring. Cowen writes pretty uniquely. He’s not a prose stylist; he’s a substance stylist. The associations, juxtapositions, perspectives, nuances, examples, and topics of his writing are unlike anything else I know. His blog posts are fusions, fantasies, and fugues. He once wrote in
His most maddening fault is to ask a question, get an intriguing answer and not pursue the implications of the answer but just ask a different question.
I listen to most of the podcasts but I find him infuriating. His delivery sounds over-prepared and unresponsive to what his guests actually say. So it is not a conversation which I find ironic given the title of the podcast. I hate the overrated/underrated section - how on earth do you make a binary response on those questions? And I loathe the deliberate hip obscurantism - the third track on the fifth album by artist X is surely better than the fourth track on album two by artist Y. There is no way that a human being can spend their waking hours consuming as much as he does - surely TC is actually four separate people each furiously writing, listening, reading and travelling and opining. I derived a kind of schadenfreude from the podcast with Amia Srinivasan whose fierce contrariness was a blunt instrument against her interviewer. I write all of this but subscribe to Marginal Revolution which is a terrific source of information and his Bloomberg column which is where he shines as a commentator who speaks outside the vortex of partisan hysteria currently dominant in the US
His most maddening fault is to ask a question, get an intriguing answer and not pursue the implications of the answer but just ask a different question.
I listen to most of the podcasts but I find him infuriating. His delivery sounds over-prepared and unresponsive to what his guests actually say. So it is not a conversation which I find ironic given the title of the podcast. I hate the overrated/underrated section - how on earth do you make a binary response on those questions? And I loathe the deliberate hip obscurantism - the third track on the fifth album by artist X is surely better than the fourth track on album two by artist Y. There is no way that a human being can spend their waking hours consuming as much as he does - surely TC is actually four separate people each furiously writing, listening, reading and travelling and opining. I derived a kind of schadenfreude from the podcast with Amia Srinivasan whose fierce contrariness was a blunt instrument against her interviewer. I write all of this but subscribe to Marginal Revolution which is a terrific source of information and his Bloomberg column which is where he shines as a commentator who speaks outside the vortex of partisan hysteria currently dominant in the US
I love the point about making interesting boards rather than aiming for checkmate. Another take on the same prompt: https://bartkus.substack.com/p/on-conversations-with-tyler