The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 283: Tyler Cowen - The Path To Prosperity In A Disordered World

Episode Date: November 12, 2018

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Episode #283: Tyler Cowen - The Path To Prosperity In A Disordered World Show Notes: Commonalities of sustaining excellence: "I admire people who are constantly reading and learning things." Those who have a quiet excellence about them The most effective leaders have a willingness to receive feedback and implement it. Tyler was a world class chess player at age 15 and won the world championship.  He always played against older players, people who were better than him. (Reminds me of James Clear and the Goldilocks Effect) Doing vs. Learning: Tyler admires those who spend more time learning than doing (he takes a counter intuitive approach to this... like most things he thinks!) "I admire people who spend a lot of time thinking, those who read a lot of books, searching..." Tyler describes his book reading process Books - "Start with what you love..." Start with fiction: Shakespeare, others like that.  Tyler is not a fan of most management books. Books he likes: The 5th Discipline, Michael Porter, Maslow, Flow, Daniel Kahneman "Read biographies" What was Tyler like as a kid? "Intense, curious, even tempered, quite happy... Much the same as I am now." There is always new information to learn from travel -- The perspective gained from traveling the world is extremely valuable.  Tyler has traveled to 100's of countries worldwide Have dialog with local people in each place you go.  We discussed my trip to Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia. Learn the personal history of the places you go.  Some great recent trips? Singapore, China, Mexico (learn to speak Spanish) Tyler's day to day actions: Write, blog, lunch with college students, teaches for 3 hours per day. He's 56 years old What is scarce? -- We all should focused on being great at what is scarce Quality land and natural resources Intellectual property, or good ideas about what should be produced Quality labor with unique skills Talent that can execute. Great leadership How to become great at what is scarce? Tyler interviewed the tennis great, Martina Navratilova... Her thoughts: "You need to make a deliberative decision to train. A complete dedication to the craft." You also need someone who will tell you the truth and help you improve. Who are your mentors, am I respecting others? A massive need to train and practice. Why shouldn't we pay kids to do chores? "Don't transact with kids.  It should be part of their normal day.  They shouldn't be paid for it." The shifting gender balance of power - Be conscientious.  "Women are simply better at almost everything." How Stripe publishing is doing things differently... Latest book: Stubborn Attachments - "It's been 20 years in the making. My most philosophical book." "It's about the eternal principles how we should think about things..." The meta explanation for why it seems like our political world is wacky... "Most of history is wacky." Tyler makes a 2020 prediction for the presidential election "Stories are deliberate over-simplifications. Complexity has been drained away from most." How to prepare for a keynote speech? "For the Martina Navratilova interview, I read 40 books about her and tennis and learned everything I could to be prepared." Reading: Read books in clusters based on topics Go to the library and do a physical search Why joining The Learning Leader Circle is a good idea Use the "Get To Know You Document" "It's about conscientiousness.  Women are simply better than men at almost everything." Social Media: Follow Tyler on Twitter: @tylercowen Read: Stubborn Attachments Connect with me on LinkedIn Join our Facebook Group: The Learning Leader Community To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12

In sports, you have a lot of consciously designed practice where you can make mistakes. And if you're managing a company, you know, you're there all day. And it's not practice. It's the real thing, right? If you screw up, it has very real consequences. But you need to ask, who are the people who will tell you the truth about yourself? Who are the people who are your mentors? Who are the people who have specialized skills that you should be asking questions of?

Ask yourself, do I know the right way to ask questions of people? Am I respecting others? How am I as a judge of talent and character? And the area is where you fall short. You know, work on those by finding more mentors in those areas, getting better feedback, doing things in your spare time, practicing offline when maybe your whole company is not at stake. And just seeing this through very consistently like an exercise. I'm a big advocate of that. This episode is brought to you by Mugsy Jeans. Mugsy Jeans are the most comfortable men. jeans ever made. That's no exaggeration. After I bought a couple pair, I so badly wanted to learn more about them. So I called there's founder and CEO Leo and asked him about them. And he said he started Mugsy because he was tired of being uncomfortable in his jeans. He spent five years

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Thanks so much for being here. It is Mindful Monday. Text, learners to 44222 in order to join thousands of other fellow learning leaders from all over the world. Text, learners to 44222. Now on tonight's featured leaders with the great Tyler Cowan, professor of economics at George Mason University, earned his PhD from Harvard. He's written more than 12 books,

many of them New York Times, bestseller, The Economist Poll, named him one of the most influential economists of the last decade, also named one of the top 100 global thinkers. At the age of 15, he's a youngest New Jersey chess champion, and he's visited hundreds of countries throughout the course of his life.

A few of the topics we got into, the dangers of storytelling, how and why, you should read multiple books per day, then advice for a first-time manager, why you should travel the world and the valuable skills needed for the future of work. This one was wide-ranging and had so much depth. Tyler is really smart. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Tyler Cowen. Tyler, thank you so much for joining me here on The Learning Leader Show. Welcome. My pleasure, Ryan. I've consumed so much of your wisdom. through the combination of your talks with Tyler, through marginal revolution, and certainly

through your books and YouTube videos. So it's a thrill for me to get a chance to ask questions directly to you, man. So I really appreciate it. I'm curious to get us going. When you think about those people in your life that you've either studied, you've read about, you've spent time around who sustain excellence, what have you found to be the commonalities among those people who sustain excellence? I've always admired most people who are reading things and learning things, maybe more than people who are doing things.

So a lot of them maintain a very quiet kind of excellence if they just read their entire life and think through matters with a curious mind. So one of my first mentors was a man named Walter Grindr, who's not especially well known for a while. He ran a few non-profits, but he just spent his whole life trying to absorb information. and I started learning that from him. I guess I was 14. So that would be a start, but it depends, you know, what area you want to look in. I think Eric Kasparov is very admirable. He was maybe the greatest chess player ever.

And then he wrote very interesting books and he did significant things in politics and he's built up at public presence in other areas. So his versatility would be another example. The great corporate leaders of Silicon Valley would be yet other examples. I think of you at age 15, did you win the New Jersey chess championship? Is that right? That is correct, yes. 18, were you playing against people from all ages? Well, they were all older than I was, typically much older.

What was the key to your success at such an early age at chess, a real thinking person's game? A willingness to receive feedback and realize my understanding of positions was not very good. so I never wanted to play against other kids. I wanted to play against people who would beat me. And then I would be very self-critical, reviewing my games and just studying. So one of the things I've learned is just how much of your career you should treat in terms of training, almost as if you're an athlete. And I think I learned that very early through chess. And I think a lot of the people who have maintained excellence throughout their careers, they have this idea that it should be somewhat like actual training.

So when I and my younger brother were younger, our parents always put us on the teams for the age group up above us, meaning we were playing up as we called it. So if we're in second grade, you play with the third graders and so on. For that very reason to force us to stretch. And some people can be critical of that because I said that we could have got specifically in football, which my brother and I both got college football scholarships. and my younger brother played it in the NFL for 11 years. But people can be critical of that because they could have said, well, what if we would have got pounded into the ground and then never wanted to play football again? It could have ruined a potential great career.

In our case, it ended up working out. It sounds like you had a similar thought process towards playing chess, always against people who were better than you, against people who would beat you so then you could analyze it and learn from it. It's good for people who are going to do well. As you mentioned, it may not, in fact, be good for everyone. So if you're going to be, say, only in the top 20th percentile of chess players, maybe you shouldn't be trying to play up. You'll just get discouraged and you'll go through life thinking you're not very talented.

But I think we should take greater care to structure education and training for people who are going to do well. So on average, I would see us move in that direction. You said the excellences for you, sustaining excellence is people who are reading things and learning things, not necessarily doing things. This probably won't be the first time that this happens during this conversation because often you say things that I think are interesting, that are thought-provoking, that are sometimes the opposite of what other people would say. And this may be one of those times because I think, especially today, when you think of people who are excellent, they are making things happen. They are doing. They are taking action, whether they're leading a company. they're perhaps in sports they're playing, whatever it may be, they're actually doing the thing,

as somebody might say, Brian Cobble might say. And I'm curious, so when you think about excellence, though, it sounds like it's more of a learner's mindset versus a doer. Well, the doing is, of course, more important for the world, but I'm allowed my own squirrelly little preferences. And if I think of a Bill Gates or a Mark Andreessen or a Patrick Collison, like the first thing I admire about them is actually all the books they read and what they think of them. It's not to say that what they do is less important. Of course not. But for someone to speak up,

you know, for thinking and searching and reading, that's important. And to see the searching in the doers, that's partly my role, right? Yeah. You're pretty well known for the people who do know you to sometimes read multiple books per day, read thousands over the course of your lifetime. I don't even know how many or if you even keep track. No, I assume not. It's too hard after. There, that also can go against some. And I think you're also known to be a very fast reader. Obviously, you'd have to be if you're reading multiple books a night. What do you think about the thought of slowing down a bit to enjoy, to reflect, to, to, reflect, to, highlight, to take notes, to really take it in when it comes to book reading as opposed to

getting through them as quickly. I don't want to assume that you get through them as quickly as possible, but you're reading a lot. So what is your thought process around reading a ton of books? Well, when I read fiction, I don't think I read much faster than other people. So right now, I'm trying to read Anthony Powell, a dance to the music of time. And it makes no sense to me. and I'm reading the first 100 pages for the second time. And probably I'll try reading them four times. And so far I still don't like it. But it's just one of those books I've never read.

And I'll go back and I'll do it at different speeds and repeat and get frustrated and ask people for help. And I think that's right for that book. But most books that come out, they don't need that. They don't deserve it. And it's a waste of your own time. So another book I'm reading, Mars by 1980, colon, the Story of Electronic Music by David Stub. I'm enjoying that, but what I'm really doing is scanning the pages and looking for whether or not he mentions works of electronic music I don't already know. And then I'm just folding those pages and I'll go listen to those works.

And that's what the book is for, which is fine. I don't mean that critically. But when he goes through again, what did Brian Eno do? What did Paul McCartney do? You know, I know that stuff. And it's not really what I'm looking for. I want like a new tip. So what are you're reading constantly?

What are some of the, I'll distill it down because you read too many just to say, just to the broad question are some of the most useful books. Let me paint an avatar for you, Tyler. So let's say the person that we're advising on what they should read is 34 years old. And they have just been promoted from individual contributor to manager for the first time in their life. And now they are the boss of 14 people at a multi-billion dollar company. and they're not getting very much direction and or training to be a leader slash manager slash boss of people and they're doing it for the first time. What would you recommend they read?

Well, for most people, I recommend starting with what you love, that you need to be motivated and you'll get much more out of it. So for that person as well, my guess is someone in that position should be reading quite a bit of fiction to understand different possible scenarios for relating with human beings or what leadership consists of or the complexity of motivation and desire. Maybe some Shakespeare if they haven't already or a reread of Shakespeare and just pick some area of fiction they feel attracted to or connected to and go crazy in that. Certainly don't read management books, right? My goodness. So obviously you say the opposite. What people listening who don't know you would say there's a

there's probably 50 leadership management books. They would say, why would you obviously not read those? Well, let's do a kind of thought experiment. Let's say you go to a decently stocked Barnes & Noble. And you've got to read like all the books in one section. Like what sections would you do the best in? The history section, all the books would have facts and information. Some would be better than others.

But that would be pretty fruitful. The fiction classic section would be very fruitful. Like almost every book in that section would be quite rewarding or could be if you had the time. If you ask like what sections would be the worst, the most like dross relative to substance, it's like maybe the self-help in the management sections, I think. I think biography would be pretty good. You know, a person's life is always interesting. But self-help and management, which in a way are the same section,

there's a few important points in those books, like just think about what you're doing. but overall to read more of them, I don't know, it seems like such rapidly diminishing returns to me. Do you ever read any of those? Sure. I've read, I guess hundreds. I was going to say, I would imagine you have. Are there any of that come to mind that you think? That was good.

I learned something. That was helpful. If I had to manage a team of 14 people, I think this could tactically help me do the job better. I'm not saying what worked for me will work for others, but a book like Peter Senge, the fifth discipline, I thought was worth my time. I enjoyed reading Deming, Michael Porter on competitive advantage. Those are good books. Maslow and in general social psychology on what people are seeking in their lives. The books on flow as a psychological experience and how that can occur in the workplace.

The Daniel Conman and Alan Krueger paper on how happy are people when they're working or doing other things in their lives. Those to me have all been valuable, say, in that area, there's many more. But in terms of a ratio, I mean, management books, they're pretty close to the worst. Why that is is an interesting question. Like, what's wrong? You know, management itself is such a significant, rich, complex activity. Why can't you write about it well?

Maybe it's like books about sex. Sex is important. How many different books on sex can you read? I'm not sure, but it may be the same problem. You're not anti-sex if you're anti-reading a lot of books about sex. So why do you, what's the issue then? Let's shift to the management ones because I think that's a lot of people listening. And I'm curious, why, what's the issue?

What's the problem? If you think about some areas in the arts, say like music or architecture, it can be very rewarding to read biographies or like histories or like histories of how a particular building was put into place. But just to read about like the music or the architecture, I find that's difficult with no slight intended toward music or music or. architecture. So I think sex and management, they're all falling into that same category. You're better off just reading a biography of a random person to learn management, I would think. If somebody who perhaps has done it? Well, but even a non-manager, you know, read a music biography or an architect's biography because they're managers too. And in a sense, it's when you have a great author, but who's not trying to teach you the same, same old things about management

that you might learn something more. Is this a topic you've considered? writing a book about? I have, and maybe someday I will. I find I've learned the most about management by reading like histories of rock groups and sports teams, like instant replay by Jerry Kramer, Vince Lamberti, Green Bay Packers. It's a phenomenal book about management. Whether Jerry Kramer ever thought of it as such, co-written with Dick Shop, maybe not. Interesting.

Books on how and why the Beatles split up. You learn much more about management than just picking up another of those tones. I read that your sister Holly said that you had consumed mass quantities of information reading before you were four years old. Holly's older than I am. I trust her memory, but I'm not sure I can confirm that. I suspect it's true. My daughter just turned four, and that's hard. It's hard to imagine.

I mean, she consumes things probably a little bit differently than you did before you were four. And I just found that amazing. So what were you like as a kid? I'm curious. I think I was somewhat like how I am now. What's that? I'm not sure. So how would you describe yourself now?

Intense, curious, very calm, very steady. I wake up and go to bed at more or less the same hour. I try every day to get quite a bit done. I'm not ever racing to meet deadlines. My moods are pretty even. I'm pretty much really quite happy every day. and I think that's how I've been really my whole life. How, how, what are, are there, everyone?

I think I have lower emotional peaks than other people just to, you know, give you the downside. So like other people at their happiest, in a sense, that feels unimaginable to me. You, you almost have a robotic cadence. Have people told you that before? Sure, yeah. It's interesting. I've obviously watched you speak and listened to you, but it's fascinating to have a conversation because you have this kind of robotic cadence that I find to be really curious and interesting.

You're also, there's other areas that you're, that you're, I think you're fascinated about based on what I read, the fact that you have a love for travel. And I'm curious, what, what is it about traveling the world and going to 100 plus countries that you feel is important for either just for you or just for people in general to do? There's always new information there. surprises, different people to talk to, things you will see that you hadn't considered. I'm actually flying to China tomorrow to Guangzhou. And I was there in 1988 when everyone was just on a bicycle. I've never been to modern Guangzhou, so it's like a new place for me. And this will just be an absolute thrill.

Even Dubai Airport on the way, and I've been there twice. It's not new. But it's such a fun, interesting place to see, like, well, who is in Dubai Airport right now? What are they doing? What are they shopping for? What are they saying to each other? Like, what's more fun than that? So when you have a layover at an airport, you're, you actively try to take it all in,

to be in the moment, present, aware, watching. Of course, and Dubai Airport is one of the world's best because it has people from all over. It's such a hub. And that, and so I would assume that's just part of your overall sense of being, of one, of, being aware of where you are, what you're doing, what people around you are doing, just an overall awareness. Don't ever waste any time. of my core views, and that includes time in the airport.

Interesting. What are some, for novice travelers, so I'm embarrassed to admit this, the first time I've been out of the country or out of the kind of the North America, I had a speech in Croatia. And so we flew over to. Oh, beautiful. Yeah, we flew over to Venice, spent some time there, then drove through Slovenia with a local fan of the show who offered to pick me up and my wife and we drove through.

It was incredible. I had no idea. And then we stopped in Croatia, Rovines right on the Adriatic Sea. I actually had to swim in the water. It was freezing cold after my speech was done. And I found that it was interesting and I learned a lot. We went to multiple dinners with locals and people, sometimes with the people who booked me as well as others. And I wanted to get their take on just life in general as well as Americans.

I was curious to hear what they had to say. and I found some of the responses to be quite interesting, which I'm happy to share, but I'm curious, what do you, what's your dialogue with, like, with locals when you travel the world? You know, it depends on what the languages are, but let's take Croatia. If you haven't been to Croatia and related parts, it's so hard to even begin to understand the Yugoslavia and civil wars. Right. But when you have an intuitive sense of how places are laid out, where different groups live, what religion looks like, say in different parts of the former Yugoslavian.

It at least starts to come together. A sense like Croatia, sort of how right-wingy is it or how European is it or how Slavic is it. If you could read 50 books on Croatia or spend a day there, you know, you might learn more spending the day there. And then you go to Croatia, just like a simple observation. It seemed to me arguably Croatia as the most beautiful people in the entire world. And I couldn't tell you why. Maybe you noticed this. But you start thinking about it.

Like what causes this? How? How is this the case? I still don't have an answer. But you walk around with these puzzles and you think about them for the rest of your life. I asked them that. Actually, some of the guys, I said, you guys are just beautiful. Both men and male and my wife said the same thing.

Great hair, incredible skin. They kind of didn't have great diets, but they were in good shape. It was amazing. And they loved the party. I had a good time. And for whatever reason, all the guys I was with loved LeBron James in the NBA. I mean, they couldn't stop talking about LeBron and the NBA. And I found all those things to be really interesting and curious.

And it was, that's why it's, that's why I actually thought of you when I was there because I'd read a lot and listened to you talk about travel and thought this is what Tyler means when he says you need, you just have to go. You have to do it. And I'm not saying I love the process of getting there flying overnight and almost missing flights in Paris and all the stuff that goes into travel. But, but once we were there, it was so worth it. And I want to make it a regular part of our of our routine now, especially it was great to be able to go with my wife. We had so much fun. And I think travel is such a useful way to understand the world a little bit better and just people in general. And if you go to the city of Split, you see the ruins of Diocletian and you start trying to imagine better what the Roman Empire must have been like.

I mean, that's phenomenal. It's better than books. What are some other places for the novice international travel or maybe they've never traveled that you would. say. And I know there's, there's more depth that comes or more questions needed, but just off the top of you had a few places that you'd say, hey, you should go here, you should go here, you should go here. Well, every place is fascinating is another of my core beliefs. So anywhere you have a linguistic or personal or family connection to is a good place to start. One of my personal favorites is Singapore for food and culture and the intelligence of their policymaking and just how they have

taken a place that had fairly little in it and over the course of 50 years turned it into somewhere that's, you know, much wealthier than most of the West and it works better. So how did they do that? Again, major questions. Mexico was one of my loves. I think I've been there 30 times to most of the regions. I speak Spanish and talk to people quite a bit there. And just the amount of drama in a small or short interaction to me is greater in Mexico than any other place. I know. That's a good place to go if you speak Spanish. But again, the point that everywhere is fascinating. I've lived in Germany, lived in New Zealand. So, of course, there are other favorites. But there's nowhere, just to like go to Canada for a day or two, for some work

reason. It's so much fun. What is your day-to-day like right now? I wake up in the morning. I do writing. So this morning, I finished off two columns for Bloomberg. I write for them, typically twice a week. And because I'm flying to China tomorrow, I lined up a whole bunch of blog entries. So I spent a lot of the rest of the day writing for the blog. I went to lunch with one of my colleagues. We're now doing a podcast.

And later tonight, I teach for three hours. Tomorrow morning I go. Most nights I don't teach for three hours. But that's not a totally atypical day. How much preparation to take you to get ready for a three-hour class? Well, I'm 56 years old. I think that has to be the answer. I mean, you cannot really do the prep in the moment.

So it will take two or three hours of going through the articles or models you're teaching. But again, you can't do that at the last minute. It has to be the case that for your life from some age onwards, you've been studying this material for a PhD class at least. Yeah, it reminds me of the story when I oftentimes if I get handed a child. check at a speaking engagement. I'd like to take one of my daughters with me and we actually deposit like old school, take it in and walk and hand it over and sign the paper. I like that.

I show them the amount. And it's obviously a substantial amount of money. And they say, they pay you that much for one hour. And I say, no, they pay me that much for 20 years worth of thoughts that one into that one hour. And that's what it's about. So be thinking about this stuff right now when you're 10, as opposed. to, like you said, just the two hours leading up to it. It's the fact that everything you got goes into it. That's probably why you're really good at what you do. And this is related to reading

speed. If someone asks, like, how long did it take you to read that book? The correct answer is 56 years, which is, again, is my age. I knew that these types of responses would come. I have so many notes. So let's think about today, Tyler, and where we're headed moving forward. And I really curious to hear what you say about this, that to put it, given the fact that we have machine intelligence coming, I'm shifting gears, by the way, but I know you can handle it. Machine intelligence will help us do a lot more things cheaply. And you've written about this. Average is over is one of my favorite books. And you're the author of that. That what's really valuable is what is scarce. And so for those listening, maybe it's that 34-year-old manager or somebody like that

person, for them to be thinking at a deeper level as I need to understand what is scarce, because what is scarce is what's most valuable. And I want to be valuable. And so to you in today's global economy, what is scarce? Talent that can execute is what is most scarce. So there's a fair amount of capital out there, venture capital. Are there four? forms of financing, retained earnings. But the idea that you have a potentially good project and you have the talent on hand, people who will be the leaders and make it work and take some chances and inspire the others and have a synthetic picture in their mind of how it all will happen.

If you can do that, obviously earnings for that group of people, they've been going up steadily. I think they will continue to rise. A few of some technical skills to help you see the bigger picture, so much the better. some natural resources are scarce, but for the most part, those become more plentiful over time. Some forms of intellectual property are scarce, but those returns also tend to erode. So I think human talent having some kind of monopoly-like position in terms of what you can do. How does one develop talent that can execute? Some of it is talent you're born with, but a lot of it, again, it gets back to this idea of training.

So I interviewed Martina Navratilova not too long ago, the famous women's tennis player, and she was a top five player for quite a few years, but not number one. And then she made a deliberate decision to build a team of people who would focus on training her and getting her like at the top of the level of play in every area of the game. And she completely dedicated herself to that. And then pretty quickly became number one. and at least, you know, up until the Williams's was without a doubt the greatest woman's tennis player ever in terms of her level of achievement. And it was training that made the difference deliberate conscious construction of a team that will help you.

I think that's especially someone who played sports growing up and in college and a little bit after college. I think that is much easier to see. It's a great story. And we'll talk about storytelling here in a second. as I have some ideas or I have seen what you think about storytelling. But when it comes to sports, I think that's a very easy story to tell. The person was pretty good. They trained really hard and they became great.

But I'm curious if I'm the person who doesn't play sports and I have a job, a 95, and I want to be talented and I want to execute, what is the process? for me to be a talented person who can execute in the business world today. I realize that's broad, Tyler, but I just want, I always, I care a lot about this relating to the person who's listening so that when they, they turn the podcast off after it's over, that they say, I can actually go and do this. This is something I could implement, execute on, and get better. So that's why I ask it and frame it this way.

I think it's surprising how much it is the same to how it's done in sports. So there's one difference. In sports, you have a lot of consciously designed practice where you can make mistakes. And if you're managing a company, you know, you're there all day. And it's not practice. It's the real thing, right? If you screw up, it has very real consequences. But you need to ask, who are the people who will tell you the truth about yourself?

Who are the people who are your mentors? Who are the people who have specialized skills that you should be asking questions of? Ask yourself, do I know the right way to ask questions of people? Am I respecting others? How am I as a judge of talent and character? And the area is where you fall short. You know, work on those by finding more mentors in those areas, getting better feedback, doing things in your spare time, practicing offline when maybe your whole company is not at stake. And just seeing this through very consistently like an exercise. I'm a big advocate of that. I sense, and I know you talk to Malcolm Gladwell a little bit about this, I love that interview you did with him and probably the best intro. row he's ever gotten and kickoff question.

But I'm curious, to me it feels like you're describing deliberate practice from Anders Erickson and when Malcolm talked a little bit from a 10,000 hours perspective, which is you're focused on the specific task and training as well as regular feedback happening. A feedback loop meaning a coach, mentors, people. And then it makes me think of Jim Collins is who is the who in your life? Who are the people that you've put in the position that will tell you the truth? that have maybe perhaps done what you want to do. They're wiser than you, smarter than you,

have an understanding of what you want to accomplish and are willing to be honest with you. I think that's really the key that I get from you is how do I execute? How do I be talented? It surround myself with people who will give me great feedback and then continuously and regularly train. Get better, work on it and then get the feedback. Exactly. That small group, they should be in part your audience and your mentors. and your inspirers.

And just ask yourself, like, what's the quality of those people? Like, are they good enough for me to do what I want to do? And if they're not, you either need to improve the group or, you know, maybe lower your aspirations. But those two things have to be in sync. Okay. You have, you also as a dad, I'm a dad. I'm curious about being a better parent.

I try to read and think about this every day. It's the most important thing that I'll ever do. you don't like the thought of paying your kids to do the dishes. Why should we not pay our kids to do the dishes? For most children, I think it demotivates them. It removes the sense of obligation. They feel it's optional or contractual, like, you know, buying oranges in the supermarket. And then they're like, eh, I'm not going to do this.

And they're smart enough to realize there's some amount of money you're going to give them anyway. So if they're earning less from you, they don't really end up. up with much less money. They're going to get it back through some other channel because you care about them. So for the most part, try not to transact too much with your children. That's for the marketplace, which is great. But it's not necessarily for your family. Would you pay for your child to go? We did. Absolutely. We didn't pay her to go. We paid the tuition bill. But if you have to pay your kid to want to go, probably something's wrong. I mean pay for the tuition. Absolutely.

So I'm curious to get your over. You obviously did it. I got a college. There's no regrets too. Okay. So I'm going to talk to this briefly because it's something I think about and talk with other parents about my oldest is 11. So you, I got a college scholarship to play football. So my parents did not pay for my college.

My wife had to work multiple jobs during college and we're still actually paying college loans back many years later. She had to work for everything. I think it built a resilience and a toughness in her that I, value and very attracted to. I'm curious what your thoughts are. You obviously can afford to do it and you did it. Why did you do it and what advice would you have for others? And every situation is different. I realize that, but I'm curious to get your thoughts about this. I think student debt is crippling to a lot of people. It's harder for them to start a business or start a family or have the deposit for a mortgage and owning a home, which is part of moving into the mainstream of a

American life, which I see is a very good thing. And I think our world is screwed up. So tuition at good schools, it's much too high. I don't think it has to be there. I think we should try to fix that problem. But in the meantime, you know, it is what it is. And you don't want your kid to suffer from that. I would point out, my parents did not pay for me to go. And I ended up earning fellowships and even supported myself through undergraduate years. And that was very good for me. but it was at a time where when you look at rents and tuition and other variables, it was very different from today. This is the early 1980s.

So I think that can be a better path for people, as it sounds like it was for your wife. But a lot of times, there are just talented kids. They get out of college. They have debt of $60,000. They take maybe a higher paying job than they ought to that they don't like to pay it off. And they're spinning their wheels for five, six years maybe more just to get to like ground zero. and they're not owning a home, starting a business, taking chances. It seems like a very bad path.

And if you can keep your kid off it, so much the better. Speaking of that, you've written about the shifting gender balance of power and that there's huge value in conscientiousness. And because of this, that shifting gender balance is actually shifting to women because the research backs up the fact that they're more conscientiousness. than men. Do you still, this is written in average is over. So there's been some time since it's come out. What are your thoughts on that today? Well, imagine you're choosing a babysitter, you know, for your three-year-old.

And you can pick either a 14-year-old girl or a 14-year-old boy. And that's all you know about the two candidates. Which one would you pick? Yeah, we picked the girl. There's not any doubt, right? You'd pick the girl. And that's because on average, for whatever reason, there's greater conscientiousness. in women and the workplace today, the more teamwork there is, the more cooperation, the more complex

is the production process. The more you need people you can rely upon. And this has helped women at the margin. And so do you see that? Because still today, when it comes to highest level of executives, the numbers there are still skewed way too far from a male perspective. Do you see that changing soon? Or what's the issue why that? That hasn't changed over the last few years or over, over any number of years to where the senior highest level of leaders are primarily men. I'm not sure it will change because I think at the highest levels, conscientiousness is not nearly enough.

You need extreme ambition. And for whatever reason, I think, I don't know about averages, but that far right-hand side of the tail, there are more very ambitious, ambitious in the career sense men than women. So you're going to get more male CEOs without my thinking that the men, and more talented. I don't think that. But more of them want to do it. But if you're talking about kind of upper middle class managerial jobs where you're not being, you know, an extreme workaholic, I think there we're seeing some relative balance shifting toward women. I got you. So Tyler, I told you about Average Over when I first emailed you a while ago. That's what it was about.

And since then a new book has come out called Stubborn Attachments. That first I'm curious about your publisher because I get advanced. Lance Galley sent to me probably 10 a week. And this is the first one from Stripe Press. What is what's the deal with this publisher? I've never got a book from them. What are they trying to do? Or why did you choose them?

Stripe is a payments company in San Francisco. Right. But they're also a company very interested in ideas and in markets and in having an intellectual and inquiring bent. And I heard they were starting a publishing program. and I have a very high opinion of them as a company, and I like the idea of doing things that are different and stretching one's own limits.

And Stripe, obviously, they're doers. It's a company. I thought, let's try publishing a book with them. And I sent them my manuscript, stubborn attachments, and they were interested. And here we go. The book is out October 16th. How's the process been?

Fantastic. They are highly efficient, amazing to work with. great in terms of being cooperative and trying to understand, you know, my point of view, the point of view of the readers, people who might review the book. It's been a wonderful, amazing experience and I'm very glad I did it. Why did you write Stubborn Attachments? And what's it about? I've been working on Stubborn Attachments for about 20 years, actually. It's a pretty short book, but every year I'll devote a month or two to stubborn attachments. And Stubborn Attachments, it's my most philosophical book. It's my attempt to explain why I think the truth of what is good is objective and why I favor a capitalist liberal democracy and why I think that is objectively better than all of the available alternatives, grounded in philosophy but with a lot of economics as well. So it's different and in some ways less applied than a lot of my books, but I actually think it's more important. What did you learn through the process of those 20 years where you'd write a portion out of a time? That some books need 20 years.

So if you think of my book average is over or great stagnation, in a sense, those are books tracking current events, current technologies. And once you have the idea, those sort of need to come out within a year or two of when you start writing the book because they're aimed at a time, this book is aimed at no time. It's what are the eternal principles ruling, how we should think about politics and making decisions. How should we deal with our own uncertainty about the future? Why the future is so important? Why we should be so forward-looking. So it's my attempt to write a book more or less completely outside of the current moment. And that the world right now is so wacky.

I think this is the ideal time to publish such a book. What's wacky about the world right now? If you look at politics and much of the West, many surprising things have happened. I'm sure listeners have very varied opinions about, you know, Brexit and Trump, what's happening in Hungary, many other places. I would just say for now those are big surprises. And you have so many people throwing books at this moment, like, you know, the decline of democracy or the populist moment or this or that. I think most of those books won't age well. Things are changing so rapidly.

It's hard to track them. So I thought this was the right time to put out like my attempt at the timeless book. Why do you think it's wacky? Like someone like something like Brexit happens or somebody like Trump gets elected president of the United States. What is it that that causes these things to happen that I think if even leading up to the day before people thought, well, there's leading up to it's like, well, he won't be the Republican candidate and then he wins that. And then even the day before, well, he's not going to win. And then he won and he won't that. So how do you think these wacky things happen?

Well, let me give you a meta explanation, at least first. I think most of American history actually is pretty wacky. If you study the 19th century, that's more like our current moment than maybe is comfortable. But I think we had this unusual period in the 80s and 90s where things were very quiet and stable and calm and predictable for the most part. And we started thinking the world wasn't wacky and that we more or less knew, oh, there's a left wing, there's a right wing. They fight each other with very known lines of combat. And there's a kind of linear march of history in a particular way. And the world is all becoming more liberal.

And we thought that. And now it turns out that's wrong. And I think we're learning for the rest of our lives. Things will be full of surprises in whichever direction. But that's actually normal. We had this 25-year delusion that we're waking up from. I like that delusion, frankly. I want it back.

I think that was a healthier time. But I don't think we're going to get it back. Hmm. If you had to... That doesn't answer your particular question. You know, why did Trump win or why did Brexit happen? But I think that's important background for whatever else you read on those questions, that you should be suspicious of your own shock.

Okay. Are you in the prediction business? I try not to be, but you know, people ask and you end up giving them. So what happens in 2020? You mean the presidential election? Yes. I think Trump has a real chance of being reelected. The economy probably still will be doing fine.

If the Democrats nominate a boring but acceptable candidate, they will definitely beat him. But the Democrats too often, they're their own worst enemy and they're less focused on, quote, unquote, winning than the Republicans are. And if they move away from the center, they'll lose to Trump. So I don't know, but that's how I see it. I think Democrats, you still would favor them to win the next election, but it's up to them. It's theirs to lose. But when it's theirs to lose, they often lose it. You don't identify with either one, correct?

Correct. What do you identify as or do you? Sometimes I'll say I'm a small L libertarian, but I'm an empiricist. Unlike many people who call themselves a libertarian, you know, I'm willing to say, oh, the evidence shows government, you know, should do this or that. Gotcha. Sure. Changing gears one more time. You have a TED talk about storytelling. And as great communicators and even visionary CEOs, one of the labels they oftentimes will get is he or she is a great storyteller.

They know how to share whatever it is that happened or what they hope to happen in the future. and you say, I'll let you expand and respond, obviously, but that there is danger and storytelling, and I'm curious as to why. I think of stories as lies of a sort, so they're deliberate oversimplifications. Stories fit particular forms like good versus evil or a stranger came to town or some kind of tragic decline of a person or institution. And when you're hearing a story, you know the complexity has been. drained away. And I think of the complexity as what we're underrating. So when I hear

stories, I just get very suspicious and I feel I'm being told somewhat of a lie. That said, stories are necessary. They're very simple ways of communicating some kind of narrative about what happened. But you're a storyteller. You're a teacher. You have to tell stories all the time, correct? I think as a storyteller, it's not my comparative advantage. I'm good at throwing a lot of information into people's faces and making slightly odd claims and confusing people and giving them a kind of big splat. And I prefer to do that than to tell stories. Again, I cannot myself totally get away from telling stories. But I feel I'm doing better when I give people the splat instead and the provocation and just a bit of kind of intellectual chaos.

Like, I'm going to mix things up. Here's something you never thought of before. I'm not sure where you should end up on this, but, you know, put it into your mix. Do you purposely try to be provocative? Oh, no. In a sense, like, I don't, I don't know how provocative I am. Like, my core positions, I don't think any of them are outrageous. I believe in capitalism. I believe in democracy.

I believe in tolerance. I think people should be nice to each other. I think people should, like, you know, buy homes and be married and have kids. Not everyone. But, you know, most people, is that provocative? No. I mean, I agree with all those. Yeah.

But in a kind of micro sense, you should always be trying to add to the mix, like the point someone else isn't making. And maybe that is provocative. Well, I think so. I don't have this like big weird secret behind it all that I actually want us to be ruled by the Knights Templar or something. But that would be provocative. Yeah, no, I think, I think of something like along stories or there are other other examples where I think we'd all like to be better storytellers. So if you go to China and have a. couple great nights and great meals and then something wild happens when you guys go out after

dinner or something. I don't know. Making it up. You're probably going to tell somebody about that and that's a story. Are you saying that in the course of whatever happened at night versus you then going back and telling somebody the story, if you will, assuming you would, that it will change and it will be the core message is not as useful as it could have been if you just throw all this information and splat as you as you put it when when describing what happened.

I think if you read my blog posts on places I have visited, it's striking how few stories they have and the information is stacked vertically and I try to paint an overall picture by a series of somewhat discordant observations that I hope converge into a common impression. But there are actually very few stories in these writings. Yeah. Okay. Well, you also talk to people a lot. interview them for your show. And it's really interesting, some obviously very smart people.

What is your process like to get ready for an interview with Martina or Malcolm Gladwell or David Brooks or Nassim Taleb? What's your process like to get ready to prepare for one of those conversations? If we take Martina Navratilova as one example, I devote maybe three weeks of my life most of it to preparing for her. So I read, I don't know, maybe 40 books on tennis. I watched tape of her playing tennis. I listened to some of the other podcasts she had done. I scrolled through her Twitter feed. I just tried to learn absolutely every single thing about her that I could. And then I spent really hours coming up with my own questions, creating a file, refining those, asking like the people I work with, well, what should I ask Martina? And it takes more time probably

than any other single thing I do. So I really like to prepare. It's a good way of learning. It focuses my reading. The preparation aspect forces you to learn. That's right. The deep dive on the topic, the deep dive on the person to try to learn the little details that I think could be important about you being a mass consumer of information at under the age of four

or winning a chess championship at 15. And certainly I haven't done, I haven't read 40 books about you. or the topics, but I, there aren't 40 books that me, yeah. Well, but I mean, I think though, this is something that I talked to, I get asked a lot about, like, how do you do a podcast or do an interview type show? And the number one answer is always, that's why I was fascinated by you, a really smart guy, what your preparation process is why I always say it's all in the prep. And then being able to be a good listener, as I told you before we hit record, being a good listener and asking good follow-up questions and truly actively listening. And I've taken improv training actually to become a better listener because if you look at improv actors, their whole goal, the whole goal to do quality improv is to make your partner look good. That's their, that's all they care about is like, how can I make my partner look good if it's one, two people doing improv?

And so that's why I have an improv coach who helps me with that because there's so many ways that we are not, we're not good listeners. We're just waiting to talk. And I think that it's doing stuff like that is something that. is something that any manager, I guess, listening now could really put into action too. Whether you think about Tyler Cowan, who's one of the smartest dudes on earth, read 40 books, talked to everybody in the world, spent three weeks of your life to get ready for one interview for about an hour with Martina Navratolova, which you could have probably gotten ready in an hour. You're smart enough guy to do it, yet you spent three weeks of your life.

That's a good lesson, I think, to people in general. If you want to be great at something, whatever it is, doesn't matter, whether it's interviewing or leave, or just being personally excellent, that's the type of work that goes into a conversation or how much what it takes to be truly great is all of that prep, all of that work. And I would imagine you enjoyed it. I mean, I enjoy the prep. Of course. So I would imagine you can't, like you said, you got to read what you love in order to love

to read. And I think that's a critical part of whatever it is that we're doing is if you don't enjoy the preparation process of whatever it is, you're probably not going to be great at it. I'm not paid to do in my podcast conversations with Tyler. One thing I would stress is how important it is to learn how to read books in clusters. So some people ask me like, well, what book should I read? I mean, you always have recommendations of your favorite books. But the real skill is to know how to pick 20 or 30 books on a topic, or even if it's only five or three,

and clump them together. And it's by reading books across each other that you really learn a lot. There's like no one perfect book really on any topic. It's picking the right cluster and sticking a bit with a cluster that gets you somewhere. How do you do that? How would one cluster books? I think this is a new concept for most people. Well, one thing I do, it depends where you live, but I live near a number of excellent public libraries,

which have a fair number of books, but actually not too many books. And if I know of one book in an area, I just physically go to the shelf and paw through it. And I know web search is so popular nowadays. Of course, I use Google. It's great. But to still do physical search through great bookshops and public libraries or university libraries, people have stopped doing it and it's underrated. And then building up in advance a network of people you can ask who will tell you what should

be next in your cluster. And again, you try to scramble to do that at the last minute. You can't do it. You're like emailing random people. Maybe they don't write you back. but in advance to have this team behind you who have their own networks. And when you need to know something or learn something, that you have someone meaningful to ask.

Yep. It's again about those people that you have in place to help. And hopefully you help them too. But doing it all together. Well, Tyler, I, again, just fascinated by marginal revolution, certainly by your books. I would encourage people to not only read stubborn attachments and the cool way that it was published by Stripe,

but also look at your other books and cluster those together. I became aware of you from Average is over, and I think there's a lot of useful things in that for leaders in all areas of life, whether it's being a parent or leading at work. That's been helpful to me as far as understanding what's valuable and how do I create skill and be able to execute hopefully we help some people with this conversation.

So I really appreciate you being here, Tyler. Thank you very much for your interest. Keep in touch. Where would you send my listeners to learn more about you online? Google, my name Tyler Cowen. My podcast is called Conversations with Tyler. My blog is called Marginal Revolution. And Twitter, I'm at Tyler Cowan, C-O-W-E-N.

Google still works. It's all there. Perfect. Well, thanks again, man. I'd love to continue this dialogue as we both rest. Take care. All right. Thanks, Tyler. Bye. Bye. Wow, what a conversation with Tyler. I find it at times hard to keep up with him because he's got so much depth and a wide variety of knowledge, whether it's travel or teaching, what's good, what's not. But it's certainly helpful to have these types of talks with people with a lot of intellectual wattage like Tyler does. I hope you enjoyed it. it if you did and found it useful.

I would love it if you would write a review, subscribe, and rate the show in iTunes, Apple Podcasts. That's write a review, subscribe and rate the show, hopefully five stars in iTunes, Apple Podcasts. It really helps spread the message and continues to give me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And I'm so appreciative of that. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I will see you next week.

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