Episode · Conversations with Tyler · 2025-08-06
Tyler Cowen & Annie Jacobsen: books mentioned on Conversations with Tyler
Annie Jacobsen on Nuclear War, Intelligence Operations, and Conspiracy Realities
Annie Jacobsen has a favorite word for America's nuclear doctrine: madness. It's madness that any single person has six minutes to decide the fate of civilization, madness that we've built weapons capable of ending the world in 72 minutes, and madness that everything hangs by the thread of deterrence.
Tyler Cowen discussed Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen. Annie Jacobsen discussed The Road by Cormac McCarthy, Hiroshima by John Hersey, Bleak House by Charles Dickens, and MOBY-DICK; or, THE WHALE by Herman Melville.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Nuclear War
Annie Jacobsen's nonfiction book Nuclear War: A Scenario provides a chilling, unsparing countdown and thorough examination of what a global nuclear exchange would actually look like.
Discussed“Most recently and prominently is a favorite of mine. It's called Nuclear War. A scenario was one of my favorite books of last year.”
Where to get it
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The Road
The Road by Cormac McCarthy is a bleak, post-apocalyptic novel that follows a father and his young son as they walk across a burned America, striving to survive while holding onto their morality.
Discussed“and someone asked me or rather stated that my book nuclear war a scenario was clearly influenced by John Hershey's Hiroshima and Cormick McCarthy's the road and I thought what absolutely both of those books I have read more than once each of those books”
Where to get it
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Hiroshima
John Hersey's groundbreaking work of narrative reportage, Hiroshima, documents the devastating atomic bombing of the Japanese city through the personal accounts of six survivors.
Discussed“and someone asked me or rather stated that my book nuclear war a scenario was clearly influenced by John Hershey's Hiroshima and Cormick McCarthy's the road and I thought what absolutely both of those books I have read more than once each of those books”
Where to get it
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Bleak House
Bleak House by Charles Dickens is a sprawling and intricate Victorian novel that famously critiques the British judicial system through the interminable chancery lawsuit of Jarndyce and Jarndyce.
Discussed“What's your favorite novel? Moby Dick or Blee House if I had to say.”
Where to get it
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MOBY-DICK; or, THE WHALE
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville is an epic American novel that chronicles the obsessive, self-destructive quest of Captain Ahab to hunt down the giant white whale that maimed him.
Discussed“What's your favorite novel? Moby Dick or Blee House if I had to say.”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (10) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
“I quote him in nuclear war scenario where he says this is an irrational concept which it is that any person let alone one single man the president of the United States would make a decision which we now know from war games would essentially end civilization.”
“Yes. But if you read nuclear war closely, as I know it sounds like you did, you perhaps if well if you're me because I wrote it, you come to the conclusion that this is madness.”
“My job is as a national security reporter to tell you the story of what would happen, what could happen in nuclear war, a scenario, not nuclear war, the only scenario.”
“And that is why in nuclear war scenario I chose the mad king scenario which is North Korea launching because this is a very new and formidable foe if you will a nuclear armed superpower with rogue tendencies and they're not ruled by a committee right I think of committees as more conservative on average than individuals.”
“But very specifically in nuclear war scenario, I don't get involved with geopolitics. Tyler, I take readers from nuclear launch to nuclear winter and it happens in 72 minutes.”
“Is when I was writing Area 51, I interviewed the first director of the CIA's Department of Science and Technology. His name was Dr. Bud Won.”
“And when I was interviewing Dr. wheelon for Area 51. My handler, when you interview these kind of former CIA guys you have, I call them a handler. They're called like a liaison. And uh this person said to me, "You may not talk to, you know, Dr. Wheel will answer all your questions about 51, about the spy planes,”
“The short version is I report in Area 51 that they were not UAPs, that they were something else, a terrible, you know, human experiment program. But, you know, that really is a longer conversation because it's so dark, so ugly, and deeply controversial. But I have no reason to believe that it that you know offplanet extraterrestrial beings or”
“you have to read the whole Area 51 book to kind of swallow that. Um but that is that was the position he maintained until he died.”
“He was the main character in my book about the CIA's paramilitary called Surprise, Kill, Vanish.”