Episode · Conversations with Tyler · 2023-08-23
Books mentioned on Celebrating Marginal Revolution's 20th Anniversary
When Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen launched Marginal Revolution in August of 2003, they saw attracting a few thousand academic-minded readers as a runaway success. To their astonishment, the blog soon eclipsed that goal, and within a decade had become one of the most widely read economics blogs in the world.
Tyler Cowen discussed Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and others, Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, and The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Vitalik Buterin discussed Ending Aging by Aubrey de Grey and Human Action by Ludwig von Mises and others. Also mentioned: General Theory Of Employment , Interest And Money by John Maynard Keynes.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Freakonomics
Freakonomics by Steven D.
Discussed“so a lot of the younger readers to Mr may not even be aware of like for economics being released in 2005 and there's just this onslaught of like popular economics books”
Where to get it
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Ending Aging
Discussed“the other one was I read aubry's book on ending aging when I was around 13 and that's uh definitely stuck with me is pretty much forever”
Where to get it
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Human Action
Human Action by Ludwig von Mises is a foundational and dense treatise on Austrian economics, methodological individualism, and human decision-making.
Discussed“uh always the libertarian inner and I have mine told you to read back then like you know I went through mine rans went through my Human Action”
Where to get it
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General Theory Of Employment , Interest And Money
John Maynard Keynes's influential 1936 economic treatise reshaped macroeconomic policy and continues to provoke critical debate among modern economists and scholars.
Discussed“there was a Keynes book club on the general theory and it just stopped halfway through why did it stop”
Where to get it
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Guns, Germs and Steel
Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond is an expansive historical exploration examining why Eurasian civilizations survived and conquered others while others did not, focusing on large-scale environmental and geographical factors rather than individual actions.
Discussed“maybe starting with Jared diamond constrips and steel yeah where you have at least 30 or 40 books”
Where to get it
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The Selfish Gene
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins is a prominent 1976 work of evolutionary biology that popularizes the gene-centric view of evolution.
Discussed“but things like the right Queen selfish Gene right in many different Freakonomics and everyone had to read all those books to be intellectually illiterate”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (1) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
“you know once I wrote the book The Great stagnation the title great stagnation okay but the whole last chapter of the book is about how we're going to get out of it”