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Comment by legitster | Hacker News Reader

Cowen is truly unique. He's one of the only "public intellectuals" who has replied to my random emails on multiple occasions.

Everyone should listen to some episodes of Conversations with Tyler. I normally hate interview podcasts, but it is bar none the best one out there. It doesn't matter the topic - the questions he is able to hit his subjects with are amazing, nothing at all like how most interviews go.

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I have on occasion reached out to public intellectuals for personal advice and wisdom over the years. Unique among everyone, he's been invariably wise and generous with me (a total stranger). He also writes back almost immediately.

The only people online who have a similarly thoughtful and generous spirit, in my direct experience, is Russ Roberts and Scott Alexander.

Prob reveals a lot about the media I consume (and my demo profile) but I am definitely open to others if there are more like these three out there.

He regularly says something like "my superpower is that I respond to all of my emails". And from what it seems, he truly does.

David Chalmers is another one that will always give a polite and thoughtful reply.

Econtalk is a pretty good podcast that's similar.

Russ tries really hard to keep an open mind, but especially now that he's getting more into political philosophy I find it hard to take him seriously depending on the guest. It can be interesting to listen to his shit takes for a while, but it grows tiresome pretty quickly.

Wow, is there some other Russ Roberts with a podcast? I can't believe you'd say this. He's the most thoughtful, humble, and introspective interviewer I'm aware of. What in the world do you mean by "shit takes"?

Russ doesn't believe in the concept of expected value. Check out the episode with Peter Singer.

Most of his episodes are great though.

Long time listener of Econtalk, but Russ tends to digress a lot and covers his interests. Still a great show, but Conversations feels on another level.

I like Econtalk, but I wish Russ would talk less. He sometimes goes on his own digressions that don't add much.

I'm going to comment on the second part. I enjoyed his podcast for quite a while, never liked the interview-type podcasts before. Once the pandemic started last year, somehow he came of for me as completely disconnected from the real world, just living in his own safe bubble and passing judgement based on his privileged status, basically becoming very "academic".

it's paying for google ads too

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