How to Teach Millions of People with Your Blog | Tyler Cowen & Alex Tabarrok | How I Write Podcast

For the past 20 years, Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok have run the world’s largest economics blog. This is the story of how they publish every day, generate ideas when they’re stuck, and plan to teach millions of people the basics of supply & demand.

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 Intro
00:00:34 Reaching 10,000 visitors
00:01:25 Genesis of Marginal Revolution
00:04:32 Tyler and Alex's best read post
00:07:00 Moments of "wow"
00:09:20 What makes Alex a great textbook writer
00:09:40 How Tyler and Alex are different
00:10:58 Stories vs Reality
00:12:00 Process for editing and improving textbooks
00:15:30 How Tyler and Alex create YouTube videos
00:18:50 Intellectual interest in India
00:20:00 YouTube subtitles dual-learning process (language and economics)
00:21:00 The process of removing ideas
00:22:30 Binding constraints for success of Marginal Revolution
00:26:00 Work habits as a writer
00:28:30 How Tyler and Alex's writing has changed
00:31:50 Tyler's modes of writing
00:32:30 High context vs low context
00:36:15 Imitation and innovation
00:37:34 Writing from conversations
00:39:50 Cold emails
00:44:25 How TV and movies impact Tyler and Alex's writing
00:50:00 What kind of blog posts lead to most inbound
00:52:45 Be interesting and timely
00:54:10 How to tell the difference between Tyler and Alex
00:56:00 Alex's TED talk
00:57:30 The internet
00:59:00 Marginal Revolution as a launching pad
00:59:40 Ego and Writing
01:03:30 What makes Marginal Revolution worthwhile

SPEAKER LINKS:
Tyler + Alex's newsletter: https://marginalrevolution.com
Tyler's website: https://tylercowen.com
Alex's website: https://alextabarrok.com
Tyler's Twitter:   / tylercowen  
Alex's Twitter:   / atabarrok  
Alex's website: https://alextabarrok.com

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ABOUT THE HOST:
I’m David Perell and I’m a writer, teacher, and podcaster. I believe writing online is one of the biggest opportunities in the world today. For the first time in human history, everybody can freely share their ideas with a global audience. I seek to help as many people publish their writing online as possible.

How I Write is a podcast by Write of Passage // Production by Adam Soccolich