Tyler Cowen: evaluation

Transcript context

…Exactly. All of those digitized versions are wave files, no MP3s allowed. On that, iTunes, I organized them . . . Mostly, you can organize them any way you like, but I usually organize them by song title. Then I download a bunch of them in alphabetical order. At the moment I’m listening to one of those big old iPods that actually my wife Andrea has. It’s her iPod, this big one with a big circle in the middle. At wave level, you can fit, I don’t know, 5,000 tunes on or something — what we’ve got, which covers from SA through SU. So, I have 5,000 titles between SA and SU, and it means you can hear all different versions of the same song. The other day, I listened to twelve versions of “St. Louis Blues” and eight versions of “St. James Infirmary.” It’s fascinating. It’s great. I really like that. Then we just keep moving, keep going around, and keep adding, so every time around the alphabet, there’s more, different, takes longer every time. If I want to listen to a specific thing, I can always look it up, pull it out, which I did writing the book quite a lot because it’s all very anally organized. Before my last question, I’d just like to plug your book again. The title is And the Roots of Rhythm Remain: A Journey through Global Music. Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin blurbed it as “profound and beyond. ” Joe worked on this book for 17 years. In my opinion, it is the most substantive book on world music ever. Congratulations, Joe. Thank you.…

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