Tyler Cowen is an economics professor, but on his podcast Conversations With Tyler his dialogues — with people like Margaret Atwood, Malcolm Gladwell, and Michael Pollan — explore nearly everything under the sun. I was the first to talk to him about hip-hop, though! It was a dream come true to appear on the show, and he fired questions at me, one after another in quick succession, about fentanyl, the opioid crisis, dive bars, why OutKast doesn’t get back together, and whether or not Taylor Swift is overrated. He even demanded my pick for the greatest hip-hop album of all time. Great fun!