In September, 2018, Tyler and his team at George Mason University launched Emergent Ventures, a grant and fellowship focused on "moon-shot" ideas.

[citation needed] In February 2023, Cowen wrote on his blog that Francis Bacon was a critic of the printing press.

[15] Commenters determined that the citations and quotations in his post did not exist in Bacon's writing; it was widely thought Cowen had gotten them from ChatGPT.

[23] Cowen has been described as a "libertarian bargainer" who can influence practical policy making,[24] yet he endorsed bank bailouts in his March 2, 2009 column in The New York Times.

[26] In 2012, David Brooks called Cowen "one of the most influential bloggers on the right", writing that he is among those who "start from broadly libertarian premises but do not apply them in a doctrinaire way".

[28] In a 2020 New Year's Day Marginal Revolution post, Cowen outlined a philosophical framework he dubbed "State Capacity Libertarianism".

[30] After the Supreme Court issued its 2015 holding affirming the right of same-sex marriage, Cowen said that "this is exciting and very positive news.

[31] In July 2019, Cowen co-authored an essay in The Atlantic with Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison calling for a "new science of progress".

Guests are usually authors and academics, but have also included athletes (Martina Navratilova, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), military personnel (Stanley A. McChrystal), entrepreneurs (Mark Zuckerberg, Brian Armstrong), novelists (Emily St. John Mandel) and a homeless person from Washington, D.C. named "Alexander the Grate".