What this covers
Margaret Atwood and Tyler Cowen conduct a sprawling conversation that moves from Canadian history and literature to censorship, feminism, climate, and the economics of artistic work. Atwood argues that Canada's defining features—vast geography and deep cultural diversity—have shaped its literature, inoculated it against totalitarianism, and left it vulnerable instead to threats it often overlooks: climate-driven conflict and the recurrence of censorship. The conversation is rooted in Atwood's observation that no single group in Canada can reach the roughly 35 percent needed to seize totalitarian control, a structural advantage that contrasts sharply with more homogeneous societies.
The two range across literature, history, and policy with equal ease. Atwood traces how Linguistic Relativity shapes worldview, why women writers succeeded earlier than women painters (anonymity and home work versus barred art schools), and how Censorship Boomerang—the principle that those who wield it become its next victims—recurs because people forget the 1940s. She discusses the Gift vs Commodity framework for understanding how artists relate to money, the way streaming has liberated storytelling from film's rigid 90-minute constraint, and why historical fiction always reflects its own era rather than the period it depicts. Cowen contributes an economic reading of The Wizard of Oz as a bimetallism parable. Atwood speaks bluntly on intrasexual competition among women, Afghanistan's geopolitical collapse after Playing Powers Off Each Other became impossible, and her fear that climate change will produce resource wars—always catastrophic for women. The conversation treats disagreement as material for thinking rather than occasion for debate.
Atwood argues that Canada's defining trait is its vast size and cultural diversity, which shapes its literature (rooted in survival), inoculates it against totalitarianism and populism, and that the real present-day threats are climate-driven conflict and the forgetting of historical lessons about censorship.
- Canada's diversity means no single group can reach the ~35% needed for totalitarianism
- Survival is the central theme of Canadian literature and increasingly of the planet
- Censorship movements recur because people forget the 1940s; the next victim of censorship is always the censor
Meaning-making through reinterpretation, experience over objective proof, and human nature's contradictions resist ideological purity.
- People genuinely have experiences of ghosts and this is well attested, which is distinct from saying there are objectively measurable ghosts; whether an external thing exists doesn't matter because the experience is real, and in the world of Shakespeare's plays ghosts therefore exist.
“I believe that people have the experience of ghosts. But that's different from saying that there are objectively ghosts that can be measured.”
- Living forever is a dicey proposition: if everybody lived forever there would be a population problem, and the theme in literature consistently shows that you get bored or become a vampire—and one cannot will eternal life only for oneself while denying it to others one dislikes.
“if everybody else was also living forever, we would have a big problem. There are a lot of people I don't want to have live forever. So, if I could have them not live forever, I'm going to have to agree to not live forever, either.”
- Any language is a different way of viewing the world, so if you have only one language and one way of viewing the world, you are missing a lot of possible solutions and approaches you would otherwise have—therefore indigenous languages should be supported through bilingual education.
“Any language is a different way of viewing the world. If you only have one way of viewing the world, if you only have one language, you're missing a lot of possible solutions and approaches that you otherwise would have.”
- Following Lewis Hyde's distinction between gifts and commodities, books that aren't mere formula originate in the gift sphere, must pass through the valley of the shadow of the commodity, and then return to a gift when they reach someone who loves them—an instructive frame for how artists relate to money in a society where most things are judged by money.
“Books are a very curious thing because they originate — if they're not just formula books — they originate in the gift sphere. Then they have to pass through the valley of the shadow of the commodity before they get back in the hands of somebody who loves them, at which point they turn back into a gift.”
- Folktales, fairy tales, legends, and myths are infinitely suggestive because we don't really know what they mean, so everybody is always reinterpreting them for their own time and in their own way.
“They're infinitely suggestive — these folktales, fairy tales, legends, and myths — because we don't really know what they mean. So everybody's always reinterpreting them for their own time and in their own way.”
- The Hulu series gave rise to an international protest symbol in which people wear the handmaid outfit—brilliant because you cannot be removed for dressing immodestly or for causing a disturbance since you say nothing, yet everyone recognizes its meaning.
“It's kind of brilliant because you can't be kicked out for being dressed immodestly, and you can't be kicked out for causing a disturbance because you're not saying anything. But everybody looks at it and they know what it means.”
- Peter the Great discovered he could tax alcohol consumption, and because he made so much money from it, he made it unpatriotic not to drink and even criminalized agitating against drinking.
“He discovered that he could tax it, and then he made it unpatriotic not to drink. He made it a crime to agitate against drinking because he was making so much money from it.”
- Mainstream progressive feminism can't acknowledge intrasexual competition among women because of an ideological belief that it shouldn't happen and therefore can't be said to happen; but women are people with the same range of aggression, dominance, and power struggles, and they need not be perfect to deserve rights any more than men do.
“I think it's an ideological thing, that it's a piece of ideology that says this shouldn't happen, and therefore we're not allowed to say that it does happen.”
- Fear inspires more respect than love—Atwood's response to being called the wicked witch of the annex.
“Sam, fear inspires more respect than love.”
- When Canadians speak of protecting Canadian culture through measures like the NAFTA cultural exception, they only mean controlling the means of production—who gets to decide what is published—not dictating content; the historical motivation came from the 1960s when there were few publishing outlets and writers were told to leave the country.
“Okay, by Canadian culture, all we mean is controlling the means of production. That's it. It's not saying things about content. It's saying things about who gets to say what we're going to publish, etc.”
- Atwood moved out of philosophy because it was the age of logical positivism, and ethics and aesthetics—the parts she cared about—had been relegated to the subbasement and sneered upon; she shifted into honors English while keeping philosophy as a major.
“I quit philosophy because it was the age of logical positivism, and that wasn't the part that I was interested in. I was interested in ethics and aesthetics, which had been relegated to the subbasement at that time.”
Censorship disguised as virtue is cyclical and dangerous because today's target becomes tomorrow's enforcer.
- During the Rushdie fatwa affair, governments, churches, and unions privately praised PEN Canada's Graham Gibson for speaking out but said nothing publicly because they were frightened—an unprecedented situation in which the Norwegian publisher was shot and the Japanese translator killed.
“Governments, churches, unions, they were all saying to him privately, 'You're doing a great job.' But they weren't saying anything because they were frightened.”
- Censorship and the shutting down of people are always carried out under banners of virtue, as both Stalin's and Hitler's regimes did while presenting themselves as utopias; people have forgotten the 1940s and what this looks like, so the lesson is that if you go in for censorship, the next person it happens to will be you.
“These kinds of shutting down of people are always done with great flags of virtue flying overhead. But of course, Stalin and Hitler did the same thing.”
Literary traditions develop from material historical conditions, not in isolation from geography and demographics.
- Canadian literature developed later than the American tradition because Canada itself developed slowly—after Quebec fell in 1760 it took a long time for the population to settle far enough from the frontier to concern itself with literature.
“But Canada took quite a while to get a population that was far enough away from the frontier to bother itself with literature.”
- Survival, which Atwood identified as the central theme of Canadian literature, is now becoming the central theme of the entire planet—Canadian literature was simply ahead of its time.
“I think it's the central theme of the entire planet. I think we were just a bit ahead of our time.”
- Canadian confederation happened partly to pay off provincial debts and build railways, but also to resist pressure from incoming people south of the border—the provinces confederated partly to keep from being annexed by the United States.
“They confederated partly just to keep from being annexed.”
- Historical fiction is always a product of the time in which it is written rather than the period it depicts—Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, though set in the Middle Ages, is a 19th-century novel because a writer has no choice but to write from their own era.
“You can write historical fiction, but it's always going to be of the time in which you're writing it because you don't have a choice. Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, although it's about the Middle Ages, is a 19th-century novel.”
- The Stratford Festival, started in the 1950s in a tent in a former railroad and pig-processing town whose citizens initially looked at it askance, became one of the first festivals to raise the economic level of its venue and rejuvenate the town.
“It's one of the first festivals that brought the economic level of the venue up.”
Media formats and commercial constraints shape how stories are told and what versions survive.
- The prediction that all books would become e-books proved false; not everything can be digital because digital is screamingly hackable, and many higher-level documents will not accept digital signatures unless a pen-and-ink paper version can also be produced.
“And it turns out that not everything can be digital, and we now know why. Why is that? Because it's so screamingly hackable.”
- The Tempest underwent major transformations after Shakespeare: when theaters reopened after Cromwell the original staging tradition was lost, so in the 18th century it became an opera with added characters like Dorinda, and in the 19th century Caliban was reinterpreted as a romantic Byronic hero because audiences had by then become aware of slavery and the noble savage idea.
“In the 19th century, when Ariel was always played by a woman who flew around, Caliban became a romantic sort of Byronic hero, oddly enough. Because by that time, people had caught up with slavery in the United States, and noble savages and other things like that that were of the 19th century.”
- Streaming has become popular because it can expand to fill whatever length a story needs, whereas films have a fixed period of roughly 90 minutes that forces stories like Great Expectations to be squished into a mere reference to the book rather than an expansive work of art.
“Because it can expand to fill the space available for the story of whatever length it may be. Films have a sort of set period of time. It's usually 90 minutes.”
Climate change and resource wars will disproportionately harm women through displacement and violence.
- Atwood's primary current fear is that climate change will drive droughts, floods, and make places uninhabitable; when those things happen you always get wars of some kind, and wars are always bad for women.
“My fear at the moment is essentially climate change driving droughts, floods, making places uninhabitable. When those things happen, you always get wars of one kind or another. And when you get wars, they're always bad for women.”
- Aging populations create a top-heavy demographic structure with not enough young people to support it, which in turn produces a lot of pressure on younger women to have more children.
“When you get aging in populations, you're going to get a top-heavy population, not enough young people to support it, and a lot of pressure on younger women to have more children.”
Canada's internal diversity and geopolitical position make totalitarianism structurally unlikely and separation destabilizing.
- Canada functions as a beckoning refuge that becomes attractive when Americans fear things will go badly in the States, a role it has played in the past.
“I think Canada these days is when you think things are going to go pear-shaped in the States — when you think they might — Canada is a beckoning refuge, as it has been in the past.”
- Quebec separating from Canada would trigger cascading conflicts: the indigenous peoples north of Quebec, who control the hydroelectric power, would separate from Quebec on the same logic, and their treaty with Canada obligates Canada to defend them against invasion, while a Quebec-France nuclear alliance would alarm the US—making separation geopolitically unstable.
“If you separate from Canada, we're going to separate from you on the same grounds... we happen to have a treaty with Canada that says that if any foreign power invades us, they have to defend us.”
- Canada is too internally diverse, with too many different groups, to provide the roughly 35 percent of a population that you need to get a really effective totalitarianism going.
“There's too many different groups to probably provide the 35 percent that you need to get a really good totalitarianism going.”
- In pre-war Afghanistan, Daoud was doing well by playing China, the USSR, and the US against each other and extracting resources from each, because Afghanistan has always been a desirable crossroads; the West should have stuck with him, but it has been chaos ever since his assassination.
“Daoud was doing quite well by playing them off against each other and getting stuff out of them. They should have stuck with him. But it's been chaos ever since.”
Women historically overcame barriers in written arts more than visual arts because writing allowed anonymity and home production.
- Women overcame disadvantages more easily in the written arts than in painting because writing could be done anonymously, at home, and under a pseudonym, whereas women were barred from art schools on the pretext that they might see naked models.
“You could do it anonymously, and you could do it at home, and you could pretend to be somebody else, as a lot of women writers did. In painting... they wouldn't let women into art schools because they might see naked women.”
- Atwood attributes her prodigious output to needing to make a living from it, having no pension or university teaching post, and she deliberately avoided university teaching partly because of gender issues and because writers who actually published were viewed askance before institutions recognized creative writing courses as a cash cow.
“Because I needed to make a living out of it... I don't have a pension. I don't teach at a university.”
Readers supply valid meaning to texts through reasoning even when authors didn't consciously intend it.
- Readers worked out Offred's name through reasoning about which first-chapter name is never mentioned again, even though Atwood didn't consciously intend it; she accepts their verdict because it adds something without contradicting the text, illustrating that valid meaning can be supplied by readers rather than the author.
“it's a question of readers adding in something that is in the book, but it wasn't in the mind of the writer consciously. I've got nothing against that because it doesn't contradict the text. It adds something in.”