BhTV: The Wright Show (audio): Recent Episodes
Bloggingheads.tv
Conversations with a series of people who have nothing in common except that program host Robert Wright is curious about what they’re thinking.
Teaser ... Sam’s ideological leanings ... Sam's AI Manhattan Project–revisited ... What does the “Pacing” letter say about the state of AI? ... Mythos, Astra, and AI’s accelerating acceleration ... The OpenAI “rogue” model escape ... Recursive self-improvement: Red line or red herring? ... How frontier AI is getting (and will get) freakier ... How is open-source AI like DEI? ... Heading to Overtime ...
Teaser ... The “Pacing the Frontier” letter signed by AI elites ... Why so many China-hawk AI-safety-hawks? ... Was the “Pacing” letter too small an ask? ... The striking AI vibe shift ... Are AI builders “just following orders”? ... Recursive self-improvement: The wrong red line? ... Heading to Overtime ...
Why did Ukraine hit an Iranian ship 500 miles from Ukraine? ... Ukraine's war on Russia's Amazon ... Why Zelensky fired his defense minister and commander-in-chief ... Bob: Ukraine may lose like people go bankrupt—gradually, then suddenly ... Nikita: Why both sides are ready to keep fighting ... Kazakh President to Putin: Nobody understands this war ... Bob: Everybody thinks they're fighting a defensive war ... Heading to Overtime: The globalist elite vs. the globalist precariat, and an AI path to WW3 ...
Teaser ... Connor’s place in the AI world ... Mythos: “digital nuke”? ... The milieu that birthed Dario and other AI titans ... Yudkowsky, Marx, and other AI harbingers ... Effective altruism’s effects on big tech ... The "cult" in Silicon Valley culture ... Is the AI race a market failure? ... What’s really driving the AI titans? ... Connor: ASI is a worse bet than Russian roulette ...
Teaser ... Zaid’s Substack and spicy-take history ... Zaid: Iran has outplayed Trump and Bibi ... 10/7 as turning point ... Did—and does—Israel want regime collapse in Iran? ... Israel’s security dilemma(s) ... How Trump blundered back into war ... Will the war end well for anyone? ... Heading to Overtime ...
Sneak peek: Danny finds flaw in Bob’s AI book ... Is the Iran war fully back on? ... What the war means for the future of US power ... The problem with blaming Bibi ... The push to intertwine the US and Israeli militaries ... What’s Israel’s endgame for the Palestinians? ... The Gulf States’ new reality ... Iran’s plans for the Strait of Hormuz ... Bob’s pitch to Derek—and his other pitch to listeners ...
Teaser ... Leonid’s journalistic work, past and present ... Are Russia and NATO headed for war? ... Decoding Putin’s recent signals ... Do European leaders really want the Ukraine war to end? ... Putin’s political psychology ... Why the war matters more to Russia than to the West ... Russia’s non-ethno nationalism ... Heading to Overtime ...
Preview: Skynet comes for Bob ... Trump‘s endearing AI obsession ... Are books dying? Is AI responsible? ... Skynet (aka Amazon) vs Bob’s book ... The problem with blurbs ... Why Gad Saad’s mad ... Heading to Overtime ...
Grandpa Bob and author Bob ... Why Bob stopped being an AI doom skeptic ... Can AI solve China’s demographic crisis? ... The irony of China’s open-source AI strategy ... Recursive self-improvement and the singularity ... The Burkean conservative case against AI ... Are we becoming AI meat puppets? ... Google Maps, AI, and the death of interhuman reliance ... Was Pete Hegseth’s military strategy written by a chatbot? ... Trump and Iran: Peace? Wider war? Other? ... The Rubio-Vance rivalry ... Is Rubio sabotaging Iran peace talks? ...
Bob’s pub-day pitch for his new book on AI, The God Test ... Is AI killing the nonfiction star? ... Geoffrey Hinton’s path from AI evangelist to doomer ... The future of books ... Trump vs Anthropic ... Are Ukrainian drone strikes rattling Putin? ... The multiple Putins theory ... Heading to Overtime ...
Was "losing" this war good for America? ... Israel’s post-war situation ... A more stable Middle East? Or less? ... The impact on Iran’s strength ... Has the war empowered Russia and China? ... How modern warfare devalues American military power ... Josh: The Gulf-state power struggle is just beginning ... Are the Palestinians back in the spotlight? ... Where do Israel-US relations go from here? ... Heading to Overtime ...
A brief message from Bob ... Ryan’s tech policy bona fides ... Is true "recursive self-improvement" near? ... AI agents as strategic empathy machines ... Is a global AI pause possible? ... Mutually assured destruction vs mutually assured AI malfunction ... The case against global AI governance ... Mythos as seen from China ... Heading to Overtime ...
Teaser ... The Midas Project and the OpenAI files ... What’s "Build American AI" up to? ... Nathan Leamer, astroturfer and sock puppeteer ... Greg Brockman, AI lobby bankroller ... Astroturfing the China panic ... Is OpenAI an innocent bystander? ... Heading to Overtime ...
Whose baby is cuter? ... Bob's new book on AI, The God Test ... Varieties of AI awe ... Geoffrey Hinton’s vision ... How LLMs do more than predict and parrot ... How powerful will AI get? ... Can AI’s impact be predicted? ... Taking doomerism seriously ... The AI governance dilemma ... Heading to Overtime ...
Teaser ... How Tianyu became a “China explainer” ... American vs Chinese exceptionalism ... What you can and can’t say in China ... Is the government more accountable in the US or China? ... How China sees America ... The one-child policy and its consequences ... Tianyu: The biggest misconception about China is… ... Heading to Overtime ...
Is NonZero or American Prestige the better podcast? AI weighs in ... The state of the US-Iran war. Or is it peace? ... Has Trump already lost the midterms? Does he care? ... The Russia-Ukraine war (and Eric Schmidt) ... What the latest Iran war strikes signal ... Overtime preview: Nuland’s “monsters,” zombie blobsters, Barak Ravid, Bari Weiss, “killzones,” and the Pope vs AI ...
A Greek pilgrimage, a mystery guest, and a Discord revival ... The first Papal encyclical devoted to AI ... Pope Leo: just war theory is outdated, and AI lets humans dodge accountability ... Anthropic tells the Pope about "mysterious, even unsettling" things inside AI ... Inside the "Kill Zone": How drones changed the Russia-Ukraine front ... Who gets replaced first: the soldier or the commander? ... Russia's hypersonic missiles and nuclear signaling ... Do drones favor the underdog? Plus a warning on Taiwan ... The Iran ceasefire wobbles as Israel pushes back ... Heading to Overtime: Greek mystery cults, Teilhard de Chardin, and Blade Runner ... Enter the Mystery Guest: Jeremy Eliosoff, Pause AI Canada ...
Teaser ... Bruce’s new book on ritual, A Time to Gather ... The "Lifequake" that led Bruce to study ritual ... What is a ritual? ... The origins of the shadow ritual renaissance ... Forest bathing and the essence of ritual ... Ritual as the original human algorithm ... Rituals across Christianity ... What rituals do ... Heading to Overtime ...
Teaser ... Hamidreza's background ... A brief history of US-Iran relations ... Understanding Iranian antipathy toward Israel ... Islam vs Islamism ... The Iran-Iraq security dilemma ... The Iran-Israel security dilemma ... Palestinian objectives and patrons ... Heading to Overtime ...
Teaser ... Zhengyu’s tech background and new book, Rethinking China ... What kind of threat is China, really? ... How trading with China transformed America ... The stakes of the chip war ... Will tech war lead to real war? ... The US-China escalation spiral and Taiwan ... “Researching while Chinese”: the new Red Scare? ... Heading to Overtime ...
Teaser ... Is AI a normal technology? ... Mythos and the METR curve ... The current state of coding agents ... The total turbulence problem ... Does Mythos favor offense or defense? ... Mythos and hype ... Regulating dangerous AI ... The centralization problem ... Heading to Overtime ...
Teaser ... Annelle’s Middle East bona fides ... The state of play in Iran ... A deepening fissure between Gulf Arab states ... Explaining the Trump-Biden continuity on Middle East policy ... Will the Middle East realign away from America? ... Turkey and the moral hazard of US aid to Israel ... Can Iran mend ties with the Gulf states? ... Heading to Overtime ...
Teaser ... Bob's big personal news ... The US counter-blockade backfires ... Iran retains escalation dominance ... Why the Iranian regime is built to absorb assassinations ... "Donald, it's too late for that." Bob says Trump has to take the L ... Putin's Victory Day ceasefire (with a threat) ... Russia's vibe shift: drone attacks, airport shutdowns, Internet blackouts ... Instagram influencer rants at the Tsar ... Siloviki vs. civilian elites ... Heading to Overtime: The Matrix, AI, DMT, interdimensional crocodiles ...
How powerful is Anthropic’s Mythos? ... How Mythos looks to China ... Does Mythos mark a new phase in the US-China arms race? ... Can Anthropic contain Mythos? ... Could superhacker AIs bring cooperation? ... How scary is China, really? ... Heading to Overtime ...
Rebecca’s past work on mind and matter(ing) ... Rebecca’s new book, The Mattering Instinct ... Varieties of mattering experience ... Mattering type 1: Heroic Strivers ... Mattering type 2: Socializers ... Mattering type 3: Transcenders ... Mattering type 4: Competitors ... “The” meaning of life problem ... Does what drives us divide us? ... Heading to Overtime ...
Teaser ... Paul’s new baby is reportedly cute ... The Tucker-Trump fracture ... Parenting later in life ... Paul's TED talk on AI and loneliness ... When does embryo screening become eugenics? ... Is intelligence a positional good? ... Heading to Overtime ...
Rob’s role in the Obama nuclear deal ... A deal that could work for both Trump and Iran ... Iran’s security “guarantee” problem ... Bob: If I were Iran, I would say… ... What Obama’s negotiators had that Trump’s don’t ... How unified is the Iranian side? ... Is Iran’s Hormuz leverage running dry? ... Heading to Overtime ...
Teaser ... Trump’s Middle East chaos continues ... Is Iran more about America’s hegemony or Israel’s? ... Who will win the Hormuz blockade duel? ... Ukraine, China, and the drone wars ... America’s “emergency” emergency ... Is an Iran peace deal possible? ... Overtime preview: The Anthropic Mythos scare ...
Teaser ... Trump's Iran blockade breaks the ceasefire ... A Chinese tanker calls Trump's bluff ... Bob's case for an Iranian "tollgate" ... Anthropic's Mythos model is too dangerous to release ... Nikita's big idea: AI as world peace mediator ... Heading to Overtime ...
A brief message from Bob ... Shakeel’s newsletter, Transformer, and its mission ... The case(s) against Sam Altman ... OpenAI President Greg Brockman's political spending ... The founding doctrines of the leading AI labs ... The singleton and the singularity ... How market forces overwhelm good intentions ... Is the singularity near? ... Sam vs. Dario vs. Demis ... Heading to Overtime ...
Bob and Eli’s history of (civil) disagreement on Iran ... Is Trump's war on Iran legal? Does it matter? ... Who’s the real rogue state? ... Israel’s nukes and Iran’s nuclear program ... Is Israel more moral than Iran? ... How Hamas became Hamas ... “Proxy,” “theocracy,” and other fighting words ... Heading to Overtime ...
Would America benefit from Iran “winning”? ... Trump’s last exit ramp? ... What’s China’s angle on the war? ... Trump: psychoanalyzed ... Israel: psychoanalyzed ... Iran’s plans for the Strait of Hormuz ... Is this Trump’s biggest blunder? ... The intra-MAGA war over Iran (and Israel) ... Where are the Democrats? ... Antisemitism, alleged and real ... Heading to Overtime ...
Teaser ... Defining (and preventing) superintelligence ... Where the nuclear analogy holds (and where it breaks) ... Imagining an AI inspections regime ... The superintelligence precursors to watch for ... Nikita: "I find him weirdly persuasive on a hypnotist kind of level" ... Our dangerous lack of government oversight ... ControlAI's "bottom-up" approach to AI policy ... The mounting geopolitical challenges to AI governance ... Heading to Overtime ...
Teaser ... Holy Week in Andalusia, and the Christian cross as branding ... Why Bob is skeptical of Trump's diplomacy ... Trump's hand got weaker and he doesn't even know it ... Killing Iran's navy chief won't reopen the Strait of Hormuz ... Nikita: "I find him weirdly persuasive on a hypnotist kind of level" ... The Iran war's secret winner: Vladimir Putin ... Bob checked back into AI podcasts and came out scared ... "Every time I see tribalism on parade, I think: we're toast on AI" ... Russia's Internet shutdowns ... Heading to Overtime ...
Teaser ... What (or who) is the Iran war for? ... Joe Kent and the MAGA rift over Israel ... Does antisemitism speech policing foment antisemitism? ... What Ron’s Substack has that others don’t ... Heading to Overtime ...
Teaser ... Overtime preview: a civil(-ish) debate on Israel-Palestine ... How vibe-coding changed Liron’s life ... Portents of the AI jobpocalypse ... What can humans do that AI agents can’t? ... The Darwinian case for AI doom ... OpenClaw vs SkyNet ... Liron: I love AI! We need to stop it. ... Amodei, Altman, and the Pentagon triangle ... Heading to Overtime ...
Teaser ... Is Iran inflicting much damage on Israel? ... Iran has a strategy. Does America? Does Israel? ... Where Trump and Bibi differ ... Why Daniel is no longer a Zionist ... Bibi vs the Israeli security establishment ... The Gulf States' dilemma ... Daniel on Bibi’s true endgame ... Heading to Overtime ...
Teaser ... How we got here ... Understanding Iran's strategy and goals ... Turkey, Europe, and the Gulf States ... Will the Iranian regime survive? ... The specious leadership of Reza Pahlavi ... The many missed opportunities for US-Iran entente ... Heading to Overtime ...
Teaser ... Will the Iran war supercharge antisemitism? ... Varieties of Israeli-Jewish conflation ... The Epstein effect ... Tucker v. Israel vs Fuentes v. Israel ... Does MSM have a pro-Israel bias? ... The ADL’s counterproductive speech policing ... Heading to Overtime ...
Teaser ... Marco Rubio's Israel faux pas ... What are Trump’s new goalposts? ... The regime after Khamenei ... Can a regime be changed by air strikes alone? ... Will Turkey be drawn in? ... The logic of Iran's response ... The pathetic European (and Canadian) response ... Heading into Overtime ...
Teaser ... Spain: the one country that got it right ... When US rhetoric starts sounding like the Kremlin ... Nukes, regime change, military threat—pick one ... Rubio's "ridiculous" explanation for attacking Iran ... Iran's restraint: from Soleimani to Khamenei ... Trump had leverage over Bibi. He didn't use it. ... Is this Israel's war or America's? ... Tommy Vietor goes after the ADL—a political first ... How fear sells papers and starts wars ... The nuclear deal: the last thing America got right ... Nikita: Trump's dopamine addiction to "starting shit" ... How the Iran strike buried the Anthropic story ... Does Israel want a stable Middle East? ... Heading to Overtime ...
Teaser ... Why is Trump threatening Iran, really? ... What’s the strategic logic behind striking? ... Trump vs Bibi on Gaza ... How would—and could—Iran respond? ... What a post-regime-collapse Iran could look like ... Josh: Trump has painted himself into a corner ... Is a new “axis of resistance” against Israel emerging? ... Heading to Overtime ...
Teaser ... Holly’s call-out campaign ... Holly: Don’t believe the Amanda Askell puff pieces ... Is Amanda a bad person? ... How Dario’s false dichotomies accelerate the AI race ... The only Anthropic through-line is "winning" ... Did Dario subvert Effective Altruism? ... The end of the AI safety fig leaf ... Heading into Overtime: The pros and cons of naming and shaming ...
Teaser ... A paywall bait masterclass ... Is Paul feeling the AI acceleration? ... The Freddie deBoer AI challenge ... What would a true AI revolution look like? ... Bob: We’re failing the AI test ... Has AI really made much of a difference? ... Heading to Overtime ...
Teaser ... Recap: how MAGA's domestic and foreign policy fit together as one project ... MAGA reframed as a response to a felt lack of agency ... AI is about to make that loss of agency universal ... The first technology we're actually transferring agency to ... What Claude Code is doing to Nikita's creative process ... Will people use their free time well — or sit on a couch and inject heroin? ... Why Spanish festival culture might survive AI better than anyone ... Bots on the street, humans in the parlor: the future of online spaces ... Reading a comment and being depressed by both possibilities ...
Teaser ... The dueling Sam Altman biographies ... Who is the real Sam Altman? ... OpenAI’s origin—did Sam scam Elon? ... Why the OpenAI board coup failed ... Good and bad critiques of OpenAI ... Heading to Overtime ...
Army brats and media empires ... Is war with Iran imminent? ... Trump’s “red line” trap ... Are we underestimating Iran? ... Israel and the “clean break” memo ... Rubio as deep state puppet master ... Trump’s AI report card ... The race for superintelligence ... Is AI an existential threat? ... Will AI trigger mass unemployment? ... Chip restrictions as war starters ... Does Xi think his Taiwan window is closing? ...
Teaser ... How Bob’s and Paul’s names wound up in the Epstein Files ... Epstein’s double option play ... Understanding Moltbook ... Bob on the “big question” Moltbook raises ... Paul: What planet are Emily Bender and Alex Hanna on? ... Heading into Overtime: Friends in the Epstein Files, the strangest thing Bob’s ever done for money and more. ...
MAGA as a coherent global phenomenon ... Narrative vs. material forces behind MAGA ... Mark Carney and the hypocrisy of the "rule-based order" ... Burkeans vs. Silicon Valley libertarians ... Make Russia Great Again ... Heading to Overtime ...
Alex and Emily’s book, The AI Con ... Beyond the AI booster-doomer spectrum ... What—and who—is AI actually useful for? ... The AI productivity question(s) ... Emily: AI won’t take your job, it’ll just make it shi**ier ... Stochastic parrots, Chinese rooms, and semantics ... Are LLMs really black boxes? ... Do AIs “understand” things? ... Debating using AIs as experts ... How “neural” are neural nets, really? ...
A recap of January’s Trump turbulence ... Is Trump a cause or symptom of world disorder? ... Is Trump increasingly unstable? ... Will we invade Cuba? ... American politics after Trump ... The crumbling bedrock of International Law ... Where are the Democrats? ... Heading into Overtime: Renee Good, Syria, Worthwhile Canadian Prime Minister ...
Teaser ... Defining AI succession ... How positive psychology led Dan to AI research ... Is Dan a "successionist"? ... Does it matter whether AI is sentient? ... Two traits of a worthy successor ... The varieties of succession scenarios ... Values and interests ... Will AI have any use for us? ... Succession scenarios to avoid ... Heading into Overtime ...
Are Bob and Mike the godfathers of podcasting? ... Slate and the origins of podcasting ... NotebookLM’s humanless podcasts ... From blogs to Substack ... Looking back at BloggingHeads ... The tribalizing influence of algorithms ... New news models ... What happened to the rules in professional sports? ... The consequences of paying college athletes ... Mike's comprehensive take on sports gambling ... Heading into OT: The perils of opining on Israel ...
Teaser ... Different readings of the Renee Good videos ... JD Vance vs Stephen Miller: compare and contrast ... Trump vs Hitler: compare and contrast ... ICE agents and stormtroopers: compare and contrast ... Has Elon totally lost it? ... Paul: Politicians are people too! ... Heading to Overtime ...
Teaser ... Cameron’s work at AE studio ... Why consciousness is such a hard problem ... Why AI consciousness matters ... Does consciousness need carbon? ... The ethics of AI subjectivity ... Can we trust LLM self-reports? ... Cameron’s innovative AI consciousness experiments ... Heading to Overtime ...
Teaser ... Joel’s legendary Bloggingheads line ... NASA’s new chief: More than a Musk toady? ... Why we’re still not living in Star Trek ... The space alien question ... Can we make the moon program great again? ... Heading to Overtime ...
David Lynch, Jane Goodall, and other notable 2025 losses ... When Bob called James Watson a "mad scientist" ... Predicting 2050: Star Trek abundance vs. "Total Chaos Planet"? ... The age of algorithmically guided attention ... Global poverty reduction (and its flip side) ... Will anyone care if your newsletter is AI-written? ... Trump's USAID cuts killed a lot of people ... Elon Musk, Alex Karp, and the age of the "manifestly crazy" ... Can the Supreme Court stop Trump? ... JD Vance's identity crisis: Tech bro or populist? ... The "Black Swan": When AI starts killing people ... AI scientific breakthroughs to come ... Bob and Paul's 2025 Entertainment Awards ... Which jobs are truly AI-proof? ... Bob's Epstein document deep-dive ... Bill Ackman's conspiracy-theory-brained year ... Are US arms sales pushing China to invade Taiwan? ... Barry Weiss’s journalistic scruples ...
Teaser ... What era are we living in? ... David Bowie: "The Internet is an alien life form." ... Bob: "It's like aliens are approaching, and we don't know their intentions" ... Nikita: "COVID was weird, and nothing has been normal since" ... The lab leak theory ... How COVID killed consensus reality ... Bob's case for international biotech monitoring ... Vaccine geopolitics ... Bob's candidate: We let machines guide our attention ... Trump's failed bargaining strategy ... Technological progress is like a cocaine high ... How common is the idea that AI will be a big deal? ... When music is high stakes. Russian street musicians get arrested ... Heading to Overtime ...
What's the long game in Venezuela? ... MAGA's Monroe Doctrine ... Trump as deep state puppet ... Will Trump oust Maduro? ... Connor: Trump's foreign policy is a "profoundly mixed bag" ... Has Israel lost the American electorate? ... Andrew: Trump's Ukraine peace plan isn’t pro-Russia ... Silicon Valley’s inept arms makers ... The administration's view(s) on China and Taiwan ... Europe learns to speak Trump ...
Elon’s reckless response to the Brown shooting ... Susie Wiles gone wild ... The weirdest thing about Trump’s weird Rob Reiner post ... The Piers Morgan/Nick Fuentes encounter ... Judging Oliver Sacks ... Heading to Overtime ...
The incoherence of Trump's foreign policy ... The paucity of debate around Chinese chip restrictions ... Danny: Is this the stupidest foreign policy establishment ever? ... Should AGI worry us? ... Bob’s Overtime bait ...
Teaser ... How AI helped shape cancer treatment for Nathan's son ... Should you tell your doctor about your AI medical adviser? ... Big leaps for Gemini 3 and Claude Opus 4.5 ... How to get the best medical advice from your AI ... The astonishing breadth of AI expertise ... AI can help on the margins ... Bob's AI cancer journey ... AI and “Right to try” ... "Turning every stone" vs falling into anxiety rabbit holes ... Gemini 3 vs Opus 4.5 ... Are scaling laws leveling off? ... AI deception ... Experiments in AI Consciousness ...
Teaser ... Trump's 28-point plan: First real negotiations? ... Why Zelensky sounded so grim ... Listing Russia's advantages ... The unknowable casualties numbers ... Ukraine's forced mobilization vs. Russia's volunteer army ... Why Russia won't run out of money ... Bob: "I want Putin to get the worst deal possible" ... What is the Blob's plan? ... Bob answers a question from Discord ... Trump's failed bargaining strategy ... Bob: Ukraine is "so much more complicated" than Gaza ... The corruption scandal threatening Zelensky ... Ukraine's corruption scandal and Zelensky's uncertain political future ... Zaluzhnyi's manifesto: The rival commander's challenge ... Why all decision-makers are ok with the war continuing ...
Teaser ... Sam’s epic new biography of William F. Buckley ... Was Buckley the original Tucker Carlson? ... Buckley's paradoxical upbringing ... How Yale turned Buckley into a “counter-intellectual” ... Was Buckley racist or tribalist or what? ... Buckley v. the Civil Rights Act ... Heading to Overtime ...
A brief message from Bob ... Bob and former Bloggingheads.tv staffer and contributor Aryeh Cohen-Wade reflect on the legacy of Bloggingheads.tv, the pioneering website Bob co-founded in 2005. Bob and Aryeh discuss how the site and the technology that powered it anticipated modern trends in online media. They also consider whether Twitter still has any use for journalists, the pros and cons of Substack, and whether Culturally Determined should pivot back to video. ...
Teaser ... A brief history of American China hawkery ... The 2008 financial crisis changed things ... Xi Jinping and the great man theory of history ... Can we get along with autocrats? ... How China hawkery became bipartisan ... Total eclipse of the hawks? ... Kaiser’s "Great Reckoning" thesis ...
Bob’s Doha trip takeaways ... The Epstein-Bannon-Trump connection ... Can MAGA survive the Epstein saga? ... Email hygiene 101 ... Paul defends Larry Summers ... Olivia Nuzzi hikes the Appalachian trail ... Overtime preview: Top podcasting secrets revealed! The punishment problem; Pluribus; the “great feminization” debate; AI “bubble” update; and more! ...
Teaser ... Alex's influential "Google PM Bible" ... What is a tech aggregator? ... AI is much more than chatbots ... The dangers of centralized AI ... What you want vs what you want to want ... How an LLM’s memory locks you in ... AGI vs ASI ... Alex's solution to the lock-in problem ... Alex's ode to “resonance” ...
Teaser ... What is Bob doing in Qatar? ... "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold." Why Yeats felt this way ... Peter Thiel's Antichrist theory ... Nikita: COVID was a weird time, and nothing has been the same since ... Why Bob feels things are falling apart ... Were things ever in order? ... "Inner emigration": tuning out the world as self-care ... A reaction to a drone strike: "Loud noises don't wake me up" ... Young people are turning away from social media ... When Spain lost all power and cellular coverage ... War as a "major inconvenience" ... Bob's prediction about Ukraine's future retaliation for Pokrovsk ... Nikita's impressions from Europe ... Nonzero Reading Club THIS SATURDAY: Norbert Wiener's God & Golem, Inc. ... Deepfakes and the future of news ... Russia's first humanoid robot falls down ...
Teaser ... Shadi’s path to his new book, The Case for American Power ... George W. Bush’s “Freedom Agenda” ... Does America’s role in Gaza undermine Shadi’s case? ... Shadi’s case for US moral supremacy ... What does China want? ... What justifies military intervention? ... Bob: International law is the answer ... Heading to Overtime ...
This week in underappreciated world history ... Were the elections all—or just mostly—bad news for Trump? ... Will Trump invade Venezuela? ... Epstein's creepy relationship with Trump ... What’s the shutdown fight really about? ... Mickey vs Ezra Klein (in absentia) on healthcare ... Back down the Epstein rabbit hole ... Was Tucker playing 4D chess with the Fuentes interview? ... What happened to the blogosphere? ... The case for (and against) Bari Weiss ... AI doom in fiction vs reality ... The AI bubble: Dot-com déjà vu? ... AOC in 2028? ... Mickey: Beware of gym girls! ...
The Carlson-Fuentes interview controversy ... Paul: Candidate Carlson is coming ... Is gatekeeping dead? ... Is Carlson’s show respectable? ... Carlson and Fuentes on the Israel lobby ... William F. Buckley as MAGA precursor ... Is antisemitism more organic on the right or left? ... Heading to Overtime ...
Bob tries to lower American Prestige’s self-esteem ... The Trump-Xi trade talks ... Making sense of Trump’s nuclear saber-rattling ... Signs of a US-China vibe shift ... Is AI accelerating science? ... Bill Gates’s climate change of heart ... This week’s Gaza ceasefire death toll ... Overtime preview: Bob vs Danny on international law ...
Teaser ... Trump on drug cartels: "We're gonna kill them. They're gonna be like, dead." ... Venezuela: Regime change disguised as drug war ... Marco Rubio holds all the foreign policy power ... Trump Doctrine candidate #1: "Jump at the chance to use force" ... Trump Doctrine candidate #2: Monroe 2.0 ... Roy Cohn's philosophy: "It is a nation of men, not laws" ... Bob: There's value in hypocrisy ... Trump is paving the way for a more competent tyrant ... Could Trump actually be good for the world? ... Trump the comedian ... Heading to Overtime: Bob's mysterious invitation-only conference ...
What triggered Trump’s 100-percent tariff threat? ... How China is mirroring the US playbook ... The real escalation: America's "50% rule" ... Why has US media coverage been so bad? ... Why has US media coverage been so bad? ... US China policy as cognitive empathy failure ... Heading to Overtime ...
Teaser ... Why Liron became a Yudkowskian ... Eliezer Yudkowsky’s vision of AI apocalypse ... Does intelligence want power? ... Decoding Yudkowsky’s key Darwinian metaphor ... Is doomerism crowding out other AI worries? ... Liron: The silent majority is very AI anxious ... Heading to Overtime ...
Amazing Bob-Paul discount deal! ... The Bari Weiss trivia test ... Lasting peace in Gaza? ... Why did Trump finally get tough on Bibi? ... MAGA free speech debates ... Is the AI bubble about to burst? ... If anyone builds it, will everyone die? ... Heading into Overtime: Ian McEwan, George Harrison, OpenAI, One Battle After Another ...
Was Free Press bought “to control US media”? ... Why pay $150M for a Substack? ... Netanyahu on the TikTok deal and "giving direction" to the Jewish people ... Pro-Israel donors giving a $2M ultimatum to Charlie Kirk about his ties to Tucker Carlson ... How much influence does Israel have over US media? ... Why Tucker Carlson's appeal to Christians is a problem for Bibi ... Trump: "I would make TikTok 100% MAGA related if I could" ... Why Hamas would be crazy to trust Trump on his Gaza deal ... Prigozhin conspiracy theory: Why would the Russian government want people to think he's alive? ... Cognitive sovereignty ... Heading to Overtime ...
Teaser ... Steve’s book In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us ... Were school closures smart policy? ... The mask mandate question ... Did medical experts get too much say? ... The role of social class and political tribe ... How dissent was suppressed ... Bob takes a jab at Jay Bhattacharya ... Heading to OT: Why Steve wrote the book ...
The deal Hamas offered Bibi before October 7 ... How October 7 changed the landscape ... Why Clinton’s Camp David talks failed ... What Arafat was actually offered at Camp David ... The centrality of the right of return ... Beyond two states ... Heading into OT: Abandoning false optimism is not pessimism ...
How Eliezer Yudkowsky's new book envisions AI takeover ... Will we ever really know how AI works? ... The “paperclip maximizer" problem revisited ... Will advanced AIs be insatiable? ... David’s alternative takeover scenario: gradual disempowerment ... Can—and should—we keep humans in the loop? ... Heading into Overtime ...
Why this pod’s a little odd ... Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike quit OpenAI—part of a larger pattern? ... Bob: AI doomers need Hollywood ... Does an AI arms race spell doom for alignment? ... Why the “Pause AI” movement matters ... AI doomerism and Don’t Look Up: compare and contrast ... How Liron (fore)sees AI doom ... Are Sam Altman’s concerns about AI safety sincere? ... Paperclip maximizing, evolution, and the AI will to power question ... Are there real-world examples of AI going rogue? ... Should we really align AI to human values? ... Heading to Overtime ...
How Jews fit—or don’t—into universities’ DEI regimes ... What do controversial pro-Palestine chants really mean? ... When does criticism of Israel become antisemitic? ... The Israel lobby’s influence on Congress and academia ... Do pro-Israel donors unwittingly inflame antisemitism? ... Evidence of increasing antisemitism ... Was Ilhan Omar’s “all about the Benjamins” tweet antisemitic? ... Bob criticizes Bari Weiss, Bill Ackman, and an Eli tweet ... Balancing concerns about free speech and antisemitism ... Are Israelis too fatalistic about antisemitism for their own good? ...
Is it ever okay to fire professors for speech? ... Bari Weiss spreads misinformation without consequence ... Are some of Israel’s American supporters unwittingly inflaming antisemitism? ... Ayaan Hirsi Ali converts to Christianity without abandoning New Atheist creed ... Do Sam Harris et. al. get religion totally wrong? ... Heading to Overtime ...
Coleman’s Joe Rogan appearance and new book, The End of Race Politics ... Campus protests and free speech ... Is anti-Zionism anti-Semitism? ... Is "exterminating Hamas" a viable solution? ... Bob: Israel never offered Palestinians a state ... “Right of return” and Palestinian national identity ... How firmly entrenched is hatred of Israel among Palestinians? ... Could better US policy have steered Israel-Palestine toward peace? ... Are Palestinian “sacred beliefs” the problem? ... Possible Palestinian futures ... Israel’s strike on Iran’s consulate in Syria ...
Paul asserts his right to non-assertion ... Campus protests and free speech controversies ... Have pro-Palestine protestors crossed a line? Have their opposition? ... Will the protests force a reckoning on campus “wokeness”? ... Remembering philosopher Daniel Dennett ... Bob vs Dennett on consciousness ... Does the mind-body problem suggest a cosmic solution? ... Heading to Overtime ...
Anatoly’s strange CV ... How the 20th century set the stage for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine ... Why did Putin turn against the West? ... Anatoly: I underestimated Russia’s incompetence ... Has the Ukraine war really shifted in Russia’s favor? ... Russia’s “elite human capital” problem ... Is the “bio-singularity” near? ... Unipolar vs multipolar AI takeover scenarios ... Heading to Overtime ...
Why Iran’s attack on Israel was an “own goal” ... Did Iran minimize casualties on purpose? ... The rising odds of Israel attacking Iran directly ... America’s contradictory relationship with Israel ... How conflict with Iran helps Israel ... What China wants in the Middle East ... America’s destabilizing role in the region ... Heading to Overtime ...
Why Paul’s eclipse experience eclipsed Bob’s ... Remembering pioneering psychologist Daniel Kahneman ... Bob fails gender affirmation test ... Has the “replication crisis” tainted Kahneman’s legacy? ... Eastern vs. Western “enlightenment” ... How AI doomerism came to the rationalist community ... 3 Body Problem review goes into Overtime ...
A brief message from Bob ... Derek and Danny stumble into Bob’s Zoom room ... Israel’s doubly out-of-control week ... How Biden's Gaza failures will shape the Democratic Party ... Biden’s political incentives on Israel-Palestine ... Heading to Overtime ...
Robin’s history of thinking about the future ... Seeing AI as offspring, not adversary ... Robin’s famous answer to a great cosmic mystery ... Would evidence of aliens be good news or bad? ... Is rationalist culture cultist? ... LLMs: revolution or hype cycle? ... Heading to Overtime ...
Ilia’s background ... Things to know about the noosphere ... Teilhard’s transgressive theological and scientific thought ... Does AI suggest a “transcendent nature to nature”? ... The Teilhardian solution to the mind-body problem ... How Darwinian was Teilhard, really? ... Teilhard on love ... “Techno-sapiens,” redemption, and the Omega Point ... Heading to Overtime ...
Kati’s unusual niche ... How Covid changed meditation ... Kati: The optimal amount of meditation is… ... Is focusing on the breath overblown? ... AI as a spiritual challenge ... Meditation and cognitive empathy ... Using technology mindfully ... Heading to Overtime ...
Are Nikolay and Kirill satisfied with the "special military operation"? ... Why have Russians become more supportive of the war effort? ... Kirill defends the RWA tweet that unsettled Bob ... US policies that made the war more likely ... How much of Ukraine does Putin want? ... Heading to Overtime ...
Paul’s Substack: small potatoes or some pumpkins? ... Elon sours on Lemon—is ketamine to blame? ... The enduring enigma that is Elon Musk ... Is Altman overdramatizing the AI #Resistance? ... Paul cavalierly ignores Bob’s sage guidance ... Oscars: The good, the bad, and the hammy ... Heading to Overtime (plus: big Small Potatoes news!) ...
Nathan’s role as “AI scout” ... What "open source" in AI really means ... Why the secrecy around AI training data? ... What’s actually “open” about OpenAI? ... The case for and against open source AI ... Is an open source crackdown coming? ... What Waymark, Nathan’s company, does with AI ...
Should Biden pursue regime change in Israel? ... How the White House mishandled Netanyahu's far-right government ... Daniel: “Israel has lost this war” ... What a ceasefire deal would look like ... Biden’s immense, unused leverage over Netanyahu ... Heading to Overtime ...
The other Tim B. Lee ... Unpacking the Elon v. OpenAI case ... How did Google’s Gemini go wrong? ... The unsung ingenious side of Gemini ... Is AI a bubble? ... Are some LLM issues insoluble? ... How Sora changes the AI picture ... Heading to Overtime ...
Big trouble with Small Potatoes ... What makes a good podcast? ... Google’s AI goes wild(ly woke) ... Is Biden a “super-ager” or just super old? ... On the psychology of self-immolation ... Are we thinking right about mental illness? ... Heading to Overtime ...
Gary’s background and place in the AI world ... Are Gary’s views on AI paradoxical? ... Bob: Searle’s Chinese Room argument is dead ... Have LLMs demonstrated "theory of mind"? ... Arguing the semantics of an LLM's “semantic space” ... Do LLM representations map onto the real world? ... Can (and should) we slow down AI development? ... Gary: I’ve never seen a field as myopic as AI today ... The (symbolic?) future of AI ...
Nikita’s memories of Navalny’s emergence as a political force ... The time Nikita was detained for protesting election fraud ... Navalny’s success as a political organizer ... What did Navalny represent? ... Navalny’s courageous post-poisoning return to Russia ... Heading to Overtime (plus: Nikita’s photo with Navalny) ...
What MSM missed about Carlsons' Putin interview ... Putin’s litany of grievances against the West ... Russia gets the upper hand in Ukraine ... Why Zelensky hasn’t paved the way for peace talks ... Putin’s mafia-inspired approach to negotiations ... Do most Russians support the war? ... Why Zelensky fired his popular top general ... Heading to Overtime ...
Does the NY-03 special election have national import? ... Will the special counsel report sink Joe Biden? ... Was Jon Stewart's monologue on the mark? ...
Nora’s low score on the AI doomer test ... The messy math of AI alignment ... Teaching and (unteaching) concepts to LLMS ... Do we really want human-like AI? ... How the AI “mind” works ... How to change an AI’s mind ... Are LLMs reverse-engineering the human mind? ... Heading to Overtime ...
Bob’s bad newsletter news for Paul ... Fast Car's moving Grammy moment ... Music, female orgasms, and other evolutionary enigmas ... The Moral Animal turns 30—how has it aged? ... How AI (barely) helps Paul work ... Is America real? ... Bob tries to drag Paul down the JFK rabbit hole ... Lab leak and the trouble with “conspiracy theories” ... Heading to Overtime ...
Effective altruism (EA) and Rob’s 80,000 Hours podcast ... BF’s fall = EA’s public relations problem ... What went wrong for (and with) SBF? ... Virtue as a utilitarian shortcut ... What drove EA’s longtermist (r)evolution? ... EA, AI, and the miscalculation of existential risk ... Did EA play a role in the OpenAI board drama? ... Heading to Overtime ...
Another high-synergy collaborative episode ... Do mainstream Israelis support ethnic cleansing? ... Biden’s electoral (mis?)calculations on Israel-Palestine ... What does a left-wing foreign policy vision look like today? ...
How Israelis think about civilian casualties in Gaza ... Is the war spawning a new generation of terrorists? ... Explaining versus justifying bad behavior ... Can Hamas and other extremist groups be moderated? ... Is the world biased against Israel? ... Cognitive biases that inflame tribal tensions ... The “river to the sea” Rorschach test ... On the precipice of World War III? ...
Fear and loathing on the campaign trail 2024 ... Haley’s shortcomings, Trump’s cognitive decline ... Who’s the perfect Democrat to run against Biden? ... How Biden could stop the Gaza war ... Why the Houthis are hard to neutralize ... Could Trump sabotage the border security deal? ... Doctor bots, robo-receipt checkers, and AI optimism ... The real problem with America’s elites ... Is catastrophe the only thing that can save America? ... Bob tries to drag Mickey (back) into the JFK assassination rabbit hole ... Has DeSantis destroyed his brand? ...
Bob saves Paul from some very bad influences ... What makes Hitler more evil than Stalin and Mao? ... New lab leak evidence—what will come of it? ... Correcting the record on effective altruism ... Is “self-plagiarism” really plagiarism? ... The dishonesty researcher accused of academic dishonesty ... Heading to Overtime ...
Reid’s deep roots in the tech world ... The kind of AI pessimism that irks Reid the most ... Can (and should) we slow down AI progress? ... Could AI help resolve international disputes? ... The promise and perils of perspective-taking AIs ... Why Reid co-wrote Impromptu with GPT-4 ... Where are the AI optimists? ... Sam Altman and the OpenAI drama: a (semi-) behind-the-scenes view ... How dangerous is open-source AI, really? ... Is AI acceleration decelerating? ... Engagement with China and “organic transparency” ...
Mickey’s in Iowa—and on the Nonzero Podcast! ... Do Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley have a chance? ... Why Biden will probably lose ... Wait, are there Democratic primaries? ... Would Trump 2.0 be a more capable authoritarian? ... AI bots that cater to your every need ... Why doesn't Biden get tougher on the border? ... Exciting new Child Tax Credit updates ... Is Twitter going down the tubes? ... Bob fails to escape from JFK assassination rabbit hole ... Subways and other things that have gotten worse ... Mickey’s Iowa caucus prediction ...
How the Gaza war harms US interests ... How the Gaza war harms Israel’s interests ... Could Biden get Israel to wind down the war? ... Biden’s complex political calculus on Israel ... The Israel lobby: what it is and what it does ... How elements of the lobby intimidate critics of Israel ... Heading to Overtime ...
Tim seeks Substack synergy beyond Bob ... Recent contributors to Bob’s AI anxiety ... Why “Mamba” matters ... Is AI moving too fast? ... Are fears of an AI “jobocalypse” overblown? ... AI’s (potential) next transformation ... Heading to Overtime ...
Jeff’s journalistic bona fides ... The origins of the official assassination narrative ... Oswald: Lone gunman? Patsy? Both? ... The CIA’s interest in Oswald before the assassination ... The Pentagon’s scheme to provoke war with Cuba via false flag ... How Bob started down the JFK rabbit hole ... Oswald’s critical time in New Orleans ... Why did Jack Ruby kill Oswald, really? ... Why JFK’s assassination still matters ...
Kati’s very unusual Venn diagram ... Your brain on meditation ... The time Bob’s meditation got weird ... What are the “jhanas”? ... What science tells us about the jhana states ... Are psychedelics gateway drugs to meditation? ... Kati: Here’s how we get “not-self” wrong… ... Psychedelics vs meditation—neuroscientifically ... Heading to Overtime ...
How Tom tried to bring down Netanyahu’s government ... The coming Biden-Netanyahu showdown ... What’s driving Israeli public support for such massive retaliation? ... The alarming growth of global disorder ... Is Israel fated to be hated? ... Why Tom is still hopeful about Israel-Palestine ...
A short history of “longtermism” ... The evolution of effective altruism (EA) ... Unpacking the TESCREAL bundle ... Why AGI dominates longtermist thinking ... Are AI doomers and accelerationists more aligned than it seems? ... Why did Émile ditch EA? ... Heading to Overtime ...
Max’s book Rules for Rebels—and the rule that Hamas broke ... Is social media a reality distortion machine? ... “From the river to the sea…” compared to “globalize the intifada” ... Does social media exaggerate the level of civil strife—and thereby raise it? ... Is Israel’s assault on Gaza intensifying antisemitism? ... How Israel’s actions impact the Jewish diaspora ... The terrorism threat facing Israel ... US foreign policy and the Israel lobby ...
The biggest surprise of Paul’s intellectual life ... What the three college presidents should have said about free speech ... Ramaswamy’s hot mic moment: mistake or power move? ... Elon’s scorched-earth moment: power move or mental break? ... Paul gets fact-checked—and likes it ... In aligning AI, should we aim higher than human values? ... Bob DESTROYS Paul’s AI article ...
A bold experiment in podcast synergy continues ... The dire humanitarian situation in Gaza ... Is full-on ethnic cleansing more likely than a political solution? ... If Biden loses in 2024, will elites rethink Israel-Palestine? ... The changing perception of Israel ... Heading to Overtime ...
Daron’s book Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity ... What tech optimists get wrong about economic history ... Will AI inevitably sideline workers? ... The surprising weakness of our digital economy ... Which jobs are most vulnerable to automation? ... How to empower workers in the age of AI ... Heading to Overtime ...
Bob and Tim seek Substack synergy ... What was the OpenAI drama really about? ... Viewing the drama through a (cynical) psychological lens ... Were reports of a safety vs speed schism greatly exaggerated? ... Larry Summers joins OpenAI’s board… time to panic? ... Superintelligence, Sam Altman, and the singularity ... Altman’s not so veiled ignorance ... Overtime preview: superintelligence skepticism, the truth about effective altruism, self-driving car speed bumps, and more ...
Biden’s vexing political calculus on Israel-Palestine ... Israel-Palestine compared to Russia-Ukraine ... If Israel eliminates Hamas, what happens next? ... Can anything good come out of the present crisis? ... The meaning of “From the river to the sea…” ... Why the 2000 Camp David Summit failed ... Where is Palestine's Nelson Mandela? ... Assessing US media coverage of the Gaza war ...
Preamble: The OpenAI drama and this conversation ... Preamble: The OpenAI drama and this conversation ... Is safe AI possible without international cooperation? ... Are we selecting AI for truth or engagement? ... Using “psychology” to understand—and control—AI ... The worrisome Darwinian dynamics of AI development ... Life after an AI takeover ... How structural incentives make AI safety harder ...
Tom’s new book, Getting Russia Right ... Does Putin want to take more territory before talking peace? ... Putin’s "messianic" transformation ... America’s failed effort to Americanize Russia ... Does the US focus too much on other nations’ internal affairs? ... The 2004 event that sunk US-Russia relations ... Why Tom supports a diplomatic reset ...
Susan’s new book, Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise ... China’s turn to more assertive policies in 2007 ... The well-intentioned reform that produced big authoritarian consequences ... How public opinion influences autocratic leaders ... Xi Jinping’s purge of suspect officials ... Does Beijing feel threatened by America? ... Heading to Overtime ...
Will Israel-Palestine cost Biden the election? ... What Hamas hoped to accomplish on October 7 ... The surprising origins of cancel culture ... Matt defends his ratioed tweet ... The persistent psychological impact of the Holocaust ... Is a one-state solution realistic? ... What Ukrainians and Palestinians have in common ... Anti-Palestine sentiment and Christian Zionism in America ... How the current crisis could lead to war with Iran ... Bob gives Matt podcasting advice ...
Is Paul Bloom the next Tony Robbins? ... Things to know about the noosphere ... How Bob and Paul work ... What Michael Lewis’s SBF bio reveals about SBF (and Michael Lewis) ... SBF and Elon Musk: compare and contrast ... Are SBF’s parents to blame? ... Heading to Overtime ...
Ron’s initial reaction to the October 7 atrocities ... How Israel’s far right undermined Israel’s national security ... Support for the Gaza war in Israel ... The trouble with “eradicating” Hamas ... How American Jews are responding to recent events ... Post-October-7 prospects for solving Israel-Palestine ... The rhetorical abuse of the Holocaust ... The origins and meaning of “From the river to the sea…” ... Could the Gaza war cost Biden the election? ... Competing visions of Zionism ... How terrorism impacts the Palestinian cause ...
What Iran hopes to gain from the Israel-Hamas war ... Did Hamas expect such a massive retaliation from Israel? ... Why Israel’s campaign in Gaza could backfire ... What Hezbollah is and how it got started ... Does Israel have an exit strategy in Gaza? ... Why the Arab world might unite in the years ahead ... How China could benefit from the current crisis ... Why the US hasn’t pushed harder to resolve Israel-Palestine ... Is a one-state solution the best path forward? ... Can the Israeli government rein in West Bank settlers? ... How Israel-Palestine damages America’s, and Biden’s, credibility ...
The significance of Jerusalem in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ... Will the current crisis explode into a wider war? ... Israel’s ultra-nationalist minister of national security ... Settler attacks intensify in the West Bank ... The two-state solution is dead—can it be revived? ... Has Israel lost the support of western young people? ... What Hamas hoped to accomplish on October 7 ... How hopelessness drives support for Hamas ... Can one-state aspirations produce a two-state solution? ...
Why Leonid considers his nationality “journalist” ... How the West alienated Russia ... Are Russia’s pro-Ukraine “liberals” actually far right? ... How Putin is responding to Israel's war on Hamas ... Are western experts more clear-minded about Israel-Hamas than Russia-Ukraine? ... Is Ukraine at risk of losing significant amounts of territory? ... Heading to Overtime ...
How much of an election denier is Mike Johnson? ... Why did the GOP moderates accept Johnson? ... Did Democrats do themselves good by trading McCarthy for Johnson? ... Matt learns to love John Fetterman ... The absence of a Republican primary, and its impact ... Who will drop out before Iowa? ... Will Dean Phillips matter? ...
Why hasn’t the ground invasion happened yet? ... Do conditions in Gaza make terrorism more likely? ... Palestinian violence compared to Israeli violence ... Did Israel really offer the Palestinians a state two decades ago? ... Does Hamas have much support in the West? ... What should be done about Hamas? ... Israel’s blockade of Gaza and strategy of massive retaliation ... Indignities suffered by Palestinians in the West Bank ... Should West Bank Palestinians focus on demanding the vote? ... Eli’s growing interest in the deep state ...
Why did Republican moderates resist Jim Jordan? ... Why Democrats should empower Patrick McHenry ... Why did Trump attack Netanyahu? ...
The Unspeakeasy, the newest arm of the Meghan-industrial complex ... Meghan’s prestigious place in Parrot Room history ... Has wokeness won? ... How common is anti-semitism on the left? ... Israel-Palestine’s destructive non-zero-sum dynamics ... Meghan’s highly therapeutic Unspeakeasy retreats ...
Israel’s military plans for northern Gaza ... How does international law apply to Israel and Hamas? ... The first casualty of war is truth ... Do Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute ethnic cleansing? ... The evolving definition of genocide ... How the US and Israel helped Hamas seize power ... America’s ill-fated push for Arab-Israeli normalization ... The hazards of overreacting to Hamas’s attack ... How western media has covered the conflict so far ...
Paul’s humble new ventures with Substack and Nonzero ... Israel-Palestine, exploitative media, and the pitfalls of empathy ... Paul’s plaudits for Mickey and the Parrot Room ... Elon Musk and Derek Parfit: compare and contrast ... Is there a method to Musk’s mad genius? ... The radical rationalism that forged SBF ... How real is implicit bias? ... How real is SBF? ... Heading to Overtime ...
Nonzero/American Prestige cocktail with a hybrid episode twist ... Was Hamas’s attack a predictable response to conditions in Gaza? ... Did Biden’s foreign policy make the attack more likely? ... America’s unstrategic Middle East strategy ... Can anything good come out of the current crisis? ... The Nonzero/American Prestige crossover arc ... How to stay sane as a critic of US foreign policy ... Biden vs Trump: Who’s the lesser evil on foreign policy? ... Strains within the restrainer coalition ... Is there any hope left for international law? ... Bob’s pitch for (sober) AI alarmism ... Heading to Overtime—and a special offer for listeners! ...
Important reminder about the Friday podcast ... Sam Bankman-Fried’s plan to stop Trump ... Biden’s new policy: Build the wall! ... Why is life expectancy dropping for some demographics in America? ... Should Democrats have helped Kevin McCarthy remain speaker? ... The Blob starts to think like Bob on Russia-Ukraine ... Should the US impose conditions on aid to Ukraine? ... What war with China over Taiwan would look like ... Parrot Room preview: McCarthyism at the news outlet Semafor. Michael Lewis’s new book on Sam Bankman-Fried. Parrot reminiscing. Evolution and homosexuality. Christopher Rufo defends Nixon. ...
Has Biden abandoned longstanding US policy on Taiwan? ... The sobering results of recent US-China war games ... Would China ever accept defeat in Taiwan? ... Why the US might bomb Taiwan’s microchip factories ... How war over Taiwan could unfold ... Lyle: DC think tanks are underestimating China's military ... Heading to Overtime ...
Mickey, the man from the future, times out on this week’s quiz ... Winners, losers, and bigger losers of the GOP debate ... Semafor’s Iran influence exposé: (semi-)exposed! ... How is Menendez still standing? Mickey has a theory ... Bad socio-economic omens for Biden’s 2024 bid ... Ukraine war update ... Is elite opinion on immigration shifting? ... Next week: The final Parrot Room ...
Sarah’s vexing exile from X/Twitter ... Sarah’s next book project ... Would dumping Biden help or harm the Dems’ 2024 chances? ... Who could bump Trump from the GOP ticket? ... Sarah: The Dems’ key to victory is… ... Will the “war on woke” be relevant in 2024? ... The thing that most worries Sarah about the election ... Heading to Overtime ...
Senator Bob Menendez accused of brazen corruption ... The issue that could sink Trump's campaign ... Unpacking the mystery of America’s open border ... Is Biden worried about a coup by Democratic Party elites? ... Ukraine’s international support shows signs of waning ... Democrats downgrade Senate dress code ... Parrot Room preview: Marty Peretz’s new book; UAW strike; insidious AI sexbots ...
Azerbaijan attacks Nagorno-Karabakh ... Preview of this week’s Biden-Zelensky meeting in DC ... Does the new technology of war favor defense? ... Is Zelensky thinking clearly about Ukraine’s military chances? ... What Anatol learned from his discussions with wounded Ukrainian soldiers ... If the US pushed for peace, would Putin be ready to make a deal? ... Heading to Overtime ...
Walter Isaacson’s Elon-Ukraine walk-back ... Debating Biden replacement theories ... Bob’s hurricane-induced bandwidth problems ... Biden’s age-induced bandwidth problems ... Ukraine war update ... Mitt Romney bows out ... The smoke-filled room shortage ... 56:00 ...
Almut’s work as a feminist activist in the former Soviet Union ... How economic anxiety helped tear Ukraine apart ... The very complex coalition behind the Maidan Revolution ... Could wiser European Union policy have averted the Russia-Ukraine conflict? ... Queer feminists and the ultra-right in Ukraine ... The nature of Ukrainian nationalism ... Heading into Overtime ...
Nikki Haley beats Biden in new poll ... How big is Ukraine’s military "breakthrough"? ... Signs that Russia is ready for peace talks ... Why are Americans feeling down on the economy? ... DeSantis takes care of business in hurricane-wrecked Florida ... Are the punishments for January 6 rioters too severe? ... How much time is there for a formidable Democrat to challenge Biden for the nomination? ... Bob and Mickey make big announcement ...
Tim’s article explaining large language models ... Do LLMs reverse engineer the human mind? ... GPT’s mesmerizing emergent properties ... The ‘T’ in Chat-GPT ... How AI models evolve during training ... Human intelligence compared to artificial intelligence ... Heading to Overtime ...
Nikita’s life as an expatriate ... Theories among Russians about Prigozhin’s death ... Putin’s handling of the Wagner mutiny, reassessed ... Did Prigozhin lose his mind? ... How worried should Putin be about Prigozhin’s supporters? ... Russians’ evolving views of the invasion ... Is Putin feeling heat from the nationalist right? ...
Mickey gets a C on the news quiz ... Prigozhin postmortem: Is Putin’s regime more secure now? ... The Ukraine war as “politics by other means” ... The good, the bad, and the ugly of the GOP debate ... Will the indictments help Trump in the general election? ... Parrot room preview: Why Bob finds Vivek scary and “Rich Men North of Richmond” icky; Extraordinary Attorney Woo; Hurricane Hilary hype; retail “shrink” hits the big time; Bidenomics and E.J. Dionne; Do presidential candidates need to be optimistic? ...
Has David’s grim outlook on the climate changed? ... How “global warming” became “climate change” ... What wilder wildfires signal about the environment ... Which climate measures are the surest bet? ... Climate science’s time-scale problem ... The pros and cons of carbon capture ... Heading to Overtime ...
Yet another Trump indictment—How strong is the case? ... Is America becoming a banana republic? ... DeSantis debate strategy goes public ... Bob floats secret elite plot to get Biden off the Democratic ticket ... Why Ukraine’s stalled offensive is politically hazardous for Biden ... Parrot Room preview: US-China war games; Sam Bankman-Fried back in jail; Hunter Biden scandal updates; populist anthem sweeps America; colorful LA character passes away; San Diego’s successful homeless policy; Twitter versus Threads; and signs of AI enlightenment. ...
Sohrab’s idiosyncratic ideological journey ... What makes Sohrab a conservative? ... Sohrab’s new book Tyranny, Inc.—a critique of neoliberal capitalism’s effects on American life ... What happened to the labor movement in America? ... Private equity’s role in Sears’s demise ... “Ghost papers”: Wall Street's effect on local news ... Overtime preview: Sohrab’s foreign policy; supporting Donald Trump; re-industrializing without Cold War II; and what is to be done? ...
New challenges for Ukraine ... What do lead pipes have to do with climate migrants? Ask Biden ... Are the Bidens corruption “disruptors”? ... Mickey’s craziest theory of the week ... Another wrinkle in the Hunter Biden scandal ... What mainstream media won’t tell you about Iran ... Mickey’s searing critique of Obama ... Parrot room preview: Mickey on the Trump cases; RIP Robbie Robertson; Tim Scott’s campaign expense weirdness; Biden's strange Saudi-Israel plan; Code Pink; assessing the UFO whistleblower; San Francisco's autonomous cabs; Michael Lind vs Richard Hanania; losing Sugar Man; Oppenheimer (the documentary); Sohrab Ahmari; a cornucopia of comments ...
How US-China rivalry is shaking up the region ... Why Washington wants to control the Middle East oil spigot ... The odds of an imminent confrontation with Iran ... Is America breaking international law in Syria? ... What would a Middle East without US intervention look like? ... Why Israel lacks a written constitution ... Heading to Overtime ...
Jeffrey Goldberg becomes King of Washington ... Does Trump prosecutor Jack Smith have the goods? ... Hunter Biden’s corruption defense: It was all an illusion ... President Biden’s Ukraine quagmire ... What Trump gets right about Russia-Ukraine ... Is West Africa heading toward a major war? ... Parrot Room preview: A PBS lament; Mickey’s border worries; Bob’s reflection on jury duty; the economics of electric vehicles; the UFO files; Italy pivots away from guaranteed income; over-the-counter Alzheimer’s test; US-China decoupling; room-temperature superconductors; and the limits of AI ...
Bob and Dan reminisce about blogging and Bloggingheads ... Was the first year of Russia’s invasion a success for US foreign policy? ... When will Putin be ready to cut a deal? ... The odds of a wider war—or a nuclear one ... What good can come from continuing the war? ... Has the US mismanaged its relationship with Putin’s Russia? ... Putin’s fear of western-backed color revolutions ...
Bob extols the virtues of jury duty ... Ukraine’s counter offensive surge ... What does Hunter’s failed plea deal mean for Joe? ... In search of a DeSantis strategy ... The Niger coup and Cold War II ... Parrot room preview: Israel’s issues; musings on late musicians; Is Ramaswamy surging?; New lab leak controversy; Mickey’s border question for Biden; Is DEI d-e-a-d?; A crazy (ex-)Twitter theory; AI self-regulation ...
Where AI fits in Connor’s tech threat taxonomy ... What does the “general” in artificial general intelligence actually mean? ... What should worry us about AI right now? ... Connor: Don’t put your trust in AI companies ... The promise and perils of open-sourcing AI ... Why "interpretability" matters ... What would an aligned AI actually look like? ... Bridging the technology wisdom gap ...
Senator Chris Murphy declares war on loneliness ... Why is the Ukraine offensive going badly? ... Why Biden should push for peace talks now ... Threads unravels ... Was RFK’s Covid conjecture anti-Semitic? ... Mickey reviews the MSM version of DeSantis ... American diplomacy update: murky scandals and trash talk ... Parrot Room preview: Biden corruption scandal; electric car paranoia; what Trump will do if he wins; Mickey on Xi Jinping; Trump’s trials; Tony Bennett passes away; Meta’s dubious AI policy; Is the internet annoying, or is Bob just old? ...
What is this new Overton Windows series about? ... Tamler’s connections to Israel and Bob’s experiences there ... What does Zionism mean in practice? ... The shifting Overton window around Israel/Palestine ... The heavy-handed response to the BDS movement ... What the Israel/Palestine discourse says about Overton windows ... So where should the boundaries be set? ...
Mickey bats .500 on this week’s news quiz ... Gen. “Spartacus” and other Russians with attitude ... What (or who) is impeding peace in Ukraine? ... What Biden has that other possible Dem candidates don’t ... What Trump’s messaging has that DeSantis’s doesn’t ... Untangling Threads’s early days ... Parrot Room preview: AI update; the mysterious Gal Luft; the irony of Klaatu’s speech; Mickey’s diversity epiphany; Canadian euthanasia initiative; Silo spoilers; AMC Pacer maker passes; Bob’s China vindication; Alan Arkin speech debate round three ...
Why Bob invited Russians with Attitude onto the Nonzero Podcast ... Why do Kirill and Nikolay support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? ... Shortcomings of US mainstream media in covering Russia ... The roots of the Donbass rebellion ... Parallels between the Maidan Revolution and the Donbass rebellion ... What was Putin’s main reason for invading? ... Is Russia systematically committing war crimes? ... Final thoughts from Nikolay and Kirill before heading into Overtime ...
Should Trump’s GOP rivals attack him, praise him, or both? ... Prigozhin mutiny aftermath gets messy ... Signs of a coming ceasefire in Ukraine ... How many Russia hawks really care about Ukrainians? ... MSM deep-sixes affirmative action ruling ... Is Zuckerberg’s Twitter clone ageist? ... Parrot Room preview: New anti-censorship ruling; private companies and the First Amendment; The Day the Earth Stood Still; riots in France; Macron’s good policy idea; artificial intelligence and war; complaints about Timothy Snyder and the New York Times; Elon-Zuckerberg cage match. ...
Why Michael McFaul is wrong about Vladimir Putin ... Is Putin ready for a ceasefire? ... Has SCOTUS succeeded in killing affirmative action? ... Americans do have to pay student loans, don’t have to make LGBT websites ... Is RFK Jr. entering Trump’s orbit? ... Parrot Room preview: GOP election strategy; Bidenomics and national conservatism; band name of the year; Yglesias says liberals have higher IQs; final episode of Silo; Bob reviews Invasion of the Body Snatchers; Titanic submarine tragedy; and reasons to worry about a false flag attack in Ukraine. ...
Sean’s new book, We May Dominate the World: Ambition, Anxiety, and the Rise of the American Colossus ... China’s and Russia’s behavior today compared to America’s a century ago ... If geopolitical realities don’t change, are great powers doomed to blow up the world? ... Why did the US decide to dominate the western hemisphere? ... American interventions from the Civil War to World War I ... Why forceful US interventions in Latin America have become less common ... Were the fears motivating the annexation of Hawaii based in reality? ... Did the Spanish-American War have broad public support? ...
Should Hunter Biden and Trump get the Tim Geithner treatment? ... Bob’s latest evidence that Biden shouldn’t run again ... Have we reached peak RFK Jr.? ... Does the counteroffensive hurt Ukraine’s cause? ... Leaky new dam collapse theory ... The rapidly metastasizing GOP primary field ... Israel-Palestine gets Black Mirror-y ... Alito’s ill-considered trip ... Parrot room preview: The right’s schism over capitalism; Prigozhin's insurrection; the Titanic sub tragedy; Why Mickey is growing to hate EVs; Janan Ganesh’s elite take on populism; Bob’s (possibly) new UFO thoughts; Cutting the tax cuts from supply-side economics?; Silo; Biden’s billion-dollar battery bonuses; Biden’s reverse-Epstein problem ...
The (fuzzy) distinction between cognitive and emotional empathy ... Simon’s work on autism and empathy ... Should we really view autism as a spectrum? ... Are powerful people bad at cognitive empathy? ... Hitler, tribalism, and the societal dynamics of empathy ... Can cognitive empathy save the world? ... The “double-empathy” problem ... How autistic kids play differently ...
Mickey gets a B+ on this week’s news quiz ... Is RFK Jr. the Dem’s key to booting Biden? ... Chris Christie’s chances vs. Trump ... Has Tucker gone off the deep end? ... No, Russia didn’t blow up Ukraine’s dam ... Is the Ukrainian counteroffensive failing? ... Parrot room preview: Remembering Daniel Ellsberg; Elizabeth Gilbert’s self-cancellation; the fake deepfake of John Lennon; Mickey’s AI question; a bit of Epstein news; LIV golf update; Mickey contra popular vote compact; the Blob’s pro-immigration argument; Who’s going to pardon Trump? And why?; Did Harvard or the CIA drive the Unabomber crazy?; RIP Ed Fredkin; Silo; Harvard and the Inuit ...
Frank’s book The End of History and the Last Man ... Bob’s book Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny ... Do people have to be rational in order to cooperate? ... Are AI and other technologies advancing too rapidly for society to adapt? ... Frank’s take on Hegel ... Why Frank’s a Russia hawk and Bob's a Russia dove ... Will authoritarian regimes do a better job of dealing with advanced information technologies? ...
The GOP primary gets crowded ... Will Trump’s indictment help him get the nomination? ... Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive begins ... Dissecting Timothy Snyder’s Ukraine analysis ... Looks like Ukraine blew up Nord Stream ... Tucker’s new Twitter show ... Parrot Room preview: Bob draws lesson from PGA’s merger with Saudi’s LIV; affirmative action set to fall; Apple’s new goggles; Taylor Swift; food stamps and the homeless; why Gen-Zers are more likely to be non-binary; Cracker Barrel goes woke; Chinese spy situation in Cuba; Bob on the sci-fi show Silo. ...
The dam breaks in Ukraine ... Is western media giving a clear picture of the war? ... Why do some Ukrainian soldiers wear Nazi symbols? ... How Russia-Ukraine could become a wider war ... Could the US have prevented the war? ... Seeing American foreign policy from Putin's point of view ...
China’s role in Saudi-Iran rapprochement ... The legacy of Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal ... Does Israel have a Palestine plan? ... Tensions resurface in Kosovo ... NATO expansion and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ... Has the US mismanaged its relationship with Russia? ... Prospects for peace in Ukraine—or for massive military escalation ... A message from Bob about this week's Parrot Room ...
Sam’s Bloggingheads bona fides ... Is AI “interpretability” worth the trouble? ... Natural selection and artificial intelligence ... Are large language models absorbing human nature? ... What Sam thinks singularitarian AI doomers get wrong ... Is it time for an AI-safety Manhattan Project? ... Sam: Let a thousand GPT-4 (but not GPT-5) plug-ins bloom. ... Where are our AI safety blindspots? ...
Bob quizzes Mickey on worrisome Ukraine war developments ... What could push Putin to go nuclear? ... How disastrous was the DeSantis launch really? ... DeSantis’s possible anti-Trump trump card ... Who’s losing the debt-ceiling fight? ... Parrot room preview: Soul and dual Dune reviews; the latest on Epstein-Gates; Bob’s 12 Monkeys howler; AI; simply the best of Tina Turner; Mickey delineates new immigration bills ...
The watershed moment that led Ben to write his new book, "Cry, Baby" ... Does meditation make you less emotional? ... How different socio-cultural groups feel about crying ... Why do we cry anyway? ... Transformative and performative weeping ... Putting Joel Osteen’s tears under a microscope ... How does the nature of crying change over a lifetime? ... Overtime preview: Bob’s most embarrassing adult crying experience, psychedelics and crying, and more! ... Ben delivers a benediction on crying ...
Mickey’s risky quiz for Bob ... Biden, Feinstein, Fetterman: Compare and contrast ... Does DeSantis have a path to the presidency? ... Bob’s biggest takeaway from the AI hearings ... How the chip war with China makes real war more likely ... What senators should have asked OpenAI’s CEO ... Ukraine war update ... Parrot room preview: (Not much) debt deal talk; Robert Putnam essay assessed; the Thiel-Epstein and Botstein-Epstein and Chomsky-Epstein connections; an important note on inequality; examining 12 Monkeys; Tucker; new “woke-watch” items; more AI ...
Tim’s tech background and his new newsletter, Understanding AI ... Natural selection and artificial intelligence ... Why Tim is a singularity skeptic ... How exactly would AI take over? And will it even want to? ... The bad AI vs good AI arms race ... What exactly are "AI agents"? ... Why Tim is an AI job-pocalypse skeptic ... Has AI created the biggest tech hype wave ever? ... How Tim thinks AI will actually transform human life ...
The food fight within Russia’s military establishment ... Could Ukraine’s looming offensive succeed? ... The foreign policy Blob’s biggest blind spot ... Was Trump’s town hall performance a tactical blunder? ... Is DeSantis’s attack on Disney anti-democratic? ... Tucker moves to Twitter ...
America’s missed opportunity to create a peaceful post-Cold-War world ... The moment US foreign policy went off track ... Why didn’t the West invest in Russia’s post-Cold War recovery? ... The foreign policy Blob’s continuity across presidential administrations ... Has the American journalism gotten worse in recent decades? ...
Mickey deflates a DeSantis challenger ... Mickey’s ego-inflating podcast week ... Who was behind the Kremlin drone attack? ... Neocon propaganda outlet busted; Bob vindicated ... Who has the bigger beef with Neera Tanden? ... How bad was the leaked Tucker text about how “white men fight”? ... Parrot room preview: Gordon Lightfoot trivia lightning-round; adjudicating the Ed Sheeran case; new Epstein name-drops; Bob’s latest AI piece; DeSantis vs. Disney; the latest Twitter rival’s arrival; Elon’s subtle Tesla pricing strategy ...
Israel’s many issues ... How ugly could Israel’s judicial reform crisis get? ... Are Palestinian citizens of Israel really under “apartheid”? ... The demographic and ideological sources of Israel’s instability ... If the two-state solution is dead, now what? ... How might an increasingly multipolar world affect Israel? ... Why climate change makes Israel-Palestine even more dire ...
Is MSM giving cheat sheets to Biden? ... Trump says he might skip GOP debates ... Will Tucker make a run for the White House? ... Disney escalates its feud with DeSantis ... Bob: Ukraine’s looming offensive is a bad idea ...
John’s upcoming book, How States Think: The Rationality of Foreign Policy ... Is the US to blame for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? ... Is Putin less rational than John assumes? ... Why John is a Russia dove and a China hawk ... Does China pose a threat to freedom around the world? ... Why John thinks China’s rise threatens American security ... Has globalization made great-power peace possible? ... Should the US defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion? ...
Is DeSantis done for? ... Ro Khanna for president! ... Why Cold War II makes AI scarier ... Is Twitter done for? ... How imminent is a recession, really? ... Ukraine war update ... The Blinken wrinkle in the Hunter Biden laptop story ... Parrot room preview: Mickey’s AI revelation; Can the GOP win over the college crowd?; Is Fetterman out of the woods?; Is a border crisis incoming?; The slow-burn of Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice; more on DeSantis ...
How Roko and Alex wound up debating on the Nonzero Podcast ... Could near-term AI disruption be worse than Covid? ... Is AI an existential threat? ... How the sci-fi apocalypse scenario might unfold ... How is a renegade AI like a man wearing a condom? ... Why would an AI want to kill us? ... How the Cold War makes AI more dangerous ... Roko and Alex make final statements before Overtime ...
The promise (and perils) of Notes, Substack’s new social media platform ... One big way Notes could be a better Twitter ... Nikita’s grand vision for Notes—and Substack ... User control vs. the allure of algorithms ... Is a better culture of discourse possible through Notes? ... How Notes benefits from elite buy-in ... Bob’s advice for Substack: Don't be like Microsoft! ... Towards a civil society ...
The Biden age issue ... Are Republicans setting the stage for Biden’s re-election? ... Bob: Right-wing “non-interventionists” are rabid China hawks ... The Pentagon’s no good, very leaky week ... Is Clarence Thomas corrupt? ... The New York Times hunts down a leaker ... Elon vs. Matt Taibbi and Substack ... Parrot Room preview: The new legal theory for prosecuting Trump; Biden’s border policy; Mickey vs. Ross Douthat on AI alarmism; government programs Mickey likes; the movie Megan comes to life; the potential of Substack Notes. ...
How freaked out is Michal by current AIs? ... Why "theory of mind" (aka cognitive empathy)—even in humans—is mind-blowing ... Michal’s theory-of-mind experiments with AI ... Bob’s theory-of-mind experiments with AI ... Do large language models construct representations of concepts? ... Does AI have subjective experience? ... What human neural networks do that AI doesn't ...
The SBF and Trump indictments: compare and contrast ... Is DeSantis tanking? ... How the Tennessee House controversy could boost Biden ... Unpacking progressive wins in Wisconsin and Chicago ... Is Twitter becoming a banana republic? ... Ukraine war (and NATO) update ... Parrot room preview: Russian pro-war blogger’s strange assassination; Jill Biden’s basketball misstep; Clarence Thomas’s controversial trips; Amazon against anti-woke reviews; M3GAN, the alignment problem, and more AI talk; GM’s EV blunder; Matt Taibbi vs. Mehdi Hasan; Dershowitz on Epstein ...
Paul’s book, The World Crisis and International Law ... Should we demand that other countries be as liberal as we are? ... What went wrong in Russia after the Soviet Union fell? ... How post-Cold war consensus gave way to global fragmentation ... Can international law prevent techno-authoritarianism? ... Paul’s skepticism about international law ... How the knowledge economy could lead to a Chinese Trump ...
A common conundrum: How to pay off your porn-star mistres ... Ways to make Ron DeSantis seem human ... Bob: The newest AI has cognitive empathy ... How Cold War II makes AI more dangerous ... Why are traditional American values in decline? ... What foreign policy elites say about Russia-Ukraine behind closed doors ... Parrot Room preview: Something smart Zelensky said; US think tank advocates murder; how the Nashville shooting was reported; Musk makes another Twitter policy change; why Elizabeth Holmes was ahead of her time ...
Bob and David reminisce about Bloggingheads ... David’s book, American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy ... Are Russiagaters moving the goalposts? ... What the Trump team knew about Russian meddling ... The missing “collusion” piece of the Russiagate puzzle ... Why David thinks Russiagate's biggest critics are perpetuating a hoax ... If Russiagaters are right, why didn’t Trump do Russia many favors? ...
Bob: On foreign policy, there is no real Ron DeSantis ... The difference between right-restrainers and left-restrainers ... The dangerous politics of indicting Trump ... Trump’s new plan to take out the deep state ... Is the war turning in Ukraine’s favor? ... Why did DeSantis change the pronunciation of his name? ... Parrot Room preview: Everything Everywhere All At Once speaks to Bob; SVB fallout not over; banning the word “woke”; Camaro goes out of production—or does it?; likelihood of Covid lab-leak ...
Richard’s banking and business bona fides ... Was the Silicon Valley Bank crash a harbinger of worse to come? ... What actually caused SVB’s collapse? ... Richard: SVB failed risk management 101 ... Costs and benefits of the SVB bailout ... The Fed’s oft-forgotten original role ... Did the deregulation SVB lobbied for doom it? ... Overtime preview: Richard’s career highlights; cognitive empathy in commerce; how to hire like a boss; and more! ...
Mickey’s mind-bending analogy between romance and politics ... Bob triggered by DeSantis’s “territorial dispute” line about Russia-Ukraine ... How to prevent the next bank collapse? ... Was “wokeness” behind SVB’s demise? ... Ukraine war update ... Are Democrats ditching Israel? ... Winners and losers of Iran-Saudi détente ... Parrot room preview: Mickey’s quibble with Bob’s AI piece; SBF news; Silicon Valley’s campaign to ban TikTok; the sad state of the Metaverse; RIP Jim Gordon; Summer of Soul; Is DeSantis too wine-track? Too beer-track? Who cares?; New segment: Brushes with Greatness ...
Ananyo’s book, The Man from the Future, about game theory inventor and polymath John von Neumann ... Early life as a mathematical wunderkind ... Von Neumann’s foundational contributions to quantum physics ... Was entanglement as "spooky" to von Neumann as it was to Einstein? ... Building—and reckoning with—the atomic bomb ... Did von Neumann really want to nuke the USSR? ... Why was early game theory so zero-sum–focused? ... Influence on Turing, the open source movement, and modern computing ... How brushes with totalitarianism shaped von Neumann’s views ... Programming pioneer Klára Dán von Neumann ... The duality of von Neumann’s social life ... Did von Neumann grok incompleteness before Gödel? ... Unfinished work comparing computers and the brain ... Von Neumann’s deathbed conversion: Pascal's wager or something more? ...
Biden’s soak-the-rich budget: big news or borefest? ... How Biden insulting Xi Jinping endangers Ukraine ... Bob finds another reason Biden shouldn’t run for re-election ... Ukraine war update ... Nordstream’s hobbyist saboteurs ... Tucker Carlson outed as anti-Trump phony ... Parrot Room preview: Gavin Newsom takes on Walgreens; Twitter community notes annoy Mickey; Semafor's China racket; Bob’s Washington Post lab leak piece; Peter Thiel’s techno-optimism. ...
Paul’s new book, Psych: The Story of the Human Mind ... Does psychology need more evolutionary thinking? ... Freud and Skinner and parts in between ... Mind-body dualism’s enduring intuitive appeal ... ChatGPT and the human mind: compare and contrast ... Are cognitive biases overblown? ... A brief note about the podcast ... Implicit biases, memory, and other topics covered in the book ...
Mickey celebrates good week for JD Vance, Ron DeSantis ... The Biden admin’s “all sticks, no carrots” approach to foreign policy ... Is China’s plummeting birth rate a problem? ... Will Bibi wag the dog? ... Will AI kill the journalism star? ... Ukraine war update ... Alarmism about a China-Russia axis ... Parrot room preview: more Ukraine; Dilbert creator gets canceled; why the kids aren’t alright; Will student loan cancellation pass Supreme Court muster?; Buy books before it’s too late?; Mickey’s flick pick; wrapping up The Long Goodbye; Lab-leak theory gets a boost; more AI; The real story being Elon’s algorithmic boost ...
Paul’s new book, Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence ... Will AIs replace humans in future wars? ... China as an AI superpower ... Will Beijing spread high-tech authoritarianism globally? ... How useful is the “democracy versus autocracy” framework? ... Why Paul’s worried about a race to the bottom in AI safety ... Tom Cruise can’t hold a candle to AI pilots ...
Washington Post highlights a cost of US hypocrisy ... Will China push for peace—or fund Russia’s war effort (or both)? ... Can Trump use Biden’s support for Ukraine against him? ... Russia’s offensive, Ukraine’s rope-a-dope ... Bob’s evolving view of America’s role in the Maidan Revolution ... The US vows to back Israel if it attacks Iran ... Parrot Room preview: AI updates; Republicans and Social Security; How Blobbish is Fiona Hill?; Carlos Watson arrested ...
Coleman’s definition of “wokeness”—and why he’s against it ... Poverty or privilege: Which predicts wokeness among black Americans? ... How much progress has America made since Jim Crow? ... Why writers in particular are haunted by their past ... How racists and criminals are made ... Does "hip-hop culture exist"—and is it bad? ... Coleman diversifies his controversy portfolio ...
How should Republicans counter Biden’s blue-collar messaging? ... The disturbing thing balloon-gate reveals about the Dems ... The Fetterman health crisis ... Twitter’s Elon algorithm ... Are women more conciliatory than men? ... Is Biden pushing Zelensky toward the negotiating table? ... An underappreciated risk of arming Ukraine ... Parrot room preview: Bob drops some hip-hop knowledge; an AI-war reversal and the dangers of “stochastic parrots”; trans activists taking names; Mickey’s quantum-physics-related pitch for Bob’s next book; new Epstein docs ...
Norman’s new book, I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It!: Heretical Thoughts on Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom ... How Norman exposed a bestselling book as a hoax ... The price Norman paid for taking on Alan Dershowitz ... What effects has “wokeness” had on academia? ... Pronouns and the perils of linguistic prescriptivism ... Who's pushing identity politics on the left? And why? ... A few unkind words about Bari Weiss ... Norman: Ibram X. Kendi is a fashion statement not a scholar ...
Why Biden’s big speech has Bob worried ... Did the US blow up the Nord Stream pipeline? ... Trump accuses DeSantis of grooming ... With friends like Joe Rogan, Ilhan Omar doesn’t need enemies ... The latest from the Twitter Files: new dirt on the Blob ... Biden takes on Xi, seems a little unhinged ... Why more people are concerned about Ukraine’s chances ... Parrot Room preview: Did the West block Russia-Ukraine negotiations?; social vs. income equality; reviewing The Long Goodbye; America’s AI arms race; quantum physics; grading Burt Bacharach songs. ...
Gabor’s new book The Myth of Normal, about trauma and mental and physical illness in modern Western society ... Are we all victims of a “toxic” culture? ... Gabor’s early years in Nazi- and then Soviet-occupied Hungary ... What Gabor thinks standard theories of addiction get wrong ... Can trauma ever be a good thing? ... Was Bob’s childhood traumatic? And if so, how? ... Trauma, attachment, and authenticity ... Is modern society hostile to community? ... The difference between healthy and unhealthy anger ... A primer on “compassionate inquiry” ... The time Gabor was leading an ayahuasca retreat and got deposed by shamans ... Gabor on why cognitive empathy is difficult but essential ... What Gabor sees as the essence of the book ...
Is the 2024 race shaping up to be a political Groundhog Day? ... Ilhan Omar and the Israel criticism tightrope ... Does the left or right look worse on recent Russiagate disclosures? ... A question about the DNC email hack ... Ukraine war update: Is time on Russia’s side? ... Is the Biden admin angling for a peace deal with Putin? ... Parrot Room preview: Evil—the show and the concept; the Tyre Nichols killing; Gaetz’s bad idea; AI inquiries; Mickey’s thrilling new Twitter power; untangling quantum entanglement; what happened to hope in politics? ...
Nikita’s life as a Russian expat in Armenia ... How the Ukraine war is talked about in Russia ... Could Putin fall from power? ... Who left and who stayed in Russia post-mobilization? ... Russia’s role in the Armenia-Azerbaijan crisis ... How the Ukraine war could turn into World War III ... Are “false flag” claims about the Maidan Massacre beyond the pale? ... The trouble with the way we talk about war ... The role of extremists in mass protests ...
Can AI transcend conventional wisdom? ... Is Trump back as 2024 GOP frontrunner? ... The trouble with “the poor” ... J.D. Vance has Ukraine on the brain ... Ukraine update: How to make sending tanks make sense ... Parrot room preview: Bob’s quasi-lucid dream; Evil corrections; The deep roots of Russian nationalist support for the war; Leon Wieseltier quote critique; DeSantis and black history; should judicial noms know their civics?; Kyrsten Sinema conspiracies; economic vs. social inequality; “exciting” child tax credit news; Israel’s multiple powder kegs ...
Ivan’s Ukrainian upbringing and academic background ... Where did pro-Russian sentiment in eastern Ukraine come from? ... Why Ivan worried Ukraine’s 2014 revolution would lead to civil war ... Did Europe impede resolution of Russia-Ukraine tensions? ... What western media gets wrong about the Maidan revolution ... Was the Maidan massacre a false flag operation? ... The state of Ukrainian democracy after the Maidan revolution ... The political forces that impeded Zelensky’s peace plan ...
The alphas of the world gather in Davos ... Mickey buys a blue check, dresses up to celebrate ... Does Russia have Ukraine on the defensive? ... How serious is the threat of US government debt default? ... Biden’s chances in 2024 ... Parrot Room preview: David Crosby passes away; Alec Baldwin charged with manslaughter; the issue that could destroy woke-ism; college after affirmative action; a false flag in Ukraine?; More Elon news; loyalty oath at Sundance; Bob reviews Top Gun: Maverick ...
Challenges in applying cognitive empathy in daily life ... Two types of self-awareness—and their links to cognitive empathy ... Josh’s recent (mis)adventures in cognitive empathy ... Can self-awareness make conflicts manageable? ... The relationship between concentration and insight meditation ... Literature and the cultivation of cognitive empathy ... Understanding one’s self vs. understanding others ... The ice cube theory of human nature ... Cognitive empathy’s role in building “mindfulness 3.0” ...
Anti-gas-stove tyranny – or slow news week? ... Biden’s classified docs scandal is a “granfalloon in search of a MacGuffin led by a wrang-wrang” ... Did Bob Gates and Condoleezza Rice miss a chance to prevent the Ukraine war? ... Is the war turning in Russia’s favor? ... The prospects for peace negotiations ... Parrot Room preview: Biden’s pivot to help the working class; Does AI have a liberal bias?; Has woke peaked?; Matthew Yglesias' style section profile; Jeff Beck, Lisa Marie Presley, and Blake Hounshell pass away; White Lotus; Mickey’s new conspiracy theory about Kevin McCarthy ...
Why are so many people (including Fred) down on John Mearsheimer? ... Bob: Explaining bad behavior is not the same as justifying it ... How the US eroded international law - and why it matters ... Did US policy make Russia’s invasion of Ukraine more likely? ... NATO’s role in Ukraine before the invasion ... How would the US respond to a China-Mexico military alliance? ... Henry Kissinger’s peace proposal ... Impediments to productive debate on US foreign policy ...
Mickey’s guide to the House Speaker drama ... What vexes Bob about the House Speaker vote ... Why Damar Hamlin’s injury wouldn’t have happened in the old days ... Biden’s new good cop, bad cop immigration plan ... Why keep sanctioning Venezuela (or Cuba, or Syria, or Iran, etc.)? ... Elon and the trouble with “great man” theories of tech progress ... Is Twitter’s new views feature a boon or bullshit? ... Ukraine war update ... Parrot room preview: The Matt Schlapp sex scandal; Jason DeParle on welfare; Mickey’s case against “unity”; More calls for a Semafor clawback; an SBF-AIPAC connection; a second Epstein-Harvard connection; The White Lotus ...
Bob hoodwinks the fashion police ... Predictions for the new year ... The pros and cons of “nepotocracy” ... Predictions for the new year (cont’d) ... Impromptu Ukraine war update ... The top 3(ish) stories of 2022 ... Is Twitter salvageable? ... The true threat of Twitter (according to Mickey) ... Mickey’s underreported and overreported stories of the year ... What did the Jan. 6 committee miss? ... Bob’s perverse theory on why the GOP would be wise to drop the Hunter Biden thing ... Parrot room preview: The root cause of homelessness; legalize cocaine? Why stop there?; The SBF clawback; signs that the tide is turning on wokeness; Bob’s grand quasi-unified MKUltra-lab leak theory; three bonus predictions from Mickey; Bob checks into The White Lotus ...
The legacy of free trade in America ... Adam’s new book Opening Up by Cracking Down, about the repression of union activism in developing countries ... Car bombing and other ways Argentina subdued labor in the 80's ... Why did the US open up trade so early? ... The quasi-dystopian law India used to break strikes in the 90’s ... Underacknowledged long-term effects of free trade ... Is a pro-labor approach to free trade possible? ... Making globalism great again ...
Has the tide turned against Elon—and against Twitter? ... Elon accuses Fauci of funding research that killed millions ... Bob sees signs that the “Twitter files” journalism is biased ... Why now might be a good time for Ukraine diplomacy ... Parrot Room preview: SBF news; breaking down the nuclear fusion breakthrough; the AI alignment problem; China’s coming COVID explosion; TikTok backlash gains traction; Elon’s growing Tesla problems ...
What Anders didn’t like about Bob’s Washington Post op-ed on Russia-Ukraine ... Was Putin always bent on invading Russia’s neighbors? ... Bob and Anders debate NATO expansion ... Should the West encourage regime change in Russia? ... Are the US and NATO “fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian”? ... The causes and consequences of Ukraine’s 2014 revolution ... Is Putin committing genocide? ... Possible endgames of the Ukraine war—and of Putin’s Russia ... Could better US policy have averted the Ukraine war? ...
A brief message from Bob ... Why Mickey thinks the first installment of the Twitter Files was a something-burger ... What Bob thinks Taibbi (and Musk) flubbed ... Do the files show a pro-Dem bias in pre-Musk Twitter? ... Ukraine war update ... Parrot Room preview: an (unwitting) win for Bob; a damning J.D. Vance quote for Mickey; the latest SBF allegation; the worst. Substack. Issue. Ever.; Bob submits a beef with Mickey for commenter consideration; commenter takes on Musk’s gun tweet; potential Parrot Room theme song(s); the Fed on why men are leaving the labor force; Janan Ganesh on why you should leave Twitter ...
Mónica’s book I Never Thought of It That Way, about how to have “bridge-building” conversations ... Why Mónica’s immigrant parents support(ed) Trump ... Barriers to getting bridge-building buy-in ... Understanding vs. the need to be understood ... Bridge-building 101 ... Is understanding a slippery slope to excusing? ... The underrated bridge-building power of curiosity ... Does the media fuel or just reflect our divisions? ... The limits of bridge-building ...
Would a Biden re-election bid spell doom for Dems? ... Opening the Ron DeSantis black box ... Bob’s Washington Post piece on Russia-Ukraine diplomacy ... Is it too early to write off Herschel Walker? ... Sam Bankman-Fried’s bipartisan approach to corrupting politics ... Elon’s and Apple’s China challenges ... Parrot Room preview: Mickey’s spat with Damon Linker; what we know about Peter Thiel; Ye and Fuentes; the center-less GOP; Elon’s Twitter regime; Errol Morris’s miniseries Wormwood. ...
Eric’s new book We Are Not One, about changing American Jewish attitudes toward Israel over the years ... Jewish-American identity before its “Zionization” ... Why fewer young American Jews are feeling the pro-Israel vibe ... Israel in American politics ... The “Israel as apartheid state” debate ... How the 1960’s defined Jewish visions of Israel ... Is a “two-state solution” now the conservative position? ... Zionism vs. social justice activism ... Why Israel is fine with the Palestinian status quo ... Does Israel really need US support? ... Could international pressure help solve the Israel-Palestine conflict? ...
The (totally selfless) reasons Mickey wants an SBF clawback ... Did Semafor fumble its big SBF-Elon scoop? ... Mickey’s clawback campaign (cont’d) ... Origins of Mickey’s (alleged) Ben Smith vendetta revealed! ... Is Musk destroying his town square? ...
Paul’s upcoming book, Psych: The Story of the Human Mind ... Bob’s upcoming book, tk ... Are psychopaths high in (cognitive) empathy? ... How good are we at perspective taking—and how can we get better? ... Elon Musk’s apparent cognitive empathy deficit ... Is cognitive empathy a biological adaptation? ... Is it even possible to understand the minds of others? ... Paul’s budding interest in perversity ...
Why Mickey’s not unhappy about the midterm results ... Can Trump go the distance against DeSantis? ... The Pelosi era ends ... Zelensky invites NATO to join the war ... Is a peace deal on the horizon in Ukraine? ... Elon update ... SBF's fall takes wind out of the sails of effective altruism movement ...
Mickey mourns the fate of his midterm hopes and dreams ... What the midterm results mean for 2024 ... Who wins in a Trump v. DeSantis civil war? ... Bob’s plan to boot Biden from the 2024 ticket ... Will Musk chicken out on his blue check shake-up? ... The Twitter business model Musk may be banking on ... Parrot room preview: Ukraine update; more Twitter business model talk; Metaverse vibe check; Errol Morris’s Leary love story; questioning “blame Trump” midterm post-mortems; is America getting nicer?; Mickey’s ongoing lessons on how to talk to a liberal; critiquing Chamath Palihapitiya’s critiques of journalism ...
Signs of the so-called “meaning crisis” ... How John addresses the meaning crisis in his own life ... Bob gets empathy-circled—live! ... How much of the meaning crisis is a crisis of community? ... Wisdom as the antidote to self-deception ... Is technological change outpacing our ability to adapt? ... How and where might new sources of meaning emerge? ... The conundrum of collective intelligence (or how should we talk about demons?) ... Can video games give us meaning? ... John: “Enlightenment” that fails to confront cognitive bias is meaningless ...
Why immigration squishes have Mickey worried about the midterms ... Elon Musk’s bull-in-a-china-shop strategy to owning Twitter ... The conspiracy theory about the attack on Paul Pelosi ... If Putin didn’t have nukes, would Biden’s Ukraine policy still be dangerous? ... Who is calling the shots in the Biden White House? ... Why Cold War psychology might have less sway over Musk-owned Twitter ... Bob has another baseball quiz for Mickey ... Could Biden’s tech embargo against China backfire horribly? ... Parrot Room preview: The odds of a centrist party succeeding in America; Elon’s secret master plan; Bob’s debate with Bret Weinstein; the impact of automation on workers; Bob and Mickey assess the metaverse (via Ready Player One) ...
Sam’s Foreign Affairs piece on the importance of Ukraine diplomacy ... What’s Biden’s endgame in Ukraine? ... Sam: Russia has already suffered a strategic defeat ... Did the West play a role in Ukraine’s 2014 revolution? ... Putin says the West is Russia’s real enemy. Does he believe it? ... America’s lack of diplomatic urgency before Putin invaded ... How much pro-Russia sentiment is there in Ukraine? ...
Mickey takes a bite out of midterm “overism” ... How revolutionary will Musk’s Twitter reign be? ... Who quashed the Progressive Caucus’s Ukraine letter? ... What’s holding up diplomacy in Ukraine? ... Is Blob opinion on the war starting to split? ... The cost of US hypocrisy ... The media’s weird coverage of the "dirty bomb" story ... Parrot room preview: implausible dirty bomb scenarios; UK PM’s dramatic early moves; a few words about the late Lucianne Goldberg; an (iffy) argument against lefty state legislature alarmism; Mickey’s labor-relations observations; Xi Jinping and the Hu Jintao removal; illustrating the dangers of war-time overreaction by way of Russian relocation coverage; Joe’s McCarthyism; Russians adopting Ukrainian children; what’s in it for Putin-humiliation-pushers? ...
How worried should we be about the “Kessler Syndrome”? ... The nightmare scenario for anti-satellite weapons anarchy ... How an attack in space could trigger WWIII ... International law is way behind the curve in outer space ... Why isn’t the grave threat of space anarchy getting attention? ... How the new Cold War makes conflict in space more likely ...
Elon Musk’s esoteric insult of former Russian president Medvedev ... Russia’s “General Armageddon” gears up for retreat ... Is the GOP becoming the anti-war party? ... Mickey’s many midterms nightmares ... With Britain's Tories in shambles, will Boris rise again? ... Bob: US policy helped create the latest "axis of evil" ... Parrot Room preview: Did Bob mischaracterize Mearsheimer?; Kanye West and Elon Musk take over social media; Jon Meacham’s fears for US democracy; what lies beneath LA’s racism row ...
What Seth learned from being in Ukraine that you won’t learn from western media ... Was the ouster of Ukraine’s president in 2014 a revolution or a coup? ... Could the White House have averted the invasion – and could it end the war now? ... The degree of on-the-ground American involvement in Ukraine and Syria ... Why Seth warns of frozen conflict when others predict Ukrainian victory ... The extent of pro-Russian sentiment in eastern Ukraine ... Seth: War always means atrocity, so we should avoid wars ... Is wartime reporting less objective now than usual? ...
What does America not understand about China – and vice versa? ... Signs of Chinese discontent with Xi Jinping ... How the focus on “beating China” distracts the US from other priorities ... Is the US making conflict over Taiwan more likely? ... Jessica: The threat to American democracy comes from within, not from China ... The roots of China’s growing assertiveness on the world stage ... What US and Chinese foreign policy (unfortunately) have in common ...
Why Mickey thinks Evan McMullin could become king of America ... Herschel Walker’s “three bulls” parable ... Is Fetterman ready for the debate stage? ... Biden’s Saudi ask vs. Trump’s Ukraine ask ... The double-edged sword of Ukrainian military success ... Bob amends last week’s "client state" comments ... Bob: The next few weeks will be critical for Ukraine ... Elon and international affairs (cont’d) ... Inflation, China chip wars, and other harbingers of global instability ... Putin’s psyche and realist views of Russia ... Parrot room preview: Ukraine’s ironic nuclear war incentives; cancellable L.A. city council commentary?; Who’s the bigger liar: Gore or Biden?; Unflattering Nikki Finke obituaries; PayPal’s crazy new misinformation policy; more Musk talk; what’s new in the Metaverse?; Serial subject’s charges dropped; a damning Maggie Haberman clip?; FiveThirtyEight bias and a point about probability ...
A few words about cognitive empathy ... Update: Nikita re-exits Russia ... Gauging Russian opinion on the Ukraine war post-mobilization ... How informed are the Russian people about the war? ... Does the West overestimate the absoluteness of Putin’s power? ... Watching "Putin’s chef" recruit prisoners for military service ... The difficulties in grasping “the” Russian perspective ... Trying to comprehend Putin’s psychology ... Was the Ukraine invasion inevitable? ... Is everything just one big cynical power game? ... The Biden State Department’s momentously zero-sum view of US-Russia relations ... The economic factors that helped shape modern Russia ... Is AI capable of cognitive empathy? ...
What’s Biden’s plan to avert nuclear Armageddon? ... The reaction to Elon Musk’s Ukraine peace proposal ... The future of free speech on Twitter ... Are we seeing cracks in Putin’s regime? ... Mickey’s midterms update ... A reason for hope about Iran’s future ... Parrot room preview: Jeffrey Toobin; Was Fukuyama right after all?; electric vehicles as a secret Chinese plot; David Sacks on woke-neocon synergy; being a character voter versus an issue voter; Michael McFaul doesn’t deserve your attention ...
Hal and Michael’s book Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China ... Would more weapons to Taiwan provoke Beijing to strike now? ... Michael: China feels threatened, which makes China threatening ... Hal: The US has a China problem, not just a Xi Jinping problem ... Is autocracy per se a threat to the rules-based order? ... Is the “democracy vs. autocracy” framework a self-fulfilling prophecy? ... Bob: If a threatened China is a dangerous China, is amping up the threat really a great idea? ...
Mickey on the latest midterm polling prophecies ... Will the new CNN put the Dems’ cash cow out to pasture? ... Could Putin’s annexation have nuclear fallout? ... Who sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines? ... Bob: We’re not grappling with how bad things could get in Ukraine ... Mickey finds a new front in Biden’s “battle against autocracy” ... Is fascism really on the march in Italy? ... Parrot room preview: Mickey tenders his “Contract with America”; guessing Bob’s seventh heaven persona non grata candidate; can AI have sex?; The Rumble (not Bumble) success story; “Serial” podcast subject released; the people Mickey doesn’t want to meet in heaven ...
Who sabotaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines—and what happens next? ... The uncertain consequences of Russia's referendums in Ukraine ... How Russia’s military failures could lead to Putin’s downfall ... How much pro-Russian sentiment is there in eastern and southeastern Ukraine? ... The odds Putin goes nuclear and the likely western response ... What’s Biden’s endgame in Ukraine? ... Is it too late for a peace deal? ... The chances that China comes to Putin’s rescue ...
Putin’s big speech: nothingburger, nuclear nightmare, or something in between? ... Why an escalating Ukraine war is so easy to envision ... All the ways DeSantis is Trump 2.0 ... Biden cools it on the anti-MAGA rhetoric ... Italy’s MAGA-like party heats up ... Crunching the midterm election numbers ... What’s wrong with Biden committing to defend Taiwan against China? ... Parrot Room preview: GOP’s new Contract for America; What is national conservatism?; reviewing Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless; Trump’s spoon-bending powers; does AI have cognitive empathy? ...
Sebastian’s book, In the Dragon’s Shadow: Southeast Asia in the Chinese Century ... The causes and consequences of the Cambodian genocide ... How American preaching pushes Asian governments towards China ... China, the anti-colonial imperial power ... Is Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative a bid for world domination? ... Beijing isn’t trying to export its political system, says Sebastian ... The state of liberal democracy in Southeast Asia ... Why the Chinese have been called “the Jews of the East” ... How the US can woo Southeast Asian nations ...
Mickey tries to take the bromance to the next level ... An impromptu primer on longtermism ... Is Lindsey Graham's abortion proposal poison for Republicans? ... Mickey’s read on the Pennsylvania and Georgia midterm races ... Is MAGA-ism going global? ... How is Biden’s pro-democracy messaging holding up? ... Ukraine war update ... Assessing DeSantis’s Martha’s Vineyard migrant scheme ... Mickey v. lefty takeaways on welfare reform ... Parrot room preview: first impressions of Godard’s Breathless; Federer’s retirement; the woke campaign against food hierarchy; a pundit-y point on the Epstein case; Charlie Munger’s envy-driven-economy theory; longtermism; free speech and the Queen; ex-Google-CEO’s anti-China sentiment; Is polio making a comeback?; Comprehending the crypto “merge” ...
The US role in Ukraine’s recent offensive – and how Moscow might respond ... Could Putin fall from power if Ukraine’s success continues? ... Will more arms to Taiwan deter or provoke China? ... Bob: On foreign policy, the US has egregiously violated its professed values ... Bret: The US should go to war against China if it invades Taiwan ... Should the US use force to defend democracy around the world? ... Can international law constrain brutal leaders like Putin? ... How Trump is kind of like a foot massage ... Explaining versus justifying bad behavior in international politics ...
RIP Queen Elizabeth II—Mickey breaks the news to Bob ... (Belated) reactions to Biden's big speech ... Bob critiques another Mickey tweet ... Will the “special master” ruling derail the Trump investigation? ... Steve Bannon faces the music ... Vegas politician fails to outsource murder ... One Liz in, one Liz out: what’s in store for the UK under Truss? ... Ukraine war update ... Trump’s nuclear document ... Parrot Room preview: Biden’s MAGA speech and his foreign policy; regulating outer space; on Ukraine coverage, Bob asks: where is today’s Bernard Trainor?; Israel's u-turn on controversial West Bank romance rules; WaPo going broke? Mickey has a solution; another Epstein-linked suicide?; Do plants have consciousness?; more AI takeover talk; lab leak; Wilde-Styles drama ...
David’s brand new book, The Varieties of Spiritual Experience ... The personal spiritual experience that sparked David’s research ... This book’s relationship to William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience ... How common are dramatic spiritual experiences? ... How different are different types of spiritual experience, really? ... Type 1 in the book’s taxonomy of spiritual experiences: The Numinous ... Type 2: The Revelatory ... Type 3: Synchronicity ... Type 4: The Mystical ... Type 5: The Aesthetic ... Type 6: The Paranormal ... Varieties of psychedelic experience ... SPOILERS: James’s surprising conclusions about religious experience ...
Are Dems’ electoral chances as good as the media says? ... Biden demonizes MAGA Republicans, feeds the MAGA narrative ... Bob: To prepare for DeSantis, the Dems should dump Biden ... Two ways Trump isn’t helping Republican candidates ... Ukraine war update ... Mickey: The new Covid booster will be a bust ... Did the FBI give Facebook advance warning about the Hunter Biden laptop story? ... Parrot Room preview: Gorbachev appraised; new Epstein intrigue; reviewing The Best Man; why is culture so boring?; why Mickey’s tweet annoyed Bob; new Putin biography; Were Monkees persecuted? ...
Mickey doubles down on performance enhancing drugs ... Is the NY19 result a red flag for a midterm “red wave”? ... Has the Mar-a-Lago bombshell already fizzled? ... Bob gets tribal about Mickey’s anti-tribalism tweet ... Ukraine war update ... The electric vehicle takeover in California ... Brian Stelter’s ouster and CNN’s future direction ... Parrot Room preview: Dugin’s daughter whodunnit, is it actually time to start worrying about AI?, Biden admin cynicism on Ukraine, another tally in the Epstein case body count, China’s quantum computing prowess, could economic troubles spur Chinese aggression?, Twitter-Facebook censorship, more Beatles doc talk ...
What is the restrainer coalition and how cohesive is it really? ... Justin: Realism opposes forever wars -- but holds that war is forever ... The challenge Russia-Ukraine poses to the restrainer community ... How the US should respond to the China-Taiwan crisis ... Does the rise of China threaten American security? ... Bob: Taking adversaries’ perspectives doesn’t equal justifying their behavior ... Can the US deter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan forever? ... Should the US make Taiwan a pricklier porcupine or China a more satisfied panda? ... Quincy represents restraint, but CATO was restraint-minded before it was cool ...
Mickey and Dr. Oz enjoy crudités—Bob and Fetterman, not so much ... The state of the Oz versus Fetterman race ... Will Liz Cheney run for president – and for which party? ... Was the FBI raid on Trump really worth it? ... Mickey sees Jay Leno at supermarket, plays it cool ... Inflation slowing and Democrats’ fortunes rising? ... The sense in which the Salman Rushdie stabbing isn’t about religion ... Ukraine war update ... Parrot Room preview: Mickey’s friend’s empathy epiphany, ridiculous piece on Peter Thiel, America’s government-media complex, Huffington Post versus Buzzfeed, Bob on the Beatles documentary, Dexter Filkins on Ron DeSantis, Bob’s beef with new Washington Post piece, Muhammad and the Satanic verses, Mickey’s dark horse presidential candidate, anti-Soros news, Larry Summers talks to Bari Weiss ...
Does the “restrainer community” actually exist? ... Has the Ukraine war fractured the restrainer community? ... How should a restrainer respond to Putin’s invasion? ... How war-time psychology impairs objective analysis ... Unpacking the differences between left-wing and right-wing restrainers ... Is realism essential to the pro-restraint worldview—or just its conservative variant? ... Some dubious characters Biden takes advice from ...
Forecasting Trump raid fallout ... Could the Dems bring back “Build Back Better”? ... Bob and Mickey compare blue-collar bona fides ... Scoring Biden's recent PR wins and losses ... What's scarier: social media, the FBI, or your Roomba? ... Ukraine war update ... Bob: How ‘defending’ Taiwan could get it invaded ... Parrot Room Preview: The Blobsters advising the White House, yet more Jonah Goldberg trash-talk, Mickey’s car-buying blues, Bob’s rave CRV road-trip review, where in the world is Ghislaine Maxwell?, Mickey’s meritocracy conundrum, AI takeover, Saudi golf tour talk, Bob shorts "longtermism" ...
Remembering the halcyon days of early Bloggingheads ... Jonah: Our institutions have become platforms for parasites ... Censorship and polarization in the social media age ... What Mickey cribbed from Jonah to jumpstart his blogging career ... How Twitter killed the blogging star ... Is Substack blogging reborn? ... What’s the matter with the modern left? Jonah diagnoses ... A Trump-Biden rematch and other depressing symptoms of polarization ... Is devotion to an institution a sucker bet? ...
Rip Van Kaus awakens to a frightening new reality ... Bob and Mickey scan the dial for better Christian music ... Did the Taliban sell out Ayman al-Zawahiri? ... Bob: Weapons sent to Ukraine will end up in US extremists’ hands ... Why did Nancy Pelosi go to Taiwan? ... If Trump had been reelected, would Putin have invaded Ukraine? ... Ukraine War update ... Are pro-choice Kansas voters also pro-Democrat? ... Mickey: My fears about Democratic midterm gains look more and more realistic ... Joe Manchin zags his way into supporting BBB ... Biden manages to avoid stagflation (for now) ... Parrot Room preview: Joe Rogan, Alex Jones, Brittney Griner, Monkeypox, Jonah Goldberg, the (possible) fascism of JD Vance and Blake Masters, Mickey’s beef with Chris Murphy, Mikey’s defense of mansplaining, the end of social media, a small wrinkle in the midterms, Obnoxious Use of the Word “Agency” of the Week, the third party question, John Fetterman, and the LIV Tour antitrust suit ...
Tom: Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan imperils the defense of Ukraine ... Unpacking the Russia-Ukraine/China-Taiwan analogy ... Tom’s critique of Bob’s argument on Russia-Ukraine ... The dangers of humiliating and alienating China ... Does Biden have a plan for winding down the war in Ukraine – and does Putin? ... China could push Russia to end the war – so why is Pelosi poking the panda? ... Why cooperation with China is in America’s national interest ... Tom’s scoop on Zelensky’s worsening reputation in the White House ... Why Tom thinks a diplomatic resolution should come sooner rather than later ...
Rajan walks through three ways the war could end ... Assessing Ukraine’s and Russia’s military aims ... The causes and consequences of Ukraine’s optimism ... What might weaken Ukrainian and western resolve? ... How America’s toxic political discourse prolongs the war ... Does Biden have a plan? ... Do we understand Putin’s motivation ... Will Putin accept anything short of taking the entire Donbas? ...
Mickey lives in darkness ... Dems rise in the polls as Trump falls ... The case that Trump was trying to obstruct Congress on January 6 gets stronger ... Steve Bannon’s role as January 6 ringleader ... How susceptible is the left to election fraud fantasies? ... Are we ready for the current Covid wave? ... Why do we need Saudi Arabia’s oil? ... Will higher wages for unskilled labor stick around? ... NYT columnists admit their errors ... The SPLC attacks Andrew Yang ... A new study challenges the link between low serotonin and depression ... Will Joe Manchin sink the global minimum corporate tax? ... Ukraine update ... Parrot Room preview: Bob and Mickey react to Jonah Goldberg’s trash talk, Bill Gates throws his money around, Washington corruption, Oz vs. Fetterman, What another Trump presidency would be like, the holograms are coming for us, Mickey’s childlike reactions to Biden and Fetterman, an interesting Supreme Court case, Ethan Hawke’s Ukraine peace plan, the Bonesaw Golf Circuit, and Bob’s epic Decoding the Gurus episode ...
Ross to Bob: In a parallel universe, you are a media god. ... The non-zero-sum nature of disagreement in the blog days ... Ross’s time as an Atlantic blogging big-shot ... Will Twitter-style discourse last forever? ... Technology, politics, and polarization ... Ross’s niche in the conservative ecosystem ... Globalization vs. the (new) “new nationalism” ... Can the world afford a Cold War II? ...
Mickey admits he was wrong about the 10-year-old abortion story ... The Atlantic’s conveniently timed story about MBS’s widow ... Is Biden doing MBS a favor by investigating the PGA? ... Mickey: Democrats are still overperforming in midterm polls ... January 6 hearings update ... Working with, or around, Joe Manchin ... Has Elon Musk actually thought through free speech on Twitter? ... Ukraine war update ... Mickey: The Peter Thiel candidates will decide the fate of the Senate ... Parrot Room preview: Bob’s Atlantic conspiracy theory revealed, the British Open and LIV, Starbucks store closings, Biden and military force in Iran, NAIRU news, the Hunter Biden cloud leak, the value of the Iraq war, sucking up to Saudi Arabia, Bob complains about a terrible WaPo headline, the annoyances of “agency,” Jill Biden’s breakfast taco faux pas, and fertilizer in Sri Lanka ...
Why David thinks better US policy could have prevented the Russia-Ukraine war ... Bob: Explaining Putin’s criminal invasion is not the same as justifying it ... How understanding other minds sheds light on international politics ... The importance of speaking out ... What Silicon Valley doesn’t get about international politics ... In what sense does Silicon Valley care about the future? ... When cancel culture meets foreign policy ... David on his political ideology ... Possible endgames in Ukraine ... Could the war tank Biden’s presidency? ... A few words on cryptocurrency ...
Mickey: Inflation could abate by the midterms, saving the Dems ... Bob: Congress’s inability to act meaningfully on guns is outrageous ... How the 14th Amendment could support federal pro-abortion legislation ... Does Boris Johnson’s fall reflect disenchantment with Brexit? ... Build Back Better is back ... Liz Cheney, Democratic presidential candidate? ... Bob’s somewhat intrusive gun control workaround ... Harvard’s pandemic stimulus check study ... Parrot Room preview: A Ukraine update, Blake Masters, good career news for two TNR alums, Mickey attacks Mark Leibovich, January 6, corporatism, naming names in the Epstein case, Bari Weiss gossip, Minions and TikTok, Bob saw Memorial and you didn’t, and the abortion-seeking ten-year-old story ...
Thinking back fondly on the time Dick Cheney shot a guy ... David: Online journalism leveled the media playing field ... Is Russiagate an example of Democratic demagoguery? ... Mickey’s little-known past as a squire to DC’s elite ... The rewards of outrageousness ... What does it take to get drummed out of public life in 2022? ... David: It’s sad that so many Americans accept Trump’s prolific lying ... Does backlash against perceived media bias explain Trump’s support? ... The undiminished shock value of January 6 ... Is there any Democratic alternative to Biden and Harris in 2024? ...
Cassidy Hutchinson’s credible-seeming January 6 testimony ... Are the January 6 hearings hurting Trump’s 2024 chances? ... Mickey: I’m surprised the press is giving Hutchinson such a hard time ... Bob: The hearings are going to be a very important historical document ... Are the Republicans putting all of their non-Trump eggs in the DeSantis basket? ... Will the Democrats retain the Senate? ... Is the Supreme Court’s EPA ruling a judicial power grab? ... Is this Supreme Court philosophically conservative or politically conservative? ... Ukraine update ... Parrot Room preview: Ghislaine Maxwell, Woke Boris Johnson, wokeism in general, Ukraine, the Cafe Milano leak, Sonny Barger and the Hell’s Angels quiz, media bias, and Mickey’s four points about Bob’s conversation with Matt Yglesias ...
Bob and Matt reflect on the early days of Bloggingheads ... The decline of print and the rise of blogging ... How Matt made blogging work for him ... The shifting incentives of digital publishing ... Matt: Filter bubbles are more real than the research seems to suggest ... Bob: To succeed in modern journalism, it helps to like being hated ... The positive side of social media ... Slippage between news and opinion at the NYT ... The worrisome incentives of Twitter for academics ...
An important announcement for Bloggingheads fans ... Was Roe v. Wade doomed from its inception? ... Will the Supreme Court’s gun ruling get people killed? ... Bob: Democrats should weaponize the gun ruling ... Mickey: The January 6 hearings have been effective if unbalanced ... The pragmatic case for not indicting Trump ... Bob’s Biden replacement proposal of the week: Van Jones ... Two Trump-related hurdles for Ron DeSantis ... Ukraine update: the momentum shift is official ... A bittersweet farewell to Bloggingheads ... Mickey clarifies: He does not think sex should be illegal ... Parrot Room preview: Media bias on Ukraine, Juneteenth, Mark Shields, Bob’s killer argument against Nick Bostrom's simulation argument, Undone, we’re all the Beatles now, a crucial test for Brexit, Mickey’s prediction about the lab leak hypothesis, Lightyear bombs, Ben Smith’s Semafor, immigration news, a “Bonesaw Golf Circuit” update, and should the government regulate AI? ...
Why Matt thinks progressives should support giving military aid to Ukraine ... Bob defends much of the left-wing critique of America’s Russia-Ukraine policies ... How the "Putin's talking points" smear shuts down criticism of US foreign policy ... Is the “democracy vs autocracy” framework leading the world to Cold War II? ... Assessing possible endgames in Ukraine – and what comes after ... Did Biden make a serious diplomatic effort to prevent Putin’s invasion? ... Making free trade agreements a tool for advancing left-of-center policy ...
Mickey implores Bob: “Leave Biden alone!” Bob proves incapable. ... Democrats’ surprisingly good Senate race poll numbers ... Mickey: Immigration numbers are climbing, but the media isn’t covering it ... The downsides of framing US foreign policy as a “struggle against autocracy” ... How courageous was Pence on January 6? ... Did Trump both plan and fan the violence on January 6? ... Mickey: Trump and DeSantis are neck and neck as 2024 prospects ... Will Biden lift Trump-era tariffs on China? ... Bob: Ukraine may soon run out of ammo for its Soviet-era artillery ... Parrot Room preview: Exciting child tax credit news, Jeffrey Epstein news, a new angle on the Dave Weigel affair, Stanford eliminates fun, a deep dive into Bob’s views on consciousness, the dating habits of Richard Spencer, the US Open, Bob pummels an NYT headline, the Proud Boys, and Kurt Gödel ...
Nikita’s exciting—but daunting—new creative venture ... What responsibility do the Russian people bear for their government’s actions? ... Seeing clearly the many perspectives in the “Russian perspective” ... When does blaming propaganda go from explanation to excuse? ... Was this war with Russia the least bad option for Ukraine? ... Is fighting the power a fool’s errand? ... Assigning credit (and blame) for post-Soviet Russia ... Did US interests want Russia to invade Ukraine? ...
What did we learn from the primetime January 6 hearing? ... Bob: “Our foreign policy is virtue signaling, and it’s very, very costly” ... The alarming threats against Supreme Court justices ... WaPo’s dismissal of Felicia Sonmez ... Does Chesa Boudin’s recall mark the end of criminal justice reform? ... The Iran Deal teeters on the edge of collapse ... Bob tears Biden and Blinken’s sanctioning policy a new one ... Mickey: Biden should prepare for midterm losses by pivoting now ... Why haven’t Ukraine’s new weapons slowed Russia down? ... Parrot Room preview: Felicia Sonmez, Saudi Arabia’s LIV golf tour, why Microsoft may own the metaverse, The Glitch in the Matrix, an under-reported Jeffrey Epstein-Elon Musk connection, a lab leak hypothesis update, Mickey’s un-PC thoughts about Ken Bode, and Mickey wrestles with his own ideological affiliations ...
Josh: World War I shattered empires, ethnic cleansing created nation-states ... How the US and Russia wound up cooperating to fight ISIS and Sunni militias ... Why Turkey is holding up NATO membership for Sweden and Finland ... By helping to keep Syria divided, is the US giving ISIS free rein? ... What Turkey wants in exchange for letting Sweden and Finland into NATO ... In retrospect, should the US not have intervened in Syria? ... Why Russia-Ukraine might become another devastating frozen conflict ... Josh: Putin misapplied the lessons of Syria to Ukraine ... How US sanctions impede conflict resolution in the Middle East ...
Mickey’s ingenious—and not at all far-fetched—solution to the Kamala problem ... Failures to unravel the Gordian knot of gun control ... Has Biden’s approval hit rock-bottom? Mickey hopes not ... The most plausible path to a ceasefire in Ukraine ... The Hillary Clinton-Cold War II connection ... Hillary lawyer Michael Sussmann acquitted ... Trump aide Peter Navarro indicted ... Inflation and Omicron: good news, bad news for Biden? ... Parrot Room preview: Depp-Heard verdict, the Ben Wittes defense of Michael Sussmann, what’s up with Tucker Carlson’s son?, Sheryl Sandberg’s political ambitions, prospective chief of staff replacement’s Harvey Weinstein problem, Ann Coulter starts a Substack, Freddie deBoer gets Ben Smith’d, making heads or tails of rising non-binary rates, Ukraine War spin, Dead End, Undone, Severance ...
Why Jon’s dire Atlantic piece demanded a Bob-response ... Are today’s problems typical technological growing pains or alarming signs of demise? ... How much blame should social media get for the mess we’re in? ... Do today’s progressives recognize social progress? ... Jon: Productive “managed conflict” has become nearly impossible ... Will self-help save the planet? ... Can America survive without cultural common ground? ... Will the flip side of intranational tension be international cohesion? ... The three changes Jon thinks could save American society ...
California voting information materials fail the cognitive empathy test ... Will the latest mass shooting spur effective federal gun legislation? ... Mickey: Schumer will learn from Obama’s post-Sandy Hook political mistakes ... Are elites and geniuses more juvenile than the rest of us? ... Bob asks: Why is Western media so slow to report bad news from Ukraine? ... Do we really know “what the Ukrainian people want”? ... The status of the US’s “strategic ambiguity” toward Taiwan becomes more ambiguous ... Mickey: Americans’ enthusiasm for funding Ukraine is cooling ... Trump’s Republican bêtes noires win in Georgia ... Parrot Room preview: Franklin Foer’s role in the Sussman case, Severance, Kellyanne Conway’s book, Elon Musk’s tweets, Peter Thiel the kingmaker, the Bush dynasty vs. the Clinton dynasty, Luke Russert reopens the national service debate, monkeypox, the Institute for the Study of War’s role in the Ukraine bad news lag, the Iran nuclear deal, the Dead End podcast, and Station Eleven ...
Suzanne’s new book, The Apocalypse and the End of History: Modern Jihad and the Crisis of Liberalism ... The ongoing War on Terror in the age of the new Cold War ... Jihadism as a modern phenomenon ... The recent evolution of the doctrine of jihad ... What about modernity are jihadists – and US right-wingers – reacting against? ... Suzanne: To thwart authoritarians, build robust democratic communities ... Who is fighting the liberal status quo? ... Are Democrats too idealistic? ... Dispelling the myth of primordial ethnic tribalism ...
Bob: Tucker Carlson’s replacement rhetoric is intentionally inflammatory ... Is the rhetoric of “transformation” analogous to that of “replacement”? ... Two NYT headlines that trigger Bob ... Is Russia making more progress than it seems in eastern Ukraine? ... Mickey: If Trumpists depose Mitch McConnell, it could forestall a Trump 2024 run ... George W. Bush’s magnificent Ukraine-Iraq gaffe ... Can John Fetterman win in the PA general election? ... Parrot Room preview: Severance, Covid, Elon Musk’s sex scandal, the Depp-Heard trial, Jonathan Chait on charter schools, unemployment fraud, the Dead End podcast, the origins of Ukrainian nationalism, Benjamin Wittes’s infuriatingly Blobby Twitter thread, and what Ramesh Ponnuru misses about replacement rhetoric ...
Ian's brand new book, The Power of Crisis ... Did NATO expansion lead to the invasion of Ukraine? ... Ian: We shouldn’t have left Russia behind after the Cold War ... How much trouble is caused by America’s lack of perspective-taking? ... The critical problems Ian wants the world to focus on ... Does the “democracy vs. autocracy” framing do more harm than good? ... The rival technological visions of the US and China (and Elon Musk) ... Could our current crises be the seeds of future flourishing? ...
The baby formula conundrum ... Mickey: Chuck Schumer has put Dems in a bad position for the midterms ... Is the Ukraine military aid bill excessive? ... How neoconish think tanks influence Western coverage of Ukraine ... Mickey asks: Would a new cold war be so bad? Bob answers. ... Kathy Barnette’s surprising surge in the Pennsylvania GOP senate primary ... If a Trumpist Trump hasn’t endorsed wins a race, is it a win for Trump? ... Is Tesla’s stock price threatening Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase? ... Musk backpedals on his free speech position ... Video of Israeli soldiers beating mourners at the funeral of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh goes viral ... Mickey: It’s much more plausible that the Roe v. Wade opinion leaker was a left-winger ... Parrot Room preview: Steve Schmidt’s meltdown, Dinesh D’Souza is at it again, the creepy views of a Disinformation Governance Board member, IQ differences in a pair of South Korean twins, J.D. Vance, the child tax credit, Station Eleven, the etymology of “black hole” and its connection to Bob, drinking spinal fluid for brain rejuvenation, Tucker Carlson, and the shifting Latino vote ...
Sizing up the new Cold War ... Is China complicit in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? ... Dissecting the Russia-Ukraine, China-Taiwan analogy ... Understanding Taiwan’s status – and vulnerability – in the international system ... Did US foreign policy make Russia’s invasion of Ukraine more likely? ... What role did the US play in Ukraine’s 2014 revolution? ... Was Bush 41 the golden age of American post-Cold-War diplomacy? ... Susan: Trump shook things up but was a blight on America’s reputation ... Bob has an idea: How about a world without war? ...
What does J.D. Vance’s primary win teach us about the Trump Effect? ... Will the overturning of Roe give Democrats a boost in the midterms? ... The Hillary Clinton campaign’s role in amping up Russiagate ... Bob: A cornered Putin is a scarier Putin ... Doing the nuclear war math ... Can Putin take Odessa and Kharkiv? ... Taylor Lorenz tangles with Matt Drudge ... A new study shows that Omicron is not intrinsically milder than the original Covid virus ... Some quick corrections ... The Biden administration’s ill-advised Ukraine leaks ... Parrot Room preview: Elon Musk talk, Station Eleven, Severance, the latest January 6 leak, Bob gets a classic Michael McFaul brush-off, the White House Correspondents Dinner, Gavin Newsom, unjustified deplatforming, WNYC’s Dead End podcast, and Roe v. Wade ...
The basics of “analytic idealism”—Bernardo’s consciousness-only theory of reality ... How intuitive is the materialist worldview, really? ... Does evolution select for “true” perceptions of reality? ... Is idealism compatible with evolutionary theory? ... Bernardo: The "physical" world is a convenient fiction ... Putting idealism to the (empirical) test ... The idealist view of various quantum physics quandaries ... Telepathy, premonition, and other “weirdness” under idealism ... Can analytic idealism change your life? ...
Does Elon Musk know what he’s gotten himself into? ... Bob: Leaving Twitter is harder than it sounds ... Bob offers Musk a free idea for monetizing Twitter ... Is the US backing Putin into a corner? ... Mickey: Kevin McCarthy’s dumbness is an asset ... A cynical theory about the origins of Russiagate ... Does anyone have anything to look forward to? ... Parrot Room preview: Covid, Jeffrey Goldberg, Mickey is worried about immigration again, false flag accusations against Russia, Bob complains about William Burns’s memoir, Glen Campbell trivia, Tucker Carlson talk, the transition of power at the NYT, another Madison Cawthorn sex scandal, Station Eleven, and Nico ...
At long last, Bob enters the DMZ ... The big changes afoot at the DMZ and Bloggingheads ... Staying alive in a hyper-competitive media environment ... Are we going to see a Biden-Trump rematch in 2024? ... Can DeSantis mount a successful challenge to Trump? ... Is Biden sharp enough to make it through another campaign? ... Is Kamala the Democrats’ best alternative to Biden? ...
What Putin means by “de-Nazifying” Ukraine ... Do most Russians support the war? ... The nature of Putin’s nationalism ... What is fascism? Is Russia fascist? ... Are Russia and China creating an alliance of autocracies? ... Sizing up the far right in Ukraine ... Assessing Putin’s turn against liberalism ... Marlene: The West could have averted the Russia-Ukraine war ...
Bob turfs out in a round of “Name That Tune” ... Mickey: Why do trans and immigrant artists seem mostly to make art about trans and immigrant issues? ... Marine Le Pen’s surprising popularity among young French voters ... A possible upside of Putin getting what he wants in Ukraine ... Is the war outlasting Americans’ attention spans? ... What’s really behind Putin’s aggression in Ukraine? ... The search for a Democratic presidential candidate who isn’t Joe Biden ... Biden is not not saying he’ll send troops to Ukraine ... Can anyone stop Elon Musk from buying Twitter? ... The siloing effects of blue checks ... Bob: Wimbledon’s exclusion of Russian tennis players is disgusting ... The massive number of US weapons on their way to Ukraine ... Parrot Room preview: The dismal fate of CNN+, Disney and DeSantis, Mickey’s latest paranoid refundable child tax credit fantasy, the craziness of natalists, Marc Andreessen and Elon Musk on censorship, “the shit hits the fan” for high-achieving white high school students, the Ritter-Lira-Nuland rabbit hole, the weirdness of Elon Musk, Everything Everywhere at the Same Time, the weirdness of Jimmy Webb, and why are so many golfers evangelicals? ...
A Wright Show/Culturally Determined crossover! ... Pros and cons of the term "cognitive empathy" ... Aryeh sees a flaw in trying to put yourself in Putin's shoes ... The real threats to Putin ... Is Bob overlooking the Ukrainians' point of view? ... Is Mickey Kaus infecting Bob's brain? ... Does Bloggingheads.tv still have a reason for being? ...
Why there’s no Mickey gag… and no Mickey ... The charmingly subversive Elon Musk ... The scarily destabilizing Elon Musk ... The New York subway shooter’s disturbingly familiar psychology ... The Ukraine War: armaments update ... Why Russians continue to back the war ... American missteps that may have led to war ... A few kind words about ‘Putin apologists’ ... The week in comets and meteors ...
Where did Marianne get the confidence to run for president? ... What childhood travels taught Marianne about people ... How “A Course in Miracles” transformed Marianne’s life ... Can unconditional love save our species? ... Changing individual consciousness vs. changing policy ... Liberation through surrender ... Marianne: Think of yourself as one of civilization’s immune cells ... If you want change, get better at forgiveness ... What exactly would a “Department of Peace” do? ... Is Marianne eyeing a 2024 presidential re-run? ...
Mickey’s French election update ... What Macron and Biden (should) have learned re: Ukraine ... Bob’s brilliant idea for a Biden ceasefire proposal ... Bob vs. Anne Applebaum on negotiating with Russia ... How prolonging the war could make Putin more dangerous ... Will Elon Musk end Twitter’s reign of blue-check terror? ... Is AOC the 2024 candidate we’ve been waiting for? ... Bob comes to collect on his New Year’s covid prediction ... Disney’s “niche sexuality” promotion and other signs of Dem midterm doom ... Sarah Palin—and her totally human hands—run for congress ... Parrot Room preview: Bob and Mickey agree in disagreeing with a recent Richard Hanania essay, David McCormick campaign update, Jan. 6 seven hour gap discussion part two, are electric cars really the future?, the Tiger Woods comeback, mystery Ukrainian soldier rabbit hole, William Burns memoir, exercising cognitive empathy for Trump, Bob’s underappreciated Will Smith take, and does Ray Dalio pass Mickey’s BS test? ...
Bob asks Joe: What are the chances this war goes nuclear? ... Joe lays out Russia’s and America’s nuclear arsenals ... What would make Putin roll the nuclear dice? ... Why atrocities in Bucha could make for a longer, bloodier war ... Joe: The US withdrawal from Cold War-era treaties led to the current nuclear arms race ... How US foreign policy laid the ground for Putin’s invasion ... Bob searches for silver linings. Joe sees a darkening cloud. ... Assessing the Biden administration’s foreign policy record ...
Mickey admits he was wrong about everything ... Four takes on the Chris Rock-Will Smith Oscars incident ... Bob: Biden shouldn’t be riffing about regime change ... The Russian redeployment in Ukraine ... Attack of the (alleged) ATV-riding Ukrainian techies ... Will Biden try to draw out the war or push for a deal? ... The roadblocks standing in the way of a peace deal in Ukraine ... Mickey: The press is going easy on Biden because the alternative is Kamala ... Will Mitt Romney make Joe Manchin irrelevant? ... The growing movement to restore standardized testing in California schools ... Parrot Room preview: Should Mickey get the fourth Covid vaccine shot, the Bob Saget saga, Eric Schmidt takes over huge chunks of the government, ringing the dinner bell for the extraterrestrials, Eric Garcetti’s aborted ambassadorship to India, a survey of international elections, the Vladimir Putin bio, Bob’s two theories about what was going on in Will Smith’s head, and the gaps in Trump’s January 6 phone records ...
Update: Nikita exits Russia ... How big and costly is the Russian exodus? ... The state of peace talks ... “Russian QAnon” and the landscape of lay opinion in Russia ... Lamenting the logic of great power competition in light of Ukraine ... Is Russian state media as tightly controlled as Westerners think? ... Is Putin's hold on power slipping? ... What remains of independent media in Russia? ... Nikita’s hopes (and fears) for the future of Russia ...
The righteous indignation of the blue checkmarkless ... Is Russia preparing the ground for a peace deal? ... Why didn’t the US try to broker a deal earlier? ... How much restraint is Putin exercising? ... What shapes US public opinion on foreign policy? ... Reasons to think peace may not be near ... Mickey’s sympathy for Ginni Thomas ... Bob and Mickey do their best to get each other arrested ... The alleged tensions between Team Biden and Team Kamala ... Trump’s dimming presidential prospects ... Parrot Room preview: Bloggingheads rebranding news, more questions about Bob Saget’s death, midterm trouble for Republicans, more theories about why preschool sucks, the origins of symmetry, Dave Rubin’s children, Zemmour falters in France, Oliver Stone’s Ukraine doc, the dangers of loose talk about chemical weapons, both Glenn Greenwald and Chris Hayes retweet Bob, how the Ukraine war is winning converts for the Blob, more OJ Simpson, and the documentary My Architect ...
Kishore’s diplomatic career and recent book, Has China Won? ... Kishore: America is walking towards a cliff when it comes to handling China ... Is the US making a Chinese invasion of Taiwan more likely? ... China’s perception of the Uyghur situation ... How anti-China sentiment in America increases Chinese nationalism ... Diagnosing the degeneration of US-China relations since 2012 ... Bob: Has technology empowered the Chinese to petition their government? ... Good news! China has no plans to export its political system ... Assessing the threat Beijing poses to freedom in America ... China’s view of the Ukraine invasion ...
Mickey engineers an unholy Bob Wright-Michael McFaul chimera ... Is Putin losing or winning slowly? ... What China stands to gain and lose from war in Ukraine ... Bob: Biden’s approach to China seems to be driven by politics, not diplomacy ... Is Xi’s leadership on shaky ground? ... Bob: China is not seeking to impose its political system on the world ... Climate change as the tip of the apocalypse iceberg ... Is Zelenskyy the hero US media makes him out to be? ... How Biden’s Ukraine policy may affect Democrats at the polls ... Iran nuclear talks enter the on-again part of the cycle ... Ten things we got wrong in the pandemic ... Parrot Room preview: Hunter Biden, anti-Asian hate crimes, civil service reform, the Michael McFaul Apology of the Week, OJ Simpson and Natalie Wood theories continued, Oliver Stone’s Ukraine doc, some mild venting about Timothy Snyder, Mickey reveals the results of his Jeffrey Toobin-Jeffrey Goldberg-Vladimir Putin poll, Steve Earle, Mickey’s favorite piece of writing of the week, some studies say preschool sucks, Ketanji Brown Jackson and pedophilia, and Bob talks about a dream ...
Eli’s assessment of the Russo-Ukrainian War to date ... Is a negotiated end to the war in sight? ... Bob and Eli debate the implications of the leaked 2014 Victoria Nuland call ... Is the war in Russia’s interest? Or Putin’s? ... What options remain for more forceful intervention (that won’t lead to nuclear war)? ... Eli’s idea for a UN alternative sans Russia and (maybe) China ... Debating America's track record as keeper of the “rules-based order” ... Bob and Eli unite against the new McCarthyism ...
Would Ukraine actually agree to cede the Donbas to Russia? ... Bob: Xi Jinping could end the war ... Is Putin using madman theory to his advantage, or is he actually going nuts? ... The pros and cons of regime change in Russia ... Is Ukraine becoming Syria? ... How George W. Bush helped alienate Putin from the West ... Russia’s new incentive to sabotage the Iran nuclear deal ... America’s curious policy on Ukraine and NATO ... Mickey: There’s no necessary link between populism and autocracy ... Parrot Room preview: Oren Cass’s revisionist account of Adam Smith, a relatively wholesome sex scandal at the Southern border, Mickey takes issue with “sneering, overconfident” legal scholar Akhil Amar, new evidence concerning Bob Saget’s death, old rumors concerning Natalie Wood’s death, the American trucker convoy flops, Bob plays damning audio from Jake Tapper, the hospital bombing in Mariupol, complaints about Michael McFaul, Putin, a reader’s question about Bob’s OJ Simpson theory, and Facebook and Twitter’s pro-Ukraine/anti-Russia stances ...
Understanding the thought process that led Putin to invade Ukraine ... Could diplomacy have prevented the invasion? ... Imagining possible endings of the war – and what comes after ... Reviewing the events that drove the West and Putin’s Russia apart ... How Moscow viewed the 2014 Maidan Revolution in Ukraine ... Could a palace coup in Moscow reset US-Russia relations? ... Bob and Katrina worry that the planet can’t afford a second cold war ...
Always be prepared (for nuclear fallout) ... Is Putin headed for the Baltics? ... Why is the Western media reporting so little about the Azov Battalion? ... Mickey: Zelenskyy should give up parts of the Donbas and Crimea ... Bob: I don’t think Putin will move on to the Baltics ... Trying to see Ukraine clearly from within the Western media bubble ... The political difficulties of ceding territory ... How Russia’s military measures up against the US ... The US’s decades-long mismanagement of its relationship with Russia ... Michael McFaul’s really, really bad tweet to the people of Russia ... Parrot Room preview: the State of the Union, the January 6 Commission alleges they have Trump, the NYT’s “fraudulent” Trayvon Martin video, the latest economic report, big news for Zemmour in France, some Epstein news, the Freedom Convoy keeps on truckin’, trouble for Rick Scott, Bob reports on a biography of Putin, a contrarian take on the OJ Simpson trial, what Bob meant by “natural organic borders,” and an (unrehearsed) harmonica performance of “A Whiter Shade of Pale” ...
Steven’s book, Status and the Challenge of Rising Powers ... How concerns about status motivate Russia’s aggressive behavior ... Bob wonders if Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine was based on emotion ... Why Steven thinks Russia’s hostile reaction to NATO expansion was partly about status ... When does a nation's wounded pride translate into dangerous behavior? ... Seeing the rise of China as a bid for prestige and recognition ... Bob: Is the US driven by status considerations? ... Applying Steven’s argument to Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan ...
Mickey converts to Bob-ism ... Reassessing the ‘Is Putin Crazy?’ question post-invasion ... Were we too understanding of Putin? ... Zelensky—to arm or not to arm? ... How will Americans grade Biden’s handling of Russia-Ukraine? ... Did Russiagate make it harder for Biden to negotiate with Putin? ... The parallels between Russia-Ukraine and the ‘99 Kosovo intervention ... Biden’s Supreme Court nominee ... Mickey denounces Trudeau’s “couch potato fascism” ... Why Bob is queasy about this week’s George Floyd verdicts ... Parrot Room preview: An Epstein associate bites the dust, Jim Pinkerton’s “Mars, Meta, or Meatspace” trichotomy re: humanity’s future, The New Yorker’s Dean Baquet puff piece, Douthat on the “virtuals” vs “reals” divide, are the convoys coming to America?, Un-cancelling Louis CK, Putin and the psychology of status, Douglas McArthur as role model, The Expanse's jump-the-shark moment, and was Bob too mean on Twitter? ...
The grim state of Ukraine and Russia today ... Nikita’s initial reactions to Putin’s Ukraine speech ... Is Putin getting weirder? Or is reality? Or both? ... How did Russians react to the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution? ... Russian views on NATO expansion and the color revolutions ... Nikita: Political life in Russia is (mostly) dead ... Are Putin’s actions savvy politicking or signs of madness? ... Has the West mismanaged the post-Cold War era? ...
Mickey sparks up ... Mickey critiques the "Coalition of the Ascendant" ... Have Democratic positions on cultural issues turned toxic? ... Mike Pence’s defense of the RNC’s January 6 resolution ... Will the trucker protests go transnational? ... Bob: I don’t see Putin doing regime change in Ukraine ... Were defense contractors the prime mover of NATO expansion? ... Mickey: The great regreasing of the Biden Administration has begun ... Is Big Pharma funneling money to the CDC? ... Who is funding Sarah Palin’s libel suit against the NYT? ... The proposed changes to the Electoral Count Act ... Remembering P.J. O’Rourke ... Parrot Room preview: A settlement in the Epstein suit, Matt Yglesias and the demise of the Slate Pitch, the rise of Zemmour in France, are people in big cities scared of crime?, Bill Kristof sucks up to Ezra Klein, the previously untold story of how Slate started, how Jeff Zucker’s departure could lead to a better CNN, Bob’s plunge into the war in the Pacific continues, and Mickey discovers gender-inclusive bathrooms ...
Ben, author of a new book on Christopher Hitchens, gives us a brief history of Hitch ... Bob: Hitchens's argument in God is not Great was...not great ... Where was Hitchens’s Marxist materialism when it came to religion? ... Assessing Hitchens’s intellectual contributions ... Was Hitchens an “honest” arguer? ... Why did Hitchens become a hawk? ... Hitchens in light of the Intellectual Dark Web ... Ben gives his closing argument for why Hitchens is still worth thinking about ...
Inflation takes a toll on Mickey’s supply closet ... Reviewing Jeff Zucker’s “contributions” to American democracy ... Do any Trumpist elites actually want Trump to run for president again? ... Who constitutes Kamala’s base? ... What Biden needs to say about Ukraine and NATO ... How Google is helping people break the law ... Mickey: Trump taking documents to Mar-A-Lago isn’t a big deal ... Why aren’t more people getting their Covid booster? ... Why are Republicans so good at controlling state legislatures? ... Was the Marjorie Taylor Greene “gazpacho police” comment intentional? ... Sarah Palin’s lawsuit against the NYT ... Mickey: How can Andrew Yang lament unemployment among men while supporting UBI? ... If waning Latino support for immigration doesn’t tighten border security, maybe robot dogs will ... Parrot Room preview: Wokeness, Mickey clarifies what he means by “corporatism,” why Mickey is waging war on meritocracy, affirmative action for different cultures instead of different races, birds aren’t real, Putin’s repulsive joke, Robert Trivers’s groundbreaking paper on sexual selection and a related joke, Joe Rogan and Spotify, war in the Pacific, news on the lab leak theory, decoupling from China, Bob becomes the Tom Friedman whisperer, and Bob learns a harsh lesson about Substack ...
How Bob and Tom wound up talking about the Russia-Ukraine crisis ... Tom says NATO should be willing to close its door to Ukrain ... The never ending “age of midgets” in US foreign policy making ... Tilting international relations in a positive direction ... Is Biden’s “democracy versus autocracy” framework counterproductive? ... Analyzing the nature of journalistic objectivity – and how to achieve it ... Bob and Tom agree we need non-zero thinking to solve global problems ...
Did Jeff Zucker resign over business or pleasure? ... Bob: “The new Cold War almost became official today” ... A grand solution to the Ukraine crisis ... George Soros predicts the downfall of Xi Jinping ... Is the killing of ISIS’s leader really a big deal? ... Are we headed toward one metaverse or many? ... Joe Rogan for president? ... Mickey: It’s wrongheaded for the left to focus their animosity on the unvaccinated ... Is Democrats’ commitment to free speech softening? ... The power plays surrounding Stephen Breyer’s retirement ... Parrot Room preview: More Spotify, Bob and Mickey risk cancelation over Whoopi Goldberg, more Jeff Zucker, Howard Cosell, QAnon, corporatism and undemocratic institutions, Democrats lose their majority in the Senate, so what if Mark Zuckerberg gets another $200 billion, waiting for Biden’s Sister Souljah moment, the Biden crime plan, the electoral count plan, Mickey gets transgressive about Joe Burrow, the Washington football team gets a new name, the NFL’s resurgence, why can’t carbon cleaners end the climate crisis, and mail-in voter fraud ...
How anti-tribal thinking formed the core of Arnold’s “Fantasy Intellectual Teams" (FITs) draft ... Was the pre-internet intellectual era really so great? ... Arnold lays out the details of the Fantasy Intellectual Teams draft ... Grassroots vs. institutional anti-tribal strategies ... Is a social media rebuild possible? ... The challenges in taking FITs to the next level ... Bob and Arnold contrast their approaches to anti-tribalism ... How bad could things get if we can't beat tribalism? ...
Hey hey, my my, Neil Young left Spotify ... Carrots and sticks in the Russia-Ukraine crisis ... What are Russia’s actual objectives in Ukraine? ... Bob: “I haven’t heard a single good argument for expanding NATO” ... Why nominating Kamala to the Supreme Court might actually be a good idea ... Are pundits overthinking Biden’s low approval rating? ... Is universal pre-K on the chopping block? ... Mickey adopts an unsettling new persona ... Parrot Room preview: A Doug Emhoff scandal?, the war in the Pacific, guess the Lou Reed verdict, let’s talk about headlines that start with “Let’s talk about,” Raymond Carver and Gordon Lish, affirmative action goes before the Supreme Court, William F. Buckley, Ilya Shapiro gets canceled, the metaverse and the Matrix, bizarre Black Lives Matter news, money liberalism, and why does Apple delay releasing this podcast? ...
Does the Russia-Ukraine crisis justify the current sense of alarm? ... How concern for ethnic Russians in Ukraine shapes Moscow’s policy ... What the US and NATO can do to resolve the crisis diplomatically ... Can Europe help Biden by staging a diplomatic intervention? ... Russia’s next military steps if diplomacy fails ... Anatol estimates the odds of a Russian invasion of Ukraine ...
Looking for signs of decline in Biden’s press conference ... Is the child tax credit what swing voters want? ... Two possible inflation fixes ... What’s on the table in U.S.-Russia negotiations over Ukraine? ... How well is Biden handling the Ukraine situation? ... Mickey: There’s a chance we'll avoid a Trump 2024 run ... Bob’s plan to convince Biden not to run ... Meat Loaf would do anything for love (but would he get vaxxed?) ... Bob: I get why white males are under fire ... Parrot Room preview: The secret to Matt Yglesias’s success, the FBI searches Henry Cuellar’s home, Mickey’s beef with the Salvation Army, how the Parrot Room is like the TV show Yellowstone, Bob’s panel appearance with Jerry Brown, Robert Malone, active shooter drills, war in the Pacific, the Los Gatos Party Mom, exploring Bob and Mickey’s positions on China, Bob issues some corrections, Mickey critiques the Atlantic and David Remnick, and the time Katie Couric interviewed Bob ...
Richard discusses his new book, Public Choice Theory and the Illusion of Grand Strategy ... Richard’s critique of the field of International Relations ... Why "concentrated interests" capture US foreign policy ... The arms industry executive who has "single handedly ruined the world" ... How the US helped create the Russia-Ukraine conflict ... The pro-militarism bias in the news media and foreign policy think tanks ... Why does the US misperceive Iran as being a threat to US interests? ... Richard: The US should learn to live with a superpower China ... The failures of the human rights lobby and the brutality of sanctions on Afghanistan ... Do autocracies have more coherent foreign policies than democracies? ...
Mickey’s plan to install Nancy Pelosi in the Oval Office ... Who can convince Biden not to run for reelection? ... Mickey’s comeback strategy for Biden ... Bob takes the Parrot Room into untested waters ... Is Boris Johnson in trouble over Covid protocols or policy failures? ... Are seditious conspiracy charges warranted for the Oath Keepers? What about Trump? ... Mickey: The Supreme Court got the vaccine mandate ruling wrong ... Bob: It will be bad if Russia invades Ukraine, but it won’t threaten U.S. interests ... Bob: China doesn’t have a monopoly on repressive software exports ... Parrot Room preview: Bob takes a Covid test, Mickey catches Bob in an almost-devastating contradiction, Bob tries to catch Robert Malone in a contradiction, Sidney Poitier, Bob Saget, Terry Teachout, Bob v. Andrew Sullivan, Don’t Look Up, Ruth Barrett sues the Atlantic, Bari Weiss on Hollywood, David Remnick claims we’re suspended between democracy and authoritarianism, Mickey has second thoughts about donating to the Salvation Army, Matt Ridley on the origin of Covid, a Jeffrey Epstein update, Maya Angelou gets a quarter, and what’s up with Leon Wieseltier’s journal? ...
Bob’s early encounters with LGBTQ visibility and invisibility ... How the pros talk about gender ... The uses of “queer” ... A writerly defense of the singular “they” ... Agustín: We need a national conversation about the trans bathroom issue ... What was the intent behind J.K. Rowling’s controversial tweets? ... What counts as an “advantage” when trans women play women’s sports? ...
Mickey: Biden is too scared of his base ... Bob: Biden privileged loyalty over competence in his staffing ... Are January 6 rioters getting off too easy? ... How can an election get overturned? Bob and Mickey count the ways ... Bob’s January 6 epiphany ... Where’s the love for Sherrod Brown and Cory Booker? ... Can Omicron save us from Delta? ... Is it time to “pivot to normalcy” yet? ... Parrot Room preview: Robert Malone on Joe Rogan, the Ghislaine Maxwell verdict in jeopardy, does everyone want to date AOC, Ben Smith’s new publication, Leonard Bernstein on the Beatles, Nick Kristof may not even reach the Kaus threshold in Oregon, Beverly Hills criminals, what’s wrong with “gaslighting,” Betty White, Peter Bogdanovich, Novak Djokovic runs afoul of Aussie vaccination policy, Greg Gutfeld gets reprimanded, and is the great David Remnick takedown upon us? ...
Has sociobiology been vindicated? ... Why the term ‘evolutionary psychology’ survived ... Is there room for free will in a modern scientific world view? ... Science, religion, and “provisional deism” ... Is the “theory of intelligent design” even a theory? ... How religion informed Ed's approach to science ... Facing death without hope of an afterlife ... How Ed reconciled work and family ...
Could a bad actor engineer a Delta-Omicron hybrid? ... Bob: Mainstream coverage of Omicron’s dangers has been misleading ... Bob’s three 2022 Covid predictions ... How do decisions get made inside Biden’s White House? ... Bob and Mickey’s Heroes of the Year ... Bob and Mickey’s Villain of the Year ... The Best and Worst Ideas of the Year ... The Year’s Biggest Surprise ... Ditching the metaverse, Pelosi persisting, and other 2022 predictions ... Parrot Room preview: words and concepts that need to go in 2022, Bob and Mickey reveal what “undernews” is, Biden’s cognitive status, 2021’s least deserving media attention-getter, the shortage of good hit pieces, who’s cruising for a bruising in 2022, Bob and Mickey’s worst opinions of 2021, Ghislaine Maxwell convicted, remembering E.O. Wilson, The Expanse, Bob defends his hair, Mickey defends his LSD abstinence, Pacific Crucible, the documentary Ascension, and more reasons why Ron Brownstein’s “coalition of the ascendent” is the worst idea of the decade ...
Why Bob loves Daniel’s Substack Eunomia and Kelley’s work at Responsible Statecraft ... Daniel and Kelley on how their conservative roots led them to anti-Blobism ... Daniel makes a conservative case for supporting international law ... Trump 2.0? Daniel and Kelley discuss Biden’s foreign policy failures ... Bob wonders why Biden didn’t try harder to revive the Iran nuclear deal ... The US is starving Afghans in the name of humanity ... Credit where due: Biden got us out of Afghanistan ... How the military-industrial complex helped create the Russia-Ukraine crisis ... Assessing China’s internal abuses and external ambitions – and how to respond ...
Have you heard the Good News? ... The role of Christ’s suffering in the Catholic tradition ... Walking the path(s) to salvation ... Peace on Earth, the virgin birth, and other Christmas miracles ... Father Bill: “To answer the question ‘Who is my neighbor’ is to answer the question ‘How big is my heart?’” ... Deriving the Trinity from the Gospel of John ... Father Bill: The meaning of Christmas is “self-emptying love” … ... … but what exactly is “self-emptying love”? ... The appeal of Teilhard de Chardin ... Christmas’s greatest hits ... How Bloggingheads.tv changed Father Bill’s life ...
Will 2024 be a Trump-Hillary rematch? ... The Omicron wave: how bad will it be? ... David Frum’s proposal to triage covid care ... Some non-Hillary prez candidates who are almost as unappealing as Hillary ... Covid lab leak theory update ... Mickey lays out a plan to resuscitate the Build Back Better bill ... Fox News audience capture and Chris Wallace’s release ... Are the Fox News Jan 6 texts scandalous? Or even interesting? ... Barton Gellman gets Mickey to take 2024 GOP election theft semi-seriously ... Parrot Room preview: Ron Brownstein on Democrats losing the culture wars, Harvard abandons the SATS, Scotus on Roe v. Wade, more trash talk about Sam Harris and the Weinsteins, Mickey’s new case against child tax credits and Bob’s new car, and comments from Parrot Heads. ...
John and Nikita (and Bob) present their psychedelic pedigrees ... Distinguishing between “unitive” and “non-unitive” psychedelic/mystical experiences ... John’s encounter with “[mischievous] animated shards of colored glass” on ayahuasca ... Nikita on DMT ep. I: Presence in everything—essence in nothing ... Can psychedelics get us closer to objective “Truth”? ... Nikita on DMT ep. II: After dis-enlightenment, chop wood ... A world charged with meaning ... John on the necessary contingency of our attempts to understand reality ... Nikita on DMT ep. III: Swapping self for gnosis—deal or no deal? ... “Everything is right here, happening. Pay attention to how it works.” ... Nikita on DMT ep. IV: oscillations between the sensuous and the cerebral ... DMT in a nutshell ...
Mickey auditions for Scope mouthwash spokesmodel (demonstration included) ... Covid news roundup; OMNIcron controversy addressed! ... Are things getting worse for Build Back Better? ... Is the prosecution in the Ghislaine case taking a dive? ... Bob: Don’t go easy on Jussie Smollett ... Good news on Iran talks? ... How to split the Ukrainian baby? ... Parrot Room Preview: Trans Penn swimmer , crime and mountain lions in LA, France's Mr. Zemmour, Jeffrey Goldberg's Trump-centered plan for the Atlantic, Boris Johnson’s decline, David Brooks divorces conservatism, perverse Substack incentives, disciplining hostile Beatles commenters, trashing the “Summit for Democracy", Bob’s mysterious car dealership experience. ...
Bob and Trita set the stage for the current crisis ... The geopolitics of the Iran nuclear deal ... The nuclear deal was great - so why did Trump pull out? ... Trita: President Biden made significant mistakes early on ... Why the nuclear negotiations might become a charade ... Are US perceptions of Iran becoming more positive? ...
How reassuring is a Biden re-run, really? ... Mickey finds hope in Omicron ... Mickey rejoices in Biden swerving right on immigration ... Marjorie Taylor Green's latest stunt ... Mickey: Inflation could kill soft infrastructure ... Bob: It’s time for challenge trials to fight Omicron ... How popular is BBB? ... Bob pulls a jiu jitsu on Mickey’s dental care/car lube metaphor ... How doomed is Roe v. Wade? ... Mickey’s mini-rant on Chris Cuomo (and Chris Matthews) ... Parrot Room Preview: The trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, a speech from the (second) French Donald Trump, John Mearsheimer on China, Bret Weinstein on Omicron, Farhad Manjoo on cars, trash-talking Sam Harris, Andrew Sullivan sings B&M’s praises, The Beatles: Get Back review, Stephen Sondheim retrospective, Mickey discusses decadence, JD Vance news, weird murder in Beverley Hills, and Iran talk ...
What, if anything, is the basis for an atheist's morals? ... When Christopher says, 'Religion poisons everything,' he means... ... Religion is irrational? Compared to what? ... Christopher: Jesus doesn't love the little children ... Did religion cause the Israel-Palestine conflict? ... Why Christopher won't stop ridiculing God ...
Bernard-Henri Lévy, c’est Mickey ... Rittenhouse acquitted, Malcolm X’s “assassins” exonerated ... How much of BBB will make it through the Senate? ... Some of Mickey’s policy nightmares still lurk within BBB ... Is Elon Musk consciously courting an ideological customer base? ... Bob: Paul Gosar and Lauren Boebert crossed a line ... Why are Biden’s poll numbers so bad? ... Mickey: Elite Trump voters don’t want him to run again ... Mickey Kaus, n’est pas Bari Weiss ... Parrot Room preview: Nellie Bowles decamps to Bari Weiss’s Substack, Andrew Sullivan on 60 Minutes, Anne Applebaum, more trash talking Sam Harris, more on the Dulles brothers, bad news for the University of Austin, Belarus, news on ivermectin and the lab leak hypothesis, why David Frum hates Blake Masters, and Bob chastises Mickey ...
John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles—the stars of Stephen’s book The Brothers—as architects of covert imperialism ... Stephen explains how disgruntled bankers and lawyers started the CIA ... How corporate interests drove the 1954 US-led coup in Guatemala ... The enduring relevance of US meddling in Iran in 1953 ... Self-fulfilling, Manichean prophecies of the Cold War ... Imagining history without the Dulles brothers ... Have we learned from our past mistakes? ...
Bob and Mickey hatch a plan to profit from the University of Austin ... Bob: The question of inflation is tied to the status of the pandemic ... Mickey’s soft infrastructure proposal ... Whither high-speed rail? ... Who will claim ideological leadership of the Republican Party? ... If Kyle Rittenhouse is acquitted, will civil unrest follow? ... Parrot Room preview: Substack, under-news about a member of Congress and a would-be member of Congress, Mickey’s beef with Jonathan Chait, Fiona Hill, Bob chastises the Washington Post for inaccurate Brian Williams coverage, evidence that Mickey is suffering from CTCDS (child tax credit derangement syndrome), some damning Tony Blinken audio, Mickey’s so-crazy-it-just-might-work solution to the Trump dilemma, Bob attempts to stump Mickey with a Beatles trivia question, Sam Harris, car talk, and more on the University of Austin ...
Who pays Eli to "follow the money"? ... Dispelling illusions about US foreign policy ... Which think tanks serve foreign interests? ... Bob tells an anecdote about a naive prominent journalist ... The hidden influence of the weapons industry ... Did money from Saudi Arabia and UAE help get America involved in Yemen? ... How foreign actors buy influence in Washington ... Eli's Twitter thread thriller ...
Bob enters the pantheon of world historical philosophers ... Was the Virginia election a referendum on wokeness or social spending? ... The Democrats’ strategy for passing (or at least voting on) infrastructure ... Have the Virginia results emboldened challengers to Trump? ... Investigating the Russia investigation ... Will Kyle Rittenhouse be acquitted? ... Is Pfizer’s Covid pill a game changer? ... China’s efforts to address inequality and climate change ... Have we reached peak newsletter? ... Clubhouse: So exclusive no one wants to use it anymore ... Parrot Room preview: Jeffrey Epstein news, the lab leak hypothesis, can Joe Manchin get away with driving a Maserati, the future of custom cars, Bob reads a book about Allen Dulles, the unkind things Sam Harris recently said about Bob, the Foundation trilogy TV adaptation, and Walter Kirn’s Blood Will Out ... A very special Walter Kirn mash-up ...
Paul’s new book, The Sweet Spot: The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning ... Why do we get pleasure from some kinds of suffering? ... The many forms of self-flagellation ... Paul: I don’t think we pursue the good only because it gives us pleasure ... How do we derive meaning from suffering? ... Paul: You cannot have a meaningful life without suffering ... Does Buddhist meditation risk severing us from important relationships with others? ... Is parenting pleasurable? ... Making progress on the hedonic treadmill ...
Could a McAuliffe loss bring about a Dem meltdown? ... Mickey: Most Americans don’t care about Build Back Better social spending ... Bob: There’s a breakdown of trust within the Democratic Party ... More possible evidence in favor of the lab leak hypothesis ... Should Biden withdraw from Syria and Iraq? ... Bob: Most people in the Blob are sincere in their beliefs ... Could Tucker run for president to the right of Trump? ... Mark Zuckerberg, mayor of the metaverse ... Bob: God bless Louis Dekmar ... Parrot Room preview: The special guest’s identity revealed, Huma Abedin’s claim that a senator made a pass at her, RIP Mort Sahl, Mickey’s friend gives up their electric car, and how Bob got mauled by Frazier ...
How Tom and Bob wound up talking about the Blob ... Why Tom wants to retire the term "the Blob" ... Is the "Restrainers vs. the Blob" framing useful? ... Chomsky's misunderstood view on how money corrupts discourse ... Tom questions the value of understanding Vladimir Putin's perspective ... Does the Blob undermine America's national interest? ... Engaging a diverse, evolving Blob ...
Mickey: Sinema’s tax plan is screwing up the infrastructure bill ... Bob: It’s a political mistake to cut free community college ... Did Biden accidentally commit to defending Taiwan against attack? ... Why you shouldn’t worry about China’s new missile ... JD Vance’s weird tweet about Alec Baldwin ... Can Trump be convinced not to run in 2024? ... Bob: Steve Bannon is still an extremely dangerous person ... US Covid numbers remain inscrutable ... Parrot Room preview: What Dave Chappelle said about Mike Pence, Merrick Garland’s conflict of interest, how to bribe Trump into staying out of the race, death threats in politics, more car advice, Bob takes another crack at besting Mickey’s joke, meditation retreats, Bob defends “the pounce move,” Alec Baldwin, King Juan Carlos’s sex drive, and the French election ...
Steve’s new book, Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters ... Are humans inherently logical? ... What is “motivated reasoning”? ... How attribution error distorts our public discourse ... How Steve deals with criticism of his work ... Bob’s defense of whataboutism ... Did evolution make us moral—or at least moralistic? ...
Trump finally crosses the line for Mickey (again) ... Why is Trump threatening to undermine Republicans in the midterms? ... Mickey: It’s smart politics to dump the child tax credit ... Are some of Dave Chappelle’s jokes antisemitic? ... Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s less-than-flattering appraisal of Colin Kaepernick ... Is Steve Bannon going to jail? ... Bob: “The jury is out” on the possibility of democracy in China ... Parrot Room preview: Supply chains, Michael Wolff’s account of Jeffrey Epstein’s theory of Trump, Walgreens closes stores over crime, Nick Kristof's possible gubernatorial run, more evidence of Ben Rhodes’s blobishness, David Shor, Terry McAuliffe’s chances in Virginia, a roadblock to Mickey’s coup theory, the new Velvet Underground doc, Steven Pinker and the left, a genitalia joke face-off, Facebook’s thought policing, and help for boomers ...
Aryeh's new YouTube channel ... The early technological innovations of Bloggingheads ... Bloggingheads's curatorial principles ... How the #Resistance media further alienated Trump supporters ... Is journalistic neutrality an obsolete concept? ... Why did the "cool kids" in the US media get the Iraq invasion so wrong? ... The powers and limitations of the UN Security Council ... Bob: "The pandemic is actually a much more complex problem than climate change" ... Why Aryeh's show is getting its own YouTube channel ...
Joe Manchin’s infrastructure shell game ... The Monty Hall problem explained ... What does Bernie want from the infrastructure deal? ... If the Taliban collapses, can Biden count it as a win? ... The exaggerated claims about China’s “incursion” into Taiwan’s "airspace" ... Should we gird ourselves for a Trump 2024 run? ... Why isn’t Biden giving more pushback to the left? ... The Pandora Papers are more consequential than they seem ... Bob: Biden should loosen patent protections on Covid vaccines ... Mickey: There’s new evidence for the lab leak hypothesis ... Mickey’s theory of Ozy founder Carlos Watson ... Parrot Room preview: Bob asks Mickey for car advice, the Iron Dome vote, Bob congratulates Mickey on last week’s outstanding joke, Bob tells a less outstanding John Wayne Bobbit joke, Facebook’s worst week ever, Bob’s near-death experience, a dream about Mort Kondracke, a new Parkinson’s treatment, and talking about Robert Kagan to ward off fascism ...
Sam's new book, Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War ... The murky legal standing of the Forever War ... Obama’s transition from traditional war to “humane” war ... Are presidents incentivized to keep war going forever? ... Sam: The true face of war is domination, control, and security ... How Vietnam changed the US’s approach to war ... What drives the demand for more humane war? ... Americans’ rising skepticism of Forever War ...
Reconstructing Pelosi’s infrastructure dealmaking ... Does Biden actually need both infrastructure bills to pass? ... Time for some game theory (to explain infrastructure negotiations) ... Positive pandemic news: Declining US case rates, Merck’s new drug ... Is Havana Syndrome real? ... Mickey: We should have empathy for whites who fear being replaced by foreigners ... What the Guinean coup shows us about the GWOT ... Was there political motivation behind the botched Kabul drone strike? ... Why were there 12,000 Haitians in Del Rio, Texas? ... Parrot Room preview: The demise of Ozy, Mickey’s stolen joke, a The Best and the Brightest anecdote, Mickey’s bad newsletter advice, why Bob doesn’t like Tommy Vietor, Bob explains why Mickey triggered him last week, a nominee for a Parrot Room guest, the mystery of the cloned horse, and the legal definition of “reckless disregard” ...
Matt and Chris's podcast, Decoding the Gurus ... What makes a guru a guru? ... Are we living in an age of secular gurus? ... Chris: I have an issue with "unevenly applied" skepticism ... Scott Adams's selectively "pro-science" stance ... Eric and Bret Weinstein's grievance-based worldviews ... Is self-aggrandizement a Weinstein family trait? ... The sinister forces supposedly closing in on Eric Weinstein ... Does social media's emphasis on "followers" encourage the creation of gurus? ...
Pelosi preps for infrastructure vote with trouble all around ... The cost of zero sum politics: the wrath of the voters ... Throwing Biden into the ash heap of history ... What do Manchin & Sinema really want? ... Is Mickey feeling schadenfreude over Biden’s Haitian immigrant debacle? ... Bob worries that Biden seems vibrant enough to run for re-election ... Is America heading toward a cold war with China? ... What Bob Woodward’s version of the Mark Milley story missed ... Mickey no longer sure Rocking the Casbah in Saudi was a good idea ... Mickey vs Bob on Ezra Klein’s supply-side progressivism column ... Quick covid update ... Hunter Biden in the Parrot Room ...
Mickey proposes a parking garage-based theory of everything ... Bob’s plan for passing Biden’s "soft infrastructure" bill ... Mickey does some Monday morning quarterbacking for Larry Elder ... Bob’s near-death experience with British food ... Was Mickey truly “in it to win it” in his Senate race? ... Were Mark Milley's calls to China justified? ... The perverse incentives of the anti-China nuclear sub deal ... Mickey’s exhaustion-induced supermarket hallucination ... Would Biden’s budget really transform American life? ... Parrot Room preview: Facebook’s whitelist, the Dixie Chicks "cancellation," loneliness, a Las Vegas shooting rabbit hole, Bob's push to get Mickey on a dating app, the US Open, Elizabeth Holmes on trial, the mystery of Trump’s attraction to Putin, and that Nicki Minaj tweet (you know the one) ...
Mickey: Biden’s weakness is his strength ... Is Biden’s vaccine mandate constitutional? And will it work? ... A reason to root for the Delta variant? ... JD Vance urges people to resist the vaccine mandate ... Looking back at 9/11-inspired fears ... Did the Iraq War give a critical boost to 9/11 Trutherism? ... We may actually see a vote on the hard infrastructure bill soon ... Mickey complains about Ezra Klein, Bob pushes back ... Parrot Room preview: Why Bob has been talking about the Weinsteins so much, The Chair, Bob tries to talk Mickey into using a dating app (or maybe the Parrot Room itself is a dating app?), the US Open, is rock dead?, Mickey’s Fred Barnes Crossfire story, and a general theory of inflation derived from staying in crappy hotels ...
Bob and Mickey’s most erotic cold open yet ... Mickey mildly critiques Bob’s latest Afghanistan piece ... Eight ways Biden messed up the Afghanistan withdrawal (according to Mickey) ... Will Pelosi get the infrastructure bill she wants? ... Will the Texas abortion law backfire on pro-lifers? ... Mickey: If Newsom loses his recall vote, it could tank the infrastructure bill ... The jury’s still out on the lab leak hypothesis ... Bob: The jury’s still out on Ivermectin but not on Bret Weinstein ... Parrot Room preview: A hit piece on JD Vance, crime rates among Afghan refugees, the NYT’s editorial practice, the (possible) millennial conspiracy to oust boomers, wokeness at Princeton, an Ivermectin tweet storm, Pierre Kory, the possible postmodernism of the Weinsteins, how Mickey turned Bob into Led Tasso, Bob gets the Ezra Klein bump, and Ed Asner ...
What is "realism" in international relations? ... How John predicted the disastrous outcome of the Iraq invasion ... How to convince neocons to respect international law ... John: Sometimes nations just have to break the law ... Bob: The US should establish a norm of strict compliance with international law ... John's Hobbesian view of international relations ... Is China an existential threat to the US? ... International law's evolutionary trajectory ...
Bob and Mickey’s vaccination vacation ... American cluelessness persists in Afghanistan ... Can the Taliban be incorporated into the global community? ... Radicalized by Microsoft ... Bret Weinstein’s ivermectin crusade (cont’d) ... Has Pelosi outmaneuvered House moderates? ... Are Millennials and Zoomers the new beatniks? ... Bob: We could benefit from a slower rate of technological change ... Parrot Room preview: ESPN literally cancels Rachel Nichols, the Weinstein Rosetta Stone, a traumatic Wieseltier anecdote, Bob’s appearance on Ezra Klein’s podcast, the lawyer-lab rat joke, Ted Lasso, and a controversial Parrot Room fan mash-up ...
Unmasked liberals in their natural environment ... The sharply rising Covid-related death rate in the US ... Should the US send vaccine doses abroad before giving boosters at home? ... Bob: The Afghanistan withdrawal could reduce the risk of domestic terrorism ... Is there political logic behind Biden’s position on Afghan refugees? ... Bob: We could have won the Cold War with much less military intervention ... Is “authoritarianism” the new “international communism”? ... Is there an anti-American terrorist threat lurking in Syria? ... The military’s institutional bias against bad news ... Will Biden reinstitute Trump’s “stay in Mexico” policy? ... Parrot Room preview: The Kamala problem, JD Vance, the case against Ghislaine, Twitter lets users flag misinformation, a new Larry Elder scandal, the Atlantic’s supposed prosperousness, Nanci Griffith, the backstory on Bob and Mickey’s teetotaling, the Weinsteins, Ted Lasso, and some inspiration for Mickey ...
A prehistory of critical race theory ... What CRT isn't ... Why CRT gets so much pushback ... When (possibly) well-meaning jokes go wrong ... CRT and the language of the elite ... The shifting definitions of "racist" and "white supremacist" ... Are subtle changes in race-related vocabulary worth the trouble? ...
Meet the new virus, same as the old virus ... The confounding Covid numbers coming out of Florida ... Just a couple of cowards talking about JD Vance ... The Biden administration’s lackluster messaging on the Delta variant ... Hunter Biden faces some deep questions from a prostitute ... Mickey: “Democratic paranoia” about new voting laws is actually about the filibuster ... Bob: The current Taliban takeover of Afghanistan could be worse ... Dems are so close to, yet so far from, passing infrastructure ... Does Andrew Cuomo have a political future? ... Parrot Room preview: Bob floats a new Grand Unified Theory of the Weinsteins, some Jeffrey Epstein news involving a doll, the Muscle Shoals doc, Trump’s wall, Glenn Greenwald gets ready to Rumble, Bob’s half-thought about vaccines, the 1/6 commission, and The Best and the Brightest continued ...
Adam's military service in Afghanistan ... How much popular support does the Taliban have? ... Adam: If the US didn’t withdraw there would be no end in sight ... Why is the Afghan military struggling to hold off the Taliban? ... A primer on Afghanistan's largest ethnic groups ... What are the chances of a political settlement? ... Will withdrawing from Afghanistan bring terrorism to America? ... Adam: Withdrawing helps the US focus on existential threats like climate change ... Can Afghanistan’s neighbors help bring stability? ...
Mickey restrains himself ... What’s Cuomo’s sex scandal strategy? ... Bob’s encounters with Cuomo the elder ... Was Bob too optimistic about the Delta variant? ... Simon Biles sticks the landing ... The implications of China’s crackdown on tech companies ... The right’s natalist schism ... Mickey: For Tucker, talking Orbán is a way to avoid talking Trump ... Eric Weinstein promises (and threatens) a big reveal ... Parrot Room preview: More Eric Weinstein talk, a Jeffrey Epstein update, Biden’s eviction moratorium, emperor penguins, the California recall, the worst program Mickey’s ever heard on NPR, The Best and the Brightest, censored parrots, and why there’s no anti-Biden Tea Party ...
Mickey protests the sexualization of Bloggingheads ... The tribal response to Simone Biles' troubles ... Mickey: The left puts too much blame on unvaccinated Trumpers ... Bob campaigns for vaccine czar ... How should Biden talk about the Delta variant? ... Who can beat Trump in 2024? ... JD Vance really wants you to have kids ... Bob wants to get rid of the news ... Mickey: Sinema should sink the child tax credit ... Elon Musk's fantasy world ... Bob is hiring! ... Parrot Room preview: Into the metaverse, Mickey's theory on Gawker, Van Jones gets rich, Mickey's take on Bruce Springsteen and Jon Landau, how woke are the Olympics, sexism in trees, the joke Mickey told Jackie Mason, and a new report on a 2013 chemical weapons attack in Syria ...
Last year's Beirut port explosion ... The roots of Lebanon's economic crisis ... Sectarianism and the dueling narratives of the Lebanese civil war ... Why did Hezbollah intervene in Syria? ... Rania: US policy in Syria helped lead to the rise of ISIS ... What if outside powers had stayed out of Syria? ... The effect of US sanctions on Syria ... How popular is Assad's government? ... Why Qatar, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia intervened in the conflict ...
Bob and Mickey enter the Cone of Silence ... Mickey: The narrative about vaccination has collapsed ... Should Bob worry about Eric Weinstein’s latest weird tweet? ... Are we stuck with Covid forever? ... Mickey: If Americans start to see work as optional, migrants will replace them ... The Child Tax Credit’s surprisingly bad polling ... Appraising the Cleveland baseball team’s new name ... A new Gallup opinion poll has some bad news about race relations ... Mickey doesn’t buy Bob’s take on the Pegasus spyware expose ... The inquiries and (alleged) conspiracies of January 6 ... Why blame Tom Barrack when you could blame Jared? ... Biden screws Ukraine over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline ... Parrot Room preview: What bad buses in Philly teach us about government overreach, the California recall, Jeffrey Goldberg in hot water, Nick Kristof eyes a run for office, Sean Hannity’s bowel problems—and ours, Eric Weinstein’s tweet, game theory among ethnic elites, and the January 6 prosecutions ...
Are democracies better at following international rules than autocracies? ... Eli: The world is better off with America in charge ... Debating US policy toward Cuba ... Bob: What's the difference between America's authoritarian allies and its authoritarian enemies? ... Does China see liberal democracies as a threat? ... The virtue of epistemic humility ...
Bob vows not to get flapped again ... A flood of reporting on the Trump Administration’s last days ... Will the billionaire space race help a wealth tax gain traction? ... Mickey: Democrats will get the soft infrastructure bill passed ... On the question of JD Vance’s degree of Trumpiness ... Mickey: The Child Tax Credit will produce a social disaster ... How Bush made war with Afghanistan unavoidable ... Why are we sanctioning Cuba (or anyone)? ... Parrot Room preview: a sad story from Bob’s youth, the subtext of Bob’s Eric Weinstein piece, further work on the Bret side of the Weinstein equation, an empirical observation about black employees in public-facing jobs, the Aspen Information Disorder Commission, apologies of Abigail Shrier’s book, Ashli Babbitt, Richard Lewontin, Tarkovsky’s Stalker, and Mickey’s Law of Success Stories ...
Tim's academic background ... Tim responds to Eric Weinstein's claims against him and his co-author ... How Tim first came into contact with Weinstein ... Tim: Weinstein is evading our critiques of his theory ... What would a "theory of everything" require and accomplish? ... Weinstein's attempt at a theory of everything ... The Shiab operator and its problems ... Tim's further objections to Geometric Unity ... The "aesthetic wish" for a unified field theory ... The difference between a mathematical and a physical theory of everything ... What frustrates Tim about Weinstein's presentation of GU ... The irony of Weinstein trying to squelch Tim's critique ... Pondering the crackpot question ...
Branson aims to beat Bezos to space ... J.D. Vance flirts with delegitimizing the 2020 election ... Tucker suggests cameras in classrooms to root out CRT ... Bob makes progress toward a Unified Theory of the Weinsteins ... Is a new Alzheimer’s drug worth the astronomical cost? ... Is Haiti paying for Trump’s belligerence toward Venezuela? ... Why is China clamping down on a big Chinese ride-hailing company? ... Mickey: Democrats will abandon the bipartisan infrastructure bill ... Covid cases are up in the US. Will deaths follow? ... Searching for insight into Trump’s mindset on January 6 ... Parrot Room preview: A Hunter Biden development, Big Tech’s possible bias against J.D. Vance, Glenn Loury and Charles Murray’s recent conversation, Republicans oppose beefing up the IRS, a Jeffrey Epstein-Marty Peretz connection, Bob continues to hypothesize on the Weinsteins, Fellini’s La Strada, even more JD Vance, and Trump’s Waterloo ...
Mickey's future's so bright ... ... Michael Wolff’s account of January 6 ... How serious are the charges against the Trump Organization? ... JD Vance masters the art of political victimhood ... The NCAA allows college athletes to monetize ... Is Bret Weinstein right about ivermectin? ... Will Kamala face competition if Biden doesn't run again? ... Derrick Bell’s “Space Traders,” Gwen Berry and “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Donald Rumsfeld, Hunter Biden, Child Tax Credit, Nikole Hannah-Jones gets tenure at UNC, Mickey gets snide about Thomas Chatterton Williams, the alleged crankiness of the Weinsteins, Bill Cosby released, and Mickey has a question about monogamy. ... Special bonus topic: Bob takes David Sanger to task ...
Assessing Biden's recent airstrikes in Iraq and Syria ... How autonomous are Iran-linked militias in Iraq? ... Sectarianism and Iraqi politics ... Why does the US still have troops in Iraq and Syria? ... Derek: Iran feels threatened by the US presence in the region ... Is the US in Syria to counter Iran? ... The hawkish bias in MSM foreign policy reporting ... Derek's new podcast, American Prestige ...
Is the infrastructure bill crumbling? ... What wouldn't Mickey sacrifice to defeat the Child Tax Credit? ... The Supreme Court rules against the NCAA ... Is ranked choice voting the best option? ... Mickey: Dem voting rights legislation is fizzling out ... CRT remains the right’s target of choice ... Bob and Mickey are on Team Britney ... America’s post-pandemic order: No waiters and no towels ... Bret Weinstein flirts with vaccine trutherism ... Parrot Room preview: Lin-Manuel Miranda gets blowback, Hunter Biden’s M&M trick, Network discussed, Isaacson’s Einstein, the Wimbledon Challenge, Ramesh Ponnuru’s ascent, Gossip Girl wrestles with its privilege, and attribution error ...
Is Israel a democracy? ... Bret: Israeli settlements in the West Bank are not illegal ... Has Israel ever offered the Palestinians a sovereign state? ... Bret: The core of the problem is Palestinian misgovernance ... Deterring Hamas ... Is international criticism of Israel inevitable? ... An exercise in perspective taking ... Whose side is time on? ...
Biden’s good-enough Russia summit performance ... Bob: Michael McFaul is obsessed with aiding-and-abetting accusations ... Jeffrey Toobin returns, to Mickey’s dismay ... Is it National Biden-Harris Child Tax Credit Day already? ... Is Stacey Abrams ingeniously engineering the end of the filibuster? ... Did the FBI have a hand in provoking the January 6 riots? ... Some peculiar implications of the Texas anti-CRT law ... Bob responds to Mickey’s anal probe challenge ... Norm entrepreneurs ... Parrot Room preview: a mystery guest joins the conversation, Hunter Biden’s memoir, a Jill Biden-Kamala Harris rivalry, a Tom Wilson biopic, the unjustly unverified, Loury and McWhorter, and the Blinken-Biden schism ...
Nikita’s disclaimer: I don’t speak for the average Russian ... One result of Western sanctions: no good cheese in Russian stores ... The crackdown on the supporters of Alexey Navalny ... What Putin learned from the protests in Belarus ... The Internet vs TV ... Do Russians see America as an enemy? ... Siloviki, the Russian ruling class ... Nikita tries to describe his ineffable Substack newsletter, Psychopolitica ...
Why we should hope there are extraterrestrials ... Bezos in space ... Bob manages to hold back on Jeffrey Toobin jokes ... Mickey: Kamala's staff is incompetent ... Is Biden really getting the US out of Afghanistan? ... Bob defends Ilhan Omar's war crimes comments ... Mickey: It's harder to pass a reconciliation bill in the House than in the Senate ... Bob frets about a mirth shortage on the left ... Parrot room preview: the Vanity Fair piece on Jeffrey Epstein, Hunter Biden, Bob's problem with Slates’s Slow Burn, Bob’s problem with David Sanger, hydroxychloroquine, trucks flying flags, and sexy cicadas ...
Mickey: Where's the anti-woke Tea Party? ... How far will Democrats go with budget reconciliation? ... Can Trump really be reinstated? ... Bye-bye Bibi ... Mickey's got good news for the Wuhan lab and bad news for pangolins ... Mickey: Just let Naomi Osaka play tennis ... Bob reminisces about life as a journalist pre-Twitter ... Mickey: We don't need more electric car subsidies ... Bob's not impressed by the NYT's UFO reporting ... Parrot Room preview: UFOs, Idiocracy, the Philadelphia sound, the situation in Xinjiang, Naomi Osaka, Huawei strikes back, and J.D. Vance ...
A primer on Xinjiang's history ... Are Uyghur women facing forced sterilization? ... China's counter-terrorism justification ... Sinifying" the Uyghurs ... What we know about the detention camps ... How many people have gone through the camps? ... Can outside pressure change China's policy? ...
Two podcasters, three definitions of neoliberalism ... What rules the ruling class? ... Phil Mickelson’s record-breaking PGA win ... Mickey: The Epstein guard verdict bodes ill for Ghislaine ... Is the left starting to worry about rising crime rates? ... You attend one Nazi sex party … ... Bob: What Belarus did was wrong, but what about … ... Parrot Room preview: UFOs, a Wuhan-stravaganza, cable news ratings, Hunter Biden, a Times reporter calls the lab leak theory racist, a trans track controversy, more Gates, etc. ...
Mickey voices concerns over Ford’s new electric truck ... Is Bitcoin worth the cost? ... Bob and Mickey manage to politicize cicadas ... The AP’s dismissal of a young journalist ... Bob: The Gaza conflict seems to have unified Palestinians ... Mickey: Republicans will get squeezed by Trump and the abortion issue ... The looming threat of inflation ... Do we need a 1/6 commission? ... Parrot Room preview: The Gatesgate plot thickens, a McKay Coppins beef, Mickey and Bob’s Slow Burn bonus content surfaces, UFOs, Charles Grodin, cancellation at Basecamp, A Face in the Crowd concluded, and a Jonathan Chait tweet ...
Covid and inequities between Palestinians and Jewish Israelis ... The aftereffects of the conflict ... Will the conflict benefit Netanyahu? ... The shift in American opinion on Israel-Palestine ... Biden and Bibi ... How Israelis view the world’s view of Israel ...
The symbolic power of Sheikh Jarrah ... Fadi: Palestinians are more united than they have been in years ... The case for a rights-based approach to the conflict ... Will a majority of Israeli Jews ever support a one-state solution? ... How Palestinians view Hamas today ... The resilience of Palestinian national identity ... Overcoming fear ...
Like a mask to a flame ... The latest episode in the Israel-Palestine conflict ... Can Liz Cheney make the GOP a safe space for hawks? ... Trump’s continuing influence over Republican politics ... Mickey: Biden will pull an about-face on immigration ... Bob: We should be talking about a one-state solution ... Goodbye Gates matrimony, hello Wright parsimony ... Bob mocks microwave weapon story, thus inviting microwave weapon attack ... Will Biden choose bipartisanship over progressivism? ... Parrot Room preview: Mickey’s next visual gag, a mild critique of Slow Burn, A Face in the Crowd, Bob Dylan trivia, and to sell ads or not to sell ads ...
Mickey sports an unsettling new look ... The Trumpist revolt against Liz Cheney ... Tucker Carlson damages his brand ... Where will babies come from? ... Bob: Trump is responsible for our failure to reach herd immunity ... Who’s at fault in the Gates divorce, Jeffrey Epstein or Clippy? ... The Justice Department indicts the Minneapolis cops ... Bob lauds Biden for waiving vaccine patents ... More evidence for the “lab leak” COVID theory ... Parrot Room preview: the menace of Menendez, Bidenomics, Twitter’s tip jar, Mickey’s psychoanalysis progresses (or at least continues), The Sleepwalkers, Woke Disneyland, Zuckerberg’s moral compass, Bob worries about millennials, and Mickey continues to gaslight Bob about the hair ...
Biden’s $10 trillion Chevy Malibu ... How much of Biden’s agenda will actually get through Congress? ... Bob frowns on Biden’s nationalistic framing ... Tucker Carlson’s bizarre mask rant ... The Chauvin conviction’s deterrent value ... Human Rights Watch declares Israel an apartheid state ... Is there a Biden doctrine? ... Parrot Room preview: Bob continues to psychoanalyze Mickey, the first episode of Slow Burn, Rudy, Rudin, the Oscars, justice and utilitarianism, Mickey has a run in with the cops, Kerry and Iran, and Mickey’s theory of West L.A. ...
Mickey’s road trip report ... The underclass takes to the airwaves ... Sympathy for a Chauvin trial alternate juror ... The regrettable melodrama of post-trial takes ... Was the Ma’Khia Bryant shooting justified? ... The subtle editorializing in the NYTs reportorial prose ... Is Biden’s use of race to frame policy appealing to people of color? ... The Ukraine lobby’s unfortunate influence ... Parrot Room preview: Revisiting LeBron’s worst decision, a jury duty confession, Bob puts Mickey on the couch, immigration, and child allowances ...
Barbara bets that the Iran nuclear deal will be revived ... Hawkish Dems and Biden's slow start on Iran ... Does Iran pose an existential threat to Israel? ... Barbara: A comprehensive deal isn't happening anytime soon ... Iran’s strategic patience ... Do Iranian elections matter? ... Does the regime care about public opinion? ... Biden’s goals in the Middle East ...
Mickey teases a tantalizing reconciliation rumor ... Biden backs off campaign promise to raise refugee cap ... Bob worries that there’s a loophole in Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal ... Rising Russia-U.S. tensions ... Should we pledge to defend Taiwan? ... Mickey: Corporate political activism is an alarming anti-democratic trend ... Bob scolds the Washington Post ... Israel’s attack on Iran and on American diplomacy ... J.D. Vance’s senatorial ambitions ... Parrot Room preview: Bob’s genius point about Israel and identity politics, more Jeffrey Goldberg trash talk, how Dominion Voting Systems is helping Fox, Naomi Wolfe and Steve Bannon form an unholy alliance ...
Alex’s new book, Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape, and Home ... Kurt Wolff’s fugitive life as a literary subversive ... Alex’s father’s experience fighting for Germany in WWII ... The complementary war recollections of Alex’s and Bob’s fathers ... Helen and Kurt Wolff’s founding of, and exit from, Pantheon Books ... The expansive life and fitting death of Kurt Wolff ... A father’s flight from the past, a son’s revisitation ... Did the German bourgeoisie’s devotion to aesthetic experience blind them to their moral responsibilities? ... Endpapers as objet d’art ...
The softer side of infrastructure ... The pitfalls of overracializing policy ... Bob gets pedantic with the New York Times ... Bob: Even if George Floyd was overdosing, Derek Chauvin is accountable for his death ... Is there something to Matt Gaetz’s claim that he is the victim of extortion? ... Bring on the vaccine passports ... Mickey reconciles himself to reconciliation ... Parrot Room preview: Mickey cancels himself, new Tiger Woods driving data, and just how big of an asshole was Bob during Slate’s Slow Burn taping? ...
Jesse’s new book, The Quick Fix: Why Fad Psychology Can’t Solve Our Social Ills ... Does the Implicit Association Test actually measure bias? ... The flawed methodology underlying the superpredator theory ... Why the grit theory lacks staying power ... The replication crisis in experimental psychology ... Jesse clarifies his views on child gender dysphoria and transgender athletes ...
Iran’s move toward China ... Gaetzgate explained (or at least described) ... Puzzling over Biden’s infrastructure bill strategy ... The political risks of racial equity legislation ... Is the corporate pressure campaign against the Georgia voting law working? ... The George Floyd jury’s pressure chamber ... Parrot Room preview: Mickey takes the Deplorable Automotive Challenge, the strange death of Tony Hsieh, the challenges of post-Covid bathroom design, and is Mickey pampered? ...
How do we know Russia was behind the Solar Winds hack? ... The political nature of cyber attribution ... Tim: A digital Geneva Convention isn’t possible—at least not yet ... Why don’t great powers want a cyber war treaty? ... Tim: We should focus on building strong international norms ... The dangers of cyber war in an interconnected world ...
Biden’s slow but steady press conference performance ... Mickey gets ratio’d ... Bob attempts to convince Mickey to run for governor of California, immediately solicits a bribe ... Disappointing foreign policy decisions and the journalists that abet them ... Bob: “Blinken is totally out of control” ... The post-vaccination blues ... How intellectual property laws choke the global vaccine supply ... Parrot Room preview: Bob’s branding problem—and ours, near-death crises, JAMA deputy editor placed on leave, guaranteed income for Oakland POCs ...