Robert Wright's Nonzero

0:28 How this conversation came to be 1:59 What surprised Glenn most about the Kirk killing 8:02 Who (or what) is driving our polarization? 17:03 Cognitive empathy for MAGA 2451 Reacting to Charlie Kirk on affirmative action 43:58 Are we re-running the 1960s? 51:14 Coming up in part 2: Israel-GazaRobert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Glenn Loury (https://glennloury.substack.com/, Brown University, Late Admissions, Self-Censorship). Recorded September 15, 2024.Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.nonzero.org/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org0:28 Has the pace of AI progress slowed? 12:25 How the tech CEOs are learning to stop worrying 14:34 Mark Zuckerberg 23:12 Sam Altman 30:23 OpenAI’s attempt to shed its non-profit status 53:29 Dario Amodei 59:51 Heading into OvertimeRobert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Holly Elmore (PauseAI US). Recorded September 11, 2025.Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org0:28 "Would Putin send a weird sexually suggestive birthday greeting to a famous affluent well-connected pedophile?" 5:55 Decoding Trump's message in the greeting 13:19 Conspiracy theories vs official silence 19:14 Why is Ezra Klein content with "We'll never know"? 24:42 Why no president wants to release the Epstein files 26:50 Ghislaine names Clinton and Larry Summers 33:57 Does Epstein kill faith in democracy? 39:07 Trump vs. Putin: Authoritarian playbooks compared 43:18 Will Trumpism outlive Trump? 49:54 David Sacks embraces strongman tactics 56:36 How war changes everything overnight 1:00:59 Trump's Mexico invasion fantasy 1:05:33 Heading to OvertimeRobert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Nikita Petrov (https://psychopolitica.substack.com). Recorded September 09, 2025.Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org0:28 The Bob-Paul secret sauce—spilled! 3:49 Mickey Kaus's latest contribution to Epsteinology 13:28 Paul fact-checks Mickey, gets fact-checked 20:16 What’s better: AI or indoor plumbing? 29:06 What Gary Marcus gets right—and (very) wrong—about AI 38:09 Has TV made us smarter? 42:13 The pros of the Google antitrust ruling 48:52 Putin’s paleo-transhumanism 53:29 Heading to OvertimeRobert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Paul Bloom (https://smallpotatoes.paulbloom.net, University of Toronto, The Sweet Spot, Against Empathy). Recorded September 04, 2025.Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org0:30 Seth’s new NYT bestseller, The Fort Bragg Cartel 2:47 What is Delta Force? 8:02 The growth of Delta Force's covert ops and unaccountability 14:35 American "death squads" 18:51 Why cops and prosecutors cover up crimes by elite soldiers 26:33 The mysterious murder of Billy Lavigne 34:28 How invading Afghanistan fueled America's drug crisis 45:48 Heading to OvertimeRobert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Seth Harp (Rolling Stone, New America, The Fort Bragg Cartel). Recorded August 26, 2025Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Bob welcomes Nikita back to the Nonzero team 6:41 WSJ's report on Trump's authoritarian drift 9:10 Three levers: streets, media, education system 13:22 Trump the businessman and Trump the politician 15:14 Why Putin was compelling in 1999, when Russia was a young democracy 23:01 Laws vs norms 29:29 Trump and lawfare: how independent is the US judiciary? 36:16 Partisanship among judges 38:52 Trump's view of the world as a game 43:08 Cynicism as a political brand 46:34 Nikita: Putin and Trump share a geopolitical worldview 50:10 The damage the US and Russia did to the international law 54:59 The evolution of Putin's understanding of geopolitics 59:46 Today's Overtime segment is open for everybody! 1:00:53 The crisis of the nation-state & NonZero's community building project 1:18:31 "Kremlin is not Russia": distinguishing between the nation and the state 1:19:59 Bob: We all need a tribe 1:24:56 What does it mean to be an American? 1:30:07 Nikita's Armenian propaganda: A legitimate reason to be proud of your nationRobert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Nikita Petrov (https://psychopolitica.substack.com). Recorded August 28, 2025.Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.nonzero.org/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org0:28 Joe’s notable background 3:39 Is most of the MAGA coalition accelerationist? 7:52 Transhumanism, big tech, Klaus Schwab, and the noosphere 20:58 How the pandemic sparked a MAGA tech backlash 34:26 Palantir as bipartisan bête noire 40:41 The conservative case for AI regulation 52:01 Should fear of China trump fear of AI? 58:04 Heading to OvertimeRobert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Joe Allen (Singularity Weekly, War Room, Dark Aeon). Recorded August 13, 2025.Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org0:30 Connor’s farewell 3:28 What’s next at NonZero 8:20 The looming invasion of Gaza City 11:28 Israel's one-state solution 16:25 Why did Trump give up on Gaza? 21:04 The "blame-it-on-Bibi" farce 31:32 A disappointing week for Ukraine 33:31 How to make security guarantees work 40:21 Ukraine's ticking time bombRecorded August 22, 2025.Read this week’s edition of the Earthling:https://www.nonzero.org/p/israel-lays-bare-its-one-state-solutionhttps://twitter.com/NonzeroNews https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org0:28 Bob defends the Unabomber (kind of) 3:05 Paul nurses his Mickey-inflicted wounds 15:55 Bob deflates the GPT-5 deflation 25:19 How big a deal are LLM hallucinations? 28:10 AI's coming social and economic disruptions 35:17 How Bob and Paul use AI 39:16 The ideas of Hanno Sauer 48:15 Heading to Overtime Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Paul Bloom (https://smallpotatoes.paulbloom.net, University of Toronto, The Sweet Spot, Against Empathy). Recorded August 19, 2025. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org0:30 What’s at stake in Alaska 1:25 George: Don’t try to do too much 4:34 EU yes, NATO no 6:10 How to get the Ukrainians on board 10:59 Could Putin dupe Trump into a bad deal? 20:26 Sanctions: painful, but not decisive 25:19 What Russian media is saying about the talks 30:12 Are Europe & Ukraine warming to a deal?Recorded August 15, 2025. https://twitter.com/NonzeroNewshttps://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org0:28 Nathan’s work at AI2—and his p(doom) 5:00 What does “open source AI” mean? 11:01 How Nathan taught a Llama new tricks 18:05 Pros and cons of open sourcing AI 29:21 Nathan's ATOM Project to boost American open models 37:58 What's behind OpenAI's open source play? 40:20 Geoffrey Hinton's case against open models 44:27 Is the US-China open model rivalry really zero-sum? 51:32 Heading to OvertimeRobert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Nathan Lambert (The Allen Institute for AI, https://www.interconnects.ai/). Recorded August 12, 2025.Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Epstein's Israel connections 9:35 Epstein's history of blackmail 22:43 Was it suicide? 27:09 Epstein's creepy relationship with Trump 32:16 Why won’t Trump release the files? 38:59 The Israel connection(s) 51:21 Some Epstein-Wexner weirdness 57:23 What’s the deal with Ghislaine? 1:03:51 Was it suicide? (cont’d) 1:16:11 Influence operation or personal fetish operation? Or both? 1:27:18 Epstein's strangely light 2008 sentence 1:33:09 The political cost for Trump 1:37:27 How dangerous is Trump?Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Mickey Kaus (kausfiles, The End of Equality). Recorded August 11, 2025.Mickey's Substack: https://kaus.substack.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.nonzero.org/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org0:28 Jordan’s ChinaTalk podcast 3:01 Making sense of America’s “China consensus” 11:03 Are fears of Chinese global ambitions overblown? 29:51 The logic (or is it illogic?) of the AI arms race 33:14 China and the Ukraine War 41:30 Influence operations: Chinese vs American 46:24 China’s endgame re the US—and vice-versa 1:00:20 Is US China talk an echo chamber? 1:08:30 Heading to OvertimeRobert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Jordan Schneider (ChinaTalk). Recorded August 05, 2025.Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org0:28 Substack glory and livestream anxiety 02:58 Reading eugenics into a dopey jeans ad 11:37 Does Sydney Sweeney spell the end of “inclusive marketing”? 15:25 Bob vs. Paul on IQ and “general intelligence” 22:10 Paul reviews the new Billy Joel documentary 28:07 The Epstein prison video snafu: a Bayesian take 37:19 Ghislaine gets a free upgradeRobert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Paul Bloom (https://smallpotatoes.paulbloom.net, University of Toronto, The Sweet Spot, Against Empathy). Recorded August 04, 2025.Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org0:30 Why Gaza’s famine is the "most intense" in decades 4:00 From food secure to starvation: How Gaza unraveled 7:26 Blinken's willful blindness to Israel's obstruction of aid 11:33 How the US muzzled its own famine warning system 15:05 The political power of the term "famine" 19:54 What starvation does to the body—and to society 24:38 The perverse logic of starvation as warfare 26:3 How the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation puts aid in Hamas's hands 29:33 Evaluating Israel's accusation against UNRWA 32:52 How many Gazans are dying of starvation? 36:19 What a real aid response would take now Recorded August 1, 2025. https://twitter.com/NonzeroNews https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org0:28 Derek and Danny plug their new Crusades series 3:19 This week’s shift in Gaza discourse 12:20 The real danger Gaza poses for Israel 22:05 Does the left’s rhetoric on Israel miss the mark? 32:24 Elite media’s think tank problem 36:27 Is American imperialism really the problem? 40:04 Heading to OvertimeRobert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True), Derek Davison (Foreign Exchanges, American Prestige, Discontents), and Daniel Bessner (American Prestige, University of Washington). Recorded July 31, 2025.Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

On this crossover edition of the NonZero podcast, Bob is interviewed by Michael Walker of Novara Media on artificial intelligence.Video on Novara’s YouTube channel: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.nonzero.org/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org0:30 Trump’s AI Action plan 4:00 The contradictions inherent to Trump's plan 6:25 How Trump’s anti-globalism undermines his AI goals 10:52 Anthropic’s leaked memo: Ideals vs Persian Gulf cash 13:06 Bob: Dario Amodei is the true AI ideologue 17:17 How AI “safety” became a hawkish movement 18:18 Why true objectivity in LLMs is a fantasy 22:58 A Palantir exec dives into the movie business 25:16 Is AI surgery around the corner? 33:06 Why the Gaza ceasefire talks are collapsing—again 35:36 Biden and Trump's allergy to using US leverageRecorded July 25, 2025.https://twitter.com/NonzeroNews https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org0:28 Josh’s hopes for post-Assad Syria—revisited 4:12 The challenge(s) facing the Syrian government 8:58 What’s driving Syria’s sectarian violence? 19:44 Josh’s personal window into the al-Sharaa regime’s brutality 22:51 The new regime’s church vs state problem 29:44 How the Druze became central to Israeli-Syrian hostilities 43:05 Why did Israel escalate with Syria, really? 50:35 Josh’s current outlook on Syria's future 55:32 Heading to OvertimeRobert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Joshua Landis (University of Oklahoma, SyriaComment.com). Recorded July 23, 2025.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org0:28 The full reason for Bob’s absence—revealed 6:41 What’s the real story with Trump and Epstein? 15:02 A peek down the Epstein rabbit hole 31:18 Grok goes full Nazi-pornbot 40:15 The promise and perils of AI companions 47:55 Bob on dealing with cancer in the age of AI 1:10:39 Heading to OvertimeRobert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Paul Bloom (https://smallpotatoes.paulbloom.net, University of Toronto, The Sweet Spot, Against Empathy). Recorded July 22, 2025.Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods