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 ....
Mar 26, 2022•1 hr 12 min
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 ex...
Mar 22, 2022•1 hr 44 min
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...
Mar 19, 2022•1 hr 16 min
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 McCarthy...
Mar 16, 2022•1 hr 23 min
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 ... ...
Mar 12, 2022•1 hr 8 min
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 ... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss ...
Mar 09, 2022•1 hr 8 min
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 ...
Mar 05, 2022•1 hr 6 min
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 Stev...
Feb 28, 2022•1 hr 9 min
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 ...
Feb 26, 2022•1 hr 8 min
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? ... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss ...
Feb 23, 2022•1 hr 13 min
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 S...
Feb 19, 2022•1 hr 7 min
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 ... This is a public ...
Feb 15, 2022•1 hr 22 min
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 le...
Feb 12, 2022•1 hr 14 min
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 ... This is a public e...
Feb 08, 2022•54 min
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 sur...
Feb 05, 2022•1 hr 9 min
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? ... Th...
Feb 01, 2022•1 hr 14 min
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 th...
Jan 29, 2022•1 hr 11 min
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 ... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes,...
Jan 25, 2022•52 min
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 previe...
Jan 22, 2022•1 hr 12 min
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? ... Richa...
Jan 19, 2022•1 hr 25 min
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 threat...
Jan 15, 2022•1 hr 14 min
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? ... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, v...
Jan 12, 2022•1 hr 4 min
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 wa...
Jan 08, 2022•1 hr 11 min
What part of secular-guru space (if any) does Bob occupy? ... On the origin of Bob’s theses (by means of natural selection) ... The mind-boggling mystery of consciousness ... Could evolution have a larger purpose? ... The “global brain” as the flowering of natural selection’s seed ... Saving our species by transcending some species-typical tendencies ... The algorithm of evolution as “the Logos” ... How cognitive biases get in the way of global cooperation ... The positive feeling of negative em...
Nov 24, 2021•2 hr 18 min
Remembering Michael Brooks ... The existential stakes of enlightenment ... Overcoming the affective dimension of cognitive bias ... Bringing broader awareness to the concept of cognitive bias ... Cognitive bias and the roots of war ... The folly of feedback loops ... Quelling our primitive retributive impulses ... Taking a mulligan in your meditation practice ... Focusing on the hindrances ... Can you fail at meditation? ... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subs...
Sep 21, 2021•1 hr 37 min
Oliver's new book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals ... Oliver outlines “compatibilism,” the idea that free will and determinism can coexist ... Bob: Everyone should be a free will agnostic ... The occasionally dramatic consequences of arguments against free will ... Would determinism require us to reform our approach to criminal justice? ... A (possible) quantum hack for free will vs. determinism ... Bob thinks compatibilism is b******t ... ... ... but Oliver tries to persuade h...
Sep 14, 2021•1 hr 14 min
John's recent bout of fever-induced hallucinations ... Does math actually help you understand QM? ... What experiments in QM have and have not verified ... John: All interpretations of QM are bad ... What do we want from science? ... "An operating system for reality" ... 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...
Sep 07, 2021•1 hr 16 min
Disavowing the naturalistic fallacy ... Why “sex” may not mean what you think it means ... Did evolution make women “choosier” about sex partners than men? ... Haggling over the price of sperm and eggs ... Agustín: Empirical studies complicate evolutionary psychology’s theoretical models ... The evolutionary significance of non-reproductive sex ... Why are males bigger than females in our species? ... Looking at pornography (for insights into human evolution) ... Are male and female sexual jealo...
Aug 25, 2021•1 hr 21 min
Oliver’s new book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals ... Why is it so hard to accept the limits of our productivity? ... Prioritizing mindfully ... Heideggerian time management ... Finding value in even "meaningless" work ... Reducing the lure of distractions ... Ten tools for embracing your finitude ... Five (pretty intense) questions for reflection ... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.nonzer...
Aug 04, 2021•1 hr 22 min
Josh's aversion to the term "guru" ... Explaining the explain/excuse conflation ... The (possible) evolutionary origins of (biased) arguing ... Are humans mismatched to their modern environment? ... Building strengths vs. addressing deficiencies ... Defusing attribution error ... Making cognitive empathy cool ... Using meditation to strengthen cognitive empathy ... The mythical side of Bob ... Rationalists, effective altruists, and other possible fellow travelers ... This is a public episode. If...
Jul 06, 2021•1 hr 27 min
