This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org 0:28 The deal Hamas offered Bibi before October 7 12:14 How October 7 changed the landscape 22:58 Why Clinton’s Camp David talks failed 38:08 What Arafat was actually offered at Camp David 46:25 The centrality of the right of return 51:59 Beyond two states 56:21 Heading into OT: Abandoning false optimism is not pessimism Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Robert Malley (Yale - Jacks...
Sep 30, 2025•1 hr 1 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org 0:00 How Eliezer Yudkowsky’s new book envisions AI takeover 8:24 Will we ever really know how AI works? 15:10 The “paperclip maximizer” problem revisited 26:13 Will advanced AIs be insatiable? 31:39 David’s alternative takeover scenario: gradual disempowerment 43:31 Can—and should—we keep humans in the loop? 51:46 Heading to Overtime Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and David Krueger ...
Sep 26, 2025•57 min
0:30 Glenn’s latest book, Self-Censorship 3:55 Why the Manhattan Institute dropped Glenn 13:25 Glenn on Gaza: “I can’t bear it.” 26:52 “Genocide” and other Israel speech code flashpoints 36:26 Has Trump’s anti-antisemitism push chilled campus speech? 42:30 The irony of the antisemitism crackdown 50:48 A few kind and less kind words for Bari Weiss 56:10 Are Israel’s defenders hurting their cause? 1:01:49 Glenn’s next big project Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) ...
Sep 23, 2025•1 hr 4 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org 0:28 Free speech after Charlie Kirk 20:28 Tyler Robinson’s strange messages 28:20 How influential was Kirk? 35:59 Do violent video games encourage violence? 48:31 Overtime topics: Paul’s debate triumph, Redford’s legacy, etc. 55:32 Heading into 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 ...
Sep 19, 2025•56 min
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-Gaza Robert 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. ...
Sep 16, 2025•52 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org 0:28 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 Overtime Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Holly Elmore (PauseAI US). Recorded September 11, 2025. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods...
Sep 12, 2025•1 hr 3 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org 0:28 "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 ...
Sep 10, 2025•1 hr 8 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org 0:28 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 Overtime Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution ...
Sep 05, 2025•56 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org 0:30 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 Overtime Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why B...
Sep 02, 2025•48 min
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 ...
Aug 29, 2025•1 hr 37 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org 0:28 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 Overtime Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) a...
Aug 26, 2025•1 hr
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org 0:30 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 bomb Recorded August 22, 2025. Read this week’s edition of the Earthling: https://www.nonzero.org/p/israel-lays-bar...
Aug 23, 2025•49 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org 0:28 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.paulbloo...
Aug 20, 2025•55 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org 0:30 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/NonzeroNews https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods...
Aug 15, 2025•36 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org 0:28 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 Overtime Robert Wright (Nonzer...
Aug 14, 2025•53 min
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...
Aug 12, 2025•1 hr 52 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org 0:28 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 Overtime Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolu...
Aug 07, 2025•1 hr 9 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org 0:28 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 upgrade Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Paul...
Aug 05, 2025•52 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org 0:30 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 Foundatio...
Aug 02, 2025•41 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org 0:28 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 Overtime Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True), Derek Davison (Foreign Exchanges, American Pr...
Aug 01, 2025•42 min
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
Jul 30, 2025•37 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org 0:30 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 co...
Jul 26, 2025•45 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org 0:28 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 futur...
Jul 24, 2025•56 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org 0:28 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 Overtime Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Paul Bloom (https://smallpotatoes.paulbloom.net, Un...
Jul 23, 2025•1 hr 12 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org 0:30 Why a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is so unlikely 4:01 Taiwan’s terrain: A defender’s dream, an invader’s nightmare 10:55 Why Taipei might be the hardest city in the world to conquer 12:45 Dan: China would need nearly 5 million soldiers to have a chance 14:18 The 2027 invasion theory—and why it doesn’t hold up 16:37 Is China trying to bankrupt the US military? 19:23 A cheaper, smarter way to defend Taiwan 22:42 Subm...
Jul 19, 2025•40 min
0:00 A brief message from Bob 1:45 Why many intelligent people think we’re living in a simulation 12:44 The philosophical argument that you’re probably not real 28:24 How cosmic rays might (and might not) reveal that reality is fake 36:18 Preston’s dire warning against trying to determine if we’re in a simulation 50:06 Is the simulation hypothesis non-falsifiable? 56:40 Is “the simulation” just religion for atheists? Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Preston...
Jul 17, 2025•1 hr 11 min
0:00 A brief message from Bob 1:55 What Lee means when he says "time is fundamental" 11:40 Understanding the universe as a network 25:59 A (very) tentative theory of consciousness 37:42 Did the laws of physics evolve? 45:23 Is the universe fine-tuned for the emergence of life? 57:21 Applying Lee's theories of time to everyday life Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Lee Smolin (Perimeter Institute, leesmolin.com). Recorded October 12, 2015. This is a public ep...
Jul 15, 2025•1 hr 6 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org 0:30 Why Neysun brings American students and scholars to China 3:05 Visiting China after Covid 5:17 Balancing US and Chinese red lines 11:03 When Neysun's students pushed Chinese officials on human rights 14:09 Do US students fear career risks for going to China? 16:08 Cultivating cognitive empathy 18:51 China's obsession with US politics 20:54 Trump's surprisingly consistent approach to Beijing 26:46 Are Chinese stude...
Jul 12, 2025•41 min
0:00 A brief message from Bob 1:51 Greg’s new book, The Gutfeld Monologues 10:49 How going to Berkeley pushed Greg toward conservatism 17:03 Trumpism creates strange ideological bedfellows 26:10 Bob offers a magic solution to the freedom vs. security dilemma 32:19 Was Obama right to avoid the phrase “Islamic radicalism”? 47:56 Trump’s savvy use of identity politics 55:48 The secret ingredient to Greg’s meditation practice Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Gr...
Jul 10, 2025•1 hr 3 min
0:00 A brief message from Bob 1:49 Why consciousness is so weird 11:29 Is consciousness like your brain’s shadow? 19:10 If David was a zombie, would anyone know? 23:21 Bob’s wacky theory about consciousness 44:49 Is consciousness what collapses the quantum wave function? 1:02:59 Can there be a true science of consciousness? Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and David Chalmers (New York University, The Australian National University). Recorded October 24, 2016. T...
Jul 08, 2025•1 hr 9 min
