Robert Wright's Nonzero

What is neuroexistentialism? ... Neuroscience, free will, and existentialism ... The "compatibilist" claim that free will and determinism can co-exist ... To define “free will,” first redefine “agency” ... Why the importance of luck should make us doubt intuitions about free will ... Moral responsibility and the Nazi war criminal thought experiment ... Does Gregg’s personality predispose him to reject retribution? ...

Ian's new book, Us vs. Them: The Failure of Globalism ... Trump’s foreign policy: belligerent nationalism or non-interventionism or both? ... What Trump offers disgruntled voters and the news media ... The perilous future of US-Iran relations ... Do US foreign policy makers pay too much attention to the oil states? ... Ian: Technology is empowering authoritarian regimes ... Why Ian is still optimistic about the world ...

Anthony's new book, The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity ... Anthony's own unusual identity ... Cosmopolitanism and its discontents ... Patriotism, nationalism, and "legitimate forms of partiality" ... Against essentialism in religion ... The invention of the idea of a national spirit ... Who owns the culture? ... How class conflict has changed in the US and UK ...

Why the media loved John McCain ... How McCain's irascible streak helped him survive torture in Vietnam ... From a "Vietnam-syndrome realist" to the hawkiest hawk ... How calculated were McCain's political shifts? ... Allying with neocons in the late '90s to fight cynicism ... Matt: McCain had "an elitist disdain for populist bigotry" ... The 2008 election and our current predicament ... When McCain was not particularly mavericky ...

How Bhikkhu Bodhi first encountered Buddhism... ... ...and how he became a Buddhist monk ... Can "secular" Buddhists have spiritual experiences? ... Traditional Buddhism, secular Buddhism, and immanent Buddhism ... Diving into nirvana: “conditioned arising” and “the unconditioned” ... Does Buddhism make you a better person? ...

Will's blockbuster podcast, Chapo Trap House ... Chapo's new book, The Chapo Guide to Revolution ... Celebrity dumbasses, liberal hawks, and neocons ... How the Iraq war radicalized Will ... Why Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein are in Chapo's crosshairs ... Critiquing the Resistance from the left ... Are Trump voters racist? Economically anxious? ... Will: There is no decent conservatism in America ...

Robby explains why he still opposes Trump ... Trump's superpower: making everything more polarized ... The tempestuous political climate on college campuses ... Why are professors overwhelmingly on the left? ... Deplatforming: Where to draw the line? ... Peter Singer’s controversial views on infanticide ... Bob laments the damage done to US foreign policy by DC think tanks ... Philosopher Thomas Nagel and ideological tribalism ...

Three fundamental questions about time ... Revisiting the famous "twins paradox" thought experiment ... Why Tim thinks mainstream physicists are wrong about time ... Einstein and determinism ... Why Einstein was wrong about quantum entanglement ... Non-locality, the weirdest thing in physics ...

David’s new book, Into the Hands of the Soldiers ... How David wound up witnessing the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 ... Al Jazeera as the “Johnny Appleseed” of the Arab Spring ... Varieties of Islamism, from “conservative” to “liberal” ... The Muslim Brotherhood as a bourgeois movement ... Mohamed Morsi’s election, brief tenure, and removal from power in July 2013 ... Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s post-coup struggle for legitimacy ... The Obama administration’s muddled pre-coup messaging to coup-master Sisi ... Did the coup give fuel to Islamist extremists? ...

Ben's essay challenging Philip Zimbardo's famous Stanford Prison Experiment ... How a study about prisoners became a study about guards ... Evidence that Zimbardo improperly influenced the study ... The unexpected political effects of the experiment ... What explains the experiment's durability? ... When Zimbardo tried to get Bob to dance ... Is Zimbardo himself a victim of circumstance? ...