Robert Wright's Nonzero

Kathleen's new book on the white power movement, Bring the War Home ... How some veterans of Vietnam and the Gulf War turned to white nationalism ... Did the 1990s militias' plan to overthrow the federal government make any sense? ... The causes and consequences of the Oklahoma City bombing ... Does PTSD explain the veteran-turned-militiaman? ... "ISIS-associated" Islamist terrorists and "lone-wolf" white nationalists ...

What's next after Trump's tweet threatening Iran? ... Bob vs. Eli on whether Iran is a meaningful threat to the US ... Comparing Iranian and Israeli foreign interventions ... Bob: America and its allies turned Syria from a tragedy into a catastrophe ... Why Bob sees no chance of Trump cutting a deal with Iran ... Was the uproar over Trump's Helsinki performance overblown? ... Is the Republic at peril? ...

Liza: Hillary Clinton's faux feminism lost her the election ... Recalling Clinton's infamous "baking cookies" remark ... Liza says Clinton used "neoliberal identity politics" ... Progressive, liberal, neoliberal: please define ... Liza's book on focus groups, Divining Desire ... The truth about famous failures: New Coke and the Edsel ... Was 2016 a rejection of focus-group driven politics? ...

Why Robin's head will be severed and frozen upon his death ... Robin used the phrase "redistribution of sex" and people got mad ... Robin defends his controversial blog post about rape and cuckoldry ... Robin's book about our selfish motives, The Elephant in the Brain ... Laughter as a signal about norm violation ... Robin: Politics is about proving your loyalty to your side ... What's the real reason we engage in conversation? ...

"Vesuvian wrath" over Trump's press conference performance ... What explains Trump's antics at the NATO meeting? ... The Cold Warriors and the doves have swapped roles ... The growing international alliance of anti-internationalists ... Did the Iraq War make Trump president? ... Jacob explains the foreign policy realism of The National Interest ... Jacob: Trump's foreign policy hearkens back to the pre-WWII GOP ... Bob’s fantasy about Theresa May ... Why does Trump like Putin so dang much? ...

Try this at home: the rubber hand illusion ... Out-of-body experiences in VR ... Why you will never have a not-self experience ... Meditation, capitalism, and political activism ... The urgent need to teach meditation in schools ... Thomas's "transparent self" model ...

Michael's controversial Scientific American column on the "final mysterians" ... Bob's thought experiment about God and quantum mechanics ... The split among philosophers over the free will question ... Revisiting Thomas Nagel’s famous essay, "What is it like to be a bat?" ... What's a harder problem, God or consciousness? ... What laws should govern a colony on Mars? ... Michael reports from inside the Intellectual Dark Web ... Deconstructing Jordan Peterson's appeal ... Bob: Life is hard and religion can help ...

John's book, The New Cosmic Story ... Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and cosmic evolution ... What it means to say that "God is more Omega than Alpha" ... John: We live in an "awakening universe" ... Putting religion in cosmic context ... Does "rightness" exist apart from human judgment? ... Why John takes comfort in the "unfinishedness" of the universe ... Alfred North Whitehead's influence on John's worldview ... Why John rejects Perennialism ...

How Trump and the evangelical right became bedfellows ... “Two Corinthians” and Trump’s familiarity with the prosperity gospel ... Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s likely pick to dismantle Roe v. Wade ... Bob: State-level abortion laws will deepen the divide between red and blue states ... Did Trump pay to cover up an abortion?—and why evangelicals don’t care ... Sarah: Becoming numb to Trump’s transgressions is “how authoritarianism works” ... Bob’s tactical approach to political outrage ... Was deplatforming Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s dinner a good idea? ...

Michael Pollan's new book, How to Change Your Mind ... Dissolving the ego via meditation and via psychedelics ... Brain, self, and personal narrative ... The underground subculture of psychedelic guides ... Michael feels the love and sees the unity (you had to be there) ... Do psychedelics validate scientific materialism or undermine it? ... Scientific vs. religious descriptions of psychedelic experience ... Why is the brain capable of psychedelic experiences? ... The future of psychedelics in research and society ...