Robert Wright's Nonzero

0:28 Worthwhile Canadian conquest 5:19 Late takes on Luigi Mangione 10:27 Elon’s AI motivation 14:23 Is the successor species sentient? (It matters!) 18:39 Paul’s AI freakout has arrived 23:39 AI buzzword of the year revealed 29:24 Bluesky brutality 35:44 Google’s experimental AI groks humanity 43:44 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 December 27, 2024.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:30 News Round-up 15:20 How progressives should approach Trump's foreign policy 30:23 Anatol Lieven joins to discuss Russia-Ukraine peace talks

Recorded December 20, 2024.

https://twitter.com/NonzeroNewshttps://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Conn and the ancestry of this podcast 2:29 Conn’s new book, Sex and the Citizen: How the Assault on Marriage Is Destroying Democracy 9:34 Modern matrimony by the numbers 18:44 Are monogamous societies more egalitarian? 24:10 Why the West went monogamous 35:15 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Conn Carroll (Washington Examiner, Sex and the Citizen). Recorded December 06, 2024.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

Overtime titles:

0:00 Why monogamous marriage is on the rocks 11:28 Conn’s proposals to fix America’s marital issue 15:14 Would income redistribution make for more marriages? 19:19 Porn, gambling, and other anti-marriage forces

0:28 Scott’s anti-war libertarianism and his new book, Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine 8:22 How the US made the Russia-Ukraine war more likely 13:10 Was Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution a US-backed coup? 30:26 America’s promise to the Soviet Union not to expand NATO 38:04 Do US officials misunderstand Russia’s perspective? 51:17 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Scott Horton (The Scott Horton Show, Fool's Errand, Provoked). Recorded December 11, 2024.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

Andrew Day and Connor Echols discuss the foreign policy news of the week. In this episode, Day and Echols also discuss Trump’s foreign policy team with James Carden of the American Conservative.

Recorded December 13, 2024.

https://twitter.com/NonzeroNewshttps://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Syria’s uncertain political future 11:10 Has the Islamist rebel group HTS actually moderated? 19:25 The extent of retributive violence since Assad fell 29:58 Syria's complicated factional divides 36:44 America's control of Syrian oil fields 40:41 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Joshua Landis (University of Oklahoma, SyriaComment.com). Recorded December 11, 2024.

0:00 Yuri’s high-stakes debate on Covid’s origins 3:42 Pros and cons of Covid vaccines 10:04 Do Covid “coincidences” point to a lab leak? 21:55 Does the pattern of Covid’s initial spread suggest zoonotic origin? 27:51 Why the Wuhan market may have amplified Covid’s spread 38:59 Covid’s lineages A and B 53:29 US-China collaboration in the Wuhan lab’s virology research

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Yuri Deigin (YouthBio Therapeutics). Recorded December 03, 2024.

Andrew Day and Connor Echols discuss the foreign policy news of the week. In this episode, Day and Echols also discuss the rapid rebel offensive in Syria with Bassam Barabandi, a former Syrian diplomat who defected in 2013.

Recorded December 06, 2024.

https://twitter.com/NonzeroNewshttps://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 A masterclass in audience alienation 3:50 Paul defends Biden’s paternal pardon 9:43 Should family come before societal good? 18:51 The costs of the Hunter pardon 32:18 Was Hunter the victim of a witch hunt? 37:52 Elon sues OpenAI (again) 45:12 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 December 04, 2024.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Anthropic’s CEO comes out as a China hawk 6:38 Why so many China hawks in the AI community? 22:49 Gaming out the AGI takeoff timeline 30:31 Last year’s OpenAI coup: What did Ilya see? 36:43 Underappreciated dangers of the China chip war 53:41 Are US tech leaders seeing China’s perspective clearly? 1:05:32 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Nathan Labenz (Cognitive Revolution, Waymark AI). Recorded November 26, 2024.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods