Robert Wright's Nonzero

Subscribe to The Parrot Room at https://patreon.com/parrotroom

0:00 How should Republicans counter Biden’s blue-collar messaging?14:19 The disturbing thing balloon-gate reveals about the Dems23:58 The Fetterman health crisis30:42 Twitter’s Elon algorithm39:52 Are women more conciliatory than men?42:47 Is Biden pushing Zelensky toward the negotiating table?56:29 An underappreciated risk of arming Ukraine59:26 Parrot room preview: Bob drops some hip-hop knowledge; an AI-war reversal and the dangers of “stochastic parrots”; trans activists taking names; Mickey’s quantum-physics-related pitch for Bob’s next book; new Epstein docs

Robert Wright (Bloggingheads.tv, The Evolution of God, Nonzero, Why Buddhism Is True) and Mickey Kaus (kausfiles, The End of Equality). Recorded February 17, 2023.

Comments on BhTV: http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/65703Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPodsFacebook: https://facebook.com/bloggingheads/Podcasts: https://bloggingheads.tv/subscribe

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

0:31 Norman’s new book, I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It!: Heretical Thoughts on Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom10:26 How Norman exposed a bestselling book as a hoax18:54 The price Norman paid for taking on Alan Dershowitz28:08 What effects has “wokeness” had on academia?33:46 Pronouns and the perils of linguistic prescriptivism47:43 Who's pushing identity politics on the left? And why?57:54 A few unkind words about Bari Weiss1:02:51 Norman: Ibram X. Kendi is a fashion statement not a scholar

Robert Wright (Bloggingheads.tv, The Evolution of God, Nonzero, Why Buddhism Is True) and Norman Finkelstein (I Accuse!, I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It!). Recorded February 7, 2023.

Comments on BhTV: http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/65684Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPodsFacebook: https://facebook.com/bloggingheads/Podcasts: https://bloggingheads.tv/subscribe

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

Subscribe to The Parrot Room at https://patreon.com/parrotroom

00:00 Why Biden’s big speech has Bob worried 9:15 Did the US blow up the Nord Stream pipeline? 18:36 Trump accuses DeSantis of grooming 25:46 With friends like Joe Rogan, Ilhan Omar doesn’t need enemies 36:16 The latest from the Twitter Files: new dirt on the Blob 48:45 Biden takes on Xi, seems a little unhinged 56:12 Why more people are concerned about Ukraine’s chances 1:03:30 Parrot Room preview: Did the West block Russia-Ukraine negotiations?; social vs. income equality; reviewing The Long Goodbye; America’s AI arms race; quantum physics; grading Burt Bacharach songs.

Robert Wright (Bloggingheads.tv, The Evolution of God, Nonzero, Why Buddhism Is True) and Mickey Kaus (kausfiles, The End of Equality). Recorded February 10, 2023.

Comments on BhTV: http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/65676Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPodsFacebook: https://facebook.com/bloggingheads/Podcasts: https://bloggingheads.tv/subscribe

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

1:02 Gabor’s new book The Myth of Normal, about trauma and mental and physical illness in modern Western society7:40 Are we all victims of a “toxic” culture?14:09 Gabor’s early years in Nazi- and then Soviet-occupied Hungary21:30 What Gabor thinks standard theories of addiction get wrong24:02 Can trauma ever be a good thing?26:34 Was Bob’s childhood traumatic? And if so, how?39:46 Trauma, attachment, and authenticity46:57 Is modern society hostile to community?53:43 The difference between healthy and unhealthy anger57:32 A primer on “compassionate inquiry”1:02:16 The time Gabor was leading an ayahuasca retreat and got deposed by shamans1:06:53 Gabor on why cognitive empathy is difficult but essential1:12:40 What Gabor sees as the essence of the book

Robert Wright (Bloggingheads.tv, The Evolution of God, Nonzero, Why Buddhism Is True) and Gabor Maté (Scattered Minds, When the Body Says No, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts). Recorded January 26, 2023.

Comments on BhTV: http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/65651Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPodsFacebook: https://facebook.com/bloggingheads/Podcasts: https://bloggingheads.tv/subscribe

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

Subscribe to The Parrot Room at https://patreon.com/parrotroom

0:00 Is the 2024 race shaping up to be a political Groundhog Day?16:05 Ilhan Omar and the Israel criticism tightrope29:46 Does the left or right look worse on recent Russiagate disclosures?37:39 A question about the DNC email hack41:46 Ukraine war update: Is time on Russia’s side?48:44 Is the Biden admin angling for a peace deal with Putin?1:00:34 Parrot Room preview: Evil—the show and the concept; the Tyre Nichols killing; Gaetz’s bad idea; AI inquiries; Mickey’s thrilling new Twitter power; untangling quantum entanglement; what happened to hope in politics?

Robert Wright (Bloggingheads.tv, The Evolution of God, Nonzero, Why Buddhism Is True) and Mickey Kaus (kausfiles, The End of Equality). Recorded February 3, 2023.

Comments on BhTV: http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/65640Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPodsFacebook: https://facebook.com/bloggingheads/Podcasts: https://bloggingheads.tv/subscribe

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

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nonzero.org

2:12 Nikita’s life as a Russian expat in Armenia 7:55 How the Ukraine war is talked about in Russia 15:24 Could Putin fall from power? 25:40 Who left and who stayed in Russia post-mobilization? 37:43 Russia’s role in the Armenia-Azerbaijan crisis 45:21 How the Ukraine war could turn into World War III 50:46 Are “false flag” claims about the Maidan Massacre beyond the pale? 1:01:12 The trouble with the way we talk about war 1:12:28 The role of extremists in mass protests

Robert Wright (Bloggingheads.tv, The Evolution of God, Nonzero, Why Buddhism Is True) and Nikita Petrov (https://psychopolitica.substack.com/). Recorded January 25, 2023.

Comments on BhTV: http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/65622Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods Facebook: https://facebook.com/bloggingheads/ Podcasts: https://bloggingheads.tv/subscribe

Subscribe to The Parrot Room at https://patreon.com/parrotroom

00:00 Can AI transcend conventional wisdom? 15:39 Is Trump back as 2024 GOP frontrunner? 24:52 The trouble with “the poor” 27:14 J.D. Vance has Ukraine on the brain 29:46 Ukraine update: How to make sending tanks make sense 46:16 Parrot room preview: Bob’s quasi-lucid dream; Evil corrections; The deep roots of Russian nationalist support for the war; Leon Wieseltier quote critique; DeSantis and black history; should judicial noms know their civics?; Kyrsten Sinema conspiracies; economic vs. social inequality; “exciting” child tax credit news; Israel’s multiple powder kegs

Robert Wright (Bloggingheads.tv, The Evolution of God, Nonzero, Why Buddhism Is True) and Mickey Kaus (kausfiles, The End of Equality). Recorded January 27, 2023.

Comments on BhTV: http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/65614Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPodsFacebook: https://facebook.com/bloggingheads/Podcasts: https://bloggingheads.tv/subscribe

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

This is an unusual issue of the newsletter, and it’s about an unusual conversation I taped yesterday. Normally I don’t send out an issue of NZN for each podcast I post, but I think this is a particularly important conversation—and also a complicated conversation, one that can benefit from a preface.

The conversation will go public next week and is available to paid NZN subscribers, like you, now—via this issue of the newsletter (video below, audio above) but also via the Nonzero feed on your podcast app (assuming you’ve set up the special paid subscriber version of that feed in your podcast app; if you haven’t, just click “Listen on” in the upper right corner of this post and follow the instructions).

The conversation is with Ivan Katchanovski, a political scientist who grew up in Ukraine, came to the US to do graduate work, and now teaches in Canada, at the University of Ottawa. He is frustrated with the way western media is covering the war in Ukraine and with the way western media depicts Ukraine more broadly—including the decade of turmoil that preceded the war.

One thing that impresses me about Katchanovski is his capacity for cognitive empathy. He grew up in western Ukraine, speaking Ukrainian, but he is attentive to perspectives in the eastern part of the country, where many people grew up speaking Russian and no few of them are considered “ethnically Russian”.

In fact, he has done research on the attitudes of eastern Ukrainians—which leads to one of his frustrations with western coverage of Ukraine. The standard western narrative about the path toward conflict in Ukraine depicts the pivotal events of 2014 roughly like this:

Peaceful protests against the policies of a pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, morphed into revolution—the “Maidan Revolution” or “Revolution of Dignity”—and after the president stepped down Putin responded by seizing Crimea and supporting separatists in the Donbas.

This is more or less accurate in so far as it goes. But Katchanovski would like to add a couple of things, the second of which would constitute a radical amendment to the standard narrative:

1. The Maidan revolution made the ground in eastern and southern Ukraine much more fertile for Russian intervention. The overthrow of a democratically elected president who had strong support in the Donbas and Crimea made many people in those areas more supportive of some kind of separation from the rest of Ukraine—more supportive of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and more supportive of the separatist movement in the Donbas that Putin would within months be aggressively aiding. (Katchanovski suggests that if the various Obama administration officials who were happy about the overthrow of Yanukovych had done their homework, they would have anticipated this effect on public opinion and perhaps been more ambivalent about regime change.)

2. The “Maidan massacre”—which is depicted in the standard narrative as the murder of dozens of protesters by riot police, and which put massive international pressure on Yanukovych to step down — wasn’t what it seemed. Katchanovski, after extensive research on how the revolution unfolded, has concluded that the massacre wasn’t in fact perpetrated by police, but rather by far right militants who supported the protests (but whom most of the protesters didn’t support, as most of the protesters weren’t far right). He says the snipers who killed the protesters were in buildings controlled by far right groups, not by the government.

In other words, Katchanovski contends that the killing of the protesters was a “false flag” operation—conducted in the hope that the Yanukovych regime would be blamed and would then be removed from power. Which is what happened.

I’m not conversant enough in the evidence to say whether Katchanovski is right, but one thing I can say is that he’s assembled a lot of evidence. You can find some of his writings on the subject here and here, and relevant videos he’s assembled here. (He says his most recent paper on the subject was accepted by an academic journal but then rejected, a change of heart he suspects reflects political pressure.)

I can also say that Katchanovski struck me as sincere and credible. But see what you think.

I should add that he has a strong accent, speaks fairly fast, and is not averse to the occasional tangent. But I think if you stick with the conversation until the end, your perspective on the war in Ukraine, and your understanding of Ukraine itself, will be significantly broadened.

00:00 Ivan’s Ukrainian upbringing and academic background5:08 Where did pro-Russian sentiment in eastern Ukraine come from? 16:19 Why Ivan worried Ukraine’s 2014 revolution would lead to civil war 33:09 Did Europe impede resolution of Russia-Ukraine tensions? 49:25 What western media gets wrong about the Maidan revolution 59:49 Was the Maidan massacre a false flag operation? 1:15:29 The state of Ukrainian democracy after the Maidan revolution 1:33:07 The political forces that impeded Zelensky’s peace plan

Robert Wright (Bloggingheads.tv, The Evolution of God, Nonzero, Why Buddhism Is True) and Ivan Katchanovski (The University of Ottawa, Historical Dictionary of Ukraine). Recorded January 18, 2023.

Comments on BhTV: http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/65579 Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods Facebook: https://facebook.com/bloggingheads/ Podcasts: https://bloggingheads.tv/subscribe

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

Ivan’s Ukrainian upbringing and academic background ... Where did pro-Russian sentiment in eastern Ukraine come from? ... Why Ivan worried Ukraine’s 2014 revolution would lead to civil war ... Did Europe impede resolution of Russia-Ukraine tensions? ... What western media gets wrong about the Maidan revolution ... Was the Maidan massacre a false flag operation? ... The state of Ukrainian democracy after the Maidan revolution ... The political forces that impeded Zelensky’s peace plan ...

Subscribe to The Parrot Room at https://patreon.com/parrotroom

1:22 The alphas of the world gather in Davos12:42 Mickey buys a blue check, dresses up to celebrate 15:47 Does Russia have Ukraine on the defensive? 28:14 How serious is the threat of US government debt default? 34:40 Biden’s chances in 2024 47:54 Parrot Room preview: David Crosby passes away; Alec Baldwin charged with manslaughter; the issue that could destroy woke-ism; college after affirmative action; a false flag in Ukraine?; More Elon news; loyalty oath at Sundance; Bob reviews Top Gun: Maverick

Robert Wright (Bloggingheads.tv, The Evolution of God, Nonzero, Why Buddhism Is True) and Mickey Kaus (kausfiles, The End of Equality). Recorded January 20, 2023.

Comments on BhTV: http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/65572 Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods Facebook: https://facebook.com/bloggingheads/ Podcasts: https://bloggingheads.tv/subscribe

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