Robert Wright's Nonzero

Have you heard the Good News? ... The role of Christ’s suffering in the Catholic tradition ... Walking the path(s) to salvation ... Peace on Earth, the virgin birth, and other Christmas miracles ... Father Bill: “To answer the question ‘Who is my neighbor’ is to answer the question ‘How big is my heart?’” ... Deriving the Trinity from the Gospel of John ... Father Bill: The meaning of Christmas is “self-emptying love” … ... … but what exactly is “self-emptying love”? ... The appeal of Teilhard de Chardin ... Christmas’s greatest hits ... How Bloggingheads.tv changed Father Bill’s life ...

Will 2024 be a Trump-Hillary rematch? ... The Omicron wave: how bad will it be? ... David Frum’s proposal to triage covid care ... Some non-Hillary prez candidates who are almost as unappealing as Hillary ... Covid lab leak theory update ... Mickey lays out a plan to resuscitate the Build Back Better bill ... Fox News audience capture and Chris Wallace’s release ... Are the Fox News Jan 6 texts scandalous? Or even interesting? ... Barton Gellman gets Mickey to take 2024 GOP election theft semi-seriously ... Parrot Room preview: Ron Brownstein on Democrats losing the culture wars, Harvard abandons the SATS, Scotus on Roe v. Wade, more trash talk about Sam Harris and the Weinsteins, Mickey’s new case against child tax credits and Bob’s new car, and comments from Parrot Heads. ...

John and Nikita (and Bob) present their psychedelic pedigrees ... Distinguishing between “unitive” and “non-unitive” psychedelic/mystical experiences ... John’s encounter with “[mischievous] animated shards of colored glass” on ayahuasca ... Nikita on DMT ep. I: Presence in everything—essence in nothing ... Can psychedelics get us closer to objective “Truth”? ... Nikita on DMT ep. II: After dis-enlightenment, chop wood ... A world charged with meaning ... John on the necessary contingency of our attempts to understand reality ... Nikita on DMT ep. III: Swapping self for gnosis—deal or no deal? ... “Everything is right here, happening. Pay attention to how it works.” ... Nikita on DMT ep. IV: oscillations between the sensuous and the cerebral ... DMT in a nutshell ...

Mickey auditions for Scope mouthwash spokesmodel (demonstration included) ... Covid news roundup; OMNIcron controversy addressed! ... Are things getting worse for Build Back Better? ... Is the prosecution in the Ghislaine case taking a dive? ... Bob: Don’t go easy on Jussie Smollett ... Good news on Iran talks? ... How to split the Ukrainian baby? ... Parrot Room Preview: Trans Penn swimmer , crime and mountain lions in LA, France's Mr. Zemmour, Jeffrey Goldberg's Trump-centered plan for the Atlantic, Boris Johnson’s decline, David Brooks divorces conservatism, perverse Substack incentives, disciplining hostile Beatles commenters, trashing the “Summit for Democracy", Bob’s mysterious car dealership experience. ...

Bob and Trita set the stage for the current crisis ... The geopolitics of the Iran nuclear deal ... The nuclear deal was great - so why did Trump pull out? ... Trita: President Biden made significant mistakes early on ... Why the nuclear negotiations might become a charade ... Are US perceptions of Iran becoming more positive? ...

How reassuring is a Biden re-run, really? ... Mickey finds hope in Omicron ... Mickey rejoices in Biden swerving right on immigration ... Marjorie Taylor Green's latest stunt ... Mickey: Inflation could kill soft infrastructure ... Bob: It’s time for challenge trials to fight Omicron ... How popular is BBB? ... Bob pulls a jiu jitsu on Mickey’s dental care/car lube metaphor ... How doomed is Roe v. Wade? ... Mickey’s mini-rant on Chris Cuomo (and Chris Matthews) ... Parrot Room Preview: The trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, a speech from the (second) French Donald Trump, John Mearsheimer on China, Bret Weinstein on Omicron, Farhad Manjoo on cars, trash-talking Sam Harris, Andrew Sullivan sings B&M’s praises, The Beatles: Get Back review, Stephen Sondheim retrospective, Mickey discusses decadence, JD Vance news, weird murder in Beverley Hills, and Iran talk ...

What, if anything, is the basis for an atheist's morals? ... When Christopher says, 'Religion poisons everything,' he means... ... Religion is irrational? Compared to what? ... Christopher: Jesus doesn't love the little children ... Did religion cause the Israel-Palestine conflict? ... Why Christopher won't stop ridiculing God ...

What part of secular-guru space (if any) does Bob occupy? ... On the origin of Bob’s theses (by means of natural selection) ... The mind-boggling mystery of consciousness ... Could evolution have a larger purpose? ... The “global brain” as the flowering of natural selection’s seed ... Saving our species by transcending some species-typical tendencies ... The algorithm of evolution as “the Logos” ... How cognitive biases get in the way of global cooperation ... The positive feeling of negative emotions (but can mindfulness feel even better?) ... Bob explains his recent writings on tribalism ... Bob: You are an expression of "the [evolutionary] Logos" ... Bob’s latent-functionality theory of epiphenomenal consciousness ... Does evolution steer us toward greater alignment with moral truth? ... On the “panoramic specificity” of Bob’s dharma ...

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Bernard-Henri Lévy, c’est Mickey ... Rittenhouse acquitted, Malcolm X’s “assassins” exonerated ... How much of BBB will make it through the Senate? ... Some of Mickey’s policy nightmares still lurk within BBB ... Is Elon Musk consciously courting an ideological customer base? ... Bob: Paul Gosar and Lauren Boebert crossed a line ... Why are Biden’s poll numbers so bad? ... Mickey: Elite Trump voters don’t want him to run again ... Mickey Kaus, n’est pas Bari Weiss ... Parrot Room preview: Nellie Bowles decamps to Bari Weiss’s Substack, Andrew Sullivan on 60 Minutes, Anne Applebaum, more trash talking Sam Harris, more on the Dulles brothers, bad news for the University of Austin, Belarus, news on ivermectin and the lab leak hypothesis, why David Frum hates Blake Masters, and Bob chastises Mickey ...

John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles—the stars of Stephen’s book The Brothers—as architects of covert imperialism ... Stephen explains how disgruntled bankers and lawyers started the CIA ... How corporate interests drove the 1954 US-led coup in Guatemala ... The enduring relevance of US meddling in Iran in 1953 ... Self-fulfilling, Manichean prophecies of the Cold War ... Imagining history without the Dulles brothers ... Have we learned from our past mistakes? ...