Robert Wright's Nonzero

Is the infrastructure bill crumbling? ... What wouldn't Mickey sacrifice to defeat the Child Tax Credit? ... The Supreme Court rules against the NCAA ... Is ranked choice voting the best option? ... Mickey: Dem voting rights legislation is fizzling out ... CRT remains the right’s target of choice ... Bob and Mickey are on Team Britney ... America’s post-pandemic order: No waiters and no towels ... Bret Weinstein flirts with vaccine trutherism ... Parrot Room preview: Lin-Manuel Miranda gets blowback, Hunter Biden’s M&M trick, Network discussed, Isaacson’s Einstein, the Wimbledon Challenge, Ramesh Ponnuru’s ascent, Gossip Girl wrestles with its privilege, and attribution error ...

Is Israel a democracy? ... Bret: Israeli settlements in the West Bank are not illegal ... Has Israel ever offered the Palestinians a sovereign state? ... Bret: The core of the problem is Palestinian misgovernance ... Deterring Hamas ... Is international criticism of Israel inevitable? ... An exercise in perspective taking ... Whose side is time on? ...

Biden’s good-enough Russia summit performance ... Bob: Michael McFaul is obsessed with aiding-and-abetting accusations ... Jeffrey Toobin returns, to Mickey’s dismay ... Is it National Biden-Harris Child Tax Credit Day already? ... Is Stacey Abrams ingeniously engineering the end of the filibuster? ... Did the FBI have a hand in provoking the January 6 riots? ... Some peculiar implications of the Texas anti-CRT law ... Bob responds to Mickey’s anal probe challenge ... Norm entrepreneurs ... Parrot Room preview: a mystery guest joins the conversation, Hunter Biden’s memoir, a Jill Biden-Kamala Harris rivalry, a Tom Wilson biopic, the unjustly unverified, Loury and McWhorter, and the Blinken-Biden schism ...

Nikita’s disclaimer: I don’t speak for the average Russian ... One result of Western sanctions: no good cheese in Russian stores ... The crackdown on the supporters of Alexey Navalny ... What Putin learned from the protests in Belarus ... The Internet vs TV ... Do Russians see America as an enemy? ... Siloviki, the Russian ruling class ... Nikita tries to describe his ineffable Substack newsletter, Psychopolitica ...

Why we should hope there are extraterrestrials ... Bezos in space ... Bob manages to hold back on Jeffrey Toobin jokes ... Mickey: Kamala's staff is incompetent ... Is Biden really getting the US out of Afghanistan? ... Bob defends Ilhan Omar's war crimes comments ... Mickey: It's harder to pass a reconciliation bill in the House than in the Senate ... Bob frets about a mirth shortage on the left ... Parrot room preview: the Vanity Fair piece on Jeffrey Epstein, Hunter Biden, Bob's problem with Slates’s Slow Burn, Bob’s problem with David Sanger, hydroxychloroquine, trucks flying flags, and sexy cicadas ...

Agustín on what he was and wasn’t saying in his controversial Science piece on Darwin ... What is biological anthropology? ... What social media critiques of Agustín’s editorial missed ... Untangling Darwin’s attitudes toward race and genocide ... Darwin’s worries about his theory’s acceptance ... What do female gibbons want? ... Agustín: Commonly used racial categories are unscientific ... The changing rules for competition among males ... Okay, so should we cancel Darwin or not? ...

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Mickey: Where's the anti-woke Tea Party? ... How far will Democrats go with budget reconciliation? ... Can Trump really be reinstated? ... Bye-bye Bibi ... Mickey's got good news for the Wuhan lab and bad news for pangolins ... Mickey: Just let Naomi Osaka play tennis ... Bob reminisces about life as a journalist pre-Twitter ... Mickey: We don't need more electric car subsidies ... Bob's not impressed by the NYT's UFO reporting ... Parrot Room preview: UFOs, Idiocracy, the Philadelphia sound, the situation in Xinjiang, Naomi Osaka, Huawei strikes back, and J.D. Vance ...

A primer on Xinjiang's history ... Are Uyghur women facing forced sterilization? ... China's counter-terrorism justification ... Sinifying" the Uyghurs ... What we know about the detention camps ... How many people have gone through the camps? ... Can outside pressure change China's policy? ...

Two podcasters, three definitions of neoliberalism ... What rules the ruling class? ... Phil Mickelson’s record-breaking PGA win ... Mickey: The Epstein guard verdict bodes ill for Ghislaine ... Is the left starting to worry about rising crime rates? ... You attend one Nazi sex party … ... Bob: What Belarus did was wrong, but what about … ... Parrot Room preview: UFOs, a Wuhan-stravaganza, cable news ratings, Hunter Biden, a Times reporter calls the lab leak theory racist, a trans track controversy, more Gates, etc. ...

Defining effective altruism ... Rob explains the meaning of ‘80,000 Hours’ ... Should young people dedicate their careers to fighting climate change? ... The Apocalypse Aversion Project ... How cognitive biases fuel tribalism ... Bob: We need a psychological revolution ... Are external threats the best way to bring people together? ... The balance between surveillance and public safety ... Bob: Let's retire the word 'apologist' ... Making rationality cool ... Rob challenges Bob to find flaws in "The Moral Animal" ...

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