1:22 Army brats and media empires 2:40 Is war with Iran imminent? 5:34 Trump’s “red line” trap 11:22 Are we underestimating Iran? 19:50 Israel and the “clean break” memo 26:25 Rubio as deep state puppet master 32:47 Trump’s AI report card 36:38 The race for superintelligence 42:33 Is AI an existential threat? 54:14 Will AI trigger mass unemployment? 1:01:28 Chip restrictions as war starters 1:04:43 Does Xi think his Taiwan window is closing?

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True), Andrew Day (The American Conservative), and Curt Mills (The American Conservative). Recorded February 04, 2026.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 How Bob’s and Paul’s names wound up in the Epstein Files 7:37 Epstein’s double option play 13:36 Power brokers after Epstein 18:13 Understanding Moltbook 25:50 Bob on the “big question” Moltbook raises 35:24 Paul: What planet are Emily Bender and Alex Hanna on? 38:36 Heading into Overtime: Friends in the Epstein Files, the strangest thing Bob’s ever done for money and more.

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 February 02, 2026. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 MAGA as a coherent global phenomenon 9:10 Narrative vs. material forces behind MAGA 18:24 Mark Carney and the hypocrisy of the “rule-based order” 24:08 Burkeans vs. Silicon Valley libertarians 29:12 Make Russia Great Again 30:56 Heading to Overtime: Bob’s experience in Moscow’s Gorky Park

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Nikita Petrov (https://psychopolitica.substack.com). Recorded January 30, 2026.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:29 Alex and Emily’s book, The AI Con 4:35 Beyond the AI booster-doomer spectrum 9:28 What—and who—is AI actually useful for? 18:26 The AI productivity question(s) 30:35 Emily: AI won’t take your job, it’ll just make it shi**ier 38:50 Stochastic parrots, Chinese rooms, and semantics 45:03 Are LLMs really black boxes? 55:35 Do AIs “understand” things? 58:50 Debating using AIs as experts 1:07:15 How “neural” are neural nets, really?

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True), Alex Hanna (The AI Con, Distributed AI Research Institute) and Emily Bender (The AI Con, director of the Computational Linguistics Laboratory). Recorded January 20, 2026.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 A recap of January’s Trump turbulence 5:16 Is Trump a cause or symptom of world disorder? 13:33 Is Trump increasingly unstable?16:05 Will we invade Cuba? 20:08 American politics after Trump 26:18 The crumbling bedrock of International Law 35:54 Where are the Democrats? 38:43 Heading into Overtime: Renee Good, Syria, Worthwhile Canadian Prime Minister

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True), Derek Davison (Foreign Exchanges, American Prestige, Discontents), and Daniel Bessner (American Prestige, University of Washington). Recorded January 22, 2026.

0:28 Defining AI succession 3:13 How positive psychology led Dan to AI research 10:42 Is Dan a “successionist”? 17:02 Does it matter whether AI is sentient? 24:35 Two traits of a worthy successor 31:25 The varieties of succession scenarios 36:02 Values and interests 41:14 Will AI have any use for us? 43:55 Succession scenarios to avoid 49:04 Heading into Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Dan Faggella (Emerj AI Research, The Trajectory). Recorded January 7, 2026. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Are Bob and Mike the godfathers of podcasting? 6:10 Slate and the origins of podcasting 9:36 NotebookLM’s humanless podcasts 14:07 From blogs to Substack 18:12 Looking back at BloggingHeads 23:38 The tribalizing influence of algorithms 31:13 New news models 40:01 What happened to the rules in professional sports? 48:49 The consequences of paying college athletes 1:00:08 Mike’s comprehensive take on sports gambling 1:06:45 Heading into OT: The perils of opining on Israel

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Mike Pesca (The Gist). Recorded December 23, 2025. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Different readings of the Renee Good videos 14:27 JD Vance vs Stephen Miller: compare and contrast 18:18 Trump vs Hitler: compare and contrast 23:18 ICE agents and stormtroopers: compare and contrast 34:57 Has Elon totally lost it? 42:45 Paul: Politicians are people too! 47:03 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 January 12, 2026. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods