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 Con4:17 Beyond the AI booster-doomer spectrum9:58 What—and who—is AI actually useful for?18:56 The AI productivity question(s)31:05 Emily: AI won’t take your job, it’ll just make it shi**ier39:20 Stochastic parrots, Chinese rooms, and semantics45:33 Are LLMs really black boxes?56:05 Do AIs “understand” things?59:20 Debating using AIs as experts1:07:45 How “neural” are neural nets, really?

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True), Alex Hanna and Emily Bender (co-authors, The AI Con). 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

0:28 Cameron’s work at AE studio 5:37 Why consciousness is such a hard problem 10:15 Why AI consciousness matters 16:42 Does consciousness need carbon? 23:20 The ethics of AI subjectivity 30:09 Can we trust LLM self-reports? 42:57 Cameron’s innovative AI consciousness experiments 48:24 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Cameron Berg (AE Studio, Truity). Recorded December 17, 2025. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Joel’s legendary Bloggingheads line 6:55 NASA’s new chief: More than a Musk toady? 12:53 Why we’re still not living in Star Trek 21:05 The space alien question 31:27 Can we make the moon program great again? 46:16 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Joel Achenbach (The Grand Idea, Captured by Aliens, A Hole at the Bottom of the Sea). Recorded December 22, 2025. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods