Why this pod’s a little odd ... Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike quit OpenAI—part of a larger pattern? ... Bob: AI doomers need Hollywood ... Does an AI arms race spell doom for alignment? ... Why the “Pause AI” movement matters ... AI doomerism and Don’t Look Up: compare and contrast ... How Liron (fore)sees AI doom ... Are Sam Altman’s concerns about AI safety sincere? ... Paperclip maximizing, evolution, and the AI will to power question ... Are there real-world examples of AI going rogue? ... Should we really align AI to human values? ... Heading to Overtime ...

How Jews fit—or don’t—into universities’ DEI regimes ... What do controversial pro-Palestine chants really mean? ... When does criticism of Israel become antisemitic? ... The Israel lobby’s influence on Congress and academia ... Do pro-Israel donors unwittingly inflame antisemitism? ... Evidence of increasing antisemitism ... Was Ilhan Omar’s “all about the Benjamins” tweet antisemitic? ... Bob criticizes Bari Weiss, Bill Ackman, and an Eli tweet ... Balancing concerns about free speech and antisemitism ... Are Israelis too fatalistic about antisemitism for their own good? ...

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Is it ever okay to fire professors for speech? ... Bari Weiss spreads misinformation without consequence ... Are some of Israel’s American supporters unwittingly inflaming antisemitism? ... Ayaan Hirsi Ali converts to Christianity without abandoning New Atheist creed ... Do Sam Harris et. al. get religion totally wrong? ... Heading to Overtime ...

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Coleman’s Joe Rogan appearance and new book, The End of Race Politics ... Campus protests and free speech ... Is anti-Zionism anti-Semitism? ... Is "exterminating Hamas" a viable solution? ... Bob: Israel never offered Palestinians a state ... “Right of return” and Palestinian national identity ... How firmly entrenched is hatred of Israel among Palestinians? ... Could better US policy have steered Israel-Palestine toward peace? ... Are Palestinian “sacred beliefs” the problem? ... Possible Palestinian futures ... Israel’s strike on Iran’s consulate in Syria ...

Paul asserts his right to non-assertion ... Campus protests and free speech controversies ... Have pro-Palestine protestors crossed a line? Have their opposition? ... Will the protests force a reckoning on campus “wokeness”? ... Remembering philosopher Daniel Dennett ... Bob vs Dennett on consciousness ... Does the mind-body problem suggest a cosmic solution? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Anatoly’s strange CV ... How the 20th century set the stage for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine ... Why did Putin turn against the West? ... Anatoly: I underestimated Russia’s incompetence ... Has the Ukraine war really shifted in Russia’s favor? ... Russia’s “elite human capital” problem ... Is the “bio-singularity” near? ... Unipolar vs multipolar AI takeover scenarios ... Heading to Overtime ...

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Why Iran’s attack on Israel was an “own goal” ... Did Iran minimize casualties on purpose? ... The rising odds of Israel attacking Iran directly ... America’s contradictory relationship with Israel ... How conflict with Iran helps Israel ... What China wants in the Middle East ... America’s destabilizing role in the region ... Heading to Overtime ...

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Why Paul’s eclipse experience eclipsed Bob’s ... Remembering pioneering psychologist Daniel Kahneman ... Bob fails gender affirmation test ... Has the “replication crisis” tainted Kahneman’s legacy? ... Eastern vs. Western “enlightenment” ... How AI doomerism came to the rationalist community ... 3 Body Problem review goes into Overtime ...

A brief message from Bob ... Derek and Danny stumble into Bob’s Zoom room ... Israel’s doubly out-of-control week ... How Biden's Gaza failures will shape the Democratic Party ... Biden’s political incentives on Israel-Palestine ... Heading to Overtime ...

Robin’s history of thinking about the future ... Seeing AI as offspring, not adversary ... Robin’s famous answer to a great cosmic mystery ... Would evidence of aliens be good news or bad? ... Is rationalist culture cultist? ... LLMs: revolution or hype cycle? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Ilia’s background ... Things to know about the noosphere ... Teilhard’s transgressive theological and scientific thought ... Does AI suggest a “transcendent nature to nature”? ... The Teilhardian solution to the mind-body problem ... How Darwinian was Teilhard, really? ... Teilhard on love ... “Techno-sapiens,” redemption, and the Omega Point ... Heading to Overtime ...

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Kati’s unusual niche ... How Covid changed meditation ... Kati: The optimal amount of meditation is… ... Is focusing on the breath overblown? ... AI as a spiritual challenge ... Meditation and cognitive empathy ... Using technology mindfully ... Heading to Overtime ...

Are Nikolay and Kirill satisfied with the "special military operation"? ... Why have Russians become more supportive of the war effort? ... Kirill defends the RWA tweet that unsettled Bob ... US policies that made the war more likely ... How much of Ukraine does Putin want? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Paul’s Substack: small potatoes or some pumpkins? ... Elon sours on Lemon—is ketamine to blame? ... The enduring enigma that is Elon Musk ... Is Altman overdramatizing the AI #Resistance? ... Paul cavalierly ignores Bob’s sage guidance ... Oscars: The good, the bad, and the hammy ... Heading to Overtime (plus: big Small Potatoes news!) ...

Nathan’s role as “AI scout” ... What "open source" in AI really means ... Why the secrecy around AI training data? ... What’s actually “open” about OpenAI? ... The case for and against open source AI ... Is an open source crackdown coming? ... What Waymark, Nathan’s company, does with AI ...

Should Biden pursue regime change in Israel? ... How the White House mishandled Netanyahu's far-right government ... Daniel: “Israel has lost this war” ... What a ceasefire deal would look like ... Biden’s immense, unused leverage over Netanyahu ... Heading to Overtime ...

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The other Tim B. Lee ... Unpacking the Elon v. OpenAI case ... How did Google’s Gemini go wrong? ... The unsung ingenious side of Gemini ... Is AI a bubble? ... Are some LLM issues insoluble? ... How Sora changes the AI picture ... Heading to Overtime ...

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Big trouble with Small Potatoes ... What makes a good podcast? ... Google’s AI goes wild(ly woke) ... Is Biden a “super-ager” or just super old? ... On the psychology of self-immolation ... Are we thinking right about mental illness? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Gary’s background and place in the AI world ... Are Gary’s views on AI paradoxical? ... Bob: Searle’s Chinese Room argument is dead ... Have LLMs demonstrated "theory of mind"? ... Arguing the semantics of an LLM's “semantic space” ... Do LLM representations map onto the real world? ... Can (and should) we slow down AI development? ... Gary: I’ve never seen a field as myopic as AI today ... The (symbolic?) future of AI ...

Nikita’s memories of Navalny’s emergence as a political force ... The time Nikita was detained for protesting election fraud ... Navalny’s success as a political organizer ... What did Navalny represent? ... Navalny’s courageous post-poisoning return to Russia ... Heading to Overtime (plus: Nikita’s photo with Navalny) ...

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What MSM missed about Carlsons' Putin interview ... Putin’s litany of grievances against the West ... Russia gets the upper hand in Ukraine ... Why Zelensky hasn’t paved the way for peace talks ... Putin’s mafia-inspired approach to negotiations ... Do most Russians support the war? ... Why Zelensky fired his popular top general ... Heading to Overtime ...

Does the NY-03 special election have national import? ... Will the special counsel report sink Joe Biden? ... Was Jon Stewart's monologue on the mark? ...

Nora’s low score on the AI doomer test ... The messy math of AI alignment ... Teaching and (unteaching) concepts to LLMS ... Do we really want human-like AI? ... How the AI “mind” works ... How to change an AI’s mind ... Are LLMs reverse-engineering the human mind? ... Heading to Overtime ...

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Bob’s bad newsletter news for Paul ... Fast Car's moving Grammy moment ... Music, female orgasms, and other evolutionary enigmas ... The Moral Animal turns 30—how has it aged? ... How AI (barely) helps Paul work ... Is America real? ... Bob tries to drag Paul down the JFK rabbit hole ... Lab leak and the trouble with “conspiracy theories” ... Heading to Overtime ...

Effective altruism (EA) and Rob’s 80,000 Hours podcast ... BF’s fall = EA’s public relations problem ... What went wrong for (and with) SBF? ... Virtue as a utilitarian shortcut ... What drove EA’s longtermist (r)evolution? ... EA, AI, and the miscalculation of existential risk ... Did EA play a role in the OpenAI board drama? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Another high-synergy collaborative episode ... Do mainstream Israelis support ethnic cleansing? ... Biden’s electoral (mis?)calculations on Israel-Palestine ... What does a left-wing foreign policy vision look like today? ...

How Israelis think about civilian casualties in Gaza ... Is the war spawning a new generation of terrorists? ... Explaining versus justifying bad behavior ... Can Hamas and other extremist groups be moderated? ... Is the world biased against Israel? ... Cognitive biases that inflame tribal tensions ... The “river to the sea” Rorschach test ... On the precipice of World War III? ...

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Fear and loathing on the campaign trail 2024 ... Haley’s shortcomings, Trump’s cognitive decline ... Who’s the perfect Democrat to run against Biden? ... How Biden could stop the Gaza war ... Why the Houthis are hard to neutralize ... Could Trump sabotage the border security deal? ... Doctor bots, robo-receipt checkers, and AI optimism ... The real problem with America’s elites ... Is catastrophe the only thing that can save America? ... Bob tries to drag Mickey (back) into the JFK assassination rabbit hole ... Has DeSantis destroyed his brand? ...

Bob saves Paul from some very bad influences ... What makes Hitler more evil than Stalin and Mao? ... New lab leak evidence—what will come of it? ... Correcting the record on effective altruism ... Is “self-plagiarism” really plagiarism? ... The dishonesty researcher accused of academic dishonesty ... Heading to Overtime ...

Reid’s deep roots in the tech world ... The kind of AI pessimism that irks Reid the most ... Can (and should) we slow down AI progress? ... Could AI help resolve international disputes? ... The promise and perils of perspective-taking AIs ... Why Reid co-wrote Impromptu with GPT-4 ... Where are the AI optimists? ... Sam Altman and the OpenAI drama: a (semi-) behind-the-scenes view ... How dangerous is open-source AI, really? ... Is AI acceleration decelerating? ... Engagement with China and “organic transparency” ...

Mickey’s in Iowa—and on the Nonzero Podcast! ... Do Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley have a chance? ... Why Biden will probably lose ... Wait, are there Democratic primaries? ... Would Trump 2.0 be a more capable authoritarian? ... AI bots that cater to your every need ... Why doesn't Biden get tougher on the border? ... Exciting new Child Tax Credit updates ... Is Twitter going down the tubes? ... Bob fails to escape from JFK assassination rabbit hole ... Subways and other things that have gotten worse ... Mickey’s Iowa caucus prediction ...

How the Gaza war harms US interests ... How the Gaza war harms Israel’s interests ... Could Biden get Israel to wind down the war? ... Biden’s complex political calculus on Israel ... The Israel lobby: what it is and what it does ... How elements of the lobby intimidate critics of Israel ... Heading to Overtime ...

Tim seeks Substack synergy beyond Bob ... Recent contributors to Bob’s AI anxiety ... Why “Mamba” matters ... Is AI moving too fast? ... Are fears of an AI “jobocalypse” overblown? ... AI’s (potential) next transformation ... Heading to Overtime ...

Jeff’s journalistic bona fides ... The origins of the official assassination narrative ... Oswald: Lone gunman? Patsy? Both? ... The CIA’s interest in Oswald before the assassination ... The Pentagon’s scheme to provoke war with Cuba via false flag ... How Bob started down the JFK rabbit hole ... Oswald’s critical time in New Orleans ... Why did Jack Ruby kill Oswald, really? ... Why JFK’s assassination still matters ...

Kati’s very unusual Venn diagram ... Your brain on meditation ... The time Bob’s meditation got weird ... What are the “jhanas”? ... What science tells us about the jhana states ... Are psychedelics gateway drugs to meditation? ... Kati: Here’s how we get “not-self” wrong… ... Psychedelics vs meditation—neuroscientifically ... Heading to Overtime ...

How Tom tried to bring down Netanyahu’s government ... The coming Biden-Netanyahu showdown ... What’s driving Israeli public support for such massive retaliation? ... The alarming growth of global disorder ... Is Israel fated to be hated? ... Why Tom is still hopeful about Israel-Palestine ...

A short history of “longtermism” ... The evolution of effective altruism (EA) ... Unpacking the TESCREAL bundle ... Why AGI dominates longtermist thinking ... Are AI doomers and accelerationists more aligned than it seems? ... Why did Émile ditch EA? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Max’s book Rules for Rebels—and the rule that Hamas broke ... Is social media a reality distortion machine? ... “From the river to the sea…” compared to “globalize the intifada” ... Does social media exaggerate the level of civil strife—and thereby raise it? ... Is Israel’s assault on Gaza intensifying antisemitism? ... How Israel’s actions impact the Jewish diaspora ... The terrorism threat facing Israel ... US foreign policy and the Israel lobby ...

The biggest surprise of Paul’s intellectual life ... What the three college presidents should have said about free speech ... Ramaswamy’s hot mic moment: mistake or power move? ... Elon’s scorched-earth moment: power move or mental break? ... Paul gets fact-checked—and likes it ... In aligning AI, should we aim higher than human values? ... Bob DESTROYS Paul’s AI article ...

A bold experiment in podcast synergy continues ... The dire humanitarian situation in Gaza ... Is full-on ethnic cleansing more likely than a political solution? ... If Biden loses in 2024, will elites rethink Israel-Palestine? ... The changing perception of Israel ... Heading to Overtime ...

Daron’s book Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity ... What tech optimists get wrong about economic history ... Will AI inevitably sideline workers? ... The surprising weakness of our digital economy ... Which jobs are most vulnerable to automation? ... How to empower workers in the age of AI ... Heading to Overtime ...

Bob and Tim seek Substack synergy ... What was the OpenAI drama really about? ... Viewing the drama through a (cynical) psychological lens ... Were reports of a safety vs speed schism greatly exaggerated? ... Larry Summers joins OpenAI’s board… time to panic? ... Superintelligence, Sam Altman, and the singularity ... Altman’s not so veiled ignorance ... Overtime preview: superintelligence skepticism, the truth about effective altruism, self-driving car speed bumps, and more ...

Biden’s vexing political calculus on Israel-Palestine ... Israel-Palestine compared to Russia-Ukraine ... If Israel eliminates Hamas, what happens next? ... Can anything good come out of the present crisis? ... The meaning of “From the river to the sea…” ... Why the 2000 Camp David Summit failed ... Where is Palestine's Nelson Mandela? ... Assessing US media coverage of the Gaza war ...

Preamble: The OpenAI drama and this conversation ... Preamble: The OpenAI drama and this conversation ... Is safe AI possible without international cooperation? ... Are we selecting AI for truth or engagement? ... Using “psychology” to understand—and control—AI ... The worrisome Darwinian dynamics of AI development ... Life after an AI takeover ... How structural incentives make AI safety harder ...

Tom’s new book, Getting Russia Right ... Does Putin want to take more territory before talking peace? ... Putin’s "messianic" transformation ... America’s failed effort to Americanize Russia ... Does the US focus too much on other nations’ internal affairs? ... The 2004 event that sunk US-Russia relations ... Why Tom supports a diplomatic reset ...

Susan’s new book, Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise ... China’s turn to more assertive policies in 2007 ... The well-intentioned reform that produced big authoritarian consequences ... How public opinion influences autocratic leaders ... Xi Jinping’s purge of suspect officials ... Does Beijing feel threatened by America? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Will Israel-Palestine cost Biden the election? ... What Hamas hoped to accomplish on October 7 ... The surprising origins of cancel culture ... Matt defends his ratioed tweet ... The persistent psychological impact of the Holocaust ... Is a one-state solution realistic? ... What Ukrainians and Palestinians have in common ... Anti-Palestine sentiment and Christian Zionism in America ... How the current crisis could lead to war with Iran ... Bob gives Matt podcasting advice ...

Is Paul Bloom the next Tony Robbins? ... Things to know about the noosphere ... How Bob and Paul work ... What Michael Lewis’s SBF bio reveals about SBF (and Michael Lewis) ... SBF and Elon Musk: compare and contrast ... Are SBF’s parents to blame? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Ron’s initial reaction to the October 7 atrocities ... How Israel’s far right undermined Israel’s national security ... Support for the Gaza war in Israel ... The trouble with “eradicating” Hamas ... How American Jews are responding to recent events ... Post-October-7 prospects for solving Israel-Palestine ... The rhetorical abuse of the Holocaust ... The origins and meaning of “From the river to the sea…” ... Could the Gaza war cost Biden the election? ... Competing visions of Zionism ... How terrorism impacts the Palestinian cause ...

What Iran hopes to gain from the Israel-Hamas war ... Did Hamas expect such a massive retaliation from Israel? ... Why Israel’s campaign in Gaza could backfire ... What Hezbollah is and how it got started ... Does Israel have an exit strategy in Gaza? ... Why the Arab world might unite in the years ahead ... How China could benefit from the current crisis ... Why the US hasn’t pushed harder to resolve Israel-Palestine ... Is a one-state solution the best path forward? ... Can the Israeli government rein in West Bank settlers? ... How Israel-Palestine damages America’s, and Biden’s, credibility ...

The significance of Jerusalem in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ... Will the current crisis explode into a wider war? ... Israel’s ultra-nationalist minister of national security ... Settler attacks intensify in the West Bank ... The two-state solution is dead—can it be revived? ... Has Israel lost the support of western young people? ... What Hamas hoped to accomplish on October 7 ... How hopelessness drives support for Hamas ... Can one-state aspirations produce a two-state solution? ...

Why Leonid considers his nationality “journalist” ... How the West alienated Russia ... Are Russia’s pro-Ukraine “liberals” actually far right? ... How Putin is responding to Israel's war on Hamas ... Are western experts more clear-minded about Israel-Hamas than Russia-Ukraine? ... Is Ukraine at risk of losing significant amounts of territory? ... Heading to Overtime ...

How much of an election denier is Mike Johnson? ... Why did the GOP moderates accept Johnson? ... Did Democrats do themselves good by trading McCarthy for Johnson? ... Matt learns to love John Fetterman ... The absence of a Republican primary, and its impact ... Who will drop out before Iowa? ... Will Dean Phillips matter? ...

Why hasn’t the ground invasion happened yet? ... Do conditions in Gaza make terrorism more likely? ... Palestinian violence compared to Israeli violence ... Did Israel really offer the Palestinians a state two decades ago? ... Does Hamas have much support in the West? ... What should be done about Hamas? ... Israel’s blockade of Gaza and strategy of massive retaliation ... Indignities suffered by Palestinians in the West Bank ... Should West Bank Palestinians focus on demanding the vote? ... Eli’s growing interest in the deep state ...

Why did Republican moderates resist Jim Jordan? ... Why Democrats should empower Patrick McHenry ... Why did Trump attack Netanyahu? ...

The Unspeakeasy, the newest arm of the Meghan-industrial complex ... Meghan’s prestigious place in Parrot Room history ... Has wokeness won? ... How common is anti-semitism on the left? ... Israel-Palestine’s destructive non-zero-sum dynamics ... Meghan’s highly therapeutic Unspeakeasy retreats ...

Israel’s military plans for northern Gaza ... How does international law apply to Israel and Hamas? ... The first casualty of war is truth ... Do Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute ethnic cleansing? ... The evolving definition of genocide ... How the US and Israel helped Hamas seize power ... America’s ill-fated push for Arab-Israeli normalization ... The hazards of overreacting to Hamas’s attack ... How western media has covered the conflict so far ...

Paul’s humble new ventures with Substack and Nonzero ... Israel-Palestine, exploitative media, and the pitfalls of empathy ... Paul’s plaudits for Mickey and the Parrot Room ... Elon Musk and Derek Parfit: compare and contrast ... Is there a method to Musk’s mad genius? ... The radical rationalism that forged SBF ... How real is implicit bias? ... How real is SBF? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Nonzero/American Prestige cocktail with a hybrid episode twist ... Was Hamas’s attack a predictable response to conditions in Gaza? ... Did Biden’s foreign policy make the attack more likely? ... America’s unstrategic Middle East strategy ... Can anything good come out of the current crisis? ... The Nonzero/American Prestige crossover arc ... How to stay sane as a critic of US foreign policy ... Biden vs Trump: Who’s the lesser evil on foreign policy? ... Strains within the restrainer coalition ... Is there any hope left for international law? ... Bob’s pitch for (sober) AI alarmism ... Heading to Overtime—and a special offer for listeners! ...

Important reminder about the Friday podcast ... Sam Bankman-Fried’s plan to stop Trump ... Biden’s new policy: Build the wall! ... Why is life expectancy dropping for some demographics in America? ... Should Democrats have helped Kevin McCarthy remain speaker? ... The Blob starts to think like Bob on Russia-Ukraine ... Should the US impose conditions on aid to Ukraine? ... What war with China over Taiwan would look like ... Parrot Room preview: McCarthyism at the news outlet Semafor. Michael Lewis’s new book on Sam Bankman-Fried. Parrot reminiscing. Evolution and homosexuality. Christopher Rufo defends Nixon. ...

Should Democrats support what's good for institutions or what's good for Democrats? ... Did Pelosi want Democrats to vote "present"? ... Why were Democrats so unified? ... Are all House Republicans equally bad? ... Who's going to be the next Speaker? ...

Has Biden abandoned longstanding US policy on Taiwan? ... The sobering results of recent US-China war games ... Would China ever accept defeat in Taiwan? ... Why the US might bomb Taiwan’s microchip factories ... How war over Taiwan could unfold ... Lyle: DC think tanks are underestimating China's military ... Heading to Overtime ...

Mickey, the man from the future, times out on this week’s quiz ... Winners, losers, and bigger losers of the GOP debate ... Semafor’s Iran influence exposé: (semi-)exposed! ... How is Menendez still standing? Mickey has a theory ... Bad socio-economic omens for Biden’s 2024 bid ... Ukraine war update ... Is elite opinion on immigration shifting? ... Next week: The final Parrot Room ...

Sarah’s vexing exile from X/Twitter ... Sarah’s next book project ... Would dumping Biden help or harm the Dems’ 2024 chances? ... Who could bump Trump from the GOP ticket? ... Sarah: The Dems’ key to victory is… ... Will the “war on woke” be relevant in 2024? ... The thing that most worries Sarah about the election ... Heading to Overtime ...

Senator Bob Menendez accused of brazen corruption ... The issue that could sink Trump's campaign ... Unpacking the mystery of America’s open border ... Is Biden worried about a coup by Democratic Party elites? ... Ukraine’s international support shows signs of waning ... Democrats downgrade Senate dress code ... Parrot Room preview: Marty Peretz’s new book; UAW strike; insidious AI sexbots ...

Azerbaijan attacks Nagorno-Karabakh ... Preview of this week’s Biden-Zelensky meeting in DC ... Does the new technology of war favor defense? ... Is Zelensky thinking clearly about Ukraine’s military chances? ... What Anatol learned from his discussions with wounded Ukrainian soldiers ... If the US pushed for peace, would Putin be ready to make a deal? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Walter Isaacson’s Elon-Ukraine walk-back ... Debating Biden replacement theories ... Bob’s hurricane-induced bandwidth problems ... Biden’s age-induced bandwidth problems ... Ukraine war update ... Mitt Romney bows out ... The smoke-filled room shortage ... 56:00 ...

Almut’s work as a feminist activist in the former Soviet Union ... How economic anxiety helped tear Ukraine apart ... The very complex coalition behind the Maidan Revolution ... Could wiser European Union policy have averted the Russia-Ukraine conflict? ... Queer feminists and the ultra-right in Ukraine ... The nature of Ukrainian nationalism ... Heading into Overtime ...

Nikki Haley beats Biden in new poll ... How big is Ukraine’s military "breakthrough"? ... Signs that Russia is ready for peace talks ... Why are Americans feeling down on the economy? ... DeSantis takes care of business in hurricane-wrecked Florida ... Are the punishments for January 6 rioters too severe? ... How much time is there for a formidable Democrat to challenge Biden for the nomination? ... Bob and Mickey make big announcement ...

Tim’s article explaining large language models ... Do LLMs reverse engineer the human mind? ... GPT’s mesmerizing emergent properties ... The ‘T’ in Chat-GPT ... How AI models evolve during training ... Human intelligence compared to artificial intelligence ... Heading to Overtime ...

Nikita’s life as an expatriate ... Theories among Russians about Prigozhin’s death ... Putin’s handling of the Wagner mutiny, reassessed ... Did Prigozhin lose his mind? ... How worried should Putin be about Prigozhin’s supporters? ... Russians’ evolving views of the invasion ... Is Putin feeling heat from the nationalist right? ...

Mickey gets a C on the news quiz ... Prigozhin postmortem: Is Putin’s regime more secure now? ... The Ukraine war as “politics by other means” ... The good, the bad, and the ugly of the GOP debate ... Will the indictments help Trump in the general election? ... Parrot room preview: Why Bob finds Vivek scary and “Rich Men North of Richmond” icky; Extraordinary Attorney Woo; Hurricane Hilary hype; retail “shrink” hits the big time; Bidenomics and E.J. Dionne; Do presidential candidates need to be optimistic? ...

Has David’s grim outlook on the climate changed? ... How “global warming” became “climate change” ... What wilder wildfires signal about the environment ... Which climate measures are the surest bet? ... Climate science’s time-scale problem ... The pros and cons of carbon capture ... Heading to Overtime ...

Yet another Trump indictment—How strong is the case? ... Is America becoming a banana republic? ... DeSantis debate strategy goes public ... Bob floats secret elite plot to get Biden off the Democratic ticket ... Why Ukraine’s stalled offensive is politically hazardous for Biden ... Parrot Room preview: US-China war games; Sam Bankman-Fried back in jail; Hunter Biden scandal updates; populist anthem sweeps America; colorful LA character passes away; San Diego’s successful homeless policy; Twitter versus Threads; and signs of AI enlightenment. ...

Sohrab’s idiosyncratic ideological journey ... What makes Sohrab a conservative? ... Sohrab’s new book Tyranny, Inc.—a critique of neoliberal capitalism’s effects on American life ... What happened to the labor movement in America? ... Private equity’s role in Sears’s demise ... “Ghost papers”: Wall Street's effect on local news ... Overtime preview: Sohrab’s foreign policy; supporting Donald Trump; re-industrializing without Cold War II; and what is to be done? ...

New challenges for Ukraine ... What do lead pipes have to do with climate migrants? Ask Biden ... Are the Bidens corruption “disruptors”? ... Mickey’s craziest theory of the week ... Another wrinkle in the Hunter Biden scandal ... What mainstream media won’t tell you about Iran ... Mickey’s searing critique of Obama ... Parrot room preview: Mickey on the Trump cases; RIP Robbie Robertson; Tim Scott’s campaign expense weirdness; Biden's strange Saudi-Israel plan; Code Pink; assessing the UFO whistleblower; San Francisco's autonomous cabs; Michael Lind vs Richard Hanania; losing Sugar Man; Oppenheimer (the documentary); Sohrab Ahmari; a cornucopia of comments ...

How US-China rivalry is shaking up the region ... Why Washington wants to control the Middle East oil spigot ... The odds of an imminent confrontation with Iran ... Is America breaking international law in Syria? ... What would a Middle East without US intervention look like? ... Why Israel lacks a written constitution ... Heading to Overtime ...

A PBS lament ... Does Trump prosecutor Jack Smith have the goods? ... Hunter Biden’s corruption defense: It was all an illusion ... President Biden’s Ukraine quagmire ... What Trump gets right about Russia-Ukraine ... Is West Africa heading toward a major war? ... Parrot Room preview: The tragedy of PBS NewsHour; Mickey’s border worries; Bob’s reflection on jury duty; the economics of electric vehicles; the UFO files; Italy pivots away from guaranteed income; over-the-counter Alzheimer’s test; US-China decoupling; room-temperature superconductors; and the limits of AI ...

Bob and Dan reminisce about blogging and Bloggingheads ... Was the first year of Russia’s invasion a success for US foreign policy? ... When will Putin be ready to cut a deal? ... The odds of a wider war—or a nuclear one ... What good can come from continuing the war? ... Has the US mismanaged its relationship with Putin’s Russia? ... Putin’s fear of western-backed color revolutions ...

Bob extols the virtues of jury duty ... Ukraine’s counter offensive surge ... What does Hunter’s failed plea deal mean for Joe? ... In search of a DeSantis strategy ... The Niger coup and Cold War II ... Parrot room preview: Israel’s issues; musings on late musicians; Is Ramaswamy surging?; New lab leak controversy; Mickey’s border question for Biden; Is DEI d-e-a-d?; A crazy (ex-)Twitter theory; AI self-regulation ...

Where AI fits in Connor’s tech threat taxonomy ... What does the “general” in artificial general intelligence actually mean? ... What should worry us about AI right now? ... Connor: Don’t put your trust in AI companies ... The promise and perils of open-sourcing AI ... Why "interpretability" matters ... What would an aligned AI actually look like? ... Bridging the technology wisdom gap ...

Senator Chris Murphy declares war on loneliness ... Why is the Ukraine offensive going badly? ... Why Biden should push for peace talks now ... Threads unravels ... Was RFK’s Covid conjecture anti-Semitic? ... Mickey reviews the MSM version of DeSantis ... American diplomacy update: murky scandals and trash talk ... Parrot Room preview: Biden corruption scandal; electric car paranoia; what Trump will do if he wins; Mickey on Xi Jinping; Trump’s trials; Tony Bennett passes away; Meta’s dubious AI policy; Is the internet annoying, or is Bob just old? ...

What is this new Overton Windows series about? ... Tamler’s connections to Israel and Bob’s experiences there ... What does Zionism mean in practice? ... The shifting Overton window around Israel/Palestine ... The heavy-handed response to the BDS movement ... What the Israel/Palestine discourse says about Overton windows ... So where should the boundaries be set? ...

Mickey bats .500 on this week’s news quiz ... Gen. “Spartacus” and other Russians with attitude ... What (or who) is impeding peace in Ukraine? ... What Biden has that other possible Dem candidates don’t ... What Trump’s messaging has that DeSantis’s doesn’t ... Untangling Threads’s early days ... Parrot Room preview: AI update; the mysterious Gal Luft; the irony of Klaatu’s speech; Mickey’s diversity epiphany; Canadian euthanasia initiative; Silo spoilers; AMC Pacer maker passes; Bob’s China vindication; Alan Arkin speech debate round three ...

Why Bob invited Russians with Attitude onto the Nonzero Podcast ... Why do Kirill and Nikolay support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? ... Shortcomings of US mainstream media in covering Russia ... The roots of the Donbass rebellion ... Parallels between the Maidan Revolution and the Donbass rebellion ... What was Putin’s main reason for invading? ... Is Russia systematically committing war crimes? ... Final thoughts from Nikolay and Kirill before heading into Overtime ...

Should Trump’s GOP rivals attack him, praise him, or both? ... Prigozhin mutiny aftermath gets messy ... Signs of a coming ceasefire in Ukraine ... How many Russia hawks really care about Ukrainians? ... MSM deep-sixes affirmative action ruling ... Is Zuckerberg’s Twitter clone ageist? ... Parrot Room preview: New anti-censorship ruling; private companies and the First Amendment; The Day the Earth Stood Still; riots in France; Macron’s good policy idea; artificial intelligence and war; complaints about Timothy Snyder and the New York Times; Elon-Zuckerberg cage match. ...

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Why Michael McFaul is wrong about Vladimir Putin ... Is Putin ready for a ceasefire? ... Has SCOTUS succeeded in killing affirmative action? ... Americans do have to pay student loans, don’t have to make LGBT websites ... Is RFK Jr. entering Trump’s orbit? ... Parrot Room preview: GOP election strategy; Bidenomics and national conservatism; band name of the year; Yglesias says liberals have higher IQs; final episode of Silo; Bob reviews Invasion of the Body Snatchers; Titanic submarine tragedy; and reasons to worry about a false flag attack in Ukraine. ...

Sean’s new book, We May Dominate the World: Ambition, Anxiety, and the Rise of the American Colossus ... China’s and Russia’s behavior today compared to America’s a century ago ... If geopolitical realities don’t change, are great powers doomed to blow up the world? ... Why did the US decide to dominate the western hemisphere? ... American interventions from the Civil War to World War I ... Why forceful US interventions in Latin America have become less common ... Were the fears motivating the annexation of Hawaii based in reality? ... Did the Spanish-American War have broad public support? ...

Should Hunter Biden and Trump get the Tim Geithner treatment? ... Bob’s latest evidence that Biden shouldn’t run again ... Have we reached peak RFK Jr.? ... Does the counteroffensive hurt Ukraine’s cause? ... Leaky new dam collapse theory ... The rapidly metastasizing GOP primary field ... Israel-Palestine gets Black Mirror-y ... Alito’s ill-considered trip ... Parrot room preview: The right’s schism over capitalism; Prigozhin's insurrection; the Titanic sub tragedy; Why Mickey is growing to hate EVs; Janan Ganesh’s elite take on populism; Bob’s (possibly) new UFO thoughts; Cutting the tax cuts from supply-side economics?; Silo; Biden’s billion-dollar battery bonuses; Biden’s reverse-Epstein problem ...

The (fuzzy) distinction between cognitive and emotional empathy ... Simon’s work on autism and empathy ... Should we really view autism as a spectrum? ... Are powerful people bad at cognitive empathy? ... Hitler, tribalism, and the societal dynamics of empathy ... Can cognitive empathy save the world? ... The “double-empathy” problem ... How autistic kids play differently ...

Mickey gets a B+ on this week’s news quiz ... Is RFK Jr. the Dem’s key to booting Biden? ... Chris Christie’s chances vs. Trump ... Has Tucker gone off the deep end? ... No, Russia didn’t blow up Ukraine’s dam ... Is the Ukrainian counteroffensive failing? ... Parrot room preview: Remembering Daniel Ellsberg; Elizabeth Gilbert’s self-cancellation; the fake deepfake of John Lennon; Mickey’s AI question; a bit of Epstein news; LIV golf update; Mickey contra popular vote compact; the Blob’s pro-immigration argument; Who’s going to pardon Trump? And why?; Did Harvard or the CIA drive the Unabomber crazy?; RIP Ed Fredkin; Silo; Harvard and the Inuit ...

Frank’s book The End of History and the Last Man ... Bob’s book Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny ... Do people have to be rational in order to cooperate? ... Are AI and other technologies advancing too rapidly for society to adapt? ... Frank’s take on Hegel ... Why Frank’s a Russia hawk and Bob's a Russia dove ... Will authoritarian regimes do a better job of dealing with advanced information technologies? ...

The GOP primary gets crowded ... Will Trump’s indictment help him get the nomination? ... Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive begins ... Dissecting Timothy Snyder’s Ukraine analysis ... Looks like Ukraine blew up Nord Stream ... Tucker’s new Twitter show ... Parrot Room preview: Bob draws lesson from PGA’s merger with Saudi’s LIV; affirmative action set to fall; Apple’s new goggles; Taylor Swift; food stamps and the homeless; why Gen-Zers are more likely to be non-binary; Cracker Barrel goes woke; Chinese spy situation in Cuba; Bob on the sci-fi show Silo. ...

The dam breaks in Ukraine ... Is western media giving a clear picture of the war? ... Why do some Ukrainian soldiers wear Nazi symbols? ... How Russia-Ukraine could become a wider war ... Could the US have prevented the war? ... Seeing American foreign policy from Putin's point of view ...

China’s role in Saudi-Iran rapprochement ... The legacy of Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal ... Does Israel have a Palestine plan? ... Tensions resurface in Kosovo ... NATO expansion and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ... Has the US mismanaged its relationship with Russia? ... Prospects for peace in Ukraine—or for massive military escalation ... A message from Bob about this week's Parrot Room ...

Sam’s Bloggingheads bona fides ... Is AI “interpretability” worth the trouble? ... Natural selection and artificial intelligence ... Are large language models absorbing human nature? ... What Sam thinks singularitarian AI doomers get wrong ... Is it time for an AI-safety Manhattan Project? ... Sam: Let a thousand GPT-4 (but not GPT-5) plug-ins bloom. ... Where are our AI safety blindspots? ...

Bob quizzes Mickey on worrisome Ukraine war developments ... What could push Putin to go nuclear? ... How disastrous was the DeSantis launch really? ... DeSantis’s possible anti-Trump trump card ... Who’s losing the debt-ceiling fight? ... Parrot room preview: Soul and dual Dune reviews; the latest on Epstein-Gates; Bob’s 12 Monkeys howler; AI; simply the best of Tina Turner; Mickey delineates new immigration bills ...

The watershed moment that led Ben to write his new book, "Cry, Baby" ... Does meditation make you less emotional? ... How different socio-cultural groups feel about crying ... Why do we cry anyway? ... Transformative and performative weeping ... Putting Joel Osteen’s tears under a microscope ... How does the nature of crying change over a lifetime? ... Overtime preview: Bob’s most embarrassing adult crying experience, psychedelics and crying, and more! ... Ben delivers a benediction on crying ...

Mickey’s risky quiz for Bob ... Biden, Feinstein, Fetterman: Compare and contrast ... Does DeSantis have a path to the presidency? ... Bob’s biggest takeaway from the AI hearings ... How the chip war with China makes real war more likely ... What senators should have asked OpenAI’s CEO ... Ukraine war update ... Parrot room preview: (Not much) debt deal talk; Robert Putnam essay assessed; the Thiel-Epstein and Botstein-Epstein and Chomsky-Epstein connections; an important note on inequality; examining 12 Monkeys; Tucker; new “woke-watch” items; more AI ...

Tim’s tech background and his new newsletter, Understanding AI ... Natural selection and artificial intelligence ... Why Tim is a singularity skeptic ... How exactly would AI take over? And will it even want to? ... The bad AI vs good AI arms race ... What exactly are "AI agents"? ... Why Tim is an AI job-pocalypse skeptic ... Has AI created the biggest tech hype wave ever? ... How Tim thinks AI will actually transform human life ...

The food fight within Russia’s military establishment ... Could Ukraine’s looming offensive succeed? ... The foreign policy Blob’s biggest blind spot ... Was Trump’s town hall performance a tactical blunder? ... Is DeSantis’s attack on Disney anti-democratic? ... Tucker moves to Twitter ...

America’s missed opportunity to create a peaceful post-Cold-War world ... The moment US foreign policy went off track ... Why didn’t the West invest in Russia’s post-Cold War recovery? ... The foreign policy Blob’s continuity across presidential administrations ... Has the American journalism gotten worse in recent decades? ...

Mickey deflates a DeSantis challenger ... Mickey’s ego-inflating podcast week ... Who was behind the Kremlin drone attack? ... Neocon propaganda outlet busted; Bob vindicated ... Who has the bigger beef with Neera Tanden? ... How bad was the leaked Tucker text about how “white men fight”? ... Parrot room preview: Gordon Lightfoot trivia lightning-round; adjudicating the Ed Sheeran case; new Epstein name-drops; Bob’s latest AI piece; DeSantis vs. Disney; the latest Twitter rival’s arrival; Elon’s subtle Tesla pricing strategy ...

Israel’s many issues ... How ugly could Israel’s judicial reform crisis get? ... Are Palestinian citizens of Israel really under “apartheid”? ... The demographic and ideological sources of Israel’s instability ... If the two-state solution is dead, now what? ... How might an increasingly multipolar world affect Israel? ... Why climate change makes Israel-Palestine even more dire ...

Is MSM giving cheat sheets to Biden? ... Trump says he might skip GOP debates ... Will Tucker make a run for the White House? ... Disney escalates its feud with DeSantis ... Bob: Ukraine’s looming offensive is a bad idea ...

John’s upcoming book, How States Think: The Rationality of Foreign Policy ... Is the US to blame for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? ... Is Putin less rational than John assumes? ... Why John is a Russia dove and a China hawk ... Does China pose a threat to freedom around the world? ... Why John thinks China’s rise threatens American security ... Has globalization made great-power peace possible? ... Should the US defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion? ...

Is DeSantis done for? ... Ro Khanna for president! ... Why Cold War II makes AI scarier ... Is Twitter done for? ... How imminent is a recession, really? ... Ukraine war update ... The Blinken wrinkle in the Hunter Biden laptop story ... Parrot room preview: Mickey’s AI revelation; Can the GOP win over the college crowd?; Is Fetterman out of the woods?; Is a border crisis incoming?; The slow-burn of Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice; more on DeSantis ...

How Roko and Alex wound up debating on the Nonzero Podcast ... Could near-term AI disruption be worse than Covid? ... Is AI an existential threat? ... How the sci-fi apocalypse scenario might unfold ... How is a renegade AI like a man wearing a condom? ... Why would an AI want to kill us? ... How the Cold War makes AI more dangerous ... Roko and Alex make final statements before Overtime ...

The promise (and perils) of Notes, Substack’s new social media platform ... One big way Notes could be a better Twitter ... Nikita’s grand vision for Notes—and Substack ... User control vs. the allure of algorithms ... Is a better culture of discourse possible through Notes? ... How Notes benefits from elite buy-in ... Bob’s advice for Substack: Don't be like Microsoft! ... Towards a civil society ...

The Biden age issue ... Are Republicans setting the stage for Biden’s re-election? ... Bob: Right-wing “non-interventionists” are rabid China hawks ... The Pentagon’s no good, very leaky week ... Is Clarence Thomas corrupt? ... The New York Times hunts down a leaker ... Elon vs. Matt Taibbi and Substack ... Parrot Room preview: The new legal theory for prosecuting Trump; Biden’s border policy; Mickey vs. Ross Douthat on AI alarmism; government programs Mickey likes; the movie Megan comes to life; the potential of Substack Notes. ...

How freaked out is Michal by current AIs? ... Why "theory of mind" (aka cognitive empathy)—even in humans—is mind-blowing ... Michal’s theory-of-mind experiments with AI ... Bob’s theory-of-mind experiments with AI ... Do large language models construct representations of concepts? ... Does AI have subjective experience? ... What human neural networks do that AI doesn't ...

The SBF and Trump indictments: compare and contrast ... Is DeSantis tanking? ... How the Tennessee House controversy could boost Biden ... Unpacking progressive wins in Wisconsin and Chicago ... Is Twitter becoming a banana republic? ... Ukraine war (and NATO) update ... Parrot room preview: Russian pro-war blogger’s strange assassination; Jill Biden’s basketball misstep; Clarence Thomas’s controversial trips; Amazon against anti-woke reviews; M3GAN, the alignment problem, and more AI talk; GM’s EV blunder; Matt Taibbi vs. Mehdi Hasan; Dershowitz on Epstein ...

Paul’s book, The World Crisis and International Law ... Should we demand that other countries be as liberal as we are? ... What went wrong in Russia after the Soviet Union fell? ... How post-Cold war consensus gave way to global fragmentation ... Can international law prevent techno-authoritarianism? ... Paul’s skepticism about international law ... How the knowledge economy could lead to a Chinese Trump ...

A common conundrum: How to pay off your porn-star mistres ... Ways to make Ron DeSantis seem human ... Bob: The newest AI has cognitive empathy ... How Cold War II makes AI more dangerous ... Why are traditional American values in decline? ... What foreign policy elites say about Russia-Ukraine behind closed doors ... Parrot Room preview: Something smart Zelensky said; US think tank advocates murder; how the Nashville shooting was reported; Musk makes another Twitter policy change; why Elizabeth Holmes was ahead of her time ...

Bob and David reminisce about Bloggingheads ... David’s book, American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy ... Are Russiagaters moving the goalposts? ... What the Trump team knew about Russian meddling ... The missing “collusion” piece of the Russiagate puzzle ... Why David thinks Russiagate's biggest critics are perpetuating a hoax ... If Russiagaters are right, why didn’t Trump do Russia many favors? ...

Bob: On foreign policy, there is no real Ron DeSantis ... The difference between right-restrainers and left-restrainers ... The dangerous politics of indicting Trump ... Trump’s new plan to take out the deep state ... Is the war turning in Ukraine’s favor? ... Why did DeSantis change the pronunciation of his name? ... Parrot Room preview: Everything Everywhere All At Once speaks to Bob; SVB fallout not over; banning the word “woke”; Camaro goes out of production—or does it?; likelihood of Covid lab-leak ...

Richard’s banking and business bona fides ... Was the Silicon Valley Bank crash a harbinger of worse to come? ... What actually caused SVB’s collapse? ... Richard: SVB failed risk management 101 ... Costs and benefits of the SVB bailout ... The Fed’s oft-forgotten original role ... Did the deregulation SVB lobbied for doom it? ... Overtime preview: Richard’s career highlights; cognitive empathy in commerce; how to hire like a boss; and more! ...

Mickey’s mind-bending analogy between romance and politics ... Bob triggered by DeSantis’s “territorial dispute” line about Russia-Ukraine ... How to prevent the next bank collapse? ... Was “wokeness” behind SVB’s demise? ... Ukraine war update ... Are Democrats ditching Israel? ... Winners and losers of Iran-Saudi détente ... Parrot room preview: Mickey’s quibble with Bob’s AI piece; SBF news; Silicon Valley’s campaign to ban TikTok; the sad state of the Metaverse; RIP Jim Gordon; Summer of Soul; Is DeSantis too wine-track? Too beer-track? Who cares?; New segment: Brushes with Greatness ...

Ananyo’s book, The Man from the Future, about game theory inventor and polymath John von Neumann ... Early life as a mathematical wunderkind ... Von Neumann’s foundational contributions to quantum physics ... Was entanglement as "spooky" to von Neumann as it was to Einstein? ... Building—and reckoning with—the atomic bomb ... Did von Neumann really want to nuke the USSR? ... Why was early game theory so zero-sum–focused? ... Influence on Turing, the open source movement, and modern computing ... How brushes with totalitarianism shaped von Neumann’s views ... Programming pioneer Klára Dán von Neumann ... The duality of von Neumann’s social life ... Did von Neumann grok incompleteness before Gödel? ... Unfinished work comparing computers and the brain ... Von Neumann’s deathbed conversion: Pascal's wager or something more? ...

Biden’s soak-the-rich budget: big news or borefest? ... How Biden insulting Xi Jinping endangers Ukraine ... Bob finds another reason Biden shouldn’t run for re-election ... Ukraine war update ... Nordstream’s hobbyist saboteurs ... Tucker Carlson outed as anti-Trump phony ... Parrot Room preview: Gavin Newsom takes on Walgreens; Twitter community notes annoy Mickey; Semafor's China racket; Bob’s Washington Post lab leak piece; Peter Thiel’s techno-optimism. ...

Paul’s new book, Psych: The Story of the Human Mind ... Does psychology need more evolutionary thinking? ... Freud and Skinner and parts in between ... Mind-body dualism’s enduring intuitive appeal ... ChatGPT and the human mind: compare and contrast ... Are cognitive biases overblown? ... A brief note about the podcast ... Implicit biases, memory, and other topics covered in the book ...

Mickey celebrates good week for JD Vance, Ron DeSantis ... The Biden admin’s “all sticks, no carrots” approach to foreign policy ... Is China’s plummeting birth rate a problem? ... Will Bibi wag the dog? ... Will AI kill the journalism star? ... Ukraine war update ... Alarmism about a China-Russia axis ... Parrot room preview: more Ukraine; Dilbert creator gets canceled; why the kids aren’t alright; Will student loan cancellation pass Supreme Court muster?; Buy books before it’s too late?; Mickey’s flick pick; wrapping up The Long Goodbye; Lab-leak theory gets a boost; more AI; The real story being Elon’s algorithmic boost ...

Paul’s new book, Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence ... Will AIs replace humans in future wars? ... China as an AI superpower ... Will Beijing spread high-tech authoritarianism globally? ... How useful is the “democracy versus autocracy” framework? ... Why Paul’s worried about a race to the bottom in AI safety ... Tom Cruise can’t hold a candle to AI pilots ...

Washington Post highlights a cost of US hypocrisy ... Will China push for peace—or fund Russia’s war effort (or both)? ... Can Trump use Biden’s support for Ukraine against him? ... Russia’s offensive, Ukraine’s rope-a-dope ... Bob’s evolving view of America’s role in the Maidan Revolution ... The US vows to back Israel if it attacks Iran ... Parrot Room preview: AI updates; Republicans and Social Security; How Blobbish is Fiona Hill?; Carlos Watson arrested ...

Coleman’s definition of “wokeness”—and why he’s against it ... Poverty or privilege: Which predicts wokeness among black Americans? ... How much progress has America made since Jim Crow? ... Why writers in particular are haunted by their past ... How racists and criminals are made ... Does "hip-hop culture exist"—and is it bad? ... Coleman diversifies his controversy portfolio ...

How should Republicans counter Biden’s blue-collar messaging? ... The disturbing thing balloon-gate reveals about the Dems ... The Fetterman health crisis ... Twitter’s Elon algorithm ... Are women more conciliatory than men? ... Is Biden pushing Zelensky toward the negotiating table? ... An underappreciated risk of arming Ukraine ... 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 ...

Norman’s new book, I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It!: Heretical Thoughts on Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom ... How Norman exposed a bestselling book as a hoax ... The price Norman paid for taking on Alan Dershowitz ... What effects has “wokeness” had on academia? ... Pronouns and the perils of linguistic prescriptivism ... Who's pushing identity politics on the left? And why? ... A few unkind words about Bari Weiss ... Norman: Ibram X. Kendi is a fashion statement not a scholar ...

Why Biden’s big speech has Bob worried ... Did the US blow up the Nord Stream pipeline? ... Trump accuses DeSantis of grooming ... With friends like Joe Rogan, Ilhan Omar doesn’t need enemies ... The latest from the Twitter Files: new dirt on the Blob ... Biden takes on Xi, seems a little unhinged ... Why more people are concerned about Ukraine’s chances ... 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. ...

Gabor’s new book The Myth of Normal, about trauma and mental and physical illness in modern Western society ... Are we all victims of a “toxic” culture? ... Gabor’s early years in Nazi- and then Soviet-occupied Hungary ... What Gabor thinks standard theories of addiction get wrong ... Can trauma ever be a good thing? ... Was Bob’s childhood traumatic? And if so, how? ... Trauma, attachment, and authenticity ... Is modern society hostile to community? ... The difference between healthy and unhealthy anger ... A primer on “compassionate inquiry” ... The time Gabor was leading an ayahuasca retreat and got deposed by shamans ... Gabor on why cognitive empathy is difficult but essential ... What Gabor sees as the essence of the book ...

Is the 2024 race shaping up to be a political Groundhog Day? ... Ilhan Omar and the Israel criticism tightrope ... Does the left or right look worse on recent Russiagate disclosures? ... A question about the DNC email hack ... Ukraine war update: Is time on Russia’s side? ... Is the Biden admin angling for a peace deal with Putin? ... 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? ...

Nikita’s life as a Russian expat in Armenia ... How the Ukraine war is talked about in Russia ... Could Putin fall from power? ... Who left and who stayed in Russia post-mobilization? ... Russia’s role in the Armenia-Azerbaijan crisis ... How the Ukraine war could turn into World War III ... Are “false flag” claims about the Maidan Massacre beyond the pale? ... The trouble with the way we talk about war ... The role of extremists in mass protests ...

Can AI transcend conventional wisdom? ... Is Trump back as 2024 GOP frontrunner? ... The trouble with “the poor” ... J.D. Vance has Ukraine on the brain ... Ukraine update: How to make sending tanks make sense ... 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 ...

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 ...

The alphas of the world gather in Davos ... Mickey buys a blue check, dresses up to celebrate ... Does Russia have Ukraine on the defensive? ... How serious is the threat of US government debt default? ... Biden’s chances in 2024 ... 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 ...

Challenges in applying cognitive empathy in daily life ... Two types of self-awareness—and their links to cognitive empathy ... Josh’s recent (mis)adventures in cognitive empathy ... Can self-awareness make conflicts manageable? ... The relationship between concentration and insight meditation ... Literature and the cultivation of cognitive empathy ... Understanding one’s self vs. understanding others ... The ice cube theory of human nature ... Cognitive empathy’s role in building “mindfulness 3.0” ...

Anti-gas-stove tyranny – or slow news week? ... Biden’s classified docs scandal is a “granfalloon in search of a MacGuffin led by a wrang-wrang” ... Did Bob Gates and Condoleezza Rice miss a chance to prevent the Ukraine war? ... Is the war turning in Russia’s favor? ... The prospects for peace negotiations ... Parrot Room preview: Biden’s pivot to help the working class; Does AI have a liberal bias?; Has woke peaked?; Matthew Yglesias' style section profile; Jeff Beck, Lisa Marie Presley, and Blake Hounshell pass away; White Lotus; Mickey’s new conspiracy theory about Kevin McCarthy ...

Why are so many people (including Fred) down on John Mearsheimer? ... Bob: Explaining bad behavior is not the same as justifying it ... How the US eroded international law - and why it matters ... Did US policy make Russia’s invasion of Ukraine more likely? ... NATO’s role in Ukraine before the invasion ... How would the US respond to a China-Mexico military alliance? ... Henry Kissinger’s peace proposal ... Impediments to productive debate on US foreign policy ...

Mickey’s guide to the House Speaker drama ... What vexes Bob about the House Speaker vote ... Why Damar Hamlin’s injury wouldn’t have happened in the old days ... Biden’s new good cop, bad cop immigration plan ... Why keep sanctioning Venezuela (or Cuba, or Syria, or Iran, etc.)? ... Elon and the trouble with “great man” theories of tech progress ... Is Twitter’s new views feature a boon or bullshit? ... Ukraine war update ... Parrot room preview: The Matt Schlapp sex scandal; Jason DeParle on welfare; Mickey’s case against “unity”; More calls for a Semafor clawback; an SBF-AIPAC connection; a second Epstein-Harvard connection; The White Lotus ...

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Bob hoodwinks the fashion police ... Predictions for the new year ... The pros and cons of “nepotocracy” ... Predictions for the new year (cont’d) ... Impromptu Ukraine war update ... The top 3(ish) stories of 2022 ... Is Twitter salvageable? ... The true threat of Twitter (according to Mickey) ... Mickey’s underreported and overreported stories of the year ... What did the Jan. 6 committee miss? ... Bob’s perverse theory on why the GOP would be wise to drop the Hunter Biden thing ... Parrot room preview: The root cause of homelessness; legalize cocaine? Why stop there?; The SBF clawback; signs that the tide is turning on wokeness; Bob’s grand quasi-unified MKUltra-lab leak theory; three bonus predictions from Mickey; Bob checks into The White Lotus ...

The legacy of free trade in America ... Adam’s new book Opening Up by Cracking Down, about the repression of union activism in developing countries ... Car bombing and other ways Argentina subdued labor in the 80's ... Why did the US open up trade so early? ... The quasi-dystopian law India used to break strikes in the 90’s ... Underacknowledged long-term effects of free trade ... Is a pro-labor approach to free trade possible? ... Making globalism great again ...

Has the tide turned against Elon—and against Twitter? ... Elon accuses Fauci of funding research that killed millions ... Bob sees signs that the “Twitter files” journalism is biased ... Why now might be a good time for Ukraine diplomacy ... Parrot Room preview: SBF news; breaking down the nuclear fusion breakthrough; the AI alignment problem; China’s coming COVID explosion; TikTok backlash gains traction; Elon’s growing Tesla problems ...

What Anders didn’t like about Bob’s Washington Post op-ed on Russia-Ukraine ... Was Putin always bent on invading Russia’s neighbors? ... Bob and Anders debate NATO expansion ... Should the West encourage regime change in Russia? ... Are the US and NATO “fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian”? ... The causes and consequences of Ukraine’s 2014 revolution ... Is Putin committing genocide? ... Possible endgames of the Ukraine war—and of Putin’s Russia ... Could better US policy have averted the Ukraine war? ...

A brief message from Bob ... Why Mickey thinks the first installment of the Twitter Files was a something-burger ... What Bob thinks Taibbi (and Musk) flubbed ... Do the files show a pro-Dem bias in pre-Musk Twitter? ... Ukraine war update ... Parrot Room preview: an (unwitting) win for Bob; a damning J.D. Vance quote for Mickey; the latest SBF allegation; the worst. Substack. Issue. Ever.; Bob submits a beef with Mickey for commenter consideration; commenter takes on Musk’s gun tweet; potential Parrot Room theme song(s); the Fed on why men are leaving the labor force; Janan Ganesh on why you should leave Twitter ...

Mónica’s book I Never Thought of It That Way, about how to have “bridge-building” conversations ... Why Mónica’s immigrant parents support(ed) Trump ... Barriers to getting bridge-building buy-in ... Understanding vs. the need to be understood ... Bridge-building 101 ... Is understanding a slippery slope to excusing? ... The underrated bridge-building power of curiosity ... Does the media fuel or just reflect our divisions? ... The limits of bridge-building ...

Would a Biden re-election bid spell doom for Dems? ... Opening the Ron DeSantis black box ... Bob’s Washington Post piece on Russia-Ukraine diplomacy ... Is it too early to write off Herschel Walker? ... Sam Bankman-Fried’s bipartisan approach to corrupting politics ... Elon’s and Apple’s China challenges ... Parrot Room preview: Mickey’s spat with Damon Linker; what we know about Peter Thiel; Ye and Fuentes; the center-less GOP; Elon’s Twitter regime; Errol Morris’s miniseries Wormwood. ...

Eric’s new book We Are Not One, about changing American Jewish attitudes toward Israel over the years ... Jewish-American identity before its “Zionization” ... Why fewer young American Jews are feeling the pro-Israel vibe ... Israel in American politics ... The “Israel as apartheid state” debate ... How the 1960’s defined Jewish visions of Israel ... Is a “two-state solution” now the conservative position? ... Zionism vs. social justice activism ... Why Israel is fine with the Palestinian status quo ... Does Israel really need US support? ... Could international pressure help solve the Israel-Palestine conflict? ...

The (totally selfless) reasons Mickey wants an SBF clawback ... Did Semafor fumble its big SBF-Elon scoop? ... Mickey’s clawback campaign (cont’d) ... Origins of Mickey’s (alleged) Ben Smith vendetta revealed! ... Is Musk destroying his town square? ...

Paul’s upcoming book, Psych: The Story of the Human Mind ... Bob’s upcoming book, tk ... Are psychopaths high in (cognitive) empathy? ... How good are we at perspective taking—and how can we get better? ... Elon Musk’s apparent cognitive empathy deficit ... Is cognitive empathy a biological adaptation? ... Is it even possible to understand the minds of others? ... Paul’s budding interest in perversity ...

Why Mickey’s not unhappy about the midterm results ... Can Trump go the distance against DeSantis? ... The Pelosi era ends ... Zelensky invites NATO to join the war ... Is a peace deal on the horizon in Ukraine? ... Elon update ... SBF's fall takes wind out of the sails of effective altruism movement ...

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Mickey mourns the fate of his midterm hopes and dreams ... What the midterm results mean for 2024 ... Who wins in a Trump v. DeSantis civil war? ... Bob’s plan to boot Biden from the 2024 ticket ... Will Musk chicken out on his blue check shake-up? ... The Twitter business model Musk may be banking on ... Parrot room preview: Ukraine update; more Twitter business model talk; Metaverse vibe check; Errol Morris’s Leary love story; questioning “blame Trump” midterm post-mortems; is America getting nicer?; Mickey’s ongoing lessons on how to talk to a liberal; critiquing Chamath Palihapitiya’s critiques of journalism ...

Signs of the so-called “meaning crisis” ... How John addresses the meaning crisis in his own life ... Bob gets empathy-circled—live! ... How much of the meaning crisis is a crisis of community? ... Wisdom as the antidote to self-deception ... Is technological change outpacing our ability to adapt? ... How and where might new sources of meaning emerge? ... The conundrum of collective intelligence (or how should we talk about demons?) ... Can video games give us meaning? ... John: “Enlightenment” that fails to confront cognitive bias is meaningless ...

Why immigration squishes have Mickey worried about the midterms ... Elon Musk’s bull-in-a-china-shop strategy to owning Twitter ... The conspiracy theory about the attack on Paul Pelosi ... If Putin didn’t have nukes, would Biden’s Ukraine policy still be dangerous? ... Who is calling the shots in the Biden White House? ... Why Cold War psychology might have less sway over Musk-owned Twitter ... Bob has another baseball quiz for Mickey ... Could Biden’s tech embargo against China backfire horribly? ... Parrot Room preview: The odds of a centrist party succeeding in America; Elon’s secret master plan; Bob’s debate with Bret Weinstein; the impact of automation on workers; Bob and Mickey assess the metaverse (via Ready Player One) ...

Sam’s Foreign Affairs piece on the importance of Ukraine diplomacy ... What’s Biden’s endgame in Ukraine? ... Sam: Russia has already suffered a strategic defeat ... Did the West play a role in Ukraine’s 2014 revolution? ... Putin says the West is Russia’s real enemy. Does he believe it? ... America’s lack of diplomatic urgency before Putin invaded ... How much pro-Russia sentiment is there in Ukraine? ...

Mickey takes a bite out of midterm “overism” ... How revolutionary will Musk’s Twitter reign be? ... Who quashed the Progressive Caucus’s Ukraine letter? ... What’s holding up diplomacy in Ukraine? ... Is Blob opinion on the war starting to split? ... The cost of US hypocrisy ... The media’s weird coverage of the "dirty bomb" story ... Parrot room preview: implausible dirty bomb scenarios; UK PM’s dramatic early moves; a few words about the late Lucianne Goldberg; an (iffy) argument against lefty state legislature alarmism; Mickey’s labor-relations observations; Xi Jinping and the Hu Jintao removal; illustrating the dangers of war-time overreaction by way of Russian relocation coverage; Joe’s McCarthyism; Russians adopting Ukrainian children; what’s in it for Putin-humiliation-pushers? ...

How worried should we be about the “Kessler Syndrome”? ... The nightmare scenario for anti-satellite weapons anarchy ... How an attack in space could trigger WWIII ... International law is way behind the curve in outer space ... Why isn’t the grave threat of space anarchy getting attention? ... How the new Cold War makes conflict in space more likely ...

Elon Musk’s esoteric insult of former Russian president Medvedev ... Russia’s “General Armageddon” gears up for retreat ... Is the GOP becoming the anti-war party? ... Mickey’s many midterms nightmares ... With Britain's Tories in shambles, will Boris rise again? ... Bob: US policy helped create the latest "axis of evil" ... Parrot Room preview: Did Bob mischaracterize Mearsheimer?; Kanye West and Elon Musk take over social media; Jon Meacham’s fears for US democracy; what lies beneath LA’s racism row ...

What Seth learned from being in Ukraine that you won’t learn from western media ... Was the ouster of Ukraine’s president in 2014 a revolution or a coup? ... Could the White House have averted the invasion – and could it end the war now? ... The degree of on-the-ground American involvement in Ukraine and Syria ... Why Seth warns of frozen conflict when others predict Ukrainian victory ... The extent of pro-Russian sentiment in eastern Ukraine ... Seth: War always means atrocity, so we should avoid wars ... Is wartime reporting less objective now than usual? ...

What does America not understand about China – and vice versa? ... Signs of Chinese discontent with Xi Jinping ... How the focus on “beating China” distracts the US from other priorities ... Is the US making conflict over Taiwan more likely? ... Jessica: The threat to American democracy comes from within, not from China ... The roots of China’s growing assertiveness on the world stage ... What US and Chinese foreign policy (unfortunately) have in common ...

Why Mickey thinks Evan McMullin could become king of America ... Herschel Walker’s “three bulls” parable ... Is Fetterman ready for the debate stage? ... Biden’s Saudi ask vs. Trump’s Ukraine ask ... The double-edged sword of Ukrainian military success ... Bob amends last week’s "client state" comments ... Bob: The next few weeks will be critical for Ukraine ... Elon and international affairs (cont’d) ... Inflation, China chip wars, and other harbingers of global instability ... Putin’s psyche and realist views of Russia ... Parrot room preview: Ukraine’s ironic nuclear war incentives; cancellable L.A. city council commentary?; Who’s the bigger liar: Gore or Biden?; Unflattering Nikki Finke obituaries; PayPal’s crazy new misinformation policy; more Musk talk; what’s new in the Metaverse?; Serial subject’s charges dropped; a damning Maggie Haberman clip?; FiveThirtyEight bias and a point about probability ...

A few words about cognitive empathy ... Update: Nikita re-exits Russia ... Gauging Russian opinion on the Ukraine war post-mobilization ... How informed are the Russian people about the war? ... Does the West overestimate the absoluteness of Putin’s power? ... Watching "Putin’s chef" recruit prisoners for military service ... The difficulties in grasping “the” Russian perspective ... Trying to comprehend Putin’s psychology ... Was the Ukraine invasion inevitable? ... Is everything just one big cynical power game? ... The Biden State Department’s momentously zero-sum view of US-Russia relations ... The economic factors that helped shape modern Russia ... Is AI capable of cognitive empathy? ...

What’s Biden’s plan to avert nuclear Armageddon? ... The reaction to Elon Musk’s Ukraine peace proposal ... The future of free speech on Twitter ... Are we seeing cracks in Putin’s regime? ... Mickey’s midterms update ... A reason for hope about Iran’s future ... Parrot room preview: Jeffrey Toobin; Was Fukuyama right after all?; electric vehicles as a secret Chinese plot; David Sacks on woke-neocon synergy; being a character voter versus an issue voter; Michael McFaul doesn’t deserve your attention ...

Hal and Michael’s book Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China ... Would more weapons to Taiwan provoke Beijing to strike now? ... Michael: China feels threatened, which makes China threatening ... Hal: The US has a China problem, not just a Xi Jinping problem ... Is autocracy per se a threat to the rules-based order? ... Is the “democracy vs. autocracy” framework a self-fulfilling prophecy? ... Bob: If a threatened China is a dangerous China, is amping up the threat really a great idea? ...

Mickey on the latest midterm polling prophecies ... Will the new CNN put the Dems’ cash cow out to pasture? ... Could Putin’s annexation have nuclear fallout? ... Who sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines? ... Bob: We’re not grappling with how bad things could get in Ukraine ... Mickey finds a new front in Biden’s “battle against autocracy” ... Is fascism really on the march in Italy? ... Parrot room preview: Mickey tenders his “Contract with America”; guessing Bob’s seventh heaven persona non grata candidate; can AI have sex?; The Rumble (not Bumble) success story; “Serial” podcast subject released; the people Mickey doesn’t want to meet in heaven ...

Who sabotaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines—and what happens next? ... The uncertain consequences of Russia's referendums in Ukraine ... How Russia’s military failures could lead to Putin’s downfall ... How much pro-Russian sentiment is there in eastern and southeastern Ukraine? ... The odds Putin goes nuclear and the likely western response ... What’s Biden’s endgame in Ukraine? ... Is it too late for a peace deal? ... The chances that China comes to Putin’s rescue ...

Putin’s big speech: nothingburger, nuclear nightmare, or something in between? ... Why an escalating Ukraine war is so easy to envision ... All the ways DeSantis is Trump 2.0 ... Biden cools it on the anti-MAGA rhetoric ... Italy’s MAGA-like party heats up ... Crunching the midterm election numbers ... What’s wrong with Biden committing to defend Taiwan against China? ... Parrot Room preview: GOP’s new Contract for America; What is national conservatism?; reviewing Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless; Trump’s spoon-bending powers; does AI have cognitive empathy? ...

Sebastian’s book, In the Dragon’s Shadow: Southeast Asia in the Chinese Century ... The causes and consequences of the Cambodian genocide ... How American preaching pushes Asian governments towards China ... China, the anti-colonial imperial power ... Is Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative a bid for world domination? ... Beijing isn’t trying to export its political system, says Sebastian ... The state of liberal democracy in Southeast Asia ... Why the Chinese have been called “the Jews of the East” ... How the US can woo Southeast Asian nations ...

Mickey tries to take the bromance to the next level ... An impromptu primer on longtermism ... Is Lindsey Graham's abortion proposal poison for Republicans? ... Mickey’s read on the Pennsylvania and Georgia midterm races ... Is MAGA-ism going global? ... How is Biden’s pro-democracy messaging holding up? ... Ukraine war update ... Assessing DeSantis’s Martha’s Vineyard migrant scheme ... Mickey v. lefty takeaways on welfare reform ... Parrot room preview: first impressions of Godard’s Breathless; Federer’s retirement; the woke campaign against food hierarchy; a pundit-y point on the Epstein case; Charlie Munger’s envy-driven-economy theory; longtermism; free speech and the Queen; ex-Google-CEO’s anti-China sentiment; Is polio making a comeback?; Comprehending the crypto “merge” ...

The US role in Ukraine’s recent offensive – and how Moscow might respond ... Could Putin fall from power if Ukraine’s success continues? ... Will more arms to Taiwan deter or provoke China? ... Bob: On foreign policy, the US has egregiously violated its professed values ... Bret: The US should go to war against China if it invades Taiwan ... Should the US use force to defend democracy around the world? ... Can international law constrain brutal leaders like Putin? ... How Trump is kind of like a foot massage ... Explaining versus justifying bad behavior in international politics ...

RIP Queen Elizabeth II—Mickey breaks the news to Bob ... (Belated) reactions to Biden's big speech ... Bob critiques another Mickey tweet ... Will the “special master” ruling derail the Trump investigation? ... Steve Bannon faces the music ... Vegas politician fails to outsource murder ... One Liz in, one Liz out: what’s in store for the UK under Truss? ... Ukraine war update ... Trump’s nuclear document ... Parrot Room preview: Biden’s MAGA speech and his foreign policy; regulating outer space; on Ukraine coverage, Bob asks: where is today’s Bernard Trainor?; Israel's u-turn on controversial West Bank romance rules; WaPo going broke? Mickey has a solution; another Epstein-linked suicide?; Do plants have consciousness?; more AI takeover talk; lab leak; Wilde-Styles drama ...

David’s brand new book, The Varieties of Spiritual Experience ... The personal spiritual experience that sparked David’s research ... This book’s relationship to William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience ... How common are dramatic spiritual experiences? ... How different are different types of spiritual experience, really? ... Type 1 in the book’s taxonomy of spiritual experiences: The Numinous ... Type 2: The Revelatory ... Type 3: Synchronicity ... Type 4: The Mystical ... Type 5: The Aesthetic ... Type 6: The Paranormal ... Varieties of psychedelic experience ... SPOILERS: James’s surprising conclusions about religious experience ...

Are Dems’ electoral chances as good as the media says? ... Biden demonizes MAGA Republicans, feeds the MAGA narrative ... Bob: To prepare for DeSantis, the Dems should dump Biden ... Two ways Trump isn’t helping Republican candidates ... Ukraine war update ... Mickey: The new Covid booster will be a bust ... Did the FBI give Facebook advance warning about the Hunter Biden laptop story? ... Parrot Room preview: Gorbachev appraised; new Epstein intrigue; reviewing The Best Man; why is culture so boring?; why Mickey’s tweet annoyed Bob; new Putin biography; Were Monkees persecuted? ...

A quick update from Robert Wright. ...

Mickey doubles down on performance enhancing drugs ... Is the NY19 result a red flag for a midterm “red wave”? ... Has the Mar-a-Lago bombshell already fizzled? ... Bob gets tribal about Mickey’s anti-tribalism tweet ... Ukraine war update ... The electric vehicle takeover in California ... Brian Stelter’s ouster and CNN’s future direction ... Parrot Room preview: Dugin’s daughter whodunnit, is it actually time to start worrying about AI?, Biden admin cynicism on Ukraine, another tally in the Epstein case body count, China’s quantum computing prowess, could economic troubles spur Chinese aggression?, Twitter-Facebook censorship, more Beatles doc talk ...

What is the restrainer coalition and how cohesive is it really? ... Justin: Realism opposes forever wars -- but holds that war is forever ... The challenge Russia-Ukraine poses to the restrainer community ... How the US should respond to the China-Taiwan crisis ... Does the rise of China threaten American security? ... Bob: Taking adversaries’ perspectives doesn’t equal justifying their behavior ... Can the US deter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan forever? ... Should the US make Taiwan a pricklier porcupine or China a more satisfied panda? ... Quincy represents restraint, but CATO was restraint-minded before it was cool ...

Mickey and Dr. Oz enjoy crudités—Bob and Fetterman, not so much ... The state of the Oz versus Fetterman race ... Will Liz Cheney run for president – and for which party? ... Was the FBI raid on Trump really worth it? ... Mickey sees Jay Leno at supermarket, plays it cool ... Inflation slowing and Democrats’ fortunes rising? ... The sense in which the Salman Rushdie stabbing isn’t about religion ... Ukraine war update ... Parrot Room preview: Mickey’s friend’s empathy epiphany, ridiculous piece on Peter Thiel, America’s government-media complex, Huffington Post versus Buzzfeed, Bob on the Beatles documentary, Dexter Filkins on Ron DeSantis, Bob’s beef with new Washington Post piece, Muhammad and the Satanic verses, Mickey’s dark horse presidential candidate, anti-Soros news, Larry Summers talks to Bari Weiss ...

Does the “restrainer community” actually exist? ... Has the Ukraine war fractured the restrainer community? ... How should a restrainer respond to Putin’s invasion? ... How war-time psychology impairs objective analysis ... Unpacking the differences between left-wing and right-wing restrainers ... Is realism essential to the pro-restraint worldview—or just its conservative variant? ... Some dubious characters Biden takes advice from ...

Forecasting Trump raid fallout ... Could the Dems bring back “Build Back Better”? ... Bob and Mickey compare blue-collar bona fides ... Scoring Biden's recent PR wins and losses ... What's scarier: social media, the FBI, or your Roomba? ... Ukraine war update ... Bob: How ‘defending’ Taiwan could get it invaded ... Parrot Room Preview: The Blobsters advising the White House, yet more Jonah Goldberg trash-talk, Mickey’s car-buying blues, Bob’s rave CRV road-trip review, where in the world is Ghislaine Maxwell?, Mickey’s meritocracy conundrum, AI takeover, Saudi golf tour talk, Bob shorts "longtermism" ...

Remembering the halcyon days of early Bloggingheads ... Jonah: Our institutions have become platforms for parasites ... Censorship and polarization in the social media age ... What Mickey cribbed from Jonah to jumpstart his blogging career ... How Twitter killed the blogging star ... Is Substack blogging reborn? ... What’s the matter with the modern left? Jonah diagnoses ... A Trump-Biden rematch and other depressing symptoms of polarization ... Is devotion to an institution a sucker bet? ...

Rip Van Kaus awakens to a frightening new reality ... Bob and Mickey scan the dial for better Christian music ... Did the Taliban sell out Ayman al-Zawahiri? ... Bob: Weapons sent to Ukraine will end up in US extremists’ hands ... Why did Nancy Pelosi go to Taiwan? ... If Trump had been reelected, would Putin have invaded Ukraine? ... Ukraine War update ... Are pro-choice Kansas voters also pro-Democrat? ... Mickey: My fears about Democratic midterm gains look more and more realistic ... Joe Manchin zags his way into supporting BBB ... Biden manages to avoid stagflation (for now) ... Parrot Room preview: Joe Rogan, Alex Jones, Brittney Griner, Monkeypox, Jonah Goldberg, the (possible) fascism of JD Vance and Blake Masters, Mickey’s beef with Chris Murphy, Mikey’s defense of mansplaining, the end of social media, a small wrinkle in the midterms, Obnoxious Use of the Word “Agency” of the Week, the third party question, John Fetterman, and the LIV Tour antitrust suit ...

Tom: Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan imperils the defense of Ukraine ... Unpacking the Russia-Ukraine/China-Taiwan analogy ... Tom’s critique of Bob’s argument on Russia-Ukraine ... The dangers of humiliating and alienating China ... Does Biden have a plan for winding down the war in Ukraine – and does Putin? ... China could push Russia to end the war – so why is Pelosi poking the panda? ... Why cooperation with China is in America’s national interest ... Tom’s scoop on Zelensky’s worsening reputation in the White House ... Why Tom thinks a diplomatic resolution should come sooner rather than later ...

Rajan walks through three ways the war could end ... Assessing Ukraine’s and Russia’s military aims ... The causes and consequences of Ukraine’s optimism ... What might weaken Ukrainian and western resolve? ... How America’s toxic political discourse prolongs the war ... Does Biden have a plan? ... Do we understand Putin’s motivation ... Will Putin accept anything short of taking the entire Donbas? ...

Mickey lives in darkness ... Dems rise in the polls as Trump falls ... The case that Trump was trying to obstruct Congress on January 6 gets stronger ... Steve Bannon’s role as January 6 ringleader ... How susceptible is the left to election fraud fantasies? ... Are we ready for the current Covid wave? ... Why do we need Saudi Arabia’s oil? ... Will higher wages for unskilled labor stick around? ... NYT columnists admit their errors ... The SPLC attacks Andrew Yang ... A new study challenges the link between low serotonin and depression ... Will Joe Manchin sink the global minimum corporate tax? ... Ukraine update ... Parrot Room preview: Bob and Mickey react to Jonah Goldberg’s trash talk, Bill Gates throws his money around, Washington corruption, Oz vs. Fetterman, What another Trump presidency would be like, the holograms are coming for us, Mickey’s childlike reactions to Biden and Fetterman, an interesting Supreme Court case, Ethan Hawke’s Ukraine peace plan, the Bonesaw Golf Circuit, and Bob’s epic Decoding the Gurus episode ...

Ross to Bob: In a parallel universe, you are a media god. ... The non-zero-sum nature of disagreement in the blog days ... Ross’s time as an Atlantic blogging big-shot ... Will Twitter-style discourse last forever? ... Technology, politics, and polarization ... Ross’s niche in the conservative ecosystem ... Globalization vs. the (new) “new nationalism” ... Can the world afford a Cold War II? ...

Mickey admits he was wrong about the 10-year-old abortion story ... The Atlantic’s conveniently timed story about MBS’s widow ... Is Biden doing MBS a favor by investigating the PGA? ... Mickey: Democrats are still overperforming in midterm polls ... January 6 hearings update ... Working with, or around, Joe Manchin ... Has Elon Musk actually thought through free speech on Twitter? ... Ukraine war update ... Mickey: The Peter Thiel candidates will decide the fate of the Senate ... Parrot Room preview: Bob’s Atlantic conspiracy theory revealed, the British Open and LIV, Starbucks store closings, Biden and military force in Iran, NAIRU news, the Hunter Biden cloud leak, the value of the Iraq war, sucking up to Saudi Arabia, Bob complains about a terrible WaPo headline, the annoyances of “agency,” Jill Biden’s breakfast taco faux pas, and fertilizer in Sri Lanka ...

Why David thinks better US policy could have prevented the Russia-Ukraine war ... Bob: Explaining Putin’s criminal invasion is not the same as justifying it ... How understanding other minds sheds light on international politics ... The importance of speaking out ... What Silicon Valley doesn’t get about international politics ... In what sense does Silicon Valley care about the future? ... When cancel culture meets foreign policy ... David on his political ideology ... Possible endgames in Ukraine ... Could the war tank Biden’s presidency? ... A few words on cryptocurrency ...

Mickey: Inflation could abate by the midterms, saving the Dems ... Bob: Congress’s inability to act meaningfully on guns is outrageous ... How the 14th Amendment could support federal pro-abortion legislation ... Does Boris Johnson’s fall reflect disenchantment with Brexit? ... Build Back Better is back ... Liz Cheney, Democratic presidential candidate? ... Bob’s somewhat intrusive gun control workaround ... Harvard’s pandemic stimulus check study ... Parrot Room preview: A Ukraine update, Blake Masters, good career news for two TNR alums, Mickey attacks Mark Leibovich, January 6, corporatism, naming names in the Epstein case, Bari Weiss gossip, Minions and TikTok, Bob saw Memorial and you didn’t, and the abortion-seeking ten-year-old story ...

Thinking back fondly on the time Dick Cheney shot a guy ... David: Online journalism leveled the media playing field ... Is Russiagate an example of Democratic demagoguery? ... Mickey’s little-known past as a squire to DC’s elite ... The rewards of outrageousness ... What does it take to get drummed out of public life in 2022? ... David: It’s sad that so many Americans accept Trump’s prolific lying ... Does backlash against perceived media bias explain Trump’s support? ... The undiminished shock value of January 6 ... Is there any Democratic alternative to Biden and Harris in 2024? ...

Cassidy Hutchinson’s credible-seeming January 6 testimony ... Are the January 6 hearings hurting Trump’s 2024 chances? ... Mickey: I’m surprised the press is giving Hutchinson such a hard time ... Bob: The hearings are going to be a very important historical document ... Are the Republicans putting all of their non-Trump eggs in the DeSantis basket? ... Will the Democrats retain the Senate? ... Is the Supreme Court’s EPA ruling a judicial power grab? ... Is this Supreme Court philosophically conservative or politically conservative? ... Ukraine update ... Parrot Room preview: Ghislaine Maxwell, Woke Boris Johnson, wokeism in general, Ukraine, the Cafe Milano leak, Sonny Barger and the Hell’s Angels quiz, media bias, and Mickey’s four points about Bob’s conversation with Matt Yglesias ...

Bob and Matt reflect on the early days of Bloggingheads ... The decline of print and the rise of blogging ... How Matt made blogging work for him ... The shifting incentives of digital publishing ... Matt: Filter bubbles are more real than the research seems to suggest ... Bob: To succeed in modern journalism, it helps to like being hated ... The positive side of social media ... Slippage between news and opinion at the NYT ... The worrisome incentives of Twitter for academics ...