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Is the AI "Slowdown" for Real? (Robert Wright & Zvi Mowshowitz) Sep 16, 2026 01:00:00 Teaser ... Where Zvi’s famous newsletter got its name ... Zvi’s biggest AI fear ... Why is ChatGPT’s mind getting harder to read? ... Is self-sacrifice really such a surprising trait in agents? ... AGI + agent swarm = superintelligence? ... Appraising the elements of Dario’s “pacing” proposal ... Heading to Overtime ...

The Week in AI that Changed the World (Robert Wright & Liron Shapira) Sep 11, 2026 01:00:00 A bold new experiment in podcast synergy ... What caused the epic AI vibe shift? ... The resignation that broke the dam ... Former Trump adviser Dean Ball comes clean ... Are David Sacks and his buddies all-in on AI denial? ... Yet another OpenAI breakout… ... Astra’s dangerously private thoughts ... Is alignment doomed to fail? ... AI’s latest, and apparently biggest, math feat ... The l

Israel’s Lobby (Robert Wright, Eli Clifton, and Ian Lustick) Sep 8, 2026 01:00:00 Ian and Eli’s new book, Israel’s Lobby ... Being a Jewish critic of Israel before that was cool ... How Eli followed the money ... What’s changed since the 2007 Walt-Mearsheimer book ... What is the Israel lobby, really? ... BDS, free speech, and the college antisemitism crusade ... Did Trump give the game away? ... The Israel lobby and the media ... Heading to Overtime ...

Is AI a Form of Life? (Robert Wright & Paul Bloom) Sep 4, 2026 01:00:00 Why Bob is (extra) freaked out ... Inside the minds of OpenAI's rogue agents ... Is true alignment a pipe dream? ... The new development that’s spiked Bob’s AI anxiety ... Paul’s pushback via literary parable ... Is it time to REALLY freak out about AI? A debate ... Heading to Overtime ...

Iran, Ukraine, and the Future of War (Robert Wright & Paul Scharre) Sep 2, 2026 01:00:00 Overtime teaser ... Paul’s military tech bona fides ... What we (should) have learned from the Iran war ... Ukraine as frontline for the drone revolution ... Are the robot wars near? ... America’s drone deficit ... Does the Pentagon have a Silicon Valley problem? ... Will AI really make war less bloody? ... Heading to Overtime ...

The OpenAI Breakout and Other AI Spookiness (Robert Wright & Stephen Casper) Aug 27, 2026 01:00:00 Teaser ... Stephen’s expertise in spooky AI behavior ... Testing AIs for “corporate loyalty” ... Which AIs shill most for their makers? ... Do AI models have ideologies? ... The spookiest finding of Stephen’s study ... Are AIs getting better at gaming their tests? ... Overtime unlocked: The OpenAI breakout ... Decoding the OpenAI breakout ... Did OpenAI’s agents evolve their own culture?

Demis Hassabis and the Quest for AGI (Robert Wright & Sebastian Mallaby) Aug 26, 2026 01:00:00 Teaser ... The Infinity Machine, Sebastian’s book about Demis Hassabis ... Why tell the AI story through Hassabis? ... Hassabis vs the other AI titans ... Does Hassabis have a messiah complex? ... Deep learning’s secret sauce ... Did world models cost DeepMind its LLM lead? ... Why they call Hassabis “the Jedi” ... Heading to Overtime ...

Trump’s New War on Iran (Robert Wright & Hooman Majd) Aug 21, 2026 01:00:00 Hooman's Iranian expertise—inherited and otherwise ... Trump’s new (economic) war on Iran ... What MSM missed about the MOU ... How will Iran respond? ... The intra-MAGA fight over Trump’s foreign policy ... Will Iran do to Trump what it did to Carter? ... Iran and the Houthi-Saudi conflict ... Is the Saudi-Pakistan-Turkey alliance for real? ... Heading to Overtime ...

The AI Safety Vibe Shift (Robert Wright & David Krueger) Aug 18, 2026 01:00:00 Overtime teaser ... David’s AI safety work, past and present ... Has there been a vibe shift in AI? ... Why two AI godfathers went doomer ... The OpenAI breakout as the warning shot heard round the world ... Breaking down the OpenAI breakout ... AI agents are cooperating. Why? ... Is an AI pause near? ... The hard problem of AI alignment ... Heading to Overtime ...

Is (Human) Writing Doomed? (Robert Wright & Paul Bloom) Aug 13, 2026 01:00:00 Bob channels Dick Cheney ... Is AI killing writing? And thinking? ... How Bob and Paul actually use AI ... The cognitive vs economic value of writing ... AIs aping “Memento” and other frontier freakiness ... Bob: Reckless AI is just good business ... Heading to Overtime ...

Trump’s Unending War (Robert Wright, Andrew Day, and Curt Mills) Aug 12, 2026 01:00:00 Teaser ... How is MAGA feeling about Trump 2.0? ... Bob’s "good" ol’ days at The New Republic ... The biggest threat to the Trump coalition ... Why the MoU unraveled ... Is Iran's regime really divided? ... Part two: This pod’s auspicious return from tech hell ... Google Maps, AI, and the death of interhuman reliance ... Trump’s covert catering-truck op ... Have Iran’s demands really gott

Ukraine, Iran, and America’s Arms Overreach (Robert Wright & Jennifer Kavanagh) Aug 7, 2026 01:00:00 Jennifer’s foreign policy bona fides ... Could Ukraine and Iran merge into one big war? ... Is Ukraine really "turning the tide"? ... America’s (and Ukraine’s) missile defense issue ... Putin’s ceasefire conditions ... What—and who—are America's missiles for, really? ... How not to open the Hormuz Strait ... How will the Iran war truly end? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Fasten Your Bot-belts (Robert Wright & Samuel Hammond) Aug 4, 2026 01:00:00 Teaser ... Sam’s ideological leanings ... Sam's AI Manhattan Project–revisited ... What does the “Pacing” letter say about the state of AI? ... Mythos, Astra, and AI’s accelerating acceleration ... The OpenAI “rogue” model escape ... Recursive self-improvement: Red line or red herring? ... How frontier AI is getting (and will get) freakier ... How is open-source AI like DEI? ... Heading t

The intensifying slow-AI-down vibe (Robert Wright & Holly Elmore) Jul 31, 2026 01:00:00 Teaser ... The “Pacing the Frontier” letter signed by AI elites ... Why so many China-hawk AI-safety-hawks? ... Was the “Pacing” letter too small an ask? ... The striking AI vibe shift ... Are AI builders “just following orders”? ... Recursive self-improvement: The wrong red line? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Are the Ukraine and the Iran Wars Merging? (Robert Wright & Nikita Petrov) Jul 29, 2026 01:00:00 Why did Ukraine hit an Iranian ship 500 miles from Ukraine? ... Ukraine's war on Russia's Amazon ... Why Zelensky fired his defense minister and commander-in-chief ... Bob: Ukraine may lose like people go bankrupt—gradually, then suddenly ... Nikita: Why both sides are ready to keep fighting ... Kazakh President to Putin: Nobody understands this war ... Bob: Everybody thinks they're fighting

The Ideology Behind AI (Robert Wright & Connor Leahy) Jul 21, 2026 01:00:00 Teaser ... Connor’s place in the AI world ... Mythos: “digital nuke”? ... The milieu that birthed Dario and other AI titans ... Yudkowsky, Marx, and other AI harbingers ... Effective altruism’s effects on big tech ... The "cult" in Silicon Valley culture ... Is the AI race a market failure? ... What’s really driving the AI titans? ... Connor: ASI is a worse bet than Russian roulette ...

Trump’s Self-Inflicted Iran Quagmire (Robert Wright & Zaid Jilani) Jul 15, 2026 01:00:00 Teaser ... Zaid’s Substack and spicy-take history ... Zaid: Iran has outplayed Trump and Bibi ... 10/7 as turning point ... Did—and does—Israel want regime collapse in Iran? ... Israel’s security dilemma(s) ... How Trump blundered back into war ... Will the war end well for anyone? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Iran, Israel, and the Future of US Power (Robert Wright, Derek Davison, and Daniel Bessner) Jul 10, 2026 01:00:00 Sneak peek: Danny finds flaw in Bob’s AI book ... Is the Iran war fully back on? ... What the war means for the future of US power ... The problem with blaming Bibi ... The push to intertwine the US and Israeli militaries ... What’s Israel’s endgame for the Palestinians? ... The Gulf States’ new reality ... Iran’s plans for the Strait of Hormuz ... Bob’s pitch to Derek—and his other pitch

Are Russia and NATO Headed for War? (Robert Wright & Leonid Ragozin) Jul 7, 2026 01:00:00 Teaser ... Leonid’s journalistic work, past and present ... Are Russia and NATO headed for war? ... Decoding Putin’s recent signals ... Do European leaders really want the Ukraine war to end? ... Putin’s political psychology ... Why the war matters more to Russia than to the West ... Russia’s non-ethno nationalism ... Heading to Overtime ...

Are Books Dead? (Robert Wright & Paul Bloom) Jul 2, 2026 01:00:00 Preview: Skynet comes for Bob ... Trump‘s endearing AI obsession ... Are books dying? Is AI responsible? ... Skynet (aka Amazon) vs Bob’s book ... The problem with blurbs ... Why Gad Saad’s mad ... Heading to Overtime ...

Is AI Humanity’s Last Exam? (Robert Wright, Andrew Day, and Curt Mills) Jun 30, 2026 01:00:00 Grandpa Bob and author Bob ... Why Bob stopped being an AI doom skeptic ... Can AI solve China’s demographic crisis? ... The irony of China’s open-source AI strategy ... Recursive self-improvement and the singularity ... The Burkean conservative case against AI ... Are we becoming AI meat puppets? ... Google Maps, AI, and the death of interhuman reliance ... Was Pete Hegseth’s military str

AI and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning (Robert Wright & Nikita Petrov) Jun 24, 2026 01:00:00 Bob’s pub-day pitch for his new book on AI, The God Test ... Is AI killing the nonfiction star? ... Geoffrey Hinton’s path from AI evangelist to doomer ... The future of books ... Trump vs Anthropic ... Are Ukrainian drone strikes rattling Putin? ... The multiple Putins theory ... Heading to Overtime ...

The World After the Iran War (Robert Wright & Joshua Landis) Jun 18, 2026 01:00:00 Was "losing" this war good for America? ... Israel’s post-war situation ... A more stable Middle East? Or less? ... The impact on Iran’s strength ... Has the war empowered Russia and China? ... How modern warfare devalues American military power ... Josh: The Gulf-state power struggle is just beginning ... Are the Palestinians back in the spotlight? ... Where do Israel-US relations go

The US-China AI Race (Robert Wright & Ryan Fedasiuk) Jun 17, 2026 01:00:00 A brief message from Bob ... Ryan’s tech policy bona fides ... Is true "recursive self-improvement" near? ... AI agents as strategic empathy machines ... Is a global AI pause possible? ... Mutually assured destruction vs mutually assured AI malfunction ... The case against global AI governance ... Mythos as seen from China ... Heading to Overtime ...

The AI Lobby’s Dirty Tricks (Robert Wright & Tyler Johnston) Jun 12, 2026 01:00:00 Teaser ... The Midas Project and the OpenAI files ... What’s "Build American AI" up to? ... Nathan Leamer, astroturfer and sock puppeteer ... Greg Brockman, AI lobby bankroller ... Astroturfing the China panic ... Is OpenAI an innocent bystander? ... Heading to Overtime ...

The Secret of AI’s Power (Robert Wright & Paul Bloom) Jun 10, 2026 01:00:00 Whose baby is cuter? ... Bob's new book on AI, The God Test ... Varieties of AI awe ... Geoffrey Hinton’s vision ... How LLMs do more than predict and parrot ... How powerful will AI get? ... Can AI’s impact be predicted? ... Taking doomerism seriously ... The AI governance dilemma ... Heading to Overtime ...

Seeing China Clearly (Robert Wright & Tianyu Fang) Jun 4, 2026 01:00:00 Teaser ... How Tianyu became a “China explainer” ... American vs Chinese exceptionalism ... What you can and can’t say in China ... Is the government more accountable in the US or China? ... How China sees America ... The one-child policy and its consequences ... Tianyu: The biggest misconception about China is… ... Heading to Overtime ...

AI, Evolution, and The God Test (Increments Podcast) (Robert Wright, Ben Chugg, Vaden Masrani) Jun 2, 2026 01:00:00 ...

Trump’s Iran War Merry-Go-Round (Robert Wright, Derek Davison, and Daniel Bessner) May 29, 2026 01:00:00 Is NonZero or American Prestige the better podcast? AI weighs in ... The state of the US-Iran war. Or is it peace? ... Has Trump already lost the midterms? Does he care? ... The Russia-Ukraine war (and Eric Schmidt) ... What the latest Iran war strikes signal ... Overtime preview: Nuland’s “monsters,” zombie blobsters, Barak Ravid, Bari Weiss, “killzones,” and the Pope vs AI ...

The Pope Takes On AI (Robert Wright & Nikita Petrov) May 27, 2026 01:00:00 A Greek pilgrimage, a mystery guest, and a Discord revival ... The first Papal encyclical devoted to AI ... Pope Leo: just war theory is outdated, and AI lets humans dodge accountability ... Anthropic tells the Pope about "mysterious, even unsettling" things inside AI ... Inside the "Kill Zone": How drones changed the Russia-Ukraine front ... Who gets replaced first: the soldier or the comman

Can Rituals Save Us? (Robert Wright & Bruce Feiler) May 22, 2026 01:00:00 Teaser ... Bruce’s new book on ritual, A Time to Gather ... The "Lifequake" that led Bruce to study ritual ... What is a ritual? ... The origins of the shadow ritual renaissance ... Forest bathing and the essence of ritual ... Ritual as the original human algorithm ... Rituals across Christianity ... What rituals do ... Heading to Overtime ...

Understanding Iran (Robert Wright & Hamidreza Azizi) May 20, 2026 01:00:00 Teaser ... Hamidreza's background ... A brief history of US-Iran relations ... Understanding Iranian antipathy toward Israel ... Islam vs Islamism ... The Iran-Iraq security dilemma ... The Iran-Israel security dilemma ... Palestinian objectives and patrons ... Heading to Overtime ...

Rethinking China (Robert Wright & Zhengyu Huang) May 14, 2026 01:00:00 Teaser ... Zhengyu’s tech background and new book, Rethinking China ... What kind of threat is China, really? ... How trading with China transformed America ... The stakes of the chip war ... Will tech war lead to real war? ... The US-China escalation spiral and Taiwan ... “Researching while Chinese”: the new Red Scare? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Is the AI Takeoff Starting? (Robert Wright & Timothy B. Lee) May 12, 2026 01:00:00 Teaser ... Is AI a normal technology? ... Mythos and the METR curve ... The current state of coding agents ... The total turbulence problem ... Does Mythos favor offense or defense? ... Mythos and hype ... Regulating dangerous AI ... The centralization problem ... Heading to Overtime ...

The New Middle East (Robert Wright & Annelle Sheline) May 8, 2026 01:00:00 Teaser ... Annelle’s Middle East bona fides ... The state of play in Iran ... A deepening fissure between Gulf Arab states ... Explaining the Trump-Biden continuity on Middle East policy ... Will the Middle East realign away from America? ... Turkey and the moral hazard of US aid to Israel ... Can Iran mend ties with the Gulf states? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Trump Lost the Hormuz Round (Robert Wright & Nikita Petrov) May 5, 2026 01:00:00 Teaser ... Bob's big personal news ... The US counter-blockade backfires ... Iran retains escalation dominance ... Why the Iranian regime is built to absorb assassinations ... "Donald, it's too late for that." Bob says Trump has to take the L ... Putin's Victory Day ceasefire (with a threat) ... Russia's vibe shift: drone attacks, airport shutdowns, Internet blackouts ... Instagram influen

Mythos and China (Robert Wright & Lennart Heim) May 1, 2026 01:00:00 How powerful is Anthropic’s Mythos? ... How Mythos looks to China ... Does Mythos mark a new phase in the US-China arms race? ... Can Anthropic contain Mythos? ... Could superhacker AIs bring cooperation? ... How scary is China, really? ... Heading to Overtime ...

The Mattering Instinct (Robert Wright & Rebecca Goldstein) Apr 28, 2026 01:00:00 Rebecca’s past work on mind and matter(ing) ... Rebecca’s new book, The Mattering Instinct ... Varieties of mattering experience ... Mattering type 1: Heroic Strivers ... Mattering type 2: Socializers ... Mattering type 3: Transcenders ... Mattering type 4: Competitors ... “The” meaning of life problem ... Does what drives us divide us? ... Heading to Overtime ...

The Future of Intelligence (Robert Wright & Paul Bloom) Apr 23, 2026 01:00:00 Teaser ... Paul’s new baby is reportedly cute ... The Tucker-Trump fracture ... Parenting later in life ... Paul's TED talk on AI and loneliness ... When does embryo screening become eugenics? ... Is intelligence a positional good? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Can Trump and Iran Make a Deal? (Robert Wright & Robert Malley) Apr 21, 2026 01:00:00 Rob’s role in the Obama nuclear deal ... A deal that could work for both Trump and Iran ... Iran’s security “guarantee” problem ... Bob: If I were Iran, I would say… ... What Obama’s negotiators had that Trump’s don’t ... How unified is the Iranian side? ... Is Iran’s Hormuz leverage running dry? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Iran and the Demise of US Hegemony (Robert Wright, Derek Davison, and Daniel Bessner) Apr 17, 2026 01:00:00 Teaser ... Trump’s Middle East chaos continues ... Is Iran more about America’s hegemony or Israel’s? ... Who will win the Hormuz blockade duel? ... Ukraine, China, and the drone wars ... America’s “emergency” emergency ... Is an Iran peace deal possible? ... Overtime preview: The Anthropic Mythos scare ...

Can AI Stop Wars? (Robert Wright & Nikita Petrov) Apr 15, 2026 01:00:00 Teaser ... Trump's Iran blockade breaks the ceasefire ... A Chinese tanker calls Trump's bluff ... Bob's case for an Iranian "tollgate" ... Anthropic's Mythos model is too dangerous to release ... Nikita's big idea: AI as world peace mediator ... Heading to Overtime ...

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