

Bloggingheads.tv
Bloggingheads.tv
Smart people talking about politics, policy, culture and other stuff
Episodes
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Oct 10, 2025 • 60min
Whose Toady is Bari Weiss? (Robert Wright & Paul Bloom)
Amazing Bob-Paul discount deal! ... The Bari Weiss trivia test ... Lasting peace in Gaza? ... Why did Trump finally get tough on Bibi? ... MAGA free speech debates ... Is the AI bubble about to burst? ... If anyone builds it, will everyone die? ... Heading into Overtime: Ian McEwan, George Harrison, OpenAI, One Battle After Another ...

Oct 8, 2025 • 60min
Bari Weiss, CBS, and Israel | Robert Wright & Nikita Petrov (Robert Wright & Nikita Petrov)
Was Free Press bought “to control US media”? ... Why pay $150M for a Substack? ... Netanyahu on the TikTok deal and "giving direction" to the Jewish people ... Pro-Israel donors giving a $2M ultimatum to Charlie Kirk about his ties to Tucker Carlson ... How much influence does Israel have over US media? ... Why Tucker Carlson's appeal to Christians is a problem for Bibi ... Trump: "I would make TikTok 100% MAGA related if I could" ... Why Hamas would be crazy to trust Trump on his Gaza deal ... Prigozhin conspiracy theory: Why would the Russian government want people to think he's alive? ... Cognitive sovereignty ... Heading to Overtime ...

Oct 2, 2025 • 60min
How We Mishandled the Covid Pandemic (Robert Wright & Stephen Macedo)
Teaser ... Steve’s book In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us ... Were school closures smart policy? ... The mask mandate question ... Did medical experts get too much say? ... The role of social class and political tribe ... How dissent was suppressed ... Bob takes a jab at Jay Bhattacharya ... Heading to OT: Why Steve wrote the book ...

Sep 30, 2025 • 60min
Why the Israel-Palestine Conflict Persists (Robert Wright & Robert Malley)
The deal Hamas offered Bibi before October 7 ... How October 7 changed the landscape ... Why Clinton’s Camp David talks failed ... What Arafat was actually offered at Camp David ... The centrality of the right of return ... Beyond two states ... Heading into OT: Abandoning false optimism is not pessimism ...

Sep 26, 2025 • 60min
Two Visions of AI Apocalypse (Robert Wright & David Krueger)
David Krueger, an AI researcher from the University of Montreal, explores the hidden dangers of advanced AI. He discusses Eliezer Yudkowsky's doomsday scenarios and his own concept of 'gradual disempowerment,' where humans slowly lose control to AI due to competitive pressures. Krueger emphasizes the opaque nature of deep learning, the risks of goal misgeneralization, and the potential for AIs to gain economic power. He warns of the urgent need for an AI-resistance movement to preserve human influence in decision-making.

Sep 23, 2025 • 60min
Israel, Gaza, and Free Speech in America (Robert Wright & Glenn Loury)
Teaser ... Glenn’s latest book, Self-Censorship ... Why the Manhattan Institute dropped Glenn ... Glenn on Gaza: “I can’t bear it.” ... “Genocide” and other Israel speech code flashpoints ... Has Trump’s anti-antisemitism push chilled campus speech? ... The irony of the antisemitism crackdown ... A few kind and less kind words for Bari Weiss ... Are Israel’s defenders hurting their cause? ... Glenn’s next big project ...

Sep 19, 2025 • 60min
Free Speech After Charlie Kirk (Robert Wright & Paul Bloom)
Free speech after Charlie Kirk ... Tyler Robinson’s strange messages ... How influential was Kirk? ... Do violent video games encourage violence? ... What Gary Marcus gets right—and (very) wrong—about AI ... Overtime topics: Paul’s debate triumph, Redford’s legacy, etc. ... Heading into Overtime ...

Sep 16, 2025 • 60min
Tribalism and the Charlie Kirk Killing (Robert Wright & Glenn Loury)
How this conversation came to be ... What surprised Glenn most about the Kirk killing ... Who (or what) is driving our polarization? ... Cognitive empathy for MAGA ... Reacting to Charlie Kirk on affirmative action ... Are we re-running the 1960s? ... Coming up in part 2: Israel-Gaza ...

Sep 16, 2025 • 60min
The Motives of the AI Moguls (Robert Wright & Holly Elmore)
Has the pace of AI progress slowed? ... How the tech CEOs are learning to stop worrying ... Mark Zuckerberg ... Sam Altman ... OpenAI’s attempt to shed its non-profit status ... Dario Amodei ... Heading to Overtime ...

Sep 10, 2025 • 60min
Trump’s Epstein Problem and His Authoritarian Slide (Robert Wright & Nikita Petrov)
Teaser ... "Would Putin send a weird sexually suggestive birthday greeting to a famous affluent well-connected pedophile?" ... Decoding Trump's message in the greeting ... Conspiracy theories vs official silence ... Why is Ezra Klein content with "We'll never know"? ... Why no president wants to release the Epstein files ... Ghislaine names Clinton and Larry Summers ... Does Epstein kill faith in democracy? ... Trump vs. Putin: Authoritarian playbooks compared ... Will Trumpism outlive Trump? ... David Sacks embraces strongman tactics ... How war changes everything overnight ... Trump's Mexico invasion fantasy ... Heading to Overtime ...