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Bloggingheads.tv
Smart people talking about politics, policy, culture and other stuff
Episodes
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Sep 5, 2025 • 60min
Epstein, AI, and the Xi-Putin Path to Immortality (Robert Wright & Paul Bloom)
The Bob-Paul secret sauce—spilled! ... Mickey Kaus's latest contribution to Epsteinology ... Paul fact-checks Mickey, gets fact-checked ... What’s better: AI or indoor plumbing? ... What Gary Marcus gets right—and (very) wrong—about AI ... Has TV made us smarter? ... The pros of the Google antitrust ruling ... Putin’s paleo-transhumanism ... Heading to Overtime ...

Sep 2, 2025 • 60min
Drugs and Mayhem in the US Special Forces (Robert Wright & Seth Harp)
Teaser ... Seth’s new NYT bestseller, The Fort Bragg Cartel ... What is Delta Force? ... The growth of Delta Force's covert ops and unaccountability ... American "death squads" ... Why cops and prosecutors cover up crimes by elite soldiers ... The mysterious murder of Billy Lavigne ... How invading Afghanistan fueled America's drug crisis ... Heading to Overtime ...

Aug 29, 2025 • 60min
Is Trump Becoming Putin? (Robert Wright & Nikita Petrov)
Bob welcomes Nikita back to the Nonzero team ... WSJ's report on Trump's authoritarian drift ... Three levers: streets, media, education system ... Trump the businessman and Trump the politician ... Why Putin was compelling in 1999, when Russia was a young democracy ... Laws vs norms ... Trump and lawfare: how independent is the US judiciary? ... Partisanship among judges ... Trump's view of the world as a game ... Cynicism as a political brand ... Nikita: Putin and Trump share a geopolitical worldview ... The damage the US and Russia did to the international law ... The evolution of Putin's understanding of geopolitics ... Today's Overtime segment is open for everybody! ... The crisis of the nation-state & NonZero's community building project ... "Kremlin is not Russia": distinguishing between the nation and the state ... Bob: We all need a tribe ... What does it mean to be an American? ... Nikita's Armenian propaganda: A legitimate reason to be proud of your nation ...

Aug 26, 2025 • 60min
The MAGA Case Against AI Accelerationism (Robert Wright & Joe Allen)
Joe’s notable background ... Is most of the MAGA coalition accelerationist? ... Transhumanism, big tech, Klaus Schwab, and the noosphere ... How the pandemic sparked a MAGA tech backlash ... Palantir as bipartisan bête noire ... The conservative case for AI regulation ... Should fear of China trump fear of AI? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Aug 23, 2025 • 60min
Trump's Failures in Israel and Ukraine (Connor Echols & Robert Wright)
Connor’s farewell ... What’s next at NonZero ... The looming invasion of Gaza City ... Israel's one-state solution ... Why did Trump give up on Gaza? ... The "blame-it-on-Bibi" farce ... A disappointing week for Ukraine ... How to make security guarantees work ... Ukraine's ticking time bomb ...

Aug 20, 2025 • 60min
Feeling the GPT-5 (Robert Wright & Paul Bloom)
Bob defends the Unabomber (kind of) ... Paul nurses his Mickey-inflicted wounds ... Bob deflates the GPT-5 deflation ... How big a deal are LLM hallucinations? ... AI's coming social and economic disruptions ... How Bob and Paul use AI ... The ideas of Hanno Sauer ... Heading to Overtime ...

Aug 15, 2025 • 60min
Can Trump and Putin Make a Deal? (Connor Echols & George Beebe)
What’s at stake in Alaska ... George: Don’t try to do too much ... EU yes, NATO no ... Could Putin dupe Trump into a bad deal? ... Sanctions: painful, but not decisive ... What Russian media is saying about the talks ... Are Europe & Ukraine warming to a deal? ...

Aug 14, 2025 • 60min
The Open Source AI Question (Robert Wright & Nathan Lambert)
Nathan’s work at AI2—and his p(doom) ... What does “open source AI” mean? ... How Nathan taught a Llama new tricks ... Pros and cons of open sourcing AI ... Nathan's ATOM Project to boost American open models ... What's behind OpenAI's open source play? ... Geoffrey Hinton's case against open models ... Is the US-China open model rivalry really zero-sum? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Aug 12, 2025 • 60min
Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus)
Epstein's Israel connections ... Epstein's history of blackmail ... Was it suicide? ... Epstein's creepy relationship with Trump ... Why won’t Trump release the files? ... The Israel connection(s) ... Some Epstein-Wexner weirdness ... What’s the deal with Ghislaine? ... Was it suicide? (cont’d) ... Mickey plays pundit defender ... Influence operation or personal fetish operation? Or both? ... How Biden made war in Taiwan more likely ... Epstein's strangely light 2008 sentence ... The political cost for Trump ... How dangerous is Trump? ...

Aug 7, 2025 • 60min
Does America’s “China Consensus” Make Sense? A Debate (Robert Wright & Jordan Schneider)
Jordan’s ChinaTalk podcast ... Making sense of America’s “China consensus” ... Are fears of Chinese global ambitions overblown? ... The logic (or is it illogic?) of the AI arms race ... China and the Ukraine War ... Influence operations: Chinese vs American ... China’s endgame re the US—and vice-versa ... Is US China talk an echo chamber? ... Heading to Overtime ...