Synopsis
Betsy Woodruff, Daniel Strauss and guests go in-depth on campaign news and the latest events on Capitol Hill.
Episodes
-
Israel and its Enemies (Connor Echols & Robert Wright)
24/05/2025 Duration: 01h00sHeadlines ... Bob joins to talk foreign policy ... The DC shootings and the war in Gaza ... Israel's growing isolation ... Are we headed toward an arms race in space? ... An end to the era of arms control? ... Heading to Overtime—and a programming update ...
-
Trump’s Mammoth Arabian AI Deals (Robert Wright & Paul Triolo)
20/05/2025 Duration: 01h00sHow significant are the Middle East data center deals? ... Why did AI safety hawks quit talking about international cooperation? ... Why build data centers in the Middle East? ... Microchips and security risks ... The unexamined assumptions of Sinophobia ... What ever happened to peace, love, and understanding? ... AI Czar David Sacks takes on his critics ... Heading to Overtime ...
-
Is Peace Breaking out in the Middle East? (Connor Echols & Matthew Petti)
17/05/2025 Duration: 01h00sHeadlines ... Why the PKK's disbanding should be the biggest news of the week ... How did Turkey get the PKK to lay down arms? ... A breakthrough for Turkey-Iraq relations ... How Syrian Kurds are trying to make nice with Damascus ... The end of US sanctions on Syria ... Rebuilding a shattered state ... Turkey and Israel: Syria caught in the middle ...
-
Kanye, Trump, and Other Enigmas (Robert Wright & Paul Bloom)
16/05/2025 Duration: 01h00sIs Kanye’s new song really pro-Hitler? ... How free should free speech be? ... Substack economics ... Welcome to Sam Altman’s orb ... Can higher education survive AI? ... Did Carney tame Trump? ... Good and bad signs from Trump 2.0 ... Heading to Overtime ...
-
Trump Flips on Bibi, Putin, and Xi (Robert Wright, Derek Davison, and Daniel Bessner)
14/05/2025 Duration: 01h00sThe week's major international stories ... Trump's approach to everything ... The Houthi deal ... Trump's Middle East trip and Gaza ... India-Pakistan conflict ... Media coverage of Trump 2.0 ... Trump’s biggest Jan 6 transgression ... Is the Republic at stake? ... Heading to Overtime ...
-
Is Trump breaking with Israel? (Connor Echols & Jon Hoffman)
10/05/2025 Duration: 01h00sHeadlines ... Is Trump breaking with Israel? ... Making sense of the US-Houthi ceasefire ... Will the US give Saudi Arabia nuclear power? ... Reading the tea leaves on US-Iran talks ... Is Trump putting the US on track for war with China? ... Would Trump really go to war with Iran? ... Are restrainers gaining ground in the Trump administration? ... How Israel could undermine US-Iran talks ...
-
The case for alarm about artificial intelligence (Robert Wright & Holly Elmore)
08/05/2025 Duration: 01h00sHolly’s newsletter and her work with PauseAI ... The state of AI safety ... Why Holly started PauseAI US ... Is AI acceleration… accelerating? ... What rationalists got wrong about the singularity ... Mechanize Inc. and the danger of AI safety sellouts ... Holly: Here’s why AI should alarm you ... Heading to Overtime ...
-
The Biden-Trump Path to Global Ruin (Robert Wright & Matthew Duss)
06/05/2025 Duration: 01h00sWhich think tanks are anti-Blob? ... What's the real goal of Bibi’s new Gaza “operation”? ... Why can’t (or won’t) the US rein in Israel? ... Who’s undermined the ‘rules-based order’ more—Biden or Trump? ... In search of anti-Blob Dems for 2028 ... How neoliberalism seeded Trump’s tariff chaos ... AI, DC, and the x-risk of China-hawkism ... Matt on what most miss about foreign policy ... Heading to Overtime ...
-
Trump Doubles Down on the Law of the Jungle (Connor Echols & Robert Wright)
03/05/2025 Duration: 01h00sHeadlines ... Bob joins to discuss Trump's first 100 days ... What the Waltz firing means for Trump's foreign policy ... Has Rubio really dropped his hawkish proclivities? ... Trump's jungle rulebook ... Is Trump putting the US on track for war with China? ... Middle East fires: Yemen, Syria, Iran ... Trump's about-face on Gaza ... Gen Z and the Trump Effect ...
-
Can Trump Make Peace in Ukraine? (Robert Wright & Anatol Lieven)
30/04/2025 Duration: 01h00sThe state of play in Russia-Ukraine ... Anatol: Here’s how the war could end ... Which side wants peace more? ... Why hasn’t Trump used his leverage? ... Anatol’s plan for peace ... What Russia-Ukraine reveals about the military-industrial complex ... What Trump's military purges reveal about his presidency ... Heading to Overtime ...
-
Pope Francis, Peacemaker or Appeaser? (Connor Echols & Michael Brendan Dougherty)
26/04/2025 Duration: 01h00sThe new NonZero World ... Headlines ... Stories of the week ... Michael Brendan Dougherty on Pope Francis' foreign policy legacy ... Michael: The pope should be a voice for peace ... A European church no more ... Michael: The Vatican went too far in deal with China ... How the Holy See helped Obama reach out to Cuba ... The pope's moral clarity on Gaza ... A restrainer in the Vatican? ...
-
Trump and Musk retreat as Canadian election approaches (Robert Wright & Paul Bloom)
25/04/2025 Duration: 01h00sTrump and Elon’s bad week = good news for Bob… ... …but bad news for Canada's prime minister? ... Trump’s crackdown on speech expands ... Debating embryo-screening ethics ... Heading to Overtime ...
-
Trump, Modi, and the Authoritarian Playbook (Robert Wright & Pratap Bhanu Mehta)
23/04/2025 Duration: 01h00sPratap’s bona fides ... How Pratap ran afoul of Modi (and the price he paid) ... Trump vs Modi: compare and contrast ... India’s birth as a multi-ethnic state ... Pratap on how we got Trump (and Modi) ... Heading to Overtime ...
-
KOSMOPOLITIKA#2: Where Do We Belong? (Nikita Petrov & Boris Shoshitaishvili)
21/04/2025 Duration: 01h00sNikita: Leaving Russia. The psychedelic lineage. Humanity is a trip, not a species ... 16 years ago, Boris took such a good nap after visiting a sacred Ancient Greek site that he still thinks about it ... In The Dark Places of Wisdom: mystical practices at the root of Western civilization ... What makes us feel we belong: identity & community ... Humanity as a planetary force ... What makes us feel we belong: values & norms ... What makes us feel we belong: direct experience ... Psychedelics & meditation in service of planetary identity ... “To be” comes from the word "to grow", "am" & "is" from "to breath" ... Rationalists ... How Socrates got himself killed ... What makes us feel we belong: awareness of inter-dependence ... Gaia, humanity, and AI are 3 generations of planetary forces ... Zizians. There's something to be said about dogma ... “DMT, death, and nanobots are the same thing, somehow” ... Humanity is still being born ... Ideas are alive ... JFK's "my fellow America
-
Trump’s Anti-antisemitism Crusade (Robert Wright & Ron Kampeas)
18/04/2025 Duration: 01h00sRon violates retirement dress code ... Trump’s “antisemitism crackdown" ... Is the Israel lobby bad for American Jews? ... The disturbing Tufts detention case ... Why don’t more progressive Jews call out the Israel lobby? ... How bad journalism makes antisemitism worse ... Heading to Overtime ...
-
Untangling Trump’s Tariff Logic (Robert Wright & Samuel Hammond)
15/04/2025 Duration: 01h00sSam's theory of (some of) Trump's tariffs ... The bad scenario and the less bad scenario ... Scott Bessent's radicalism ... Will Trump display the art of the deal? ... China's trade-war strengths ... An intentional end to American hegemony? ... Sam’s defense of chip restrictions ... Heading to Overtime ...
-
How Trump could strike a deal with Iran (Connor Echols & Sina Toossi)
11/04/2025 Duration: 01h00sSina's hopes for this weekend's US-Iran talks ... Trump's two-month clock starts ticking ... Iran's growing nuclear leverage ... Trump the dealmaker vs Trump the warmonger ... The myth of a "surgical" military campaign against Iran ... The resurgence of Iran's reformist camp ...
-
The Psycho-logic of Trump’s Tariffs (Robert Wright & Paul Bloom)
09/04/2025 Duration: 01h00sPaul is Bob's worthwhile Canadian initiative ... The psycho-logic of Trump’s tariff strategy ... Has Trump exposed structural flaws in America? ... Is Musk saying Navarro is dumber than Ivanka? ... On incest ... Heading to Overtime ...
-
The Real (And Fictional) Orson Welles (Robert Wright & Milton Lawson)
08/04/2025 Duration: 01h00sMilton’s epic new comic, “Orson Welles: Warrior of the Worlds” ... Comics culture, then and now ... The real story behind the faux War of the Worlds broadcast ... Why Milton was drawn to Orson Welles ... What (or who) really derailed Welles’s career? ... Will Milton's comic go multimedia? ... Heading to Overtime—with Bob in the hot seat ...
-
The Psychopolitics of the Noosphere (audio replay) (Robert Wright, Nikita Petrov, and Boris Shoshitaishvili)
07/04/2025 Duration: 01h00sAudio of the livestream titled “The Psychopolitics of the Noosphere,” the first installment in an ongoing—and evolving—collaboration between Nonzero and Psychopolitica. ...