BhTV: The Wright Show (audio)

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 ...