BhTV: The Wright Show (audio)

A common conundrum: How to pay off your porn-star mistres ... Ways to make Ron DeSantis seem human ... Bob: The newest AI has cognitive empathy ... How Cold War II makes AI more dangerous ... Why are traditional American values in decline? ... What foreign policy elites say about Russia-Ukraine behind closed doors ... Parrot Room preview: Something smart Zelensky said; US think tank advocates murder; how the Nashville shooting was reported; Musk makes another Twitter policy change; why Elizabeth Holmes was ahead of her time ...

Bob and David reminisce about Bloggingheads ... David’s book, American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy ... Are Russiagaters moving the goalposts? ... What the Trump team knew about Russian meddling ... The missing “collusion” piece of the Russiagate puzzle ... Why David thinks Russiagate's biggest critics are perpetuating a hoax ... If Russiagaters are right, why didn’t Trump do Russia many favors? ...

Bob: On foreign policy, there is no real Ron DeSantis ... The difference between right-restrainers and left-restrainers ... The dangerous politics of indicting Trump ... Trump’s new plan to take out the deep state ... Is the war turning in Ukraine’s favor? ... Why did DeSantis change the pronunciation of his name? ... Parrot Room preview: Everything Everywhere All At Once speaks to Bob; SVB fallout not over; banning the word “woke”; Camaro goes out of production—or does it?; likelihood of Covid lab-leak ...

Richard’s banking and business bona fides ... Was the Silicon Valley Bank crash a harbinger of worse to come? ... What actually caused SVB’s collapse? ... Richard: SVB failed risk management 101 ... Costs and benefits of the SVB bailout ... The Fed’s oft-forgotten original role ... Did the deregulation SVB lobbied for doom it? ... Overtime preview: Richard’s career highlights; cognitive empathy in commerce; how to hire like a boss; and more! ...

Mickey’s mind-bending analogy between romance and politics ... Bob triggered by DeSantis’s “territorial dispute” line about Russia-Ukraine ... How to prevent the next bank collapse? ... Was “wokeness” behind SVB’s demise? ... Ukraine war update ... Are Democrats ditching Israel? ... Winners and losers of Iran-Saudi détente ... Parrot room preview: Mickey’s quibble with Bob’s AI piece; SBF news; Silicon Valley’s campaign to ban TikTok; the sad state of the Metaverse; RIP Jim Gordon; Summer of Soul; Is DeSantis too wine-track? Too beer-track? Who cares?; New segment: Brushes with Greatness ...

Ananyo’s book, The Man from the Future, about game theory inventor and polymath John von Neumann ... Early life as a mathematical wunderkind ... Von Neumann’s foundational contributions to quantum physics ... Was entanglement as "spooky" to von Neumann as it was to Einstein? ... Building—and reckoning with—the atomic bomb ... Did von Neumann really want to nuke the USSR? ... Why was early game theory so zero-sum–focused? ... Influence on Turing, the open source movement, and modern computing ... How brushes with totalitarianism shaped von Neumann’s views ... Programming pioneer Klára Dán von Neumann ... The duality of von Neumann’s social life ... Did von Neumann grok incompleteness before Gödel? ... Unfinished work comparing computers and the brain ... Von Neumann’s deathbed conversion: Pascal's wager or something more? ...

Biden’s soak-the-rich budget: big news or borefest? ... How Biden insulting Xi Jinping endangers Ukraine ... Bob finds another reason Biden shouldn’t run for re-election ... Ukraine war update ... Nordstream’s hobbyist saboteurs ... Tucker Carlson outed as anti-Trump phony ... Parrot Room preview: Gavin Newsom takes on Walgreens; Twitter community notes annoy Mickey; Semafor's China racket; Bob’s Washington Post lab leak piece; Peter Thiel’s techno-optimism. ...

Paul’s new book, Psych: The Story of the Human Mind ... Does psychology need more evolutionary thinking? ... Freud and Skinner and parts in between ... Mind-body dualism’s enduring intuitive appeal ... ChatGPT and the human mind: compare and contrast ... Are cognitive biases overblown? ... A brief note about the podcast ... Implicit biases, memory, and other topics covered in the book ...

Mickey celebrates good week for JD Vance, Ron DeSantis ... The Biden admin’s “all sticks, no carrots” approach to foreign policy ... Is China’s plummeting birth rate a problem? ... Will Bibi wag the dog? ... Will AI kill the journalism star? ... Ukraine war update ... Alarmism about a China-Russia axis ... Parrot room preview: more Ukraine; Dilbert creator gets canceled; why the kids aren’t alright; Will student loan cancellation pass Supreme Court muster?; Buy books before it’s too late?; Mickey’s flick pick; wrapping up The Long Goodbye; Lab-leak theory gets a boost; more AI; The real story being Elon’s algorithmic boost ...

Paul’s new book, Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence ... Will AIs replace humans in future wars? ... China as an AI superpower ... Will Beijing spread high-tech authoritarianism globally? ... How useful is the “democracy versus autocracy” framework? ... Why Paul’s worried about a race to the bottom in AI safety ... Tom Cruise can’t hold a candle to AI pilots ...

Washington Post highlights a cost of US hypocrisy ... Will China push for peace—or fund Russia’s war effort (or both)? ... Can Trump use Biden’s support for Ukraine against him? ... Russia’s offensive, Ukraine’s rope-a-dope ... Bob’s evolving view of America’s role in the Maidan Revolution ... The US vows to back Israel if it attacks Iran ... Parrot Room preview: AI updates; Republicans and Social Security; How Blobbish is Fiona Hill?; Carlos Watson arrested ...

Coleman’s definition of “wokeness”—and why he’s against it ... Poverty or privilege: Which predicts wokeness among black Americans? ... How much progress has America made since Jim Crow? ... Why writers in particular are haunted by their past ... How racists and criminals are made ... Does "hip-hop culture exist"—and is it bad? ... Coleman diversifies his controversy portfolio ...

How should Republicans counter Biden’s blue-collar messaging? ... The disturbing thing balloon-gate reveals about the Dems ... The Fetterman health crisis ... Twitter’s Elon algorithm ... Are women more conciliatory than men? ... Is Biden pushing Zelensky toward the negotiating table? ... An underappreciated risk of arming Ukraine ... Parrot room preview: Bob drops some hip-hop knowledge; an AI-war reversal and the dangers of “stochastic parrots”; trans activists taking names; Mickey’s quantum-physics-related pitch for Bob’s next book; new Epstein docs ...

Norman’s new book, I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It!: Heretical Thoughts on Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom ... How Norman exposed a bestselling book as a hoax ... The price Norman paid for taking on Alan Dershowitz ... What effects has “wokeness” had on academia? ... Pronouns and the perils of linguistic prescriptivism ... Who's pushing identity politics on the left? And why? ... A few unkind words about Bari Weiss ... Norman: Ibram X. Kendi is a fashion statement not a scholar ...

Why Biden’s big speech has Bob worried ... Did the US blow up the Nord Stream pipeline? ... Trump accuses DeSantis of grooming ... With friends like Joe Rogan, Ilhan Omar doesn’t need enemies ... The latest from the Twitter Files: new dirt on the Blob ... Biden takes on Xi, seems a little unhinged ... Why more people are concerned about Ukraine’s chances ... Parrot Room preview: Did the West block Russia-Ukraine negotiations?; social vs. income equality; reviewing The Long Goodbye; America’s AI arms race; quantum physics; grading Burt Bacharach songs. ...