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Hooman's Iranian expertise—inherited and otherwise ... Trump’s new (economic) war on Iran ... What MSM missed about the MOU ... How will Iran respond? ... The intra-MAGA fight over Trump’s foreign policy ... Will Iran do to Trump what it did to Carter? ... Iran and the Houthi-Saudi conflict ... Is the Saudi-Pakistan-Turkey alliance for real? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Overtime teaser ... David’s AI safety work, past and present ... Has there been a vibe shift in AI? ... Why two AI godfathers went doomer ... The OpenAI breakout as the warning shot heard round the world ... Breaking down the OpenAI breakout ... AI agents are cooperating. Why? ... Is an AI pause near? ... The hard problem of AI alignment ... Heading to Overtime ...

Bob channels Dick Cheney ... Is AI killing writing? And thinking? ... How Bob and Paul actually use AI ... The cognitive vs economic value of writing ... AIs aping “Memento” and other frontier freakiness ... Bob: Reckless AI is just good business ... Heading to Overtime ...

Teaser ... How is MAGA feeling about Trump 2.0? ... Bob’s "good" ol’ days at The New Republic ... The biggest threat to the Trump coalition ... Why the MoU unraveled ... Is Iran's regime really divided? ... Part two: This pod’s auspicious return from tech hell ... Google Maps, AI, and the death of interhuman reliance ... Trump’s covert catering-truck op ... Have Iran’s demands really gotten more e...

Jennifer’s foreign policy bona fides ... Could Ukraine and Iran merge into one big war? ... Is Ukraine really "turning the tide"? ... America’s (and Ukraine’s) missile defense issue ... Putin’s ceasefire conditions ... What—and who—are America's missiles for, really? ... How not to open the Hormuz Strait ... How will the Iran war truly end? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Teaser ... Sam’s ideological leanings ... Sam's AI Manhattan Project–revisited ... What does the “Pacing” letter say about the state of AI? ... Mythos, Astra, and AI’s accelerating acceleration ... The OpenAI “rogue” model escape ... Recursive self-improvement: Red line or red herring? ... How frontier AI is getting (and will get) freakier ... How is open-source AI like DEI? ... Heading to Overtim...

Teaser ... The “Pacing the Frontier” letter signed by AI elites ... Why so many China-hawk AI-safety-hawks? ... Was the “Pacing” letter too small an ask? ... The striking AI vibe shift ... Are AI builders “just following orders”? ... Recursive self-improvement: The wrong red line? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Why did Ukraine hit an Iranian ship 500 miles from Ukraine? ... Ukraine's war on Russia's Amazon ... Why Zelensky fired his defense minister and commander-in-chief ... Bob: Ukraine may lose like people go bankrupt—gradually, then suddenly ... Nikita: Why both sides are ready to keep fighting ... Kazakh President to Putin: Nobody understands this war ... Bob: Everybody thinks they're fighting a def...

Teaser ... Connor’s place in the AI world ... Mythos: “digital nuke”? ... The milieu that birthed Dario and other AI titans ... Yudkowsky, Marx, and other AI harbingers ... Effective altruism’s effects on big tech ... The "cult" in Silicon Valley culture ... Is the AI race a market failure? ... What’s really driving the AI titans? ... Connor: ASI is a worse bet than Russian roulette ...

Teaser ... Zaid’s Substack and spicy-take history ... Zaid: Iran has outplayed Trump and Bibi ... 10/7 as turning point ... Did—and does—Israel want regime collapse in Iran? ... Israel’s security dilemma(s) ... How Trump blundered back into war ... Will the war end well for anyone? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Sneak peek: Danny finds flaw in Bob’s AI book ... Is the Iran war fully back on? ... What the war means for the future of US power ... The problem with blaming Bibi ... The push to intertwine the US and Israeli militaries ... What’s Israel’s endgame for the Palestinians? ... The Gulf States’ new reality ... Iran’s plans for the Strait of Hormuz ... Bob’s pitch to Derek—and his other pitch to liste...

Teaser ... Leonid’s journalistic work, past and present ... Are Russia and NATO headed for war? ... Decoding Putin’s recent signals ... Do European leaders really want the Ukraine war to end? ... Putin’s political psychology ... Why the war matters more to Russia than to the West ... Russia’s non-ethno nationalism ... Heading to Overtime ...

Preview: Skynet comes for Bob ... Trump‘s endearing AI obsession ... Are books dying? Is AI responsible? ... Skynet (aka Amazon) vs Bob’s book ... The problem with blurbs ... Why Gad Saad’s mad ... Heading to Overtime ...

Grandpa Bob and author Bob ... Why Bob stopped being an AI doom skeptic ... Can AI solve China’s demographic crisis? ... The irony of China’s open-source AI strategy ... Recursive self-improvement and the singularity ... The Burkean conservative case against AI ... Are we becoming AI meat puppets? ... Google Maps, AI, and the death of interhuman reliance ... Was Pete Hegseth’s military strategy wr...

Bob’s pub-day pitch for his new book on AI, The God Test ... Is AI killing the nonfiction star? ... Geoffrey Hinton’s path from AI evangelist to doomer ... The future of books ... Trump vs Anthropic ... Are Ukrainian drone strikes rattling Putin? ... The multiple Putins theory ... Heading to Overtime ...

Was "losing" this war good for America? ... Israel’s post-war situation ... A more stable Middle East? Or less? ... The impact on Iran’s strength ... Has the war empowered Russia and China? ... How modern warfare devalues American military power ... Josh: The Gulf-state power struggle is just beginning ... Are the Palestinians back in the spotlight? ... Where do Israel-US relations go from here? ....

A brief message from Bob ... Ryan’s tech policy bona fides ... Is true "recursive self-improvement" near? ... AI agents as strategic empathy machines ... Is a global AI pause possible? ... Mutually assured destruction vs mutually assured AI malfunction ... The case against global AI governance ... Mythos as seen from China ... Heading to Overtime ...

Teaser ... The Midas Project and the OpenAI files ... What’s "Build American AI" up to? ... Nathan Leamer, astroturfer and sock puppeteer ... Greg Brockman, AI lobby bankroller ... Astroturfing the China panic ... Is OpenAI an innocent bystander? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Whose baby is cuter? ... Bob's new book on AI, The God Test ... Varieties of AI awe ... Geoffrey Hinton’s vision ... How LLMs do more than predict and parrot ... How powerful will AI get? ... Can AI’s impact be predicted? ... Taking doomerism seriously ... The AI governance dilemma ... Heading to Overtime ...

Teaser ... How Tianyu became a “China explainer” ... American vs Chinese exceptionalism ... What you can and can’t say in China ... Is the government more accountable in the US or China? ... How China sees America ... The one-child policy and its consequences ... Tianyu: The biggest misconception about China is… ... Heading to Overtime ...

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Is NonZero or American Prestige the better podcast? AI weighs in ... The state of the US-Iran war. Or is it peace? ... Has Trump already lost the midterms? Does he care? ... The Russia-Ukraine war (and Eric Schmidt) ... What the latest Iran war strikes signal ... Overtime preview: Nuland’s “monsters,” zombie blobsters, Barak Ravid, Bari Weiss, “killzones,” and the Pope vs AI ...

A Greek pilgrimage, a mystery guest, and a Discord revival ... The first Papal encyclical devoted to AI ... Pope Leo: just war theory is outdated, and AI lets humans dodge accountability ... Anthropic tells the Pope about "mysterious, even unsettling" things inside AI ... Inside the "Kill Zone": How drones changed the Russia-Ukraine front ... Who gets replaced first: the soldier or the commander?...

Teaser ... Bruce’s new book on ritual, A Time to Gather ... The "Lifequake" that led Bruce to study ritual ... What is a ritual? ... The origins of the shadow ritual renaissance ... Forest bathing and the essence of ritual ... Ritual as the original human algorithm ... Rituals across Christianity ... What rituals do ... Heading to Overtime ...

Teaser ... Hamidreza's background ... A brief history of US-Iran relations ... Understanding Iranian antipathy toward Israel ... Islam vs Islamism ... The Iran-Iraq security dilemma ... The Iran-Israel security dilemma ... Palestinian objectives and patrons ... Heading to Overtime ...