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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 ...

Teaser ... Zhengyu’s tech background and new book, Rethinking China ... What kind of threat is China, really? ... How trading with China transformed America ... The stakes of the chip war ... Will tech war lead to real war? ... The US-China escalation spiral and Taiwan ... “Researching while Chinese”: the new Red Scare? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Teaser ... Is AI a normal technology? ... Mythos and the METR curve ... The current state of coding agents ... The total turbulence problem ... Does Mythos favor offense or defense? ... Mythos and hype ... Regulating dangerous AI ... The centralization problem ... Heading to Overtime ...

Teaser ... Annelle’s Middle East bona fides ... The state of play in Iran ... A deepening fissure between Gulf Arab states ... Explaining the Trump-Biden continuity on Middle East policy ... Will the Middle East realign away from America? ... Turkey and the moral hazard of US aid to Israel ... Can Iran mend ties with the Gulf states? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Teaser ... Bob's big personal news ... The US counter-blockade backfires ... Iran retains escalation dominance ... Why the Iranian regime is built to absorb assassinations ... "Donald, it's too late for that." Bob says Trump has to take the L ... Putin's Victory Day ceasefire (with a threat) ... Russia's vibe shift: drone attacks, airport shutdowns, Internet blackouts ... Instagram influencer rant...

How powerful is Anthropic’s Mythos? ... How Mythos looks to China ... Does Mythos mark a new phase in the US-China arms race? ... Can Anthropic contain Mythos? ... Could superhacker AIs bring cooperation? ... How scary is China, really? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Rebecca’s past work on mind and matter(ing) ... Rebecca’s new book, The Mattering Instinct ... Varieties of mattering experience ... Mattering type 1: Heroic Strivers ... Mattering type 2: Socializers ... Mattering type 3: Transcenders ... Mattering type 4: Competitors ... “The” meaning of life problem ... Does what drives us divide us? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Teaser ... Paul’s new baby is reportedly cute ... The Tucker-Trump fracture ... Parenting later in life ... Paul's TED talk on AI and loneliness ... When does embryo screening become eugenics? ... Is intelligence a positional good? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Rob’s role in the Obama nuclear deal ... A deal that could work for both Trump and Iran ... Iran’s security “guarantee” problem ... Bob: If I were Iran, I would say… ... What Obama’s negotiators had that Trump’s don’t ... How unified is the Iranian side? ... Is Iran’s Hormuz leverage running dry? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Teaser ... Trump’s Middle East chaos continues ... Is Iran more about America’s hegemony or Israel’s? ... Who will win the Hormuz blockade duel? ... Ukraine, China, and the drone wars ... America’s “emergency” emergency ... Is an Iran peace deal possible? ... Overtime preview: The Anthropic Mythos scare ...

Teaser ... Trump's Iran blockade breaks the ceasefire ... A Chinese tanker calls Trump's bluff ... Bob's case for an Iranian "tollgate" ... Anthropic's Mythos model is too dangerous to release ... Nikita's big idea: AI as world peace mediator ... Heading to Overtime ...

A brief message from Bob ... Shakeel’s newsletter, Transformer, and its mission ... The case(s) against Sam Altman ... OpenAI President Greg Brockman's political spending ... The founding doctrines of the leading AI labs ... The singleton and the singularity ... How market forces overwhelm good intentions ... Is the singularity near? ... Sam vs. Dario vs. Demis ... Heading to Overtime ...

Bob and Eli’s history of (civil) disagreement on Iran ... Is Trump's war on Iran legal? Does it matter? ... Who’s the real rogue state? ... Israel’s nukes and Iran’s nuclear program ... Is Israel more moral than Iran? ... How Hamas became Hamas ... “Proxy,” “theocracy,” and other fighting words ... Heading to Overtime ...

Would America benefit from Iran “winning”? ... Trump’s last exit ramp? ... What’s China’s angle on the war? ... Trump: psychoanalyzed ... Israel: psychoanalyzed ... Iran’s plans for the Strait of Hormuz ... Is this Trump’s biggest blunder? ... The intra-MAGA war over Iran (and Israel) ... Where are the Democrats? ... Antisemitism, alleged and real ... Heading to Overtime ...

Teaser ... Defining (and preventing) superintelligence ... Where the nuclear analogy holds (and where it breaks) ... Imagining an AI inspections regime ... The superintelligence precursors to watch for ... Nikita: "I find him weirdly persuasive on a hypnotist kind of level" ... Our dangerous lack of government oversight ... ControlAI's "bottom-up" approach to AI policy ... The mounting geopolitica...