Nonzero Podcasts

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit nonzero.substack.com 0:00 Richard’s banking and business bona fides 2:51 Was the Silicon Valley Bank crash a harbinger of worse to come? 10:06 What actually caused SVB’s collapse? 18:46 Richard: SVB failed risk management 101 31:41 Costs and benefits of the SVB bailout 38:13 The Fed’s of…

Subscribe to The Parrot Room at https://patreon.com/parrotroom 0:00 Mickey’s mind-bending analogy between romance and politics 5:11 Bob triggered by DeSantis’s “territorial dispute” line about Russia-Ukraine 21:29 How to prevent the next bank collapse? 32:03 Was “wokeness” behind SVB’s demise? 36:56 Ukraine war update 47:53 Are Democrats ditching I…

0:25 Ananyo’s book, The Man from the Future, about game theory inventor and polymath John von Neumann 6:38 Early life as a mathematical wunderkind 10:16 Von Neumann’s foundational contributions to quantum physics 24:39 Was entanglement as "spooky" to von Neumann as it was to Einstein? 33:46 Building—and reckoning with—the atomic bomb 47:22 Did von …

Subscribe to The Parrot Room at https://patreon.com/parrotroom 4:24 Biden’s soak-the-rich budget: big news or borefest? 16:03 How Biden insulting Xi Jinping endangers Ukraine 23:38 Bob finds another reason Biden shouldn’t run for re-election 27:54 Ukraine war update 35:53 Nordstream’s hobbyist saboteurs 43:05 Tucker Carlson outed as anti-Trump phon…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit nonzero.substack.com 1:46 Paul’s new book, Psych: The Story of the Human Mind 12:13 Does psychology need more evolutionary thinking? 20:33 Freud and Skinner and parts in between 30:47 Mind-body dualism’s enduring intuitive appeal 33:16 ChatGPT and the human mind: compare and contrast 38:…

Subscribe to The Parrot Room at https://patreon.com/parrotroom 0:00 Mickey celebrates good week for JD Vance, Ron DeSantis 11:37 The Biden admin’s “all sticks, no carrots” approach to foreign policy 15:55 Is China’s plummeting birth rate a problem? 17:16 Will Bibi wag the dog? 31:07 Will AI kill the journalism star? 36:42 Ukraine war update 44:11 A…

00:37 Paul’s new book, Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence 11:42 Will AIs replace humans in future wars? 29:24 China as an AI superpower 39:29 Will Beijing spread high-tech authoritarianism globally? 48:51 How useful is the “democracy versus autocracy” framework? 54:01 Why Paul’s worried about a race to the bottom in AI …

Subscribe to The Parrot Room at https://patreon.com/parrotroom 0:00 Washington Post highlights a cost of US hypocrisy 6:54 Will China push for peace—or fund Russia’s war effort (or both)? 17:49 Can Trump use Biden’s support for Ukraine against him? 28:42 Russia’s offensive, Ukraine’s rope-a-dope 37:59 Bob’s evolving view of America’s role in the Ma…

01:25 Coleman’s definition of “wokeness”—and why he’s against it 13:07 Poverty or privilege: Which predicts wokeness among black Americans? 22:46 How much progress has America made since Jim Crow? 32:17 Why writers in particular are haunted by their past 41:59 How racists and criminals are made 51:25 Does "hip-hop culture exist"—and is it bad? 1:02…

Subscribe to The Parrot Room at https://patreon.com/parrotroom 0:00 How should Republicans counter Biden’s blue-collar messaging?14:19 The disturbing thing balloon-gate reveals about the Dems23:58 The Fetterman health crisis30:42 Twitter’s Elon algorithm39:52 Are women more conciliatory than men?42:47 Is Biden pushing Zelensky toward the negotiatin…

0:31 Norman’s new book, I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It!: Heretical Thoughts on Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom10:26 How Norman exposed a bestselling book as a hoax18:54 The price Norman paid for taking on Alan Dershowitz28:08 What effects has “wokeness” had on academia?33:46 Pronouns and the perils of linguistic pres…

Subscribe to The Parrot Room at https://patreon.com/parrotroom 00:00 Why Biden’s big speech has Bob worried 9:15 Did the US blow up the Nord Stream pipeline? 18:36 Trump accuses DeSantis of grooming 25:46 With friends like Joe Rogan, Ilhan Omar doesn’t need enemies 36:16 The latest from the Twitter Files: new dirt on the Blob 48:45 Biden takes on X…

1:02 Gabor’s new book The Myth of Normal, about trauma and mental and physical illness in modern Western society7:40 Are we all victims of a “toxic” culture?14:09 Gabor’s early years in Nazi- and then Soviet-occupied Hungary21:30 What Gabor thinks standard theories of addiction get wrong24:02 Can trauma ever be a good thing?26:34 Was Bob’s childhoo…

Subscribe to The Parrot Room at https://patreon.com/parrotroom 0:00 Is the 2024 race shaping up to be a political Groundhog Day?16:05 Ilhan Omar and the Israel criticism tightrope29:46 Does the left or right look worse on recent Russiagate disclosures?37:39 A question about the DNC email hack41:46 Ukraine war update: Is time on Russia’s side?48:44 …

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit nonzero.substack.com 2:12 Nikita’s life as a Russian expat in Armenia 7:55 How the Ukraine war is talked about in Russia 15:24 Could Putin fall from power? 25:40 Who left and who stayed in Russia post-mobilization? 37:43 Russia’s role in the Armenia-Azerbaijan crisis 45:21 How the Ukrain…

Subscribe to The Parrot Room at https://patreon.com/parrotroom 00:00 Can AI transcend conventional wisdom? 15:39 Is Trump back as 2024 GOP frontrunner? 24:52 The trouble with “the poor” 27:14 J.D. Vance has Ukraine on the brain 29:46 Ukraine update: How to make sending tanks make sense 46:16 Parrot room preview: Bob’s quasi-lucid dream; Evil correc…

This is an unusual issue of the newsletter, and it’s about an unusual conversation I taped yesterday. Normally I don’t send out an issue of NZN for each podcast I post, but I think this is a particularly important conversation—and also a complicated conversation, one that can benefit from a preface. The conversation will go public next week and is …

Subscribe to The Parrot Room at https://patreon.com/parrotroom 1:22 The alphas of the world gather in Davos12:42 Mickey buys a blue check, dresses up to celebrate 15:47 Does Russia have Ukraine on the defensive? 28:14 How serious is the threat of US government debt default? 34:40 Biden’s chances in 2024 47:54 Parrot Room preview: David Crosby passe…

0:00 Challenges in applying cognitive empathy in daily life11:32 Two types of self-awareness—and their links to cognitive empathy17:38 Josh’s recent (mis)adventures in cognitive empathy31:29 Can self-awareness make conflicts manageable?49:01 The relationship between concentration and insight meditation55:56 Literature and the cultivation of cogniti…

Subscribe to The Parrot Room at https://patreon.com/parrotroom 2:16 Anti-gas-stove tyranny – or slow news week? 6:27 Biden’s classified docs scandal is a “granfalloon in search of a MacGuffin led by a wrang-wrang” 20:09 Did Bob Gates and Condoleezza Rice miss a chance to prevent the Ukraine war?28:21 Is the war turning in Russia’s favor? 37:05 The …

2:17 Why are so many people (including Fred) down on John Mearsheimer? 15:21 Bob: Explaining bad behavior is not the same as justifying it 30:16 How the US eroded international law—and why it matters 44:16 Did US policy make Russia’s invasion of Ukraine more likely? 58:06 NATO’s role in Ukraine before the invasion 1:21:31 How would the US respond t…

Subscribe to The Parrot Room at https://patreon.com/parrotroom 0:00 Mickey’s guide to the House Speaker drama10:29 What vexes Bob about the House Speaker vote19:19 Why Damar Hamlin’s injury wouldn’t have happened in the old days26:40 Biden’s new good cop, bad cop immigration plan32:56 Why keep sanctioning Venezuela (or Cuba, or Syria, or Iran, etc.…

In this classic interview, Robert Wright and Daniel Dennett discuss consciousness, free will, being good without belief in God, and whether natural selection could have a larger purpose. Robert Wright (Bloggingheads.tv, The Evolution of God, Nonzero, Why Buddhism Is True) and Daniel Dennett (Consciousness Explained, Freedom Evolved, Tufts Universit…

Subscribe to The Parrot Room at https://patreon.com/parrotroom 0:00 Bob hoodwinks the fashion police 3:54 Predictions for the new year 11:53 The pros and cons of “nepotocracy” 14:05 Predictions for the new year (cont’d) 19:45 Impromptu Ukraine war update 21:51 The top 3(ish) stories of 2022 28:59 Is Twitter salvageable? 44:20 The true threat of Twi…

2:27 The legacy of free trade in America 4:55 Adam’s new book Opening Up by Cracking Down, about the repression of union activism in developing countries 18:17 Car bombing and other ways Argentina subdued labor in the 80's 28:08 Why did the US open up trade so early? 33:03 The quasi-dystopian law India used to break strikes in the 90’s 38:12 Undera…