The Wright Show

Latest Episodes:

The MAGA Case Against AI Accelerationism (Robert Wright & Joe Allen) Aug 26, 2025

Show notes

Joe’s notable background ... Is most of the MAGA coalition accelerationist? ... Transhumanism, big tech, Klaus Schwab, and the noosphere ... How the pandemic sparked a MAGA tech backlash ... Palantir as bipartisan bête noire ... The conservative case for AI regulation ... Should fear of China trump fear of AI? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Trump's Failures in Israel and Ukraine (Connor Echols & Robert Wright) Aug 23, 2025

Show notes

Connor’s farewell ... What’s next at NonZero ... The looming invasion of Gaza City ... Israel's one-state solution ... Why did Trump give up on Gaza? ... The "blame-it-on-Bibi" farce ... A disappointing week for Ukraine ... How to make security guarantees work ... Ukraine's ticking time bomb ...

Feeling the GPT-5 (Robert Wright & Paul Bloom) Aug 20, 2025

Show notes

Bob defends the Unabomber (kind of) ... Paul nurses his Mickey-inflicted wounds ... Bob deflates the GPT-5 deflation ... How big a deal are LLM hallucinations? ... AI's coming social and economic disruptions ... How Bob and Paul use AI ... The ideas of Hanno Sauer ... Heading to Overtime ...

Can Trump and Putin Make a Deal? (Connor Echols & George Beebe) Aug 15, 2025

Show notes

What’s at stake in Alaska ... George: Don’t try to do too much ... EU yes, NATO no ... Could Putin dupe Trump into a bad deal? ... Sanctions: painful, but not decisive ... What Russian media is saying about the talks ... Are Europe & Ukraine warming to a deal? ...

The Open Source AI Question (Robert Wright & Nathan Lambert) Aug 14, 2025

Show notes

Nathan’s work at AI2—and his p(doom) ... What does “open source AI” mean? ... How Nathan taught a Llama new tricks ... Pros and cons of open sourcing AI ... Nathan's ATOM Project to boost American open models ... What's behind OpenAI's open source play? ... Geoffrey Hinton's case against open models ... Is the US-China open model rivalry really zero-sum? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus) Aug 12, 2025

Show notes

Epstein's Israel connections ... Epstein's history of blackmail ... Was it suicide? ... Epstein's creepy relationship with Trump ... Why won’t Trump release the files? ... The Israel connection(s) ... Some Epstein-Wexner weirdness ... What’s the deal with Ghislaine? ... Was it suicide? (cont’d) ... Mickey plays pundit defender ... Influence operation or personal fetish operation? Or both? ... How Biden made war in Taiwan more likely ... Epstein's strangely light 2008 sentence ... The political cost for Trump ... How dangerous is Trump? ...

Does America’s “China Consensus” Make Sense? A Debate (Robert Wright & Jordan Schneider) Aug 07, 2025

Show notes

Jordan’s ChinaTalk podcast ... Making sense of America’s “China consensus” ... Are fears of Chinese global ambitions overblown? ... The logic (or is it illogic?) of the AI arms race ... China and the Ukraine War ... Influence operations: Chinese vs American ... China’s endgame re the US—and vice-versa ... Is US China talk an echo chamber? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Must We Discuss Sydney Sweeney? (Robert Wright & Paul Bloom) Aug 05, 2025

Show notes

Substack glory and livestream anxiety ... Reading eugenics into a dopey jeans ad ... Does Sydney Sweeney spell the end of “inclusive marketing”? ... Bob vs. Paul on IQ and “general intelligence” ... Paul reviews the new Billy Joel documentary ... The Epstein prison video snafu: a Bayesian take ... Ghislaine gets a free upgrade ...

Anatomy of a Man-Made Famine (Connor Echols & Alex de Waal) Aug 05, 2025

Show notes

Why Gaza’s famine is the "most intense" in decades ... From food secure to starvation: How Gaza unraveled ... Blinken's willful blindness to Israel's obstruction of aid ... How the US muzzled its own famine warning system ... The political power of the term "famine" ... What starvation does to the body—and to society ... The perverse logic of starvation as warfare ... How the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation puts aid in Hamas's hands ... Evaluating Israel's accusation against UNRWA ... How many Gazans are dying of starvation? ... What a real aid response would take now ...

Gaza Awareness Week (Robert Wright, Derek Davison, and Daniel Bessner) Aug 01, 2025

Show notes

Derek and Danny plug their new Crusades series ... This week’s shift in Gaza discourse ... The real danger Gaza poses for Israel ... Does the left’s rhetoric on Israel miss the mark? ... Elite media’s think tank problem ... Is American imperialism really the problem? ... Heading to Overtime ...

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