
Location:
United States
Description:
Smart people talking about politics, policy, culture and other stuff
Twitter:
@bloggingheads
Language:
English
Website:
http://bloggingheads.tv/
Email:
mail@bloggingheads.tv
Episodes
Agency, AI, and the MAGA Impulse (Robert Wright & Nikita Petrov)
2/12/2026
Teaser ... Recap: how MAGA's domestic and foreign policy fit together as one project ... MAGA reframed as a response to a felt lack of agency ... AI is about to make that loss of agency universal ... The first technology we're actually transferring agency to ... What Claude Code is doing to Nikita's creative process ... Will people use their free time well — or sit on a couch and inject heroin? ... Why Spanish festival culture might survive AI better than anyone ... Bots on the street, humans in the parlor: the future of online spaces ... Reading a comment and being depressed by both possibilities ...
Duration:01:00:00
Is the Singularity Near? (Robert Wright & Timothy B. Lee)
2/10/2026
Teaser ... The dueling Sam Altman biographies ... Who is the real Sam Altman? ... OpenAI’s origin—did Sam scam Elon? ... Why the OpenAI board coup failed ... Good and bad critiques of OpenAI ... Heading to Overtime ...
Duration:01:00:00
Trump's Big Gambles: Iran, China, and AI (Robert Wright, Andrew Day, and Curt Mills)
2/5/2026
Army brats and media empires ... Is war with Iran imminent? ... Trump’s “red line” trap ... Are we underestimating Iran? ... Israel and the “clean break” memo ... Rubio as deep state puppet master ... Trump’s AI report card ... The race for superintelligence ... Is AI an existential threat? ... Will AI trigger mass unemployment? ... Chip restrictions as war starters ... Does Xi think his Taiwan window is closing? ...
Duration:01:00:00
The Meaning of Moltbook (Robert Wright & Paul Bloom)
2/3/2026
Teaser ... How Bob’s and Paul’s names wound up in the Epstein Files ... Epstein’s double option play ... Understanding Moltbook ... Bob on the “big question” Moltbook raises ... Paul: What planet are Emily Bender and Alex Hanna on? ... Heading into Overtime: Friends in the Epstein Files, the strangest thing Bob’s ever done for money and more. ...
Duration:01:00:00
The Grand Unified Theory of MAGA (Robert Wright & Nikita Petrov)
1/30/2026
MAGA as a coherent global phenomenon ... Narrative vs. material forces behind MAGA ... Mark Carney and the hypocrisy of the "rule-based order" ... Burkeans vs. Silicon Valley libertarians ... Make Russia Great Again ... Heading to Overtime ...
Duration:01:00:00
The Case Against AI (Robert Wright, Alex Hanna, and Emily Bender)
1/27/2026
Alex and Emily’s book, The AI Con ... Beyond the AI booster-doomer spectrum ... What—and who—is AI actually useful for? ... The AI productivity question(s) ... Emily: AI won’t take your job, it’ll just make it shi**ier ... Stochastic parrots, Chinese rooms, and semantics ... Are LLMs really black boxes? ... Do AIs “understand” things? ... Debating using AIs as experts ... How “neural” are neural nets, really? ...
Duration:01:00:00
The Trump Foreign Policy Roller Coaster (Robert Wright, Derek Davison, and Daniel Bessner)
1/22/2026
A recap of January’s Trump turbulence ... Is Trump a cause or symptom of world disorder? ... Is Trump increasingly unstable? ... Will we invade Cuba? ... American politics after Trump ... The crumbling bedrock of International Law ... Where are the Democrats? ... Heading into Overtime: Renee Good, Syria, Worthwhile Canadian Prime Minister ...
Duration:01:00:00
AI After Us: The "Succession" Scenario (Robert Wright & Dan Faggella)
1/20/2026
Teaser ... Defining AI succession ... How positive psychology led Dan to AI research ... Is Dan a "successionist"? ... Does it matter whether AI is sentient? ... Two traits of a worthy successor ... The varieties of succession scenarios ... Values and interests ... Will AI have any use for us? ... Succession scenarios to avoid ... Heading into Overtime ...
Duration:01:00:00
The Past and Future of Digital Media (Robert Wright & Mike Pesca)
1/15/2026
Are Bob and Mike the godfathers of podcasting? ... Slate and the origins of podcasting ... NotebookLM’s humanless podcasts ... From blogs to Substack ... Looking back at BloggingHeads ... The tribalizing influence of algorithms ... New news models ... What happened to the rules in professional sports? ... The consequences of paying college athletes ... Mike's comprehensive take on sports gambling ... Heading into OT: The perils of opining on Israel ...
Duration:01:00:00
The Minneapolis Shooting Rorschach Test (Robert Wright & Paul Bloom)
1/13/2026
Teaser ... Different readings of the Renee Good videos ... JD Vance vs Stephen Miller: compare and contrast ... Trump vs Hitler: compare and contrast ... ICE agents and stormtroopers: compare and contrast ... Has Elon totally lost it? ... Paul: Politicians are people too! ... Heading to Overtime ...
Duration:01:00:00
NASA’s Plans for the Moon and Mars (Robert Wright & Cameron Berg)
1/8/2026
Teaser ... Cameron’s work at AE studio ... Why consciousness is such a hard problem ... Why AI consciousness matters ... Does consciousness need carbon? ... The ethics of AI subjectivity ... Can we trust LLM self-reports? ... Cameron’s innovative AI consciousness experiments ... Heading to Overtime ...
Duration:01:00:00
NASA’s Plans for the Moon and Mars (Robert Wright & Joel Achenbach)
1/6/2026
Teaser ... Joel’s legendary Bloggingheads line ... NASA’s new chief: More than a Musk toady? ... Why we’re still not living in Star Trek ... The space alien question ... Can we make the moon program great again? ... Heading to Overtime ...
Duration:01:00:00
2025: A Year-End (And Quarter-Century-End) Reckoning (Robert Wright & Paul Bloom)
12/29/2025
David Lynch, Jane Goodall, and other notable 2025 losses ... When Bob called James Watson a "mad scientist" ... Predicting 2050: Star Trek abundance vs. "Total Chaos Planet"? ... The age of algorithmically guided attention ... Global poverty reduction (and its flip side) ... Will anyone care if your newsletter is AI-written? ... Trump's USAID cuts killed a lot of people ... Elon Musk, Alex Karp, and the age of the "manifestly crazy" ... Can the Supreme Court stop Trump? ... JD Vance's identity crisis: Tech bro or populist? ... The "Black Swan": When AI starts killing people ... AI scientific breakthroughs to come ... Bob and Paul's 2025 Entertainment Awards ... Which jobs are truly AI-proof? ... Bob's Epstein document deep-dive ... Bill Ackman's conspiracy-theory-brained year ... Are US arms sales pushing China to invade Taiwan? ... Barry Weiss’s journalistic scruples ...
Duration:01:00:00
What Era Are We Living In? (Robert Wright & Nikita Petrov)
12/23/2025
Teaser ... What era are we living in? ... David Bowie: "The Internet is an alien life form." ... Bob: "It's like aliens are approaching, and we don't know their intentions" ... Nikita: "COVID was weird, and nothing has been normal since" ... The lab leak theory ... How COVID killed consensus reality ... Bob's case for international biotech monitoring ... Vaccine geopolitics ... Bob's candidate: We let machines guide our attention ... Trump's failed bargaining strategy ... Technological progress is like a cocaine high ... How common is the idea that AI will be a big deal? ... When music is high stakes. Russian street musicians get arrested ... Heading to Overtime ...
Duration:01:00:00
The Year in Trump Foreign Policy (Robert Wright, Andrew Day, and Connor Echols)
12/18/2025
What's the long game in Venezuela? ... MAGA's Monroe Doctrine ... Trump as deep state puppet ... Will Trump oust Maduro? ... Connor: Trump's foreign policy is a "profoundly mixed bag" ... Has Israel lost the American electorate? ... Andrew: Trump's Ukraine peace plan isn’t pro-Russia ... Silicon Valley’s inept arms makers ... The administration's view(s) on China and Taiwan ... Europe learns to speak Trump ...
Duration:01:00:00
Elon, Trump, Fuentes: Bad Men or Trolls or Both? (Robert Wright & Paul Bloom)
12/16/2025
Elon’s reckless response to the Brown shooting ... Susie Wiles gone wild ... The weirdest thing about Trump’s weird Rob Reiner post ... The Piers Morgan/Nick Fuentes encounter ... Judging Oliver Sacks ... Heading to Overtime ...
Duration:01:00:00
Venezuela, China, and Trump’s Incoherence (Robert Wright, Derek Davison, and Daniel Bessner)
12/11/2025
The incoherence of Trump's foreign policy ... The paucity of debate around Chinese chip restrictions ... Danny: Is this the stupidest foreign policy establishment ever? ... Should AGI worry us? ... Bob’s Overtime bait ...
Duration:01:00:00
Using AI to Fight Cancer (Robert Wright & Nathan Labenz)
12/9/2025
Teaser ... How AI helped shape cancer treatment for Nathan's son ... Should you tell your doctor about your AI medical adviser? ... Big leaps for Gemini 3 and Claude Opus 4.5 ... How to get the best medical advice from your AI ... The astonishing breadth of AI expertise ... AI can help on the margins ... Bob's AI cancer journey ... AI and “Right to try” ... "Turning every stone" vs falling into anxiety rabbit holes ... Gemini 3 vs Opus 4.5 ... Are scaling laws leveling off? ... AI deception ... Experiments in AI Consciousness ...
Duration:01:00:00
The Hard Truth about Peace in Ukraine (Robert Wright & Nikita Petrov)
12/4/2025
Teaser ... Trump's 28-point plan: First real negotiations? ... Why Zelensky sounded so grim ... Listing Russia's advantages ... The unknowable casualties numbers ... Ukraine's forced mobilization vs. Russia's volunteer army ... Why Russia won't run out of money ... Bob: "I want Putin to get the worst deal possible" ... What is the Blob's plan? ... Bob answers a question from Discord ... Trump's failed bargaining strategy ... Bob: Ukraine is "so much more complicated" than Gaza ... The corruption scandal threatening Zelensky ... Ukraine's corruption scandal and Zelensky's uncertain political future ... Zaluzhnyi's manifesto: The rival commander's challenge ... Why all decision-makers are ok with the war continuing ...
Duration:01:00:00
The Life and Legacy of William F. Buckley (Robert Wright & Sam Tanenhaus)
12/2/2025
Teaser ... Sam’s epic new biography of William F. Buckley ... Was Buckley the original Tucker Carlson? ... Buckley's paradoxical upbringing ... How Yale turned Buckley into a “counter-intellectual” ... Was Buckley racist or tribalist or what? ... Buckley v. the Civil Rights Act ... Heading to Overtime ...
Duration:01:00:00