Bloggingheads.tv

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 geopolitical challenges to AI governance ... Heading to Overtime ...

Teaser ... Holy Week in Andalusia, and the Christian cross as branding ... Why Bob is skeptical of Trump's diplomacy ... Trump's hand got weaker and he doesn't even know it ... Killing Iran's navy chief won't reopen the Strait of Hormuz ... Nikita: "I find him weirdly persuasive on a hypnotist kind of level" ... The Iran war's secret winner: Vladimir Putin ... Bob checked back into AI podcasts and came out scared ... "Every time I see tribalism on parade, I think: we're toast on AI" ... Russia's Internet shutdowns ... Heading to Overtime ...

Teaser ... What (or who) is the Iran war for? ... Joe Kent and the MAGA rift over Israel ... Does antisemitism speech policing foment antisemitism? ... What Ron’s Substack has that others don’t ... Heading to Overtime ...

Teaser ... Overtime preview: a civil(-ish) debate on Israel-Palestine ... How vibe-coding changed Liron’s life ... Portents of the AI jobpocalypse ... What can humans do that AI agents can’t? ... The Darwinian case for AI doom ... OpenClaw vs SkyNet ... Liron: I love AI! We need to stop it. ... Amodei, Altman, and the Pentagon triangle ... Heading to Overtime ...

Teaser ... Is Iran inflicting much damage on Israel? ... Iran has a strategy. Does America? Does Israel? ... Where Trump and Bibi differ ... Why Daniel is no longer a Zionist ... Bibi vs the Israeli security establishment ... The Gulf States' dilemma ... Daniel on Bibi’s true endgame ... Heading to Overtime ...

Teaser ... How we got here ... Understanding Iran's strategy and goals ... Turkey, Europe, and the Gulf States ... Will the Iranian regime survive? ... The specious leadership of Reza Pahlavi ... The many missed opportunities for US-Iran entente ... Heading to Overtime ...

Teaser ... Will the Iran war supercharge antisemitism? ... Varieties of Israeli-Jewish conflation ... The Epstein effect ... Tucker v. Israel vs Fuentes v. Israel ... Does MSM have a pro-Israel bias? ... The ADL’s counterproductive speech policing ... Heading to Overtime ...

Teaser ... Marco Rubio's Israel faux pas ... What are Trump’s new goalposts? ... The regime after Khamenei ... Can a regime be changed by air strikes alone? ... Will Turkey be drawn in? ... The logic of Iran's response ... The pathetic European (and Canadian) response ... Heading into Overtime ...

Teaser ... Spain: the one country that got it right ... When US rhetoric starts sounding like the Kremlin ... Nukes, regime change, military threat—pick one ... Rubio's "ridiculous" explanation for attacking Iran ... Iran's restraint: from Soleimani to Khamenei ... Trump had leverage over Bibi. He didn't use it. ... Is this Israel's war or America's? ... Tommy Vietor goes after the ADL—a political first ... How fear sells papers and starts wars ... The nuclear deal: the last thing America got right ... Nikita: Trump's dopamine addiction to "starting shit" ... How the Iran strike buried the Anthropic story ... Does Israel want a stable Middle East? ... Heading to Over...

Teaser ... Why is Trump threatening Iran, really? ... What’s the strategic logic behind striking? ... Trump vs Bibi on Gaza ... How would—and could—Iran respond? ... What a post-regime-collapse Iran could look like ... Josh: Trump has painted himself into a corner ... Is a new “axis of resistance” against Israel emerging? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Teaser ... Holly’s call-out campaign ... Holly: Don’t believe the Amanda Askell puff pieces ... Is Amanda a bad person? ... How Dario’s false dichotomies accelerate the AI race ... The only Anthropic through-line is "winning" ... Did Dario subvert Effective Altruism? ... The end of the AI safety fig leaf ... Heading into Overtime: The pros and cons of naming and shaming ...

Teaser ... A paywall bait masterclass ... Is Paul feeling the AI acceleration? ... The Freddie deBoer AI challenge ... What would a true AI revolution look like? ... Bob: We’re failing the AI test ... Has AI really made much of a difference? ... Heading to Overtime ...

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 ...

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 ...

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? ...

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. ...

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 ...

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? ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

A brief message from Bob ... Bob and former Bloggingheads.tv staffer and contributor Aryeh Cohen-Wade reflect on the legacy of Bloggingheads.tv, the pioneering website Bob co-founded in 2005. Bob and Aryeh discuss how the site and the technology that powered it anticipated modern trends in online media. They also consider whether Twitter still has any use for journalists, the pros and cons of Substack, and whether Culturally Determined should pivot back to video. ...