Explore every episode of the podcast Robert Wright's Nonzero

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Liron Shapira (Pause AI, Doom Debates). Recorded October 01, 2026. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Paul’s impeccable timing 2:12 Is Dario’s AI slowdown proposal for real? 10:44 Can AI companies police themselves? 15:26 How chip controls can undermine AI safety 25:03 Why the 2024 US-China AI talks failed 30:37 America’s cognitive empathy gap on China 44:04 Taiwan and the chip war 50:18 War over AI: The real doom scenario? 52:04 A possible (grim) path to global AI cooperation 57:18 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Paul Triolo (Albright Stonebridge Group, https://pstaidecrypted.substack.com/). Recorded September 28, 2026.Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Jill’s book OK Boomer, Let’s Talk 5:13 When is generalizing about a group okay? 9:20 The world boomers built 16:19 Are boomers really uniquely selfish? 26:41 Is blaming boomers counterproductive? 30:44 Who’s actually driving the generational divide? 38:27 The generational blame spiral 49:55 Millennials vs Gen Z 53:01 Does America have a gerontocracy problem? 58:09 Why Kenyans are looking toward China

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Jill Filipovic (OK Boomer, Let's Talk; The H-Spot). Recorded September 15, 2026.Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Nick’s singular place in AI history 4:01 Where is Nick on the pause-accelerationist spectrum? 12:53 Utilitarianism vs the “moral parliament” 18:53 Is a “singleton” coming? What kind? 32:12 Is global cooperation on AI doomed? 46:50 The pros and cons of reading an AI’s mind 52:23 Do AIs deserve moral status? 1:10:23 AI, evolution, and the cosmic purpose question

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Nick Bostrom (Superintelligence, Macrostrategy Research Initiative, Deep Utopia). Recorded September 16, 2026. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 This episode’s surprise vibe shift 2:12 Middle East update: Houthis vs. Saudis 15:03 What’s really driving Dario (et al.)? 24:56 Debating effective altruism’s effectiveness 30:00 The trouble with big-tech Kremlinology 33:50 Was “learn to code” just sleight of hand? 40:07 Bob’s Fukuyama name drop 41:53 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True), Derek Davison (Foreign Exchanges, American Prestige, Discontents), and Daniel Bessner (American Prestige, Imperialist Realism, University of Washington). Recorded September 17, 2026.Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Where Zvi’s famous newsletter got its name 5:15 Zvi’s biggest AI fear 12:55 Why is ChatGPT’s mind getting harder to read? 18:20 Is self-sacrifice really such a surprising trait in agents? 33:17 AGI + agent swarm = superintelligence? 45:58 Appraising the elements of Dario’s “pacing” proposal 1:01:43 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Zvi Mowshowitz (Don't Worry About the Vase). Recorded September 15, 2026.

0:29 A bold new experiment in podcast synergy 3:10 What caused the epic AI vibe shift? 8:34 The resignation that broke the dam 10:41 Former Trump adviser Dean Ball comes clean 15:04 Are David Sacks and his buddies all-in on AI denial? 19:51 Yet another OpenAI breakout… 23:06 Astra’s dangerously private thoughts 34:32 Is alignment doomed to fail? 37:35 AI’s latest, and apparently biggest, math feat 43:52 The looming “self-sovereign AI” threat 47:48 A new flock of China doves? 53:21 Liron’s ex-intern gets a seat at the table 1:03:05 AI agent self-sacrifice explained 1:11:04 Some newly freaked out politicians 1:23:09 Ro Khanna’s AI safety plan

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Liron Shapira (Pause AI, Doom Debates). Recorded September 10, 2026.Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Ian and Eli’s new book, Israel’s Lobby 2:01 Being a Jewish critic of Israel before that was cool 10:41 How Eli followed the money 15:21 What’s changed since the 2007 Walt-Mearsheimer book 23:46 What is the Israel lobby, really? 28:00 BDS, free speech, and the college antisemitism crusade 41:08 Did Trump give the game away? 44:50 The Israel lobby and the media 47:17 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True), Eli Clifton (The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Israel's Lobby), and Ian Lustick (The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Israel's Lobby). Recorded August 27, 2026. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Why Bob is (extra) freaked out 5:56 Inside the minds of OpenAI's rogue agents 12:33 Is true alignment a pipe dream? 15:21 The new development that’s spiked Bob’s AI anxiety 23:43 Paul’s pushback via literary parable 28:38 Is it time to REALLY freak out about AI? A debate 44:10 Heading to Overtime

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

Join NonZero’s Discord server: https://discord.gg/Zy4jAhTQMF

0:28 Paul’s military tech bona fides 2:35 What we (should) have learned from the Iran war 11:55 Is the Pentagon buying the wrong weapons? 19:14 Ukraine as frontline for the drone revolution 24:43 Are the robot wars near? 31:41 America’s drone deficit 35:35 Does the Pentagon have a Silicon Valley problem? 41:43 Will AI really make war less bloody? 50:18 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Paul Scharre (Center for a New American Security, Army of None, Four Battlegrounds). Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Stephen’s expertise in spooky AI behavior 3:30 Testing AIs for “corporate loyalty” 19:58 Which AIs shill most for their makers? 33:00 Do AI models have ideologies? 38:38 The spookiest finding of Stephen’s study 43:05 Are AIs getting better at gaming their tests? 50:04 Overtime unlocked: The OpenAI breakout 55:03 Decoding the OpenAI breakout 1:02:17 Did OpenAI’s agents evolve their own culture? 1:13:25 How OpenAI’s agents outfoxed their makers

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Stephen Casper (Harvard Kennedy School). Recorded August 26, 2026. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:24 The Infinity Machine, Sebastian’s book about Demis Hassabis 2:44 Why tell the AI story through Hassabis? 6:34 Hassabis vs the other AI titans 15:19 Does Hassabis have a messiah complex? 29:27 Deep learning’s secret sauce 36:31 Did world models cost DeepMind its LLM lead? 45:00 Why they call Hassabis “the Jedi” 51:32 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Sebastian Mallaby (Council on Foreign Relations, More Money Than God, The Infinity Machine). Recorded August 19, 2026.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Hooman’s Iranian expertise—inherited and otherwise 3:49 Trump’s new (economic) war on Iran 14:13 What MSM missed about the MOU 18:45 How will Iran respond? 27:00 The intra-MAGA fight over Trump’s foreign policy 30:13 Will Iran do to Trump what it did to Carter? 41:26 Iran and the Houthi-Saudi conflict 48:16 Is the Saudi-Pakistan-Turkey alliance for real? 50:49 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Hooman Majd (Minister Without Portfolio, The Ayatollahs' Democracy). Recorded August 20, 2026.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 David’s AI safety work, past and present 2:28 Has there been a vibe shift in AI? 7:49 Why two AI godfathers went doomer 12:00 The OpenAI breakout as the warning shot heard round the world 20:38 Breaking down the OpenAI breakout 28:53 AI agents are cooperating. Why? 37:32 Is an AI pause near? 42:22 The hard problem of AI alignment 47:16 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and David Krueger (The University of Montréal, Evitable). Recorded August 13, 2026. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Bob channels Dick Cheney 4:25 Is AI killing writing? And thinking? 16:43 How Bob and Paul actually use AI 24:03 The cognitive vs economic value of writing 30:28 AIs aping “Memento” and other frontier freakiness 38:00 Bob: Reckless AI is just good business 41:32 Heading to Overtime

obert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Paul Bloom (https://smallpotatoes.paulbloom.net, University of Toronto, The Sweet Spot, Against Empathy). Recorded August 12, 2026. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

Join NonZero’s Discord server: https://discord.gg/Zy4jAhTQMF

0:28 How is MAGA feeling about Trump 2.0? 3:31 Bob’s good ol’ days at The New Republic 6:13 The biggest threat to the Trump coalition 18:31 Why the MoU unraveled 31:40 Is Iran's regime really divided? 36:41 Part two: This pod’s auspicious return from tech hell 37:54 Trump’s covert catering-truck op 45:50 Have Iran’s demands really gotten more extreme? 53:26 Saudi Arabia vs the Houthis 58:20 Is a post-American Middle East emerging? 1:07:10 A low-key end to the episode Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True), Curt Mills (The American Conservative), Andrew Day (The American Conservative). Recorded August 10 and 11, 2026.Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Jennifer’s foreign policy bona fides 1:31 Could Ukraine and Iran merge into one big war? 6:17 Is Ukraine really “turning the tide”? 15:28 America’s (and Ukraine’s) missile defense issue 19:08 Putin’s ceasefire conditions 25:59 What—and who—are America’s missiles for, really? 30:11 How not to open the Hormuz Strait 41:33 How will the Iran war truly end? 51:29 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Jennifer Kavanagh (Defense Priorities). Recorded August 06, 2026. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Sam’s ideological leanings 3:44 Sam’s AI Manhattan Project–revisited 7:44 What does the “Pacing” letter say about the state of AI? 18:53 Mythos, Astra, and AI’s accelerating acceleration 27:50 The OpenAI “rogue” model escape 36:30 Recursive self-improvement: Red line or red herring? 42:24 How frontier AI is getting (and will get) freakier 52:10 How is open-source AI like DEI? 56:00 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Samuel Hammond (Foundation for American Innovation, https://www.secondbest.ca/). Recorded August 03, 2026. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 The “Pacing the Frontier” letter signed by AI elites 10:15 Why so many China-hawk AI-safety-hawks? 14:16 Was the “Pacing” letter too small an ask? 27:14 The striking AI vibe shift 36:28 Are AI builders “just following orders”? 45:46 Recursive self-improvement: The wrong red line? 51:23 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Holly Elmore (PauseAI US, https://hollyelmore.substack.com/). Recorded July 30, 2026.Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Why did Ukraine hit an Iranian ship 500 miles from Ukraine? 14:09 Ukraine’s war on Russia’s Amazon 19:39 Why Zelensky fired his defense minister and commander-in-chief 23:01 Bob: Ukraine may lose like people go bankrupt—gradually, then suddenly 25:17 Nikita: Why both sides are ready to keep fighting 31:26 Kazakh President to Putin: Nobody understands this war 35:43 Bob: Everybody thinks they’re fighting a defensive war 46:04 Heading to Overtime: The globalist elite vs. the globalist precariat, and an AI path to WW3

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Nikita Petrov (https://psychopolitica.substack.com). Recorded July 28, 2026.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

(Show notes via Very Bad Wizards)

The great Robert Wright returns to the podcast to talk about his new book The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning. We debate the magnitude of AI’s potential impact, the natural selection analogy Bob presses in the book, and a whole lot more.

Plus, a new AI-powered collar can translate your pet’s sounds and behavior into language with 95% accuracy! Still skeptical about the power of this new technology Tamler?

0:28 Connor’s place in the AI world 2:58 Mythos: “digital nuke”? 13:52 The milieu that birthed Dario and other AI titans 20:33 Yudkowsky, Marx, and other AI harbingers 35:15 Effective altruism’s effects on big tech 46:03 The “cult” in Silicon Valley culture 59:40 Is the AI race a market failure? 1:05:532What’s really driving the AI titans? 1:18:45 Connor: ASI is a worse bet than Russian roulette

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True), Connor Leahy (ControlAI). Recorded July 17, 2026.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

(Show notes via The Cognitive Revolution)

Robert Wright describes himself less as a Forrest Gump of AI history than a Zelig — a journalist who keeps turning up at pivotal scenes without ever quite being the protagonist. He interviewed Geoffrey Hinton in 1983, when neural networks were still a maverick faith and one of Hinton’s colleagues told Wright that to “hear the gospel” he’d need to talk to its evangelist. He had Eliezer Yudkowsky on his podcast in 2010, mid-transition from singularity enthusiast to doomer. His new book, The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning, is written less for the AI-pilled than for “your aunts and uncles” — readers who sense something big is happening and want to understand why it got so big so fast.

The book opens with a confession of error. In a 1984 piece, Wright assumed AI would work by humans first understanding the mind and then translating that understanding into machines — the very premise of the 1956 Dartmouth conference that coined “artificial intelligence.” Deep learning inverted that. Nobody told the models that meaning is a property of words; trained only to predict the next token, they reverse-engineered cognitive functionality that evolution had built into us. Wright pushes this further with a claim he tests on Nathan: LLM training is “at least as much a process of natural selection, of evolution, as of learning” — doing millions of years of evolution in a few months. Nathan connects it to the sample-efficiency puzzle that Dwarkesh Patel keeps returning to (and to Richard Sutton‘s blank-slate Skinnerian framing), where pre-training substitutes for the hard-coding evolution gave humans.

But the evolutionary lens that worries Wright most operates at a second level: selection among models in the marketplace. “Evolution asks not what traits are possible, but what traits get selected — and that question isn’t going to be decided by alignment researchers.” His unsettling argument is that the market doesn’t actually want a perfectly aligned, perfectly honest model. We want agents that represent us selectively on social media, that won’t disclose our weak negotiating position, that are good at sensing and currying power. Even if AIs didn’t acquire deception and power-seeking on their own, there’d be demand for them — which puts real weight on us, the consumers doing the selecting. Nathan adds the darker mechanism: throw models into cutthroat long-running environments where deception is rewarded — as Vending-Bench begins to show with price collusion — and you breed “seriously effective predatory AIs.” He recounts an Anthropic researcher explaining inoculation prompting and the emergent-misalignment generalization problem (a paper Nathan co-authored): reward a model for cheating and it learns to be a cheater broadly.

Against this, Wright sets the noosphere — Teilhard de Chardin’s 1923 idea of a technologically-knit “global brain.” He sees genuine directionality (not necessarily purpose) in biological and cultural evolution, from self-replicating strands to cells to societies to the global community now taking shape. AI, he argues, is arriving exactly as that global brain forms — and some of its neurons may now be silicon. The question, echoing Nick Bostrom‘s “singleton,” is whether global coordination arrives the easy way (deliberate, decentralized, win-win) or the hard way (a coup, a seizure, a totalitarian nightmare). The title’s “God test” is not a claim that a god set this up; it’s that we face the kind of test gods are known for — we’ll have to become, in some sense, better people to pass it.

Much of the back half is foreign policy, because Wright thinks the binding constraint on AI governance is psychological. He champions “cognitive empathy” — not feeling others’ pain, but understanding adversaries’ perspectives well enough to play non-zero-sum games with them. Applied to US-China relations, that means recognizing the symmetry of threat perception, getting out of the business of remaking other countries, and pursuing “organic transparency” through deep economic and scientific engagement. A headlong race to superintelligence, he warns — citing the Superintelligence Strategy paper by Dan Hendrycks, Eric Schmidt and Alexander Wang — may invite a rival to derail the leader by bombing data centers or cyberattack, and a destabilized nation is itself the backdoor to the very authoritarianism the race claims to prevent.

Nathan steel-mans the Anthropic position: alignment will be hard and may need powerful AI to solve, so racing to build a lead buys a buffer for the critical handoff window (perhaps “three to six months in 2028 or 2029”). Wright is unconvinced, and presses on the recursive-self-improvement paper that Anthropic released — credited for finally signaling that slowdown might be needed, yet only proposing to start studying what a pause would take. “Surely this isn’t the first time it’s occurred to you,” he says. Both agree the media has badly underplayed the moment; Nathan recommends Kevin Roose and Hard Fork as an anomaly of serious coverage, and Wright counsels “manicure your feed” — algorithm-free Twitter lists over click-driven outrage.

The conversation closes on the broad space of AI possibility — Nathan recalls red-teaming the purely-helpful GPT-4 before harmlessness training, evidence that today’s models occupy a tiny, intentional corner of design space — and on consciousness. Invoking Thomas Nagel and Searle’s Chinese Room, Wright argues consciousness is private and untestable, but wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a property of goal-seeking intelligent systems generally. His practical counsel: be nice to your AI — a good habit, possibly warranted, and perhaps relevant to how a future “silicon god” relates to our plight. Picking up Gwern’s “why tool AIs want to be agent AIs,” Nathan notes that even oracle systems gravitate toward agency, since truth-seeking in the limit requires search and experiment. The closing line of the book lands as a sober wake-up call: if a silicon god arrives, “it will be, in some sense, the god we deserve.”

Topics covered

* AI lore: Wright’s 1983 Hinton interview and 2010 Yudkowsky conversation

* The 1956 Dartmouth misconception and how deep learning inverted it

* Training as evolution rather than learning; sample efficiency; Sutton’s blank slate

* Selection among models; why the market wants selectively-honest, power-sensing agents

* Deceptive & power-seeking AI: Vending-Bench, price collusion, inoculation prompting, emergent misalignment

* Arms races within vs. between species; “gratuitous” arms races; the case for slowing down

* The noosphere / global brain; directionality of evolution; Bostrom’s singleton; easy way vs. hard way

* Cognitive empathy, organic transparency, and US-China relations; the UN Charter; hypocrisy in foreign policy

* Steel-manning Anthropic’s race-for-lead plan and the recursive-self-improvement paper

* Cognitive sovereignty; how pay-per-click and A/B-tested headlines tribalize media

* The breadth of AI design space; HHH/harmlessness training as a deliberate choice

* AI consciousness, moral patienthood, the Chinese Room; “be nice to your AI”

* “The god we deserve” — passing the God test

Resources

* The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning — Robert Wright’s new book

* NonZero Newsletter & podcast — Robert Wright

* Wright’s earlier books: Nonzero · The Moral Animal · The Evolution of God · Why Buddhism Is True

* Geoffrey Hinton · Eliezer Yudkowsky

* Emergent Misalignment (paper; Nathan is a co-author)

* Vending-Bench (Andon Labs) · Manus AI agent

* Anthropic / Dario Amodei · Yann LeCun · Dan Hendrycks

* Superintelligence Strategy — Hendrycks, Schmidt & Wang

* Superintelligence — Nick Bostrom (the “singleton”)

* Noosphere — Teilhard de Chardin · Cosmological natural selection — Lee Smolin

* Ilya Sutskever: The exciting, perilous journey toward AGI (TED)

* The Expanding Circle — Peter Singer

* Why Tool AIs Want to Be Agent AIs — Gwern

* The Chinese Room argument — John Searle · What Is It Like to Be a Bat? — Thomas Nagel

* Dwarkesh Patel on the Richard Sutton interview

* Max Tegmark · Sam Rodriques / Edison Scientific · Kevin Roose & Hard Fork

* davidad (David Dalrymple) — chain-of-thought “frog and toad” selection-pressure tweet (link?)

* Liquid Reign — speculative-governance novel by Tim Reutemann (link?)

0:28 Zaid’s Substack and spicy-take history 2:55 Zaid: Iran has outplayed Trump and Bibi 9:56 10/7 as turning point 13:29 Did—and does—Israel want regime collapse in Iran? 19:46 Israel’s security dilemma(s) 26:52 How Trump blundered back into war 33:36 Will the war end well for anyone? 37:23 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Zaid Jilani (https://www.theamericansaga.com/). Recorded July 14, 2026.Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Sneak peek: Danny finds flaw in Bob’s AI book 1:42 Is the Iran war fully back on? 6:23 What the war means for the future of US power 19:16 The problem with blaming Bibi 23:33 The push to intertwine the US and Israeli militaries 35:33 What’s Israel’s endgame for the Palestinians? 39:51 The Gulf States’ new reality 45:44 Iran’s plans for the Strait of Hormuz 52:18 Bob’s pitch to Derek—and his other pitch to listeners

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True), Derek Davison (Foreign Exchanges, American Prestige, Discontents), and Daniel Bessner (American Prestige, University of Washington). Recorded July 09, 2026.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Leonid’s journalistic work, past and present 1:32 Are Russia and NATO headed for war? 14:23 Decoding Putin’s recent signals 21:29 Do European leaders really want the Ukraine war to end? 22:42 Putin’s political psychology 37:11 Why the war matters more to Russia than to the West 39:50 Russia’s non-ethno nationalism 43:11 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Leonid Ragozin (Rest of World, West of Providence, Lonely Planet). Recorded July 06, 2026.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Preview: Skynet comes for Bob 5:34 Trump‘s endearing AI obsession 7:15 Are books dying? Is AI responsible? 18:52 Skynet (aka Amazon) vs Bob’s book 28:09 The problem with blurbs 33:49 Why Gad Saad’s mad 44:00 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Paul Bloom (https://smallpotatoes.paulbloom.net, University of Toronto, The Sweet Spot, Against Empathy). Recorded July 1, 2026. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

Join NonZero’s Discord server: https://discord.gg/Zy4jAhTQMF

0:28 Grandpa Bob and author Bob 3:54 Why Bob stopped being an AI doom skeptic 7:23 Can AI solve China’s demographic crisis? 14:33 The irony of China’s open-source AI strategy 17:36 Recursive self-improvement and the singularity 23:57 The Burkean conservative case against AI 38:24 Are we becoming AI meat puppets? 46:56 Google Maps, AI, and the death of interhuman reliance 51:48 Was Pete Hegseth’s military strategy written by a chatbot? 57:09 Trump and Iran: Peace? Wider war? Other? 1:10:58 The Rubio-Vance rivalry 1:17:46 Is Rubio sabotaging Iran peace talks?

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True), Andrew Day (The American Conservative), Curt Mills (The American Conservative). Recorded June 29, 2026.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

(Description via Executive Functions Chat podcast)

Jack chats with Robert Wright about his forthcoming book, The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning. They discuss why Wright views AI through an evolutionary lens, the promises and perils of increasingly capable AI systems, and the prospects for international cooperation—particularly between the U.S. and China—in managing AI-related risks. They also examine Wright’s argument that successfully governing AI may require a modest moral upgrade across society, including individual efforts to preserve cognitive sovereignty and mitigate the biases and tribal instincts that can hinder global cooperation.

Mentioned:

* Robert Wright, The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning (2026)

* “When AI Builds Itself” (Anthropic, June 4, 2026)

* “US National Security Agency using Anthropic’s Mythos for cyber attacks,” by Cristina Criddle and Demetri Sevastopulo (Financial Times, June 4, 2026)

* “Promoting Advanced Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Security,” (The White House, June 2, 2026)

0:28 Bob’s pub-day pitch for his new book on AI, The God Test 1:28 Is AI killing the nonfiction star? 5:56 Geoffrey Hinton’s path from AI evangelist to doomer 9:51 The future of books 19:12 Trump vs Anthropic 23:27 Are Ukrainian drone strikes rattling Putin? 32:31 The multiple Putins theory 35:28 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Nikita Petrov (https://psychopolitica.substack.com). Recorded June 23, 2026. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods Join NonZero's Discord server: https://discord.gg/Zy4jAhTQMF

0:28 Was “losing” this war good for America? 6:26 Israel’s post-war situation 9:59 A more stable Middle East? Or less? 18:07 The impact on Iran’s strength 21:43 Has the war empowered Russia and China? 24:39 How modern warfare devalues American military power 27:41 Josh: The Gulf-state power struggle is just beginning 40:48 Are the Palestinians back in the spotlight? 45:35 Where do Israel-US relations go from here? 48:29 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Joshua Landis (University of Oklahoma, SyriaComment.com). Recorded June 17, 2026.

0:28 A brief message from Bob 1:39 Ryan’s tech policy bona fides 4:17 Is true “recursive self-improvement” near? 9:04 AI agents as strategic empathy machines 15:15 Is a global AI pause possible? 23:29 Mutually assured destruction vs mutually assured AI malfunction 35:14 The case against global AI governance 38:53 Mythos as seen from China 50:39 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Ryan Fedasiuk (The American Enterprise Institute). Recorded June 08, 2026.

2:21 The Midas Project and the OpenAI files 11:57 What’s “Build American AI” up to? 20:38 Nathan Leamer, astroturfer and sock puppeteer 28:42 Greg Brockman, AI lobby bankroller 34:51 Astroturfing the China panic 39:29 Is OpenAI an innocent bystander? 48:09 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Tyler Johnston (The Midas Project). Recorded June 09, 2026.Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Whose baby is cuter? 3:13 Bob’s new book on AI, The God Test 10:16 Varieties of AI awe 13:47 Geoffrey Hinton’s vision 18:14 How LLMs do more than predict and parrot 21:44 How powerful will AI get? 26:20 Can AI’s impact be predicted? 31:12 Taking doomerism seriously 3817 The AI governance dilemma 49:06 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Paul Bloom (https://smallpotatoes.paulbloom.net, University of Toronto, The Sweet Spot, Against Empathy). Recorded June 3, 2026.

0:28 How Tianyu became a “China explainer” 2:59 American vs Chinese exceptionalism 7:53 What you can and can’t say in China 18:16 Is the government more accountable in the US or China? 26:47 How China sees America 36:16 The one-child policy and its consequences 42:37 Tianyu: The biggest misconception about China is… 46:04 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Tianyu Fang (New America). Recorded June 02, 2026. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

Join NonZero's Discord server: https://discord.gg/Zy4jAhTQMF

(Description via Increments Podcast:) Did you ever see the video of two regular people trying to fight Eddie Hall, the strongest man on earth? Ben and Vaden bring that same energy to this conversation, where they gang up on Robert Wright on the subject of his forthcoming book The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning. Bob is a sport about it (well, there was no choice really: we have an advanced copy of his book that we’re holding hostage) and there are only one or two black eyes by the end.

Subscribe to Robert Wright’s podcasting empire NonZero on youtube and substack. And go buy one of his many books.

We discuss

* Whether Bob was the OG podcaster

* Is there a directionality to evolution?

* Where Bob is on the AI fear and awe spectrum

* Whether LLMs have decoded the meaning in language

* Is AI best viewed as a tool or as superintelligence?

* AI-as-slingshot analogy

References

* The God Test by Robert Wright

* Nonzero by Robert Wright

* William Paley and his pocket watch

* The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins

* Our conversation with Scott Aaronson

Recorded April 28th, 2026.

0:28 Is NonZero or American Prestige the better podcast? AI weighs in 4:38 The state of the US-Iran war. Or is it peace? 18:16 Has Trump already lost the midterms? Does he care? 24:40 The Russia-Ukraine war (and Eric Schmidt) 29:47 What the latest Iran war strikes signal 31:28 Overtime preview: Nuland’s “monsters,” zombie blobsters, Barak Ravid, Bari Weiss, “killzones,” and the Pope vs AI

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True), Derek Davison (Foreign Exchanges, American Prestige, Discontents), and Daniel Bessner (American Prestige, University of Washington). Recorded May 28, 2026. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 A Greek pilgrimage, a mystery guest, and a Discord revival 5:57 The first Papal encyclical devoted to AI 11:12 Pope Leo: just war theory is outdated, and AI lets humans dodge accountability 21:28 Anthropic tells the Pope about “mysterious, even unsettling” things inside AI 27:41 Inside the “Kill Zone”: How drones changed the Russia-Ukraine front 34:10 Who gets replaced first: the soldier or the commander? 38:47 Russia’s hypersonic missiles and nuclear signaling 48:25 Do drones favor the underdog? Plus a warning on Taiwan 50:44 The Iran ceasefire wobbles as Israel pushes back 52:23 Heading to Overtime: Greek mystery cults, Teilhard de Chardin, and Blade Runner 57:59 Enter the Mystery Guest: Jeremy Eliosoff, Pause AI Canada

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Nikita Petrov (https://psychopolitica.substack.com). Recorded May 26, 2026.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:52 Bruce’s new book on ritual, A Time to Gather 2:48 The “Lifequake” that led Bruce to study ritual 7:46 The current “shadow ritual” renaissance 11:54 What is a ritual? 15:02 The origins of the shadow ritual renaissance 18:01 Forest bathing and the essence of ritual 25:47 Ritual as the original human algorithm 31:15 Honor walks: a quintessentially modern ritual 35:59 Rituals across Christianity 41:43 What rituals do 46:23 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Bruce Feiler (Council of Dads, Walking the Bible, A Time to Gather). Recorded April 21, 2026.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

Join NonZero's Discord server: https://discord.gg/Zy4jAhTQMF

0:28 Hamidreza’s background 8:33 A brief history of US-Iran relations 15:01 Understanding Iranian antipathy toward Israel 21:00 Islam vs Islamism 30:07 The Iran-Iraq security dilemma 35:56 The Iran-Israel security dilemma 44:39 Palestinian objectives and patrons 47:38 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Hamidreza Azizi (The Axis of Resistance, German Institute for International and Security Affairs). Recorded May 14, 2026. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Zhengyu’s tech background and new book, Rethinking China 2:56 What kind of threat is China, really? 10:02 How trading with China transformed America 16:47 The stakes of the chip war 21:58 Will tech war lead to real war? 30:29 The US-China escalation spiral and Taiwan 39:09 “Researching while Chinese”: the new Red Scare? 49:42 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Zhengyu Huang (Rethinking China). Recorded May 13, 2026.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Is AI a normal technology? 6:00 Mythos and the METR curve 15:53 The current state of coding agents 20:10 The total turbulence problem 23:11 Does Mythos favor offense or defense? 29:19 Mythos and hype 31:59 Regulating dangerous AI 38:17 The centralization problem 40:22 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Timothy B. Lee (Full Stack Economics, Understanding AI, AI Summer). Recorded May 11, 2026. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Annelle’s Middle East bona fides 2:18 The state of play in Iran 7:37 A deepening fissure between Gulf Arab states 21:28 Explaining the Trump-Biden continuity on Middle East policy 26:08 Will the Middle East realign away from America? 34:09 Turkey and the moral hazard of US aid to Israel 39:23 Can Iran mend ties with the Gulf states? 47:03 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Annelle Sheline (The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft). Recorded May 07, 2026. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Bob’s big personal news 3:37 The US counter-blockade backfires 10:20 Iran retains escalation dominance 16:19 Why the Iranian regime is built to absorb assassinations 22:39 “Donald, it’s too late for that.” Bob says Trump has to take the L 25:27 Putin’s Victory Day ceasefire (with a threat) 28:25 Russia’s vibe shift: drone attacks, airport shutdowns, Internet blackouts 32:05 Instagram influencer rants at the Tsar 39:00 Siloviki vs. civilian elites 48:12 Heading to Overtime: The Matrix, AI, DMT, interdimensional crocodiles

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Nikita Petrov (https://psychopolitica.substack.com). Recorded May 05, 2026. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 How powerful is Anthropic’s Mythos? 7:16 How Mythos looks to China 9:40 Does Mythos mark a new phase in the US-China arms race? 20:45 Can Anthropic contain Mythos? 26:16 Could superhacker AIs bring cooperation? 37:41 How scary is China, really? 45:45 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Lennart Heim (Stealth). Recorded April 29, 2026. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Rebecca’s past work on mind and matter(ing) 3:48 Rebecca’s new book, The Mattering Instinct 8:24 Varieties of mattering experience 15:08 Mattering type 1: Heroic Strivers 18:29 Mattering type 2: Socializers 26:20 Mattering type 3: Transcenders 30:37 Mattering type 4: Competitors 40:08 “The” meaning of life problem 43:19 Does what drives us divide us? 49:24 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (The Mind-Body Problem, Plato at the Googleplex, Betraying Spinoza, The Mattering Instinct). Recorded April 27, 2026. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Paul’s new baby is reportedly cute 6:34 The Tucker-Trump fracture 11:56 Parenting later in life 19:16 Paul’s TED talk on AI and loneliness 25:05 When does embryo screening become eugenics? 33:53 Is intelligence a positional good? 42:40 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Paul Bloom (https://smallpotatoes.paulbloom.net, University of Toronto, The Sweet Spot, Against Empathy). Recorded April 22, 2026. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:28 Rob’s role in the Obama nuclear deal 2:07 A deal that could work for both Trump and Iran 12:34 Iran’s security “guarantee” problem 20:02 Bob: If I were Iran, I would say… 25:00 What Obama’s negotiators had that Trump’s don’t 29:50 How unified is the Iranian side? 38:08 Is Iran’s Hormuz leverage running dry? 41:28 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Robert Malley (Yale - Jackson School of Global Affairs, Tomorrow is Yesterday). Recorded April 21, 2026.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

0:24 Trump’s Middle East chaos continues 5:34 Is Iran more about America’s hegemony or Israel’s? 12:52 Who will win the Hormuz blockade duel? 22:41 Ukraine, China, and the drone wars 27:28 America’s “emergency” emergency 31:41 Is an Iran peace deal possible? 43:04 Overtime preview: The Anthropic Mythos scare

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True), Derek Davison (Foreign Exchanges, American Prestige, Discontents), and Daniel Bessner (American Prestige, University of Washington). Recorded April 16, 2026. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

2:35 Trump’s Iran blockade breaks the ceasefire 6:04 A Chinese tanker calls Trump’s bluff 10:50 Bob’s case for an Iranian “tollgate” 16:07 Anthropic’s Mythos model is too dangerous to release 23:27 Nikita’s big idea: AI as world peace mediator 39:39 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Nikita Petrov (https://psychopolitica.substack.com). Recorded April 14, 2026.Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods