Bhtv: Woodruff & Strauss (fast)

What have Matt and Bill been up to? ... A Complete Unknown vs. Netflix ... Should we listen to more Joe Rogan? ... What does Mike Johnson's victory say about the GOP? ... Can Democrats recover? ...

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The uncertain future of AI ... What would it mean to “lose the AI race” to China? ... The promise and peril of artificial general intelligence ... The international policy challenges of AI ... Can Trump deliver peace between Russia and Ukraine? ... Are there any good arguments for Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense? ... Bob: With Iran weakened, Israel faces a decision: bombs or diplomacy ... The continuing assault on Gaza ... Antiwar speech codes ... Apartheid, genocide, ethnic cleansing ... Missed opportunities to turn the temperature down in Israel ... Bob: The international community has little sway over Israel ... The advantages of cognitive empathy ...

Worthwhile Canadian conquest ... Late takes on Luigi Mangione ... Elon’s AI motivation ... Is the successor species sentient? (It matters!) ... Paul’s AI freakout has arrived ... AI buzzword of the year revealed ... Bluesky brutality ... Google’s experimental AI groks humanity ... Heading to Overtime ...

News Round-up ... How progressives should approach Trump's foreign policy ... Anatol Lieven joins to discuss Russia-Ukraine peace talks ...

Conn and the ancestry of this podcast ... Conn’s new book, Sex and the Citizen: How the Assault on Marriage Is Destroying Democracy ... Modern matrimony by the numbers ... Are monogamous societies more egalitarian? ... Why the West went monogamous ... Heading to Overtime ...

Scott’s anti-war libertarianism and his new book, Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine ... How the US made the Russia-Ukraine war more likely ... Was Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution a US-backed coup? ... America’s promise to the Soviet Union not to expand NATO ... Do US officials misunderstand Russia’s perspective? ... Heading to Overtime ...

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Syria’s uncertain political future ... Has the Islamist rebel group HTS actually moderated? ... The extent of retributive violence since Assad fell ... Syria's complicated factional divides ... America's control of Syrian oil fields ... Heading to Overtime ...

Yuri’s high-stakes debate on Covid’s origins ... Pros and cons of Covid vaccines ... Do Covid “coincidences” point to a lab leak? ... Does the pattern of Covid’s initial spread suggest zoonotic origin? ... Why the Wuhan market may have amplified Covid’s spread ... Covid’s lineages A and B ... US-China collaboration in the Wuhan lab’s virology research ...

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A masterclass in audience alienation ... Paul defends Biden’s paternal pardon ... Should family come before societal good? ... The costs of the Hunter pardon ... Was Hunter the victim of a witch hunt? ... Elon sues OpenAI (again) ... Heading to Overtime ...

Anthropic’s CEO comes out as a China hawk ... Why so many China hawks in the AI community? ... Gaming out the AGI takeoff timeline ... Last year’s OpenAI coup: What did Ilya see? ... Underappreciated dangers of the China chip war ... Are US tech leaders seeing China’s perspective clearly? ... Heading to Overtime ...

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Bob’s trip down the JFK rabbit hole gets real ... Will Trump release the JFK files? ... What the CIA actually knew about Oswald, pre-assassination ... The damning Oswald-CIA connection Jeff uncovered ... Was there a second shooter? Bob’s on-the-ground research ... Bob’s research cont’d: grassy knoll geometry ... Was the alleged CIA cover-up just CYA? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Are Bluesky pastures really greener? ... Dissecting SciAm editor’s Bluesky blowup ... Elon’s free speech stolen valor ... The “highlights” of the Paul-Tyson “fight” ... Has the military-industrial complex conquered the AI industry? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Another high-synergy, brilliant collaboration ... Is Elon our first true oligarch? ... Trump assembles his Justice League of hawks ... Biden’s awful foreign policy team ... Trump’s plan to purge the military ... Will Trump go full-on authoritarian? ... Left-wing capitalists—and a discount offer ...

Sam’s place on the AI accelerationist-pauser spectrum ... Predicting AI’s near-term impact ... Is regulating AI a fool’s errand? ... Does strong AI governance court authoritarianism? ... Can Trump and Elon be trusted on AI? ... How Sam thinks AI should be regulated ... Heading to Overtime ...

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Harris's interviews? ... Focus on "fascism"? ... Positions from 2019? ... Sexism? ... Too much of a politician? ... Biden? ... Inflation? ...