2025: A Year-End (And Quarter-Century-End) Reckoning (Robert Wright & Paul Bloom)

2025: A Year-End (And Quarter-Century-End) Reckoning (Robert Wright & Paul Bloom)

Author: Bloggingheads.tv December 30, 2025 Duration: 1:00:00
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 ...

For over a decade, Bloggingheads.tv has been a unique fixture in the digital landscape, pairing experts and thinkers for in-depth, unscripted dialogues. This podcast captures the essence of those conversations, transforming the split-screen "diavlog" format into an engaging audio experience. You'll hear scholars, journalists, and practitioners dive deep into the week's developments across politics and policy, but the discussions consistently branch into the scientific discoveries, cultural shifts, and public health questions that shape our world. The range is deliberately broad, with episodes moving from a nuanced film analysis to a debate on medical ethics, all grounded in substantive expertise. It’s the intellectual curiosity and genuine exchange between hosts that defines this series, offering listeners a chance to eavesdrop on smart, meandering talks that refuse to stay within narrow lanes. Tune into this podcast not for soundbites, but for the kind of thoughtful, long-form exploration that reveals how interconnected ideas in news, science, and culture truly are.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 42

Bloggingheads.tv
Podcast Episodes
The Meaning of Moltbook (Robert Wright & Paul Bloom) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:00
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 Ale…
The Grand Unified Theory of MAGA (Robert Wright & Nikita Petrov) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:00
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 ...…
The Case Against AI (Robert Wright, Alex Hanna, and Emily Bender) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:00
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 .…
AI After Us: The "Succession" Scenario (Robert Wright & Dan Faggella) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:00
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 succ…
The Past and Future of Digital Media (Robert Wright & Mike Pesca) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:00
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 alg…
The Minneapolis Shooting Rorschach Test (Robert Wright & Paul Bloom) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:00
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 to…
NASA’s Plans for the Moon and Mars (Robert Wright & Cameron Berg) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:00
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…
NASA’s Plans for the Moon and Mars (Robert Wright & Joel Achenbach) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:00
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? ... Head…