Small Potatoes

Small Potatoes

What's better: AI or indoor plumbing?

Podcast with Robert Wright

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Paul Bloom
Sep 05, 2025
∙ Paid
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Robert Wright and I meet every two weeks or so to discuss the issues of the day. This is a joint production of Small Potatoes and Bob’s Non-Zero Podcast. Here’s the most recent meeting. 

0:00 The Bob-Paul secret sauce—spilled!
3:25 Mickey Kaus's latest contribution to Epsteinology
13:04 Paul fact-checks Mickey, gets fact-checked
19:51 What’s better: AI or indoor plumbing?
28:42 Gary Marcus and Scott Alexander on AI
37:45 Has TV made us smarter?
41:49 The pros of the Google antitrust ruling
48:28 Putin’s paleo-transhumanism
53:05 Heading to Overtime

As many YouTube commentators noticed, we mixed up Inception and Tenet. I’m a big Christoper Nolan fan, so I feel awful about this.

Paid subscribers get the overtime segment, which includes:

Over- and under-rated podcasts.
Bob indicts Paul for pedagogical malpractice.
Bob and Paul on drugs.
Is there a method to Florida’s anti-vax madness?
Bob reminisces about his cancer journey.
Vaccine anxiety vs AI anxiety vs China anxiety.
Andor, South Park, and not much ado about Trump.
A few words about viral evolution.

They also get a special discount offer to Bob’s podcast/newsletter.

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