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Iran and the Demise of US Hegemony (Robert Wright, Derek Davison, and Daniel Bessner)
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Iran and the Demise of US Hegemony (Robert Wright, Derek Davison, and Daniel Bessner)

Note: Paid NZN subscribers can now get a 50 percent discount on a one-year subscription to Derek’s excellent Substack newsletter, Foreign Exchanges. The discount coupon is at the bottom of this newsletter, below the paywall.

This episode includes an Overtime segment that’s available to paid subscribers. If you’re not a paid subscriber, we of course encourage you to become one. If you are a paid subscriber, you can access the complete conversation either via the audio and video on this post or by setting up the paid-subscriber podcast feed, which includes all exclusive audio content. To set that up, simply grab the RSS feed from this page (by first clicking the “...” icon on the audio player) and paste it into your favorite podcast app.

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0:00 Teaser
1:02 Trump’s Middle East chaos continues
6:04 Is Iran more about America’s hegemony or Israel’s?
13:22 Who will win the Hormuz blockade duel?
23:11 Ukraine, China, and the drone wars
27:58 America’s “emergency” emergency
32:11 Is an Iran peace deal possible?
43:34 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

American Prestige on SupportingCast: https://americanprestige.supportingcast.fm/listen

Overtime titles:
Anthropic’s new AI: mythos vs reality.
RIP the intellectual?
Is Bob feeling la revolución?
Danny’s devastating antisemitism riposte.
JD Vance, the Pope, and Clavicular.
On Christian-Islamic theological relations.

Overtime video:

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