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The Age of Imperialist Realism (Robert Wright & Daniel Bessner)
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The Age of Imperialist Realism (Robert Wright & Daniel Bessner)

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. If you have trouble completing the process, check out this super-simple how-to guide.

0:00 Teaser
0:19 Bob and Danny get experimental
3:11 Danny’s new(ish) book, Imperialist Realism
12:28 Is US imperialism natural?
16:18 America vs other empires
26:04 The three features of imperialist realism
39:37 When did US foreign policy turn cynical?
48:13 Imperialist realism: the video game
52:35 Heading to Overtime

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Daniel Bessner (American Prestige, Imperialist Realism, University of Washington). Recorded October 12, 2026.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

Danny's Substack:

Overtime titles:

Grand Theft Auto and the death of liberalism.
Was international law doomed to fail?
Is Bob a de facto Marxist?
Is fear of China just projection?
Danny: Fukuyama was (half) right.
Superheroic imperialism.
George Soros’s take on Danny.

Overtime video:

This post is for paid subscribers