NonZero Newsletter
Robert Wright's Nonzero
The Pope Takes On AI (Robert Wright & Nikita Petrov)
Preview
0:00
-1:11:45

The Pope Takes On AI (Robert Wright & Nikita Petrov)

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 A Greek pilgrimage, a mystery guest, and a Discord revival
5:33 The first Papal encyclical devoted to AI
10:48 Pope Leo: just war theory is outdated, and AI lets humans dodge accountability
21:04 Anthropic tells the Pope about “mysterious, even unsettling” things inside AI
27:17 Inside the “Kill Zone”: How drones changed the Russia-Ukraine front
33:46 Who gets replaced first: the soldier or the commander?
38:23 Russia’s hypersonic missiles and nuclear signaling
48:01 Do drones favor the underdog? Plus a warning on Taiwan
50:20 The Iran ceasefire wobbles as Israel pushes back
51:59 Heading to Overtime: Greek mystery cults, Teilhard de Chardin, and Blade Runner
57:35 Enter the Mystery Guest: Jeremy Eliosoff, Pause AI Canada

Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Evolution of God, Why Buddhism Is True) and Nikita Petrov (https://psychopolitica.substack.com). Recorded May 26, 2026.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

The voting on the day and time for the AI meetup is underway on the Nonzero Discord server: https://discord.gg/Zy4jAhTQMF

Nikita x Jeremy conversation on Psychopolitica:

Psychopolitica
Metaphysical Implications of Telepathic AI
This is a conversation I had with Jeremy Eliosoff, artist and Canada’s main Pause AI guy, sometime late last year. We talked about telepathic AI, DMT, lucid dreaming, art, and dogs watching TV (these are the topics I remember; dogs watching TV is a metaphor for our level of understanding reality). It was a lot of fun…
Listen now

Overtime titles:

Pause AI.
Nikita’s Greek dream retreat: oracles, black rams, sacred snakes.
Teilhard de Chardin’s noosphere: a planetary brain of brains.
Kin selection, cooperating cells, and the search for connection.
Philip K Dick’s vision of a holographic reality.
Waking Life.
Blade Runner 2049.

This post is for paid subscribers