You're listening to Robert Wright's Non-Zero Podcasts.

Greetings, Earthlings. This is Earthling Unplugged, an edition of the Non-Zero podcast, in which we talk about the latest issue of the earthling,

which is an addition of the non-zero newsletter.

And I'm Robert Wright, and I'm joined by two other people who like me have jobs in the

non-zero media empire, somewhere in the non-zero media empire.

I don't even know where they are right now. It's such a vast empire. But why don't you, so the people will recognize the voices, why don't you say your names rather than me? Okay. I'm Andrew Day and I'm staff writer at the non-zero newsletter. I like this new introduction. This is cool. And this is my voice. And that is Andrew's voice. And this is Connor's voice. Connor Eccles, the managing editor of the non-zero newsletter, the non-zero media empire, coming to you here. Connor, you were accused of having vocal fry. I was accused of having vocal fry. Yeah, I don't know if I do. I don't know.

I think that I have a bad habit.

I think I have a bad habit of at the end of things doing like, that, well, that's what we call vocal fry, Connor. It's definitely vocal fry. That's kind of a long-winded way of saying you have vocal fry. Okay. I never noticed. I really never noticed. Let's tighten this thing up.

I mean, I guess my principles of editing have still been lost on some staff members.

All you had to do is say, I have vocal fry.

I never noticed.

I want to say that comment really annoyed me.

And it's a really good example of why political discourse doesn't work in this format of, like, freaking YouTube comments.

Because that's something you would never say to a person's face if you were just having, like, a dialogue with them about politics.

So, yeah, let's give, like, some sort of bad award to the commenter.

We will hunt him down and make sure that he has brought to justice.

Okay, so a lot happening, some of which was covered in the Earthling. Certainly the Middle East

conflict, major developments there will also be talking about the possibly ill-advised tech war against China that Joe Biden launched.

Well, that Trump launched and Biden ratcheted up.

And some other stuff, stuff about AI, some striking public opinion findings and so on.

So I guess we're starting in the Middle East, two big developments, right?

Yeah, why don't you lay out a little bit?

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