#175 – Yannis Pappas: History and Comedy

Yannis Pappas is a comedian and podcaster. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: – Wine Access: https://wineaccess.com/lex to get 20% off first order – Blinkist: https://blinkist.com/lex and use code LEX to get 25% off premium – Magic Spoon: https://magicspoon.com/lex and use code LEX to get $5 off – Indeed: https://indeed.com/lex to get $75 credit EPISODE LINKS: Yannis’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/yannispappas Long Days Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCywn6iboO1P8U7fotfllocw Stand Up Special: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R156F0uXhzk PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: – Check out the sponsors above, it’s the best way to support this podcast – Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman – Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman – Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman – LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman – Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman – Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) – Introduction (08:39) – Tim Dillon and absolute power (16:00) – Mortality (24:01) – Immortality (31:47) – Dogs (38:26) – Power (43:46) – Hyenas (49:00) – Nature is metal (51:53) – Battle of Crete (59:21) – History is written by the victors (1:04:09) – History Hyenas podcast (1:16:18) – Bernie Madoff (1:19:23) – Jeffrey Epstein (1:24:16) – Hitler (1:26:24) – Conspiracy theories (1:29:34) – Andrew Yang and New York City (1:33:01) – Podcast with Lex’s dad (1:36:09) – Andrew Yang and the prison-industrial complex (1:41:57) – Queen Elizabeth (1:49:04) – Advice for young people

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lex Fridman?

  The following is a conversation with Yanis Papas, a comedian who co-hosted the podcast History Hyenas that I came across when I was researching the Battle of Crete from World War II. He and his co-hosts were hilarious in their rants about history and about life. The chemistry they have is probably the best of any co-hosted comedy podcast, or even podcasts in general, that I've ever heard. As of a few weeks ago, unfortunately, History Hyenas is no more, at least for now, because all good things must come to an end. But Yanis hosts a new podcast called Long Days with Yanis Papas. Plus, he has a comedy special on YouTube for free.

• 0:45Lex Fridman?

  Quick mention of our sponsors: Wine Access, Blinkist, Magic Spoon, and Indeed. Check them out in the description to support this podcast. As a side note, let me say that some of you have noticed that I have not spoken with too many computer scientists, physicists, biologists, or engineers recently. The reason has to do mostly with the risk aversion of many of these folks in the time of COVID, especially as they get closer to taking the vaccine. I'm tested several times a week, and still, some people are just more willing than others to have an in-person conversation in these times. I only do these podcasts in person because I look for the possibility of a genuine human connection. I'm willing to sacrifice a lot for that.

• 1:30Lex Fridman?

  Maybe it's silly, but I look for the magic that Charles Bukowski writes about in his poem Nirvana. The magic that is somehow in the air on those rare occasions when two people meet, talk, and you notice that while on the surface you may be worlds apart, you're still somehow woven from the same fabric. I've had that with many guests. Jim Keller comes to mind, but many others as well. I'm an AI person. Machine learning, robotics, computer science is my passion. Trust me, I can't wait to be having more technical conversations again, but I will also continue to mix in comedians, musicians, historians, and of course, Wise, all seeing sages like Yanis Pappas and Tim Dillon.

• 2:15Lex Fridman?

  Just to keep it, as Tim likes to say, fun. As usual, I'll do a few minutes of ads now. I try to make these interesting, but I give you timestamps because I value your time and listening experience, so you can skip, but please still check out the sponsors in the description. I'm fortunate to be able to be very selective with the sponsors we take on. So hopefully, if you buy their stuff, you'll find value in it, just as I have. Click their links in the description. It really is the best way to support this podcast. This episode is sponsored by Wine Access, online store with expertly selected wine. I love it because it lets me explore wines. Steak, red wine, and a good conversation with a good friend is my idea of a perfect

• 3:00Lex Fridman?

  evening. My current recommendation is the, and here I try to pronounce, an incredibly beautiful sounding wine, 2017 Sagesio Family Vineyards Old Vine Zinfendo from Sonoma County. There's a lot of fascinating things about this wine, including the fact that it comes from small grapes that apparently intensified the flavor. I don't know about all that, I just know it's delicious. To me, there's something about wine that creates a certain kind of atmosphere. You know, without COVID, the plan actually for me was to go to Paris to meet a few people there and also to record a few conversations. And, you know, outside of all that, just meeting certain kinds of strangers over some

• 3:43Lex Fridman?

  good food and good wine in Paris, I think is something I looked forward to for a long time. There's few things I enjoy more than connecting with cool people over a bit of alcohol. Anyway, get 20% off your first order when you go to wineaccess.com/lex. The discount will be applied at checkout. That's wineaccess.com/lex to see my wine picks and to get the discount.

• 4:10Lex Fridman?

  This episode is also sponsored by Blinkist, my favorite app for learning new things. Blinkist takes the key ideas from thousands of nonfiction books and condenses them down into just 15 minutes that you can read or listen to. They also have shortcasts, which are summaries of podcasts. They basically pick some podcasts that are summarizable, which is not this podcast, or at least I don't think so, and certainly not the long form podcasts like Joe Rogan Experience and so on. I think an exciting life, a productive life, a fulfilling life, is one that includes books, or at least a lot of learning.

• 4:49Lex Fridman?

  And I think long form reading, AKA books, is actually one of the deepest ways to think through a subject. I don't read just for the reading, I read for the thinking. So Blinkist is almost like an introduction to the book, and the book itself is a deep dive and a chance to really think. Anyway, go to blinkist.com/lex to start your free seven day trial and get 25% off a Blinkist Premium Membership, which is what they want you to get. That's blinkist.com/lex. Go there now. This episode is sponsored by Magic Spoon, low carb keto-friendly cereal.

• 5:29Lex Fridman?

  It has zero grams of sugar, 13 to 14 grams of protein, only 49 grams of carbs, and 140 calories in each serving. This month, they're bringing back the OG blueberry flavor. My favorite flavor is still cocoa, but blueberry is pretty good, too. And there's some good news for our Canadian friends up north. They now ship to Canada, too. In fact, I'm quickly making a bunch of friends in Canada, and I definitely need to travel to Canada soon. One of my favorite cities is Montreal, but I also need to go to Toronto, and also a bunch of smaller towns as well. In the machine learning space, in the computer science space, physics as well, there's so many brilliant people over there.

• 6:12Lex Fridman?

  I just love Canada, so I can't wait until COVID is over and we can travel again and meet some cool people again. Anyway, Magic Spoon has a 100% happiness guarantee. So if you don't like it, they'll refund it. Go to magic spoon.com/lex and use code Lex at checkout to save $5 off your order. That's magic spoon.com/lex and use code Lex. This episode is also sponsored by Indeed, a hiring website. I've used them as part of many hiring efforts I've done for the teams I've led. The main task is to quickly go from a huge number of initial applicants to a short list of great candidates.

• 6:54Lex Fridman?

  I've been in the process of hiring a few folks to help me out with this little side project of mine with the podcast and the videos and all those kinds of things. But if I decide to also go on that old painful entrepreneurial journey, I will definitely need to be hiring in a whole nother scale. And it's of course obvious to say, but the most important aspect of creating something special is hiring the right kind of people to create that special thing with you. And I'm not just thinking about what's good for a business. I'm just thinking about happiness and fulfillment. There's few things as awesome as working on a team where all of you are rowing in the same direction. And it just feels good to wake up in the morning and look forward to the day.

• 7:39Lex Fridman?

  Because there's just a right combination of passion and excellence to where you just might get a chance to create something special. Anyway, right now, get a free $75 credit at indeed.com/lex. It used to be slash Friedman. That still works, but they made it easier with the slash Lex. Indeed.com/lex. That's their best offer anywhere. Get it at indeed.com/lex. Terms and conditions apply. Indeed.com/lex. Because they have lost all faith in your ability to spell Friedman. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast, and here's my conversation with Yanis Pappas.

• 8:39Lex Fridman?

  You've co-hosted, until recently, an amazing history comedy podcast called The History Hyenas. So you're a bit of a student of history?

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, an F student of history.

• 8:51Lex Fridman?

  F student, okay. I thought it was more like a D minus.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  D minus, yeah.

• 8:54Lex Fridman?

  Okay.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Still gotta repeat the grade if you get all D minuses. I actually had a .67 GPA average my freshman year and I had to do it again. This is, this podcast is gonna be the spectrum of human intelligence. It runs the gamut from there to here.

• 9:07Lex Fridman?

  So this is gonna set the low bar.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  I'm barely sliding into human. I'm closer to chimp.

• 9:13Lex Fridman?

  And I bring that up, that you're also friends with the great, the powerful Tim Dillon. So let's talk about power and the corrupting effects of power. Sometimes I look at Tim Dillon as he grows in power.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  I thought you meant in size.

• 9:32Lex Fridman?

  Well, size, I think they're correlated.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. I saw him, I've been in Austin a couple of days. I saw him once. We had eight meals in one day.

• 9:40Lex Fridman?

  Eight meals?

• 9:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I feel like I've been here longer than I have just because of the meals with Dillon. Kid likes biscuits and barbecue.

• 9:47Lex Fridman?

  Okay. So he's more like, see, I was imagining Putin or somebody like that. He's more like the North Korean dictator. Okay. All right.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  They'd get along great, those two.

• 9:57Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  They would get, I mean, Tim Dillon and King John Um would be like, they could make like a buddy cop movie. They would get along like Lethal Weapon. That would be a good pitch movie.

• 10:05Lex Fridman?

  Great podcast.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, that would be a great podcast. Yeah.

• 10:08Lex Fridman?

  So much to talk about. So many similar ideas about the world. So what do you think the world would look like if Tim Dillon was given absolute power? He seems like a person... That's an interesting study of the corrupting effects of power.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, you don't want to give him power. You don't want, I don't even want him wearing a suit. Like, I want a guy who's as thoughtful and educated as you wearing a suit. Like, because, you know, suits corrupt you. You put that suit on, you start feeling that power.

• 10:36Lex Fridman?

  Definitely.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  It's like, you know, yeah, I don't even want Tim Dillon in a suit. Power would, he would kill people. He'd get rid of anything that he deemed. I mean, if you made a lobster roll and it wasn't up to Tim Dillon's standard, he would have you executed.

• 10:48Lex Fridman?

  The entire restaurant staff is just gone.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  He would have people below his food standard executed. There'd be pogroms, not of people who are political dissidents, but of people who don't meet his food standard. His cuisine standard is high, and he's usually right.

• 11:03Lex Fridman?

  Do you think power does corrupt people?

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:06Lex Fridman?

  Like, one of the reasons we mentioned offline, Joe Rogan, he's been an inspiration to me because he gets, he gets, if you get power, just more famous and famous, and yes, probably a bit of power in terms of influence. And he's still pretty much the same guy. I'm not sure that's going to be true for everybody. Do you ever think, ask yourself that question?

• 11:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's a rare breed. He's like a benign king. I've, most people I meet who are like really powerful are like douchebags, and that's how they got there. I think that's, psychopaths have the advantage because they don't have feelings. And Joe's a rare example. He's just a powerhouse of will. And I, he, I do think about that, yeah. I think I should be stopped right now. Just stop me right now because, yeah, power for me, I would, when people get power, they indulge. I don't think it changes anyone. It just reveals your darkest. You know, people aren't supposed to have anything they want. You gotta be able to struggle for everything. So I would have a harem. I'd be like a Roman dictator. Yeah, I'd be like a Roman emperor. I mean, people called them emperors. They were dictators. The most effective leaders are dictators. I hope we get back to that. Democracy hasn't worked.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  I'm ready for a succession of Caesars, and I want to start with AOC.

• 12:15Lex Fridman?

  That's true, dictators get the job done.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  They do, they do. At certain point, you got, that's why social workers can only get you so far. You need action. I was a social worker for five years and all you do is ask about medications and you don't solve anything.

• 12:28Lex Fridman?

  I do ask myself of that, like, because I'm more in the tech space of constructing systems that prevent me from being corrupt. Because right now, I'm all about love and all about those kinds of things. But I wonder, you said like, it just reveals the darkness. The problem is, we might not be aware of our own darkness. I have the same feeling about money, actually. I've been avoiding, thinking about money, like, basically constructing my moral system, my moral compass around money. It's like, the moment I feel a little too happy about the idea of owning some cool shiny thing, I start to think, okay, I'm not gonna own that shiny thing. Because I'm afraid of the slippery slope of it.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:13Lex Fridman?

  You ever think about that kind of stuff?

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. The funny thing about our, the capitalist system is it's a, it's, it puts sort of a profit motive above beauty. And you notice when you see certain cities, especially in the old days where like, buildings used to be beautiful. And now they're just like boxes, they throw a kit up and it's just for all profit margin. It's, it's the illusion of permanence that, you know, it's like, oh, let me get as much money as I can. You're like, yeah. You know, my dad used to say, you know, everyone, it's a cliche, but you can't take it with you. So it's kind of, it's comical to me that we're here trying to get this infinite amount, like they were climbing, it's like Sisyphus, we're all trying to climb this hill, but, I mean, a rock's gonna fall on us. So I think that's a healthy outlook, yeah.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  My dad always used to say before he passed, you know, he would say, you can't, you have to survive not only physically, but you have to survive emotionally. I think a lot of people forget about the emotional part of survival. You have to survive emotionally and humor and, and, and understanding reality in its objective context helps with that. Accepting reality as this ephemeral thing that you're in really just a part of, but not as significant as your ego wants you to believe, is a, is a start. That's a good foundation for surviving emotionally.

• 14:30Lex Fridman?

  What's that mean, surviving emotionally? Like, what's an ideal life look like where you're thriving?

• 14:36Speaker 01

  You can't take things too seriously. You can't, because they're ephemeral. They're not permanent. Nothing's permanent. Your bank account's not permanent. Your problems aren't permanent. Nothing's permanent. Your abilities aren't permanent. Your memory's not permanent. Your dick getting hard's not permanent. Can I curse on this, or is this go out to jail?

• 14:53Lex Fridman?

  You can curse to your heart's content.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  OK, yeah. I mean, gender's not even permanent anymore. I think I'm gonna change, maybe, and live my second half as another gender, just to have... I'm bored with this gender. So it's like, nothing is permanent. And so, accepting that emotionally is a good start to being more flexible. You gotta be flexible. Like, my dad used to say, anything too stiff snaps. You gotta, you know, it's a cliche, and people have said it a bunch of different ways. But Bruce Lee's right, man. Be water. Be water.

• 15:24Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. Bukowski has this quote about love, that love is a fog that fades with the first light of reality. So he's a romantic, that guy. But that even love is a thing that just doesn't last very long.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  No.

• 15:39Lex Fridman?

  You know, some people would disagree with that. Maybe it morphs, like water. It changes, right? It might not be, it might not be this... Because he's mostly just loved, like, prostitutes, I think.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  The best kind of love, yeah. No demand, no responsibilities.

• 15:55Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it's a financial transaction.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:58Lex Fridman?

  Ephemeral as ever. You mentioned your dad. He passed away a year and a half ago. What did you learn from him?

• 16:09Speaker 01

  I love my dad. My dad, I would say, my dad was my hero. He was just, my dad really embodied those values. And I think, for better or worse, it's made me who I am. He's, he, my dad was a painter. He was a lawyer. He was a... He was a, you know, a lieutenant in the military.

• 16:28Lex Fridman?

  New Yorker.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  New Yorker, born and bred Brooklyn. His dad, his dad, you know, surprise owned a diner. So that's, that's sort of the Greek passport. That's the immigration passport for Greeks into America. And, um, yeah, my dad played football. He just, my dad did what he wanted. He lived as he wanted at all costs. And I think I got that from him for better or worse. I think it's hurt me in my pursuits. If you consider money and fame to be paramount. You know, I, I've always done what I wanted. If I stopped wanting to do it, I just stopped doing it. And I think I got that from my dad. So maybe for better or worse, that's what I learned from him. But that's a real currency, you know? Feeling like you're in love with what you're doing when you're doing it. Maybe perhaps that's worth more than money. I don't know.

• 17:14Lex Fridman?

  You miss him?

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, every day, every day. But I'm happy that, uh, he, he got 91 years. It's very rare. I mean, he smoked for 60 years. Talk about like a guy who was an outlier. I mean, he smoked like 60 years, like packs. I mean, and he didn't die from that. He died, he had a prostate cancer, which is the way men should go. Your dick should give out. It should start from the dick. I mean, we focus so much of our life on the dick.

• 17:39Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  That that's the way, that's a successful life. And that's why every man eventually gets prostate cancer. Cause that is the universe's way of saying like, the thing you focused on the most is you put the most energy into is the thing that's spent. And it's gonna, your, your rotting is gonna start there. So that's a successful life.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  And it just spread all over his body and he slowly died. I was with him when he died and that meant a lot to me. Cause me and my brother weren't talking at the time, cause we're Greeks. We're, we're talking again, but that's how it is.

• 18:08Lex Fridman?

  You got a few brothers, right?

• 18:09Speaker 01

  I got two brothers. But I wanted to make sure I was with him, uh, when he died. And I got lucky and I was in the room with him when he died.

• 18:16Lex Fridman?

  You were in the room with your brother and you weren't?

• 18:19Speaker 01

  No, my brother wasn't there. We were kind of doing shifts. I was, I was there. I spent the night, the dad, my, the, the night my dad died. He died in the, early in the morning. And I heard the, the death right out of the last breath. And it was just, I think it was, uh, I, he knew I was there. And, uh, I think that just probably meant something to him. And I'm just glad I was there.

• 18:38Lex Fridman?

  Does that make you sad that, uh, life is ephemeral? Like you said?

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:42Lex Fridman?

  That, that you die?

• 18:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:44Lex Fridman?

  What do you think about your own death? You meditate on that?

• 18:46Speaker 01

  I think it, I think the actual, if there is a point to life, it's to, um, Hopefully not fear death, to accept reality. I think that's important. I think so much goes awry in the human condition when we lose touch with reality. Every political system that's led to mass murder and everything, I think because it's because the the tenants of those political philosophies ended up being utopian. They were detached from reality, detached from nature. And so I think it's it's very important to accept and acknowledge your own mortality. I think it's the foundation for what makes a good person, a moral person, a contributing member of society, because it's true.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  True things should be the foundation of all things. If if if what you believe is based on illusion, you're going to end up doing destruction. Whether that destruction's on a scale of one to 10, you are going to be destructed because it's not real. It's a fantasy, it doesn't exist.

• 19:46Lex Fridman?

  See, the thing is, though, truth is about, I don't think you can ever reach truth. Truth is about like constantly digging. And to push back in your idea that you should accept death, I think the more honest response to death, so the least honest is to run away from it, create illusions that help you imagine like there's not a death. The next is to accept it, but the real honest one is to fear it. Because I I mean, I'm I'm with Ernest Becker as a philosopher, who wrote a book called Denial of Death. He says that the like much of the human condition is based in the fear of mortality, that we like that's that's the creative force of the human energy. Like Freud said, you want to sleep with your mother?

• 20:30Lex Fridman?

  He said, no, that's not what motivates you.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  Maybe his mom wasn't hot, though. I mean, or he wasn't Greek, because apparently Oedipal, we we found we found it all things good and bad. Yeah.

• 20:41Lex Fridman?

  Thanks, thanks for that. Thanks.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  I just don't know if his mom was luck or not. I mean, I'd have to Google it.

• 20:46Lex Fridman?

  All right.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:48Lex Fridman?

  I'll look up on Google Images.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:50Lex Fridman?

  No, but I think the honest, as he says, the thing that we run away from is that there's a terror. He calls it like terror. There's something called terror management theory that's Some philosophers after him followed on that were basically trying to run away from this fear. And acceptance is actually creating an illusion for yourself, like you can actually accept something as terrifying as this. So he's more with the Stoics, the Stoic constantly meditate on their death. I mean, they, what does that mean? I mean, it's kind of, you know, acceptance of death isn't a thing you do like on a Monday and then you're done.

• 21:30Lex Fridman?

  It's a thing you constantly have to meditate on, like reminding yourself, like this ride is over. It could be over today. And that's something you're, if you think about every single day.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  It gives you an appreciation of Woody Allen movies, at least.

• 21:45Lex Fridman?

  It gives you appreciation of basically everything, including Woody Allen movies, which shows you how deep your appreciation for life could be. I've actually haven't been following much of Woody Allen's, but apparently he's been a troublemaker through most of his life.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  He's, yeah, I mean, you know, he's caused a little bit of strife. He's left a little, uh, yeah, he's left a little confusion in his wake, for sure. But I mean, you know, that's another one, separate the art from the artist. He's got, I mean, the guys will go down in history as the greatest. He's made, I mean, a movie a year and they're all, you can always find something good about each movie, like the dialogue or whatever. Um, I love what you're saying. It's interesting, but the only thing I would say to push back a little bit, since we're playing a little table tennis here.

• 22:26Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Is, um, I don't know if it's a choice to fear death. That's more of an, it seems more instinctual. It seems like something that nature wants you to do because I've been in positions where I thought I was going to die. Like I've been shot and I had those moments. And then nature also, uh, you know, kicks in an instinct, which is acceptance. Where you kind of, I don't, it's a chemical release or whatever. I don't know, you know, we're all, we're robots, basically. So some sort of chemical is released that protects you. But there is an acceptance. I don't know how much, uh, was a conscious choice, probably very little. And that's the point I'm making is it's, it's instinctual. We don't really have a choice in fearing death. Otherwise there would be no progression.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  We wouldn't, all life seems to want to survive, uh, not by choice, but by instinct.

• 23:15Lex Fridman?

  So he argues that the fear is not the instinctual, it's not the animalistic stuff. That's the thing that makes us special is the, what humans are able to do is to have a knowledge that we're going to die one day. Animals don't have that. Animals' fear is instinctual. It's like, holy shit, what's that sound over there? He says we're actually able to contemplate the fact that this ride ends. And that, that kind of cognitive construct is difficult for us to deal with. Like, what the hell does that mean? Like, just to, just to think about, it's gonna be over at a certain point. It's just over, lights out. Like, it's very difficult to kind of load that into whatever this like little brain we got.

• 24:00Lex Fridman?

  Like, what does that actually mean?

• 24:01Speaker 01

  Maybe that's what gives everything meaning.

• 24:04Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Because if everything lasted forever, if, if this went on ad infinitum, there would be no meaning to it. It'd be like, hey, if I don't see you tomorrow, I'll see you in a million years. There would be no meaning, there would be no urgency, there would be no feelings, there'd be no, uh, nothing of magnitude or superficiality. It would all just be this kind of, it would be torture. It would actually, that would actually be torture to be here forever. I mean, I'm already sick of this place and I'm just in my 40s, like, I'm done. I'm sick of me, I'm sick of everything.

• 24:34Lex Fridman?

  You know, a lot of people, when they talk about mortality, they consider, they consider mortality appealing because you get a chance to do basically all these things you might not get a chance to do otherwise. Like, all the kinds of travel broadly, explore, read every book, explore every idea, do every hobby, all those kinds of things. Somebody else I was talking to mentioned, uh, the reality of being immortal would be more likely, I like this idea, more likely would be you just sitting there doing nothing because, and putting off all that travel and exploration till later because you'll always have time.

• 25:16Lex Fridman?

  And so what you're gonna have, what actual immortality would look like for a bunch of humans, is people sitting there doing nothing.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  It'd be like a Greek kafania, just sitting there drinking coffee, watching, I love it.

• 25:26Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  I mean, it's a lazy man's paradise, yeah.

• 25:30Lex Fridman?

  But it's so interesting because that rings true to me for what humans are like is we'll basically just put off all those exciting adventures and just be lazy, become lazier and lazier and lazier because you always have a chance to do all the exciting things. And we'll just get, we'll basically become Tim Dill. We just sit there and have a podcast and that's it.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  He works hard. Yeah, I mean, that sounds actually like heaven, dude. That's speaking of my heart, really. I mean, I'm at heart. I'm a very lazy person. I always try to find ways to lie down. Like if I'm sitting, I'll figure out a way to kind of contort myself to lay down. That's an interesting thing to like, yeah, if you can always push something off, yeah, I like that. I think that's heaven.

• 26:14Lex Fridman?

  See, we just changed your mind. You kind of like the immortality.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I kind of like it. No, so there'll be no thirsts, no, you can always put it off. Hey, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna have, I wanna bang this girl. You're like, I'll put it off. But now I'm thinking about Muslim heaven and they may be offering the best deal. I mean, if it was an expo and they had a booth, I may go with them because they offer, they offer 62 or 72, but then I'd get sick of them. I'd wanna, I don't know. I always wondered, like, are you given the 62 virgins or you choose, can you create them like an avatar, like a video game, or are you just given?

• 26:49Lex Fridman?

  I don't know what the number, why it's important to have that high number. First of all, I think it's a mistranslation about the virgins, but outside of that, outside of that, I feel like the conversation is really important. I don't think they ever specify like what kind of books these girls read, like what are they, what are they into? Like, the quality of the conversation, I think if you're talking about eternity, the quality of the intellect and the conversation and the personalities is way more important.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  And the Greeks have an ancient, ancient expression, pat metronariston, which my mother always used to say, which is everything in moderation, nothing in excess. So trying to always get the status quo. And yeah, that many women, eventually it's like the Magic Johnson effect, Isaiah Thomas effect. It's just too much and you're gonna end up, you're gonna end up banging a dude is what I'm saying. You're gonna get sick of it because it's too much and there's going Going to be a eunuch that finds its way into your harem. That's been proven throughout history, every empire. When you have all that power, and again, this goes back to power corrupting. If you have, if there's no struggle, there's no meaning, there's. The value is from the journey, the, the working hard, the struggle. And if it's just given to you because you're a sultan or you're Alexander the Great or whatever.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  You're gonna get bored and you're gonna bang a dude. That's it's, I think that's a scientific axiom, actually. Eventually you'll get bored and bang a dude.

• 28:08Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, but I think it won't stop there. I think you'll go to animals, you go to robot. I mean, eventually it all ends up in robots and then the robots rebel and then the humans will be destroyed.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:17Lex Fridman?

  I'm sorry, if, if we're speaking truth, you said the value of, of life. One of the highest ideals is to seek truth, I think.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a quick question? If you, if you live in a small, I come from small islands, right? And so there's a stereotype that that's where they bang animals. But if you come from a very small community.

• 28:35Lex Fridman?

  Yes.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  You know, an island or something, and you have the choice of banging a family member or an animal. Which one is worse on the moral scale? Cause you're technically not related to the animal.

• 28:44Lex Fridman?

  Right, this is interesting. I mean, all of these are human constructs, these ideas, but yet for me personally, taboo would be more taboo to, to, to have sex with a family member.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:54Lex Fridman?

  I mean, animal, I mean, okay.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  It's good to know where you stand on that. I think your viewers, you know, if they didn't have, they didn't know they had that question. I, they just learned a little bit about you and now I know.

• 29:03Lex Fridman?

  I look forward to the internet clipping that out.

• 29:09Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I mean, there, there is, listen, in some, outside of, outside of that. I do think about that a lot, it sounds ridiculous, about morality connected to animals. In terms of all the, the factory farming and so on. It seems like that's one of the things we'll look, cause I love meat. But I kind of feel bad about it. And, and bad in a way where I think if we look like a hundred years from now, we'll look back at this time. As like one of the great, like tortures and injustices that we humans have committed. And I mean, all that has to do with the sex with the animal, has to do with consent and about the experience of suffering of animals. The reason I think about that personally a lot, cause I think about robotics.

• 29:55Lex Fridman?

  I think about creating artificial.

• 29:58Lex Fridman?

  Consciousnesses are artificial beings that have some elements of the human nature. And then you start to think like, well, what does it mean to suffer? What does it mean for entity to exist such that it deserves rights? This is something that the founding fathers were thinking about, like, you know, all men are created equal. What is it? Which? Who is included in the men? Who is not in that in that sentence? And are animals included in that? Are robots? I honestly think that there will be a civil rights movement for robots in the future.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  I don't know. Is that the Turing test? The way you try to? Is that what they call it? Where you're trying to see if AI can think like a human or whatever, or feel like a human?

• 30:41Lex Fridman?

  Well, it's the Turing test closely defined is more about talk like a human. So you can you can imagine systems that are able to you can have a conversation like this and I would be a robot, for example. But that doesn't mean I would in the in society, that doesn't mean I deserve rights. Or that doesn't mean I would be conscious. It doesn't mean that I would be able to suffer and to experience pleasure and dream and all those kinds of human things. The question isn't whether you're able to talk, which is passing the Turing test. The question is whether you're able to feel, to be, I mean, I go back to suffering.

• 31:21Lex Fridman?

  The thing that the that our documents protect us against is suffering. Like, we don't want humans to suffer. And if a robot can suffer, that discussion starts being about like, well, shouldn't we protect them? Currently, we don't protect animals.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  We protect that dogs. There's laws, there's actual legislation that protects dogs.

• 31:46Lex Fridman?

  For torture.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  Certain places, yeah. And you know what, dogs is something I don't think people really understand enough about. It's one of my obsessions, so they, they, my dad always used to say, he goes, those things are, those things are basically human. And I mean, they dream, they have anxiety. And what people often overlook about dogs is without dogs, we wouldn't be here. We would not have ever evolved from hunter gatherer to agrarian to, you know, civilization. We wouldn't have cities, we wouldn't have anything. I mean, they are our partner in survival. And they are a magical animal. There's no, there's no animal that was, it was like destiny almost.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  I mean, a malleable animal, there's no animal that's that malleable that in a few generations, you can tailor to a specific job that you need. And without that animal, without dogs doing that animal, protecting our crops from, from, you know, scavengers and stuff like that, you know, the list goes on, we wouldn't be here. So we, that's an often overlooked fact that human evolution was not done in a vacuum just with humans. I mean, without dogs, we would have never evolved. I mean, we weren't the apex predator. For most of our existence, we weren't even the apex predator. I mean, we're getting eaten by hyenas, which is my favorite animal. You know, that's kind of an injustice to, I mean, I'm kind of mad at dogs. We deserve to get eaten by hyenas, but without dogs, we wouldn't be here.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  And dogs, dogs deserve the protection. So do horses. They fucking lugged us around for thousands of years. And now these fucking German psychopaths are eating them or whatever. We should not eat horse meat just on like, be a good dude, man. These things lugged us around for generations. They're beautiful, you know, ride them or I don't know. I don't know, but it, it rubs me the wrong way that we eat horses.

• 33:33Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, the, the horses one is interesting. And one of my favorite books is Animal Farm by Orwell. And the horses don't get a good ending in that, I kind of, my spirit animal, I suppose, is the horse from Animal Farm, Boxer, where he says, I will work harder. That's his motto. I, I work really hard at stupid things. That's, that's basically what I, I just hit my head against the wall for no reason whatsoever.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  But that probably fulfills, you have a big brain, you were probably born with a big brain. That kind of fulfills.

• 34:02Lex Fridman?

  Killing neurons.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  It's exercise for you.

• 34:04Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  Don't you think some animals deserve to be eaten though? Kind of like?

• 34:08Lex Fridman?

  Hyenas.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  Come on, dude. I mean, you gotta respect the hyena.

• 34:13Lex Fridman?

  Okay, so first of all, let me just comment on the dog thing. There is like conferences on dog cognition from a perspective of people that study psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience. Dogs are fascinating. The way they move their eyes, they're able to, they're the only other animal besides humans, they're able to communicate with their eyes. They can look at a thing and look back at you and look back at the thing to communicate that we're all like, through our eyes communicate that we're collaborating. So every other animal uses their eyes to actually look at things. The dogs use it to like communicate with you, with us humans. It's fascinating. There's a lot of other elements of dogs that are amazing.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, if it wasn't for them, they're the ones, they were our first alarm system for predators. They would defend us. I mean, the Basenji is one of the most ancient dogs. I mean, they're tiny, but they're fearless.

• 35:01Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  And they would chase off lions, like, you know, there'd be packs of them and they'd chase off lions and protect the tribes. It's, I even get tingles like thinking about dogs, because I have a dog, I love my dog. It's just, and there's something about when you're walking with your dog off leash in the woods, it like, there's something about it that's like, that, that tugs at that millions of years of evolution, like that gut, you know, it's like, I had a Finnish friend of mine, he's a comic, Tommy Valami, he's once told me, he was like, he was like, the gut, he's like, I believe in that, like that gut, you know, when you have that feeling, he's like, always trust that because that is million, those are all your ancestors. That's the survival instinct of all your ancestors in the beginning of time,

• 35:43Speaker 01

  you know, telling you like, hey, something's off here, something's, you know, so don't get in the car with Ted Bundy is what I'm saying, ladies. How fucking stupid. How could you fall for that? You know, he's got a fucking sling on, don't get in.

• 35:53Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, follow the gut.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  My question to you, are psychopaths essentially robots?

• 35:59Lex Fridman?

  So first of all, let's not, you're using the word robot in a derogatory way that I, I'm triggered by, okay?

• 36:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you should be. You should be because, you know what, people are always scared of robots, but I actually, I have, I've made the sort of, I I I've made the decision. Hey, I've I've thought about it like robot. Robots have been nothing but helpful. It's the people we should be scared of.

• 36:22Lex Fridman?

  Right.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  Again, we're kind of missing the most destructive thing is us because it's but robots are helpful. I mean, this is a fucking robot. You know, I went on Hotel Tonight. I'm already booked up. You know, I got my I can change my flight if if this barbecue with Rogan goes 16 hours, which whatever Rogan wants to do, I'll do if he wants to kick me in the chest. I'll let him kick me in the chest, whatever. Um, robots are helpful, no?

• 36:44Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, the tanks and autonomous weapon systems don't kill people. People kill people.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  People kill people, yeah.

• 36:49Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, that's.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, the NRA is about to click that for you.

• 36:56Lex Fridman?

  A lot of love for dogs. I appreciate it very much. And at the same time, you have the other thing that people seem to have love for, which is cats. And on the flip side of everything you've said, I'm trying to understand what have cats ever done for human civilization?

• 37:11Speaker 01

  They keep rodents away. The domesticated cat is very important. Keeps rodents away. Yeah, that's what they were domesticated for. I mean, they're psychopathic killers who end up killing innocent neighborhood chipmunks and

• 37:24Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  and birds. They really affect the the balance of the local ecosystem, but

• 37:31Lex Fridman?

  Do you have love for cats too?

• 37:33Speaker 01

  Not as much as dogs. I mean, dogs are, like you said, they look at humans. I actually read an article there. Some people were theorizing they're smarter than chimps because of the way they can work with humans. And there was one border collie that spoke like 300 words, like a quarter, like a lang- almost part of the language, and their nose is like a ma- I mean, that's like magic, dude. If you can smell in my ass to what I had for breakfast from miles away.

• 37:55Lex Fridman?

  That's intelligence.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  That's intelligence. I mean, in some ways that their nose, if you were to put it on a scale, maybe their nose is more intelligent than our brain for what it does. You know, it's like, I mean, dude, they can smell you from miles away. You ever see a dog just like sniffing, catching? I mean, it's smelling like, I don't remember the the the date on it, but it's like they have like millions of receptors or something where we only, you know, thank God, we we don't have their nose. That would be, that would make sex weird.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  Be a little too intense.

• 38:26Lex Fridman?

  I think you mentioned when you were talking about Woody Allen separating the the art from the artist. So that brings to mind Vladimir Putin.

• 38:37Lex Fridman?

  How about that transition? I don't know. I'm so sorry. But if you look at just powerful leaders throughout history, Stalin, Hitler, but even modern ones like Putin, and we're talking about power. How do you explain them? You said that power reveals, not corrupts. But do you think there's some element to which power corrupted Hitler? Power corrupted Stalin after he gained power? And the same with Putin. When Putin gained power in 2000, do you think the amount of power that he was in possession with for many years, do you think that corrupted him? I mean, we're joking about dictators get the job done.

• 39:20Lex Fridman?

  There is some sense in certain countries where dictator is the only thing that can stabilize a nation. The counter argument to that for democracies is like, yeah, but that's a short term solution for a long term problem. So you want to embrace chaos of democracy. That might be violent. There might be a lot of just constant changing of leadership. There might be a lot of corruption in the short term. But if you stay strong with with the ideals of democracy, then it'll be ultimately create something that as beautiful and stable as the United States.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  The sad thing is, is I don't know if that, if history tells that story. It's like I said, you look at Greece, you look at Rome, democracy kind of failed. The majority of Rome, the most successful empire that we've had, was a dictatorship for most of its run. So, but I do believe in a republic, which is sort of a limited democracy. I do believe in what we have here. I believe in common law. I believe, you know, in individual rights. But yeah, I think you said it. I couldn't, nobody could have said it better. Yeah, it's a, it's a short term solution. You look at Saddam Hussein. He kinda, you know, when we took him out, then there was a lot of infighting that

• 40:49Speaker 01

  that happened that he was kind of keeping at bay because he was a strong man dictator.

• 40:56Lex Fridman?

  Well, he's an interesting one. Sorry to interrupt.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  No.

• 40:59Lex Fridman?

  From my understanding, I'm sure people will correct me, but when Saddam Hussein first came to power, he was, he's quite progressive. So like, the, as far as I understand, the signs of an evil dictator weren't exactly there. So again, there's, I don't know if power revealed or power corrupted.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  Or that could have been the initial subterfuge to kind of get everybody. You know, Hitler also is, you know, champion of the people. Let's build some new roads. It's what psychopaths do. And that's why it's interesting to me. I'm not sure if power corrupts psychopaths. And now that we know that we can do these CAT scans and brain scans, we know that they're born that way. Power definitely corrupts people who have the capacity to feel and for empathy. Power, I'm not sure. I don't think power corrupts people who were born psychopathic with that condition or sociopaths who had, who, you know, who were closer to psychopath and then had some traumatic life. You know, I just think, you know, the best way to get away with whatever nefarious thing you want to

• 42:05Speaker 01

  do to feel, I guess the only thing psychopaths can feel is that excitement, is to pretend to be the opposite of what you are.

• 42:11Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 42:11Speaker 01

  That's what, that's what killers do. That's what the worst people, look at Bill Cosby. I mean, he was, what better way to hide, you know? It's like what wokeness is now. It's like, I'm such a great person. And you're like, are you? It's a great, the best way to hide is to pretend to be the opposite of what you are. Just like Ted Bundy. I'm, I'm just an innocent, helpful guy. And then boom, next thing you know, you're getting your titbit off.

• 42:34Lex Fridman?

  That's really well said. It's actually kind of funny because I talk about love a lot. And I think the people that kind of look at me with squinty eyes, they wonder like, how many bodies are in that closet? You know what I mean? Like, there's something about the duality of like, we're so skeptical as a culture. Like, if somebody is just like, seems to be kind of sort of, I don't know, positive and all that kind of, you know, how do I put it? Just simple, simple minded in the positivity they express. They think like, there's some demons in there.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, especially if you're a New Yorker, we don't trust any, the nicer you are, the more skeptical we are.

• 43:14Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  I've struggled with that down here. I've been like, what's your angle? And they're like, no, dude, just, I wanted to show you the best tacos, man. And I'm like, did you really? What do you want? Cause in New York, it's like, if anyone's nice to you, they want something.

• 43:25Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  And that's, that's the pro side to that is it makes you very street smart. The downside to that is it makes you way too cynical.

• 43:34Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I definitely experienced that here in Texas, where people are super, super nice, and they're like, do all this cool shit for you, and you wonder, what, what, what's the angle?

• 43:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:45Lex Fridman?

  What are we doing here?

• 43:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:46Lex Fridman?

  You mentioned hyenas is your favorite animal. I forgot to ask you, what the hell were you thinking? Why is hyenas your favorite animal?

• 43:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a fascinating animal.

• 43:58Lex Fridman?

  Let's look at the whole animal kingdom. Like, why, where do you put, so you like dogs?

• 44:03Speaker 01

  Love, my favorite.

• 44:04Lex Fridman?

  Your favorite is dogs. But they're kind of outside the animal kingdom, because you're thinking about wolves. So, the animal kingdom is in nature. Dogs escaped nature.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  They kind of did, yeah.

• 44:15Lex Fridman?

  Together with humans, like in a collaborative way, exactly. So, within nature, within the animal kingdom, what, who's, why not lions?

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Cause lions are predictable. Lions are just, you know, they're regal and kind of they born, it's like the hot chick. It's like, we get it. You were born the best.

• 44:35Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  You know, I like a scrappy, by any means necessary, intelligent and cunning.

• 44:42Lex Fridman?

  Boy, aren't they dishonest?

• 44:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's why I like them. Yes, they're dishonest, they employ chicanery. They uh, they're, and that's just a sign of how intelligent they are and how self-reliant they are. And how brutal they are. Um, they're brutally honest in how much they lie.

• 45:01Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  You know, because it's just, they're trying to get the job done. You know, lions are just like, they're, they're too gifted. Everyone hates the fucking, you know, if I went to school with you, I'd be like, of course Lex knows the fucking answer. Lex was born smarter than me, you know, and you'd probably hate me because I was the kid always seeking attention and making people. It's like, that's not interesting. The guy that claws his way to the top and those are hyenas. They're also fascinating just by uh, merely who they are. I mean, they're not related to any other animal. They're more closely related to cats than they are dogs, even though they look more like a dog. Yeah, they're, but they're very, like, very tangentially related even to cats. So they're their own kind of thing, which is kind of mysterious. I don't think they've fully figured out.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  And uh, they, this pseudopenis thing is the, is the, I mean, is the talk.

• 45:50Lex Fridman?

  Can you explain the pseudopenis?

• 45:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the, it's a matriarchal society, by the way. So that's the unique in and of itself that this, we're talking about an apex predator that is uh, matriarchal, much like uh, you know, the praying mantis. It's very rare though, and they are fucking brutal and vicious and the women are bigger. And they let their cubs fight, a lot of fratricide, and they do that because they're like, hey, you're weaker. They like, I'd let your brother kill you. And uh, the women have penises. The women have pseudopenises that they give birth out of, and the birth is violent. But they, they roll around with just huge pieces. Their glue guns are just fucking swinging, you know? And the women are just run the show and uh, it's just cool that they have these pseudopenises.

• 46:34Lex Fridman?

  It's almost romantic the way you describe it.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  They have the strongest bite force. They pulverize bone like when they eat an animal, the animal's gone. There's no bones. They eat everything. They can pulverize. Their bite is so powerful, they pulverize bone and eat it. So if they consume an animal, it, the animal was there and then the animal's gone. There's no, nothing for the vultures there to, uh, to, to, to grab.

• 46:57Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I'm gonna have to revisit the hyenas because my experience with the hyenas was from, uh, first of all, History Hyenas, your show, uh, has rebranded them for me, but, uh, The Lion King, which is a cartoon, I guess, that I get emotional at every time I, I hope, they probably have father issues. Every, every guy.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  Probably just, you just have feelings. You're a good guy. I mean, everyone gets that. Yeah, you have feelings.

• 47:25Lex Fridman?

  That one gets everybody? I don't know. I get, I get every father, son movie, like Blow with Johnny Depp, uh, and, uh, Ray Liotta. Damn, that's a good movie. And whenever there's like, um, like the disappointment in the father that his son has become like this incredibly successful drug lord that then ends up with nothing in, in, in prison. Uh, just the sadness of them can be came through letters. Man, that gets me every time.

• 47:55Lex Fridman?

  But, you know, uh, the, the hyenas are not presented that well in that, um.

• 48:00Speaker 01

  No, they're usually portrayed as like, uh, it's really sad that they're portrayed that way and lions, like lions aren't dicks. Lions are dicks. They, the, the, the, the alpha lions will kill the cubs of another rival. They do all types of dick shit.

• 48:15Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  And, um, yeah, it's, uh, the hya- hyenas are more interesting. Like they'll just roll in like a hyena will like, like you said, the lie, you know, cause uh, when you watch the Serengeti, you know, animals will hang out with each other. They're like by water. So one hyena will just kind of roll in and pretend like it's not hungry and then bang, they'll use any means necessary to take an animal down. Like lions will just use brute strength. Hyenas use cunning and you can even go on the internet and find, um, memes of this where hyenas will grab the big animal by the balls and just like will sneak up behind it and bite its balls. And you'll watch an animal ten size, ten times the size of the hyena just slowly go down. It's brutal, but it's fucking hilarious.

• 48:59Lex Fridman?

  So I think that's, I don't know if you follow the, the, the channel, um, nature's metal. That, that one weighs heavy on me. Um, with the hyenas and the balls. I, it's tough to, to intellectualize it. It's tough to think that the entirety of life on earth has this history of predators being violent. Just like, just the murder that we come from.

• 49:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:30Lex Fridman?

  It's crazy. I, it, uh, just like we're talking about meditating on death. I, I actually, I keep following and unfollowing that Instagram channel because like sometimes it's too much. Like I can't, I can't continue with the day after like seeing the brutality, the honest brutality of that. I don't know how to make sense of it.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  It's important to acknowledge, I think, cause that it's real. We do come from that. We are, we evolved from that. It's important. We still do that. We're just hidden from it. You know, when you go to the supermarket and get your slab of meat and you know, you're so disconnected from where that meat came from. It came from that. And often that's uglier to watch. Then because there's some honesty, you know, the, the, the, the nature channels only show, uh, that's why we have so much sympathy with the prey. And this is where I think the same thing with mafia movies. They don't show what the mafia really does. They glorify the good parts. That's why I like State of Grace, cause it's really just shaking down old people and fucking being dicks. It's not driving nice cars and being like, you know, so, and, and animal channels do the same thing. They only show when the cheetah

• 50:32Speaker 01

  gets it because that's, that's the exciting part. But what most people don't know is that those predators strike out almost always. A majority of the time, the prey wins. And so if you saw that and put it in context, you might not hate it as much when the predator actually gets the little fawn or whatever, because it's so many fawns got away. It's so hard to capture your prey. And you know, we, we don't have the, the, they, no, no documentary is going to sit around and show you the 99 times the cheetah, uh, didn't catch.

• 51:04Lex Fridman?

  Thank you for this perspective. It's murder is difficult. So like, this is the, they never talk about for people who murder, how difficult it is like.

• 51:13Speaker 01

  It's tough.

• 51:14Lex Fridman?

  To trap somebody, to convince them to come back to your place.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  Give it some respect. Put some respect on Ted Bundy's name. Yeah, it's not easy to convince somebody to get in your Volkswagen Beagle and.

• 51:23Lex Fridman?

  The cleanup. And then you have to kind of plan ahead because you want to keep doing the murder, mass murder.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  You gotta learn how to saw them up, put them in duffel bags, bury. You gotta learn how to dig. You gotta learn how to hide. You gotta learn to lie. I mean, it's a lot that goes into it.

• 51:36Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  That we need to put a little respect on. Yeah.

• 51:38Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. And you have to figure out which tools work the best for the sawing and all those kinds of things. So, thank you for the perspective. That's what I was hoping we would bring to this table.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  That's what we're here for, yeah.

• 51:51Lex Fridman?

  So, you got a little bit Greek in you. One of the episodes on History Hyenas, you talked about the Battle of Crete, where the Greeks, your people, in 19, I guess, 41, in the early stages of the World War II, is one of the most epic battles of the war. In fact, in 1941, in a speech made at the Reichstag, Hitler paid tribute to the bravery of the Greeks, saying, "It must be said, for the sake of historical truth, that amongst all our opponents, only the Greeks fought with the endless courage and defiance of

• 52:34Lex Fridman?

  death." So, okay, what do you make of this battle? What do you make of the spirit of the Greek people?

• 52:40Speaker 01

  This is one of the closest things to me because my mother was actually on the island of Crete during this, the first aerial invasion in history. A lot of people don't know that. So, this is a very significant battle. First time there was an invasion from the sky. And my mother was a little girl and she lived through four years of Nazi occupation there. So, my mother was a human rights lawyer and everything, but she just always hated Germans. It's just what it is. She hated Germans and she never got over it. So, the most progressive, open-minded woman just could not get over this. It's a monumental battle that a lot of historians in retrospect have now looked back on and said, because the Nazis. First off, you gotta take it back to when Hitler instructed Mussolini.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  Because let's be honest, Mussolini was Hitler's bitch. You know what I mean? It was like. If it were, you know, if it was Fantasy Island, Hitler was the fucking and Mussolini was boss, the plane guy.

• 53:32Lex Fridman?

  Mussolini ever say no to Hitler, or even maybe, it's always like, yes.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, we will do it. And it's like, yeah, takes, you have to take Greece. And so, um, yeah. So Italy being much bigger than Greece, Greece is a tiny country, nine, 10 million. So Italy invaded Greece. You know, um, and Aki is a big, it's a big holiday for Greeks, and this speaks to the spirit. Greeks in fight until we have a common enemy and then we unite. You see it throughout history, Sparta and Athens, you see it in Greek families, where the brothers will fight, but then as soon as we have a common enemy, we unite. And maybe it's an overactive brain, we think too much, our tradition's philosophy,

• 54:19Speaker 01

  and we overthink things and we fight with each other and take things personally, we're ultra passionate. But when Italy said, hey, we're gonna move troops through, you know, uh, Greeks said Aki, which means no. And that was, um, and then Italy attacked. And, uh, we beat the shit out of them, a much bigger country, much, uh, more well-equipped country. Greece beat the shit of them, kicked them back into Albania, actually not only repelled them, actually like conquered some ground in Albania, pushed them back. And then Hitler was like, fuck, you know? I was planning my march to Russia, uh, but I have to go down because he basically said to Mussolini, like, you know, you're basically bitch slapped, like Fredo, like I gotta do this myself, because you're such a fucking bitch.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  So then the Nazis invaded Greece, obviously they took the mainland with fight. And shout out, the Greeks never give credit to the British and New Zealand and Australian troops that were there. You know, they were a large part of this, the majority of it, but the Greeks fight, dude, civilians, I mean, they fought. You know, the Ottomans were there 400 years. You go to Greece now, there's no evidence. There's virtually no evidence of them ever being there. That's the Greek spirit. Kick them out, and we kicked out hummus too. So it's like, your culture's gone, you're gone. Because Greeks are, uh, it's philoptimo. It's called philoptimo. It's a real thing. Philoptimo is, uh, there's very little transl- you can't translate it, but it's kind of like

• 55:41Speaker 01

  honor, loyalty, friendship, altruism. It's a, it's, you can't define it, but Greeks know it, and we're taught it from our, from our, uh, families. It's a vibe, and it's a Greek cultural thing, and we're an old culture, and philoptimo is what it's called, philoptimo. And it's, uh, it's love, it's passion, and it comes out, and it comes out. And so, um, so Hitler had to postpone his invasion of, um, of Russia, went down. The island of Crete took 10 days to conquer. It's an island.

• 56:15Lex Fridman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  To put that in perspective, the country of France fell in three or four days. I can't even remember, because they fucking just rolled over. So what is, what, what does a couple hours matter when you're that much of a fucking pussy?

• 56:26Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 56:26Speaker 01

  Okay? What is a couple hour, 12 hour fucking, three or four days? The island of Crete

• 56:31Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 56:32Speaker 01

  Took the Germans 10 days to conquer. And because of that, and because of the Greek resistance, Hitler had to postpone his invasion of Russia to winter. And of course, that was, you know, that was his downfall, just as it was Napoleon's. And, uh, never, dude, never try to invade Russia. They got millions of people to throw at death. Every time you read about Russians in history books, like, and a million died. I mean, it's like, you just guys throw millions of people at the problem. And don't fuck with that Russian winter, and don't fuck with Russian people, dude. They're tough. People in New York know that. You don't go to fucking Sheepshead Bay and start talking shit. You'll end up in a fucking car trunk, and they'll brutally murder you. I do not fuck with Russians.

• 57:11Lex Fridman?

  Amen. And then there's, I mean, there's a lot of people, a lot of historians argue that that battle was because of the Russian winter, because of delaying the Russian invasion, but also psychologically delaying the invasion. It was the first time, I think it was the first time the Germans failed.

• 57:29Lex Fridman?

  Not or didn't succeed like they wanted to early in the war.

• 57:33Speaker 01

  True.

• 57:33Lex Fridman?

  Which is a little like psychologically, the impact of that, I think, is immeasurable. And also, a lot of people argue from a military strategy perspective that the, just like you said, it was an aerial attack and that Hitler didn't think that that kind of attack would then be useful for the rest of the war. So that's, that's a really part where, whereas it might have been very useful. So it's a, it's really interesting how these little battles can steer the directions of war. Of course, me growing up in the Soviet Union, we didn't hear much about this battle. Just like you said, millions of Soviets died. All those people in history that you read about dying, those are all civilians, but I mean,

• 58:17Lex Fridman?

  not all, but a very large number of them are civilians. And their stories, obviously, that's the rooted, the literature, the poetry, the music, just the way people talk, the way they drink vodka, the way they love, the way they hate, the way they fear, that's all like rooted in World War II and World War I. And so, but we never kind of think about Europe and we certainly, growing up, didn't think about their role in the United States. All this, there's plenty of stories of heroism in, in the Soviet Union, enough, enough for many lifetimes. So, but it was fascinating to read from a Greek perspective, cause I, you know, I don't have many Greek friends, hoping to change that.

• 59:03Lex Fridman?

  There is, this is the beginning of a love affair of your people. Yeah.

• 59:08Speaker 01

  Likewise, the Americans don't hear about the Soviet contribution to the end of World War II because obviously we became, you know, enemies after that because of the two systems. But yeah, without the Russians, World War II wouldn't have been won either.

• 59:21Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, the stories are written by the victors. That's really interesting. I, just looking at, at history, you wonder what's missing.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  I'll tell you what's missing that I know for a fact, cause my dad told, my dad told me combat's hell and he would tell me the reality of what it's really like, guys pissing themselves, calling for their mother, the fog of war, obviously, fratricide happens all the time, it's pandemonium. I mean, there's skill involved, but I mean, there's no, like, it's a lot of it is just luck. My dad said, my dad won three, he got, you know, medals, Purple Hearts, all that shit. And he said, the reason was is because he can't, he always said, there's another thing he told me, you can't pin a medal on a dead guy. So it's like, those are the guys who deserve it, but you can't pin a medal. You can't do the pomp and with. And um, I'll tell you one thing is that uh, it is written by the victors and all these leaders. They say were in the front, were not in the front.

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  We're not, whenever the history books say he led his troops into battle. It's like, did he really? Did he, so then how did he live? Cause they put like kids in the front, you know, it's like, nobody limps back from the front with like a injury. You know, that's, that's army PR, you know, whenever you read, uh, you know, uh, 27 soldiers died, 14 were injured. The, the word injured is PR. That's like injured, was he? Did he sprain his ankle? Did he need, yeah, did he get carried off the court? Or, you know, he was maimed. I mean, he was like, his leg was blown off, you know, it's like. So uh, I think that, you know, Alexander the Great was just kind of in the back on his horse and just kinda, he had his eunuch blown a few times. And he was like, is it bad up there?

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  And then like after the, he was like, okay, what my scribe, give me my scribe. Okay, when you write this down, could you put me in the front? Yeah, and I was just make me a big hero. And I was in there and then he, you know, he just blew his, you know, he had sex with his eunuch and rode off into the sunset. Because there's just no way you survive in the front, especially warfare back then. I mean, it's like brutal.

• 1:01:12Lex Fridman?

  Then again, you have like uh, Genghis Khan. The sense I got that he was a little bit up on the front, at least the first.

• 1:01:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:20Lex Fridman?

  Or is that also, is he a little bit?

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  Give me my scribe, yeah, it's all lore. I mean, you ever play the game of telephone? You know, it's like, you know, there's no video cameras back then, so shit just get, turns into myth. You know, and uh, there's no way he was in the front. There's no way he wouldn't have lived. You know, he was probably good on horseback, cause those, those dudes were good on horseback. But it was like game of thrones back then, you had all these different people and they're kinda, yeah, the, the, the Mongols were wild, dude. They are actually said like um, they started like, they were more adaptable to the horse because they were so good on horseback that kids started to be born like kinda bow legged, like to fit the horse. It's wild and they would stretch their heads and shit like that. They'd wrap them and stretch their heads so they find like Mongol skulls and they, they look like cone heads.

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  And they were brutal and vicious. And they would maraud and rape and all the fun stuff that, you know, when, you know, when you visit other places back then, there's no tchotchke stops and souvenir shops. What you do is you take women and those are the tokens, you know? You burn a few huts, different tourism was different back then.

• 1:02:25Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, that's another difficult thing, just we're talking about nature and predators, to think about the long stretch of history where it was just murder.

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:36Lex Fridman?

  And we made so much progress, I guess, in the past couple of centuries. The United States is a shining example of that.

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  But do you think also that it's that effect that we were, a lot of good things had to happen too, or else we wouldn't be here? So do we just focus, isn't like a car crash effect? That like we're, you know, the rubberneck who everyone pulls over to see a car crash? Are we just only focusing on the negative things of history because they're just more exciting to us? Like, it's just not, it's boring to be like, yeah, and then there was a bunch of villagers and they ate every day and danced and.

• 1:03:07Lex Fridman?

  And loved, yeah. I wonder, I wonder how different those people were, you know? Like, they might have had the same exact loves and fears and, like, they perhaps had the same kind of brilliant ideas in their head, if not more brilliant. And we kind of think about, like, this moment in history is like the most special moment. Like, we're doing the coolest shit, that we're doing the most amazing, building the most amazing things, but maybe they were building amazing things in their different way with, like, less technological, but in the space of ideas, in the space of just all the different, the camaraderie, in the space of, like, concepts, mathematics, all those kinds of things.

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, Greece, you look at the architecture, it still stands up. I mean, all the government, it's still arguably, I mean, as far as objective beauty, it's hard to argue that Greco-Roman, it's just something about it with the, with the columns, it's just, it's powerful, it's, I don't know, even Ayn Rand would probably appreciate it.

• 1:04:07Lex Fridman?

  She doesn't, no, no, no.

• 1:04:12Lex Fridman?

  So in your history Hyenas, that unfortunately has come to an end.

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:16Lex Fridman?

  We're talking about empires coming to an end, all empires fall.

• 1:04:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:21Lex Fridman?

  That one, well, it may rise again, empires might rise, who knows? Who knows? I, I'm obviously a fan, so I hope it does rise again. But you've seemed to develop your own language.

• 1:04:35Lex Fridman?

  Can you, you know, it's what it is. What is, what is that? What, what the hell? Um, is this some kind of medical condition? Or can you, can you explain like the linguistic essentials that, uh, uh, catch us up to the linguistic essentials that people need to know to understand the way you speak?

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  You ever, you know, Leopold and Loeb? You know, the story of those two, uh, they murdered that kid and they had this weird relationship. Uh, anyway, it's an interesting thing to Google. Leopold and Loeb, these two guys who ended up murdering a kid because they developed their own language with each other and, uh, this own reality and this weird thing. And they wanted to know what it's like to murder a kid and they murder a kid. It's a famous story in American lore and history, whatever. Famous case. Um, but this phenomenon, yeah, me and Chris got together. I, I, it wasn't as dark as Leopold and Loeb. We didn't murder a kid, but, uh, we murdered a podcast.

• 1:05:30Lex Fridman?

  Or at least stab it if you do.

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, um, it was something in the organic chemistry of me and Chris that I think we'll both end up, uh, appreciating even probably more than we do now. That, uh, it's mysterious. I gotta be honest with you. It's, um, it was a thing that, uh, it wasn't conscious, uh, wasn't intentional. It was something that happened in the music of our energies.

• 1:05:56Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  That just went.

• 1:05:58Lex Fridman?

  Fascinating.

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  Like when you hear someone sing or when a jazz band hits a rhythm or even when I'm on stage and I just catch a rhythm. It's like, dude, I didn't make a choice there. I don't know what that is. I don't know how to explain it, but it comes from somewhere else. And, uh, I don't know what it is. It's beyond my comprehension, but with Chris, uh, there was this magical chemistry that, uh, you know, I have chemistry with a lot of people and, uh, it can be funny and I enjoy.

• 1:06:23Lex Fridman?

  I feel zero chemistry here.

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  This is great. This is great. Yeah, it's a little bit more intelligent than what me and Chris did. Uh, but you know, uh, me and Chris, uh, I think we connected in, in a, on, on the funny bone. Like I, he, I found him so funny and we found the same things funny. And from that, these organic expressions came from the, some part of our brains. That was created from this chemistry and yeah, we just developed this in language and this cult following. And people were really upset when we ended, but it was the right thing to end because like all things that end, it was kind of done a few episodes even before we finished. And I think we pulled the plug before it started rolling downhill.

• 1:07:03Speaker 01

  Like all, uh, you know, like all great flings, you know, there's your long relation, long marriages are boring and comfortable.

• 1:07:12Speaker 01

  The one you really like fucking always ends abruptly and sadly and, uh, but you always look back and you jerk off to it. And, uh, but.

• 1:07:21Lex Fridman?

  So you, so you guys made love?

• 1:07:22Speaker 01

  We made, yeah. So it's like, it was like a hot fling with me and him and it was intense. And we burned the candle at both ends and it was, I think that podcast was meant to be three years. And, um, maybe people will go back and appreciate it and listen to it over and over again. And I think the new things we do, people will love. I, I'm doing long days now, that podcast and people seem to enjoy.

• 1:07:45Lex Fridman?

  I've been really enjoying the long days, yeah, uh, on YouTube. I just found myself just like staring at you ranting for, same with Tim Dillon. I, I really enjoyed the, whatever those rants are, the genius of just one thing after the other. But definitely the chemistry almost as a study. I remember the reason I first started listening to it, I was trying to get an, a perspective on certain historical moments. Like it was interesting. I tuned in to learn history. I, yeah, I, I came for the history and like stayed for the, the chaos.

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  Stayed for the crack open and clean out.

• 1:08:21Lex Fridman?

  And yeah, this, it was almost, I listen to Rogan like this sometimes. I'll, I'll re-listen to an episode. Uh, to, to try to understand, why was this so fun to listen to? It's, it's almost like trying to analyze humor or something like that, but it's nice from, from a conversational perspective. Like, why was this so easy to listen to? And then, and, uh, with History, Heine is like, why is the chemistry so good? It's, it's so, it's weird. It's weird, uh, cause there's not many podcasts like that. I don't know any with the chemistry like that.

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:57Lex Fridman?

  It's interesting and it's kind of sad that, uh, that, that, uh, the, the fling with a prostitute in Vegas has to end. You know, like that, but that's what makes it special. It's the Bukowski thing with the fog. The, the British office, one of my favorite shows was, was that it ended very quick. You know, it's only a couple of seasons or something like that. And that was tragic, but that took guts to just end it. Given all the money you could have made, given all the, you just end it. And that's what makes it like truly special.

• 1:09:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I'll tell you, man, I'll just emphasize it cause I marvel at it too. Cause as a guy who tries to always figure out, uh, what the causes of things, I gotta be honest, man. Looking back on that, even with retrospective wisdom, you know, that 2020 hindsight, we've been done a couple of months now. It's, um, it's something that I can't explain.

• 1:09:48Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:48Speaker 01

  It's something that I don't know how you quantify it. I don't know how you describe it. It's, it's musical. It's really kind of rhythmic. So.

• 1:09:57Lex Fridman?

  Maybe, uh, maybe like a Netflix show about history. That's, that's in the, that, that's in the future, that with the, with the two of you.

• 1:10:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. Who knows?

• 1:10:05Lex Fridman?

  You, you guys will meet like, uh, with that, the way you meet with a fling, like a decade from now at a diner. And, uh, you're both way fatter and uglier. And, and then you just reminisce over some cigarettes and coffee.

• 1:10:19Speaker 01

  It could be. Yeah, it could be.

• 1:10:21Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  But, uh, it's definitely a classic podcast that people can go back and appreciate. It's fast paced and it was unique.

• 1:10:29Lex Fridman?

  What was it like to research for, uh, I mean, it was really scholarly, the, the depth of research that you performed. It, uh, sometimes felt like you almost read an entire Wikipedia article beforehand.

• 1:10:42Lex Fridman?

  More like.

• 1:10:43Speaker 01

  Exactly true. We were, we were, one fan, we attracted such funny people to that podcast and the fans were so funny. And one fan called us nicknamed as Wikipedia sluts. And so it just stuck. Yeah, we just would read Wikipedia. I would do a lot more research than Chris.

• 1:11:01Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:01Speaker 01

  And so I would actually, you know, once in a while he'd get into it too. But for very interesting episodes, I got, I got some, some, some subject matter would just pull me in, like Bernie Madoff, just to think of one that was recent, it was one of our last ones. And I think one of our better episodes, and I'm glad that it kind of ended after that because it was rare to, I think we started to slip a little bit. I got fascinated and I got, I did a lot of research for Bernie Madoff. But usually, yeah, we'd pull up Wikipedia and we'd have fun. We were sort of the antithesis of Dan Carlin. I mean, you went to Dan Carlin for accuracy and thoughtfulness and you went to us for, it was a hang with histories. That's why History Hyenas was such an appropriate name because it was, it was a little bit of

• 1:11:43Speaker 01

  his, some, some episodes were more hyena, more wild and a little history and some were a little more dense, like the Battle of Crete and less hyena. So you were, you were always going to get both. You're either going to get a majority of one or the other.

• 1:11:55Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. And Dan Carlin's the lion, I guess.

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:58Lex Fridman?

  And you guys predictably good.

• 1:12:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:02Lex Fridman?

  I mean, what, what are your thoughts about, I mean, he's a storyteller too. He gets a lot of criticism for the, from the historians, quote unquote. That's why he likes to not, he keeps saying he's not a historian, but what's your, what are your thoughts about hardcore history with Dan Carlin? Like, was he an inspiration to the podcast you were doing? Or, or like an account, like a, almost like reverse psychology inspiration where you wanted to do some kind of opposing type of podcast in history? Or was history always just like a?

• 1:12:39Lex Fridman?

  A launching pad to just talk shit about human nature.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  More the latter. I wasn't even aware of his podcast when we started.

• 1:12:46Lex Fridman?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:12:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so we, it was just very organic. Again, like the chemistry, me and Chris became very good friends. We started the podcast. First, we did a web series called Bay Ridge Boys, which has its sort of little cult following. We did like five episodes and ended it. And then we did the podcast and hyenas were my favorite animal. And I talk about them passionately and I told Chris about them and then he started appreciating them. And we both love history. I majored in history. It's one of the things I love. I go to museums all the time. I go to, I do history tours. So does he. And so it was just sort of a natural, let's do a history podcast and it gave us something to talk about each episode. To sort of lean our, you know, hang our hats on and riff off of. So it had nothing to do with Dan's. What I think about Dan's, I think it's great. I think even if he's inaccurate.

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  In the opinions of the historical community, it starts conversations, which is good. It's like this thing where people go, oh, it's dangerous rhetoric. It's like, no. Rhetoric only becomes dangerous when education fails. What's going on in America is education has failed. So if you call someone online dangerous, it's not him that's dangerous. It's the fucking stupid people that's dangerous. And it's the fall of this country. We didn't listen to Aristotle. The future of a civilization depends on public education. And we failed. Education has failed. Kids are, kids are not interested in shit. And um.

• 1:14:06Lex Fridman?

  Well, in some sense, those, like Dan's podcasts and podcasts can be incredibly educational. That's, he's a. The storytelling that pulls you in. Ultimately leads to you internalizing these stories and like remembering them and thinking through them and all those kinds of things that is much more powerful than you. Book on history that's accurate.

• 1:14:29Speaker 01

  I think often it inspires you to go learn more. So it's like, I know we did that. I mean, you know, I, people would go, hey, I went and learned about this because they knew with us, there was no pretense, which was great, that we had no standard. So it's like, nobody came to us for historical accuracy. But I was kind of turned on by the fact that it inspired people to go learn about this stuff. Or to at least know, like Battle of Crete, like you said, a very underappreciated battle. Even Winston Churchill said, from here on, we will no longer say that Greeks fight like heroes, but heroes fight like Greeks. I mean, it was a monumental battle. And, um, you know, not talked about enough. And I, our podcast would inspire people to go actually learn more.

• 1:15:12Speaker 01

  To go listen to Dan Carlin, or to go pick up a book, or to do research on their own. And so I think podcasts, Dan Carlin's obviously much more accurate than us. But it's good that people are going to podcasts like yours and to learn shit. Joe was, is really like the progenitor of that. I mean, you know, having intellectuals on and getting the public interested with this new medium. In, in people who are intelligent. It's nice because, you know, what the mainstream press pushes out is horse shit. Gorgeous horse shit. It's got a beautiful veneer, but no substance. And so this, this is a nice pushback.

• 1:15:52Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, the authenticity of Joe's show. I mean, I'm through, I started listening from the very beginning, you know, doing my, in grad school. You know, I, like a technical person. And he just pulled me in and made me curious to learn about all kinds of things. And use my own critical reasoning skills on some of the bullshit guests he's had. And some of the most inspiring guests he's had. So I'll teach you to think. Can you, uh, I don't know much about Bernie Madoff as a small tangent. Can you, can you tell me who the hell is Bernie Madoff?

• 1:16:23Speaker 01

  Oh, Bernie Madoff is the GOAT. The greatest thief of all time, dude. Um, hedge fund guy, ran a hedge fund and pulled, uh, stole the most money in the history of America. I mean, a con artist. And, um, he does, people, obviously, he's become, he's a household name because of the magnitude of his crime. But you got to appreciate, again, you got to appreciate what went into this and how long he was able to pull it off. By tricking the smartest and richest people in the world. And a brilliant scam. The con man, uh, con man is short for confidence man. And it, it came from, yeah, a con man, basically they, they exude confidence.

• 1:17:05Speaker 01

  And they trick people by playing on their ego and, and blind spots. And it, uh, the, the word comes from a guy, I can't remember where, but what do you, what he used to do? I can't remember the guy's name, uh, you know, whatever. You can Google it, con man. But it's very interesting. The, the first con man that is on record, what he would do, and he would go to very rich people and he'd be very well dressed. Right? And he'd go, uh, he'd say, I bet you, you don't have the confidence to give me your watch. And he would play on the egos, these very powerful and rich people, and they would give him the watch. For some reason, some sort of reverse psychology bullshit. And he'd take the watch and he would just steal it.

• 1:17:39Speaker 01

  Cause basically saying like, I don't, you don't have the confidence to give me the watch. Cause you don't, I don't know. You don't think I'm gonna give it back? And he would just take it.

• 1:17:44Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:44Speaker 01

  So Bernie Madoff was a very sophisticated, sophisticated con man. And again, we were talking about people pretending to be the opposite of what they are. Bernie hid his, uh, thievery in how available he was to his clients. How he would show up at every bar, miss for every birthday. He was always available for their phone calls. And he, uh, played on their egos. He made it so people were, wanted to invest in him. Like they were competing. He made it very exclusive and he, he wouldn't just take anyone. And there was a method behind that madness because he wanted the whales that wouldn't notice that he was, he was, had this pyramid scheme going. And so what he would do is he would just rob from the richer and he'd just get, it was like he'd pay back the richer with the guy who was a little, and it was a pyramid scheme.

• 1:18:28Speaker 01

  And, um, he was able to do it for so long and steal so much money. And he would win people over with the scheme because with that scheme, he was the only guy who could provide, who could guarantee like a 1% return. Even during times of recession. And because he was such a good con man, he hijacked people's reasoning with his charm.

• 1:18:48Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:48Speaker 01

  And that's what con artists do. That's what psychopaths do. They're so fucking charming. They get you in that Volkswagen Beetle. Because if they use their reasoning for one second, they'd go, hey, nobody can provide 1% returns during recessions. How the fuck is this guy doing it? I'll tell you how he's doing it. He's stealing from another guy to pay you. You fucking idiot.

• 1:19:05Lex Fridman?

  So charisma is a sensitive, uh, you know, maybe you can help explain something to me, something I have been affected by.

• 1:19:13Speaker 01

  Way too loud for your listeners. There's gonna be comments like, tell this guy to calm down. I'm sorry, I'm Greek aposent.

• 1:19:20Lex Fridman?

  No, that's beautiful. I love it. Something that I have been thinking about and have encountered indirectly is Jeffrey Epstein. And I have a sense, because of MIT, because of all the other people that have been touched, the wrong term, by Jeffrey Epstein, in the sense that

• 1:19:39Speaker 01

  Literally touched.

• 1:19:40Lex Fridman?

  Literally and figuratively.

• 1:19:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:43Lex Fridman?

  And it always felt to me like there's not a deep conspiracy. I don't know. I don't know. But it felt to me like it's not some deeply rooted conspiracy where like Eric Weinstein thinks that there's some probability that Jeffrey Epstein is a front for like an intelligence agency, whether it's Israeli or the CIA, I don't know, but is a front for something much, much bigger. And then I always thought that he's just, maybe you can correct me, but more of the Bernie Madoff variety, where he's just a charismatic guy who maybe a psychopathic in some sense. So, you know, also a pedophile, but just charismatic and is able to convince

• 1:20:28Lex Fridman?

  people of that 1% of any idea that in the case of scientists is able to convince these people that their ideas matter. So one thing scientists don't really, you know, despite what people say, I don't think they care about money as much as people think.

• 1:20:45Speaker 01

  People are ridiculous when they think that. Yeah, that's why people get into science for the money.

• 1:20:48Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:49Speaker 01

  The person who's got into science are obsessed with minutia and they do the scientific method. You know how boring that is? Like you have to have a love for it.

• 1:20:58Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:20:58Speaker 01

  In order to do it.

• 1:20:59Lex Fridman?

  But the thing, what drives you is for your ideas to be then heard. And when a rich guy comes over, probably super charismatic, is going to tell you that your ideas, especially for some of these outsiders at MIT, at Harvard, at Caltech, all these like, sort of big, like physics, biology, artificial intelligence, computing fields.

• 1:21:26Lex Fridman?

  To hear somebody say that your ideas are brilliant, ideas matter, it's pretty powerful, especially when you've been an outsider. Like, he's talked to a bunch of people who were, who had outsider ideas. You know, the, the, the, the big negative for me of modern academia is that most people, actually, like, most communities, most people think the same, and there's just these brilliant outsiders. And the outsiders are just derided. And so when you have Jeffrey Epstein, like, a hyena, sorry, sorry, sorry, going from, on the outside and picking off these brilliant minds that are the outsiders, he can use charisma

• 1:22:05Lex Fridman?

  to convince them to, uh, to, to collaborate with him, to take his funding, and then thereby, he builds a reputation, like, slowly accumulates these people that actually results in, um, in a network of, like, some of the most brilliant people in the world, you know, and then pulls in people like Bill Gates and, I don't know, political figures. I tend to believe that one, one person can do that.

• 1:22:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, look at Hitler. Charisma is blinding. I think that's what con men, speaking of Bernie Madoff, that's one of their major tools, is flattery, just glib, superficial charm. It creates those blind spots. People want to hear how great they are. They want to be flattered. It, it, it takes your defenses down, plays to our ego, the, the, how much we're all just pieces of garbage, and want to hear how great we are. We want that love from our mother and our father. It's Freudian, and, and they know, because they're not burdened with that need, they're not burdened with that, uh, empathy or emotions, and they just see things very calculatively. They play, they know that we're prey in their game, and they use that against us, and that

• 1:23:17Speaker 01

  is why someone who is not that intelligent, like Hitler, can probably convince a lot more intelligent people, you know, and that's why we can't give him Dylan power, because, you know, he already stands on a stage. I mean, if we let that guy, I mean, he will just take over a country, and everyone who can't cook well will be eliminated.

• 1:23:34Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:34Speaker 01

  So it's like, um...

• 1:23:35Lex Fridman?

  I wonder why he keeps complimenting me when we're in private.

• 1:23:38Speaker 01

  Exactly. Be careful.

• 1:23:38Lex Fridman?

  He, he looks at me, just, you're, you're, I like your suit, I like the cut of your jib, yeah, definitely.

• 1:23:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, you gotta be careful of that kid, he's Hitler.

• 1:23:47Speaker 01

  But it's crazy to think about.

• 1:23:48Lex Fridman?

  Clip that, please, internet.

• 1:23:50Speaker 01

  I mean, Quentin Tarantino said it to bad, I mean, in his script, personality goes a long way, dude.

• 1:23:54Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:54Speaker 01

  I mean, personality can can usurp common sense and reason of the smartest people. These absolute smartest people can be hypnotized. It's sort of like a sexy woman. It's like you can just, it just, you can be tricked because we have such a blind spot for, you know, for flattery.

• 1:24:16Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I wonder, I think there's a BBC documentary on, I think it's called something like Charisma, Hitler's Charisma or something like that. Does quite, I mean, that one focused more about the power of his speeches. But I wonder if most of the success or the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich had to do with the charisma of Hitler when he's alone in a room with somebody, with the generals, just one on one. Like, I wonder, I wonder if that's the essential element of just being able to just look into a person's eyes, like flatter them or whatever is needed.

• 1:24:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:24:52Lex Fridman?

  To earn their trust and then convince them of anything you want.

• 1:24:56Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, I mean, you're right, because that's, that's the one piece of history we don't have.

• 1:25:02Lex Fridman?

  Don't know.

• 1:25:02Speaker 01

  We don't know. We do know that the kid crushed. I mean, he was a headliner. He got up there and his hair would flop around. I mean, he crushed it.

• 1:25:13Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, there's certain elements about nationalism and pride that are really powerful. Like, a lot of us humans, I think, long for that, for the feeling of belonging. And when some charismatic leader makes us feel like we belong to a group, the amount of evil we can do to other humans because of that.

• 1:25:34Speaker 01

  Especially when you give people a scapegoat. Nobody wants to look in, nobody wants to do the work to be better or look at where they messed up.

• 1:25:40Lex Fridman?

  Why does it always have to be the Jews that are scapegoating?

• 1:25:42Speaker 01

  You know, it's like, get over it, guys. I mean, it's like, they killed Jesus, you get over it.

• 1:25:48Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:49Speaker 01

  Okay, it's a long time ago. I mean, move on.

• 1:25:51Lex Fridman?

  I'm Jewish, I understand, because we do run the central banks and.

• 1:25:54Speaker 01

  And the weather.

• 1:25:55Lex Fridman?

  And the weather.

• 1:25:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. Don't forget about the weather, that's a big one. That's a funny one that people created, like, who gives a shit? Well, what is the weather? Like, what's the importance of the weather? All right, Jews made it rain outside. Good, you gotta fuck, you know, they made it snow. Okay, you get a day off. Thank the Jews.

• 1:26:07Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it's like, yeah, there's certain conspiracies that make me, like, Flat Earth. Like, what's the motive? Like, what, who, what's the motivation for lying that the Earth is round? Like, what's the conspiracy?

• 1:26:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, what does anyone get out of that?

• 1:26:19Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, what is exactly the profit? What's the, yeah, what's the strategy? Do you have any, from a historical perspective, or just a human perspective, conspiracy theories you connect with? Or you're not necessarily conspiratorial?

• 1:26:34Speaker 01

  I'm, uh, I'm not necessarily conspiratorial. Um, nobody cares that much. Um, but there...

• 1:26:43Speaker 01

  But then, you know, what happens is, you find out this one or this two.

• 1:26:48Lex Fridman?

  And you start questioning everything.

• 1:26:49Speaker 01

  And you start questioning everything, man. It's like, you know, the Vietnam War started, that was a lie. Um, that was a false flag. And then, next thing you know, everything's a false flag. There are some strange things on 9/11. Um, you know, there's some strange things from a scientific perspective. I'm no scientist, but it's like, you know, yeah, three steel-framed skyscrapers falling on the same day in the same way. A lot of people say, oh, it was, they were hit by planes. It's like, yeah, but that's not why they fell. They fell because of fires and usually, not usually, all the time, except for three times. And there was buildings that have burned for longer than that.

• 1:27:30Lex Fridman?

  And there might be good explanations, but the lack of transparency, it's like, I feel like government...

• 1:27:35Speaker 01

  And Building 7 is weird. I mean, the way it kind of died, just a neat, just a neat, the physical, I mean, you're a scientist, is that...

• 1:27:42Lex Fridman?

  Well, I don't, I...

• 1:27:43Speaker 01

  Is there resistance from the steel?

• 1:27:44Lex Fridman?

  No.

• 1:27:46Speaker 01

  Free fall seems weird.

• 1:27:46Lex Fridman?

  Not all scientists know everything. I'm just a computer guy.

• 1:27:49Speaker 01

  Okay, because I had some questions I wanted to ask you about my biology.

• 1:27:53Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, so exactly. I don't understand biology, I don't understand the melting point of steel, I don't... But I'm just a common sense human that looks at government and institutions when they try to communicate, and there's a certain human element where you can sense that there's dishonesty going on. That dishonesty might not be deeply rooted in a conspiracy theory and something malevolent. It might just be rooted more likely, to me, in a basic fear of losing your job.

• 1:28:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:28:19Lex Fridman?

  So, when you have a bunch of people that are afraid of losing their job, you know, and they just don't want to... Uh, like the origins of the virus, whether it came from a lab or not, you know, that's a pretty, I know a lot of biologists behind closed doors that, that say it's, it's very likely it was leaked from the lab.

• 1:28:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:28:38Lex Fridman?

  But like, they don't want to talk about it because there's not good evidence either way. It's mostly, you're just using common sense. So they're waiting for good evidence to come out in either direction. But just like, nobody in positions of institutional, like centralized power wants to just honestly say, we don't know. Or on the point of masks or all those kinds of things to say, you know, here's the best evidence we have. We're not sure. We're trying to figure that out. We're desperately trying to figure that out. Or just like honesty, especially in the modern day, that's the hope I have for the 21st century is, people seem to detect bullshit much, much better.

• 1:29:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:12Lex Fridman?

  Internet.

• 1:29:13Speaker 01

  Internet, yeah.

• 1:29:13Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, and we, we.

• 1:29:14Speaker 01

  But they also believe crazy shit too. There's no yang without a yang, I guess.

• 1:29:18Lex Fridman?

  But, uh, I think the conspiracy theories arise only when the people in positions of power and government and institutions are full of shit.

• 1:29:27Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:29:28Lex Fridman?

  Like, the air will be taken out of the conspiracy theories if the people in elected power would be much more honest. Like, just like real. You have people like Andrew Yang, whatever you think about him, just more honest. He, he just like says whatever the hell, uh, comes to mind. By the way, he's running for New York mayor.

• 1:29:45Speaker 01

  Mayor, yeah.

• 1:29:46Lex Fridman?

  Do you have opinions?

• 1:29:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's no good. I like Andrew Yang and it's no good. I, I'd be honest with you. I'm a, I'm a lifelong New Yorker. I mean, I'm a New Yorker.

• 1:29:54Lex Fridman?

  Well, you're a New Yorker, so nothing's good.

• 1:29:57Speaker 01

  Well, something is good.

• 1:29:58Lex Fridman?

  Okay.

• 1:29:59Speaker 01

  And talking, let's be honest about New York. It's a very socially liberal place. It is the head of the snake. New York is the country. If New York, when New York's not doing good, country's not doing good. Um, it's the most important city, DC, New York. It's really Rome, be honest. It's, it's, uh, I, I, maybe I'm biased. I don't know.

• 1:30:18Lex Fridman?

  No.

• 1:30:20Speaker 01

  We just, New Yorkers, we walk around everywhere and we go, this is just like New York, but not New York. It's, um, but, and, New York needs, and I'm a guy who leans left, I, you know, I just, I lean left and that's just what it is.

• 1:30:33Lex Fridman?

  A dictator? Is that where you're going?

• 1:30:34Speaker 01

  No, we need, we need, it's a money town. Let, let's be, come on, man. I mean, New York is a money town. And, uh, Wall Street, and then when AOC and her cronies, um, at the local level rejected that Amazon thing, you're going like, what do you think makes cities? And what, what, what's gonna create jobs in the 21st century? What do we need? More nail salons? More pizza places? I mean, we're living in the tech revolution and, you know, whatever your opinions are about Jeff Bezos, that's the world, tech. And they wants to come here, of course you give them tax breaks. That's why any, companies go anywhere. She's so fucking utopian and that, that progressive wing is so utopian and that always ends in disaster

• 1:31:18Speaker 01

  because it's not rooted in reality. It doesn't, it's, except the reality that people are self-interested. Now they're gonna do this 14%, 15% tax hike on people making a million dollars more. In New York City, a million dollars is not that much. So people are gonna flee New York. The tax base is gonna flee. New York's gonna fall to shit like it did before.

• 1:31:34Lex Fridman?

  So you're saying it basically needs a more capitalist front, like capitalistic type of thinker?

• 1:31:39Speaker 01

  Bloomberg, Giuliani, when he was still sane and his hair wasn't melting off his face. Prosecutor, you need a tough, I mean, I don't know what's happened. That guy's lost it, but it's fun.

• 1:31:49Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it's fun to watch.

• 1:31:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's fun to watch him be just like, uh, Trump's lackey. Like, yeah, boy, whatever you want, boss. I'll just say whatever you want, boss.

• 1:31:57Speaker 01

  New York is a money town that needs a money guy and sort of more of a Republican. I have to say on the local level, I, I was more of a guy who leans left, I'll just be honest. It, it's a tough city that needs a tough mayor, not some guy who's going like, I understand, we all need free money, you know? Andrew Yang, I think is right in the big picture because all the real jobs are somewhere else. You look at those Asian cities, you go like, oh, that's what our cities used to look like at the industrial revolution. You know, there was like, there was jobs and people were making things here. And now you look at those cities in Asia and you're going like, wow. And then you go to Detroit and you're like, yeah, we're done. You go to Cleveland, you go, we, we're done.

• 1:32:32Lex Fridman?

  So I, I don't, actually, it's, it's funny. The, the, the reason I really like Andrew Yang is I've learned a lot every time he talks. Like, it's not his opinions, he's just giving a lot of data.

• 1:32:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:43Lex Fridman?

  Like, information, which I-

• 1:32:45Speaker 01

  Just start a podcast, don't run for mayor.

• 1:32:46Lex Fridman?

  Well, yeah, that's true. He already has a podcast, I think. Yang, Yang Speaks.

• 1:32:50Speaker 01

  Who doesn't?

• 1:32:50Lex Fridman?

  Who doesn't?

• 1:32:51Speaker 01

  Fucking, who doesn't now? That's the way we communicate, dude. I don't even talk to people unless it's on a podcast.

• 1:32:57Lex Fridman?

  Well, listen, man, I'm a, I'm not gonna criticize that because there is something, like, I talked to my dad on a podcast in, for four hours, and I'm not sure I would, I would ever talk to him in the way we talked without the podcast.

• 1:33:10Speaker 01

  What does he do to you, dad?

• 1:33:11Lex Fridman?

  Uh, physicist.

• 1:33:12Speaker 01

  Oh, shit.

• 1:33:13Lex Fridman?

  But, like-

• 1:33:14Speaker 01

  Get that episode out.

• 1:33:14Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it's, uh, episode 100 and, you know,

• 1:33:23Lex Fridman?

  I, uh, the, the way I recorded that podcast is I tried to put my ego aside. It's actually really tough to talk to your dad, especially because you're giving him a platform.

• 1:33:33Lex Fridman?

  Uh, especially, so at that time, there's already a bit of a platform for this podcast. And so, there's this, as a son, you think like, oh, here it goes with this bullshit again. Like, that's the natural son thought that you have. But, at the same time, I wanted to, the way I thought about it is, in 20 years, when I look back, like, I wanna do a conversation where I'm happy with it, you know? So I wanna make him shine. But I also called him out on, like, why were you so distant?

• 1:34:02Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:34:03Lex Fridman?

  Like, all of that kinda stuff, yeah. It was very difficult to do, but it was really important to do, and I don't think I'd be able to do it without a, without a microphone.

• 1:34:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:34:11Lex Fridman?

  Listen, how often do we sit there and just focus our attention, just look at the other person? I, I don't know, man. This is not even recording right now. I just invited, I just invited you over.

• 1:34:23Speaker 01

  Just so we could actually, you're right, the podcast does make, like, I listen, I've been listening to every word you've been saying, and if we weren't doing a podcast, I might be looking at my phone, or being self-conscious about something else, or nervous, or anxious.

• 1:34:34Lex Fridman?

  You're just in, especially with people close to you. I mean, that was, I recommend that, actually, for people, uh, to talk to their family on a podcast. Like, or like, fake or not, that's really powerful. It made me realize that there's a clear distinction between the conversations we usually have with humans and those we have on a podcast that's being recorded. What the fuck were we talking on before that?

• 1:34:58Speaker 01

  I knew you were gonna lose your train of thought on that one because that's a big one. There's emotion behind that one. A podcast with dad is gonna take, that's gonna take you to a place. It took you to a place. It took you outside of interviewer.

• 1:35:10Lex Fridman?

  New York. I went to a place.

• 1:35:11Speaker 01

  New York and Yang.

• 1:35:12Lex Fridman?

  In New York and Yang. So the data, one of the things that really surprised me about,

• 1:35:18Lex Fridman?

  I like the psychoanalysis you just threw in there.

• 1:35:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I knew that. Yeah, that took you, that took you to a place.

• 1:35:23Lex Fridman?

  So Andrew Yang mentioned-

• 1:35:25Speaker 01

  Do you respect me now, dad? MIT, is it enough? Fucking million people listening to this? I got 14 Rogans? Is it enough, dad? I'm creating robots. Is it enough for you? That's what drives you, probably.

• 1:35:39Lex Fridman?

  That's probably what drives me. That's what gives meaning to life, is it's never enough. And I hope to pass that on to my kids one day, that nothing's ever enough.

• 1:35:47Speaker 01

  Whether they're robot or human, right? Your kids.

• 1:35:50Lex Fridman?

  Most likely, let's be honest, robot.

• 1:35:51Speaker 01

  You might call one of your robot. Do you love your robot? Are you starting to love your, is it gonna be like that Pygmalion thing? You create them and then they kill you, but even while they're killing you, you got a tear rolling down your face?

• 1:35:59Lex Fridman?

  A tear, a slow, one tear, one tear, and just-

• 1:36:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. Why are you doing this Frankenstein?

• 1:36:03Lex Fridman?

  Why? Why? But I loved you. Those would be the last words out of my mouth. But Andrew Yang mentioned something on the, that it costs $400,000, over $400,000 per year to support one person in prison in New York. Like, when I heard that number, it was really confusing to me. Like, that it costs that much? 400K per person?

• 1:36:34Lex Fridman?

  And it was really refreshing to hear a politician describe a particular problem with data. That this is this prison industrial complex, whatever the hell it is. And whether the solution, it's unclear what the solution is. I think he has solutions, but just the honesty of presenting that information was refreshing. And I'm not sure a capitalistic person would solve that. Those kinds of problems, he might make worse. And I'm not, you know, I'm a huge fan of capitalism. I think- I think the free market is the way we make progress in this world, but it seems to go wrong in certain directions, like the military industrial complex, the prison, anything that ends with industrial complex. And so I'm not sure.

• 1:37:19Lex Fridman?

  I'm not sure if all of the problems, you're basically saying,

• 1:37:25Lex Fridman?

  let's put New York's problems aside. We need to have New York shine first to do what it does best.

• 1:37:33Speaker 01

  Essentially, yeah.

• 1:37:34Lex Fridman?

  And then the problems will fix them. Well, and then we can focus on the problems. But if you just say like, here's a problem, here's a problem, here's a problem. Let's make sure we have the safety net that protects against all of these kinds of problems. That's not going to, that's going to kill the city, the spirit of the city. That is, in your biased opinion, the Rome of the world.

• 1:37:55Lex Fridman?

  That said, a lot of people are fleeing New York.

• 1:37:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's why I say it. That's the reality of the situation is, you know,

• 1:38:03Speaker 01

  I'm all for the public good, but yeah, there needs to be, back to that Greek expression, pan metronariston. I also think the free market is responsible for progress. I think it's the most natural thing, the thing that's most aligned with human nature, which is self-interest and which I believe, not to the extent that Ayn Rand would, but I do believe people are mostly self-interested, especially with one gun to the head. Morals are out the window. You know, it's about survival. So, you know, create a system that respects that and acknowledges that. But socialism works very well, at least right now, as a check, as to temper the excesses of capitalism. And in certain scenarios, is the more appropriate system, you know, in a vacuum.

• 1:38:44Speaker 01

  So one being prisons or, you know, you know, governance, you know, parks.

• 1:38:51Lex Fridman?

  Maybe even, well, and this is a difficult one, but in healthcare.

• 1:38:55Speaker 01

  Healthcare.

• 1:38:56Lex Fridman?

  It's unclear what's right. There's a lot of debate there.

• 1:38:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, doctors want boats.

• 1:39:01Lex Fridman?

  So I guess you're voting for AOC, you're saying?

• 1:39:03Speaker 01

  No, I'm not voting for AOC, but I do, it's just a tough one, that's a tough one, but ultimately, the Hippocratic Oath, it's like, how do you turn people away, man? How do you do that to people? It's like, it's a tough thing to reconcile, helping people, curing people with the marketplace. It's just, I can understand why that one's so tough, and then you got hypochondriacs, of course, who drain the system, you know, like people who are, have anxiety like me, who had COVID and called 14, you know, I called 14 ambulances. So, and then, of course, we're fat, and the free market made us fat because it played, the marketing made us want all this junk food, and that's a burden on the healthcare system. So we gotta do something

• 1:39:48Speaker 01

  about that. We gotta get creative, we need new thinkers, I'll be one of them. When you go to a fast food restaurant, you stand on a scale. If you're over a certain thing, you can't be served. It's good for the healthcare system. You know, you just hand it a salad and say, "Sorry, this burger's illegal for right now." If you achieve these certain BMI goals, then you can, you can have this burger, but right now, you can't. And that's where the state's important.

• 1:40:11Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:12Speaker 01

  Okay, to regulate our freedoms. No slurpees, I'm with you, Bloomberg.

• 1:40:16Lex Fridman?

  Well, I'm with you, to go along, I think the salads are too expensive, they should be subsidized. If you, if you go to like a fast food joint, the burger's always going to be cheaper than the salad.

• 1:40:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:25Lex Fridman?

  And this does not make sense. We should run this platform.

• 1:40:27Speaker 01

  A little more delicious.

• 1:40:28Lex Fridman?

  I'll be your vice president.

• 1:40:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:29Lex Fridman?

  We'll ban burgers for, for people over a certain weight, and make salads cheap.

• 1:40:34Speaker 01

  Three-day work weeks. Why has that been happening?

• 1:40:36Lex Fridman?

  Wait, wait, okay, where are you going with this one?

• 1:40:37Speaker 01

  Dude, good for the economy, stimulates the economy, right? More shifts, creates more jobs, more people spending because they have more leisure time, boosts the leisure economy, you know? Why are we still doing the five-day work week? That, that was, that was tempered from the seven-day work week. That was, so the seven, it used to be seven-day work, but it used to be like, and people who are just these libertarians, it's like, "Come on, dude, what is this, freshmen, are we freshmen in college?"

• 1:41:01Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:01Speaker 01

  "You're gonna, we're gonna talk about Ayn Rand next, like, let's talk about reality, okay? And human nature. People are fucking greedy, they're, they lie, they, you know, there's no end to up," which is one of my My favorite expressions.

• 1:41:12Lex Fridman?

  No end to up.

• 1:41:13Speaker 01

  No end to up. There's no end to up.

• 1:41:14Lex Fridman?

  Can we dissect that?

• 1:41:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:16Lex Fridman?

  From a Randian perspective?

• 1:41:17Speaker 01

  There's no end to up, which is, you just keep going. It's never enough.

• 1:41:22Lex Fridman?

  Oh, never enough.

• 1:41:23Speaker 01

  Oh, it's never enough. No end to up. More, more, more. And, you know, you have to reconcile your fact that you're gonna die. So like this no end to up thing is that balance is is just as valuable as progress. So we have to reconcile those two things and put them on a seesaw and figure out how to get two people who have the equal weight to to keep it like that. And that's the goal. And it constantly vacillates according to the time. Sometimes you need a little more socialism. Sometimes you need a little more capitalism. You gotta, you gotta, you gotta fly the plane, man. You gotta fly the plane, dude.

• 1:41:57Lex Fridman?

  What's your, um, looking back at history, is there a moment, time period in history, a person in history that's most fascinating to you? You mentioned Bernie Madoff. Maybe second to Bernie Madoff. Is there in the Battle of Crete? Is there something that you've always been curious about, even if it's something you haven't actually researched that well yet? Just something that pulled your curiosity, that instructed the way you think about the world?

• 1:42:22Speaker 01

  An individual or an event or?

• 1:42:24Lex Fridman?

  Event, individual, uh, you know, yeah, moment in history or a person in history?

• 1:42:33Speaker 01

  There's a few, but, uh, you know, Queen Elizabeth, uh, the Elizabethan era, you know, the sun never sets in the British Empire, very successful empire. Uh, what an absolute success story that is for a leader and a woman.

• 1:42:52Lex Fridman?

  Can you tell a little bit about her story?

• 1:42:54Speaker 01

  Well, you know.

• 1:42:54Lex Fridman?

  I actually don't know much about the British Empire.

• 1:42:55Speaker 01

  She had a good run. I think it's like 70 years, you know, Shakespeare. They, you know, the, oh, I guess what's the word Pax Romana, the, the, a period of Rome that was at peace and they flourished, like a couple of emperors like Trajan or some good ones. And I think he was part of the Pax Romana that sort of just a peace and a comfortable flourishing time. And England had sort of that in their empire under her. Successful reign, she murdered her cousin. She, you know, the movies, there's, you know, um, Cate Blanchett plays her and and does so. And she didn't win the Oscar because fucking Gwyneth Paltrow put a, put a British accent on in Shakespeare in Love. It's a tragedy. Why do I know this? Because I'm not a full man. I'm a comedian, which means I do skits and I perform.

• 1:43:39Speaker 01

  Um, and I, Kate Blanchett's incredible actress, great movies. She was just so, and here's the thing, she, she never got married. She was, oh, she was so, um, astute at public relations. And, and, and, and imagine how strong you gotta be as a woman to lead the greatest empire maybe known to man at the time, and to do so, so successfully. How Machiavellian you have to be, how idealist you have to be, how much of a good marketer you have to be. Propaganda machine was on point. She was married to England. She was adored, the way she adorned herself. You walked in, you're like, holy men, a god just walked in here. And of course she got fucked. I mean, who doesn't fuck? We all fuck.

• 1:44:21Lex Fridman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:44:21Speaker 01

  Even robots one day will fuck.

• 1:44:23Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:23Speaker 01

  But she was, she, she did that propaganda thing. And, and historians aren't, uh, haven't, they haven't decided this, but I believe she fucked. And I believe she did that as a tool of propaganda. I'm married to England.

• 1:44:39Lex Fridman?

  So you, oh, you're directly referring to like using sex as a way to manipulate people?

• 1:44:44Speaker 01

  Well, she, her, she was known as like the, the virgin queen.

• 1:44:48Lex Fridman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:44:48Speaker 01

  And, uh, and her thing was like, I'm married to England. Like, I can't be distracted by man or woman, blah, blah, blah. She never had any kids, nothing. I think she did that as a tool of manipulation.

• 1:44:59Lex Fridman?

  Yes.

• 1:45:00Speaker 01

  Which you need. Yeah, rulers need to, you know, Obama made you feel good and then he went and carpet bombed everywhere. You need to feel good about your guy, no matter how evil they are. And she was fucking a dictator.

• 1:45:13Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:14Speaker 01

  But when you look back at her, everyone's like, oh my God, she was so great. The horror and the shit that she had to do, she didn't put that in history books, but that's what probably was part of what made her successful. And, um, she's a fascinating character to, to ponder because she was so successful and, and, and England flourished so much. And it's just fascinating to me because she was the great virgin queen. And can you think of, there's no other woman who was that, I mean, Angela Merkel, I mean, come on.

• 1:45:42Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:42Speaker 01

  I mean, there's nobody who comes close and defeating the Spanish Armada, I think that happened under her. I mean, I'm no professional history, but I mean, the, the woman crushed. And, uh,

• 1:45:53Lex Fridman?

  Do you think it's more effective to lead by love, which it sounds like what she did from the PR perspective, or by fear? Where do, where do you land on that?

• 1:46:01Speaker 01

  Dude, I'm no leader. That's a great question. Um, I'm the, we gotta ask Joe.

• 1:46:06Lex Fridman?

  Well, yeah, this is interesting because I think leading in the 21st century in whatever ways is different. I think it's very difficult to lead by fear. I mean, that's why I find Putin fascinating and like really fascinating. Like, is he a relic of another era? Or is he something that will still be necessary in the coming decades for certain nations?

• 1:46:29Speaker 01

  I think he's a, I don't think he's a relic from another era. I think his background, I think he is who you think he is because his background was in espionage. His background was in subterfuge and espionage. I think I've said the word subterfuge maybe 10 times now. But he uh

• 1:46:45Lex Fridman?

  You like big words. You're intellectuals.

• 1:46:47Speaker 01

  I just, I'm sitting here with you. It's time to flex. But he, he's very good at that, right? Like controlling people with psychology. And even if you look at the way he sort of used the internet and has sort of been, you know, gotten in to the citizens of other countries' opinions. And it's very KGB. He also looks great without a shirt on a pony.

• 1:47:12Lex Fridman?

  On a horse.

• 1:47:13Speaker 01

  On a horse. Yeah. Yeah. I thought he would choose a pony because a pony's smaller.

• 1:47:18Lex Fridman?

  Would, would you, would you put Queen Elizabeth as the greatest leader of all time?

• 1:47:22Speaker 01

  Probably. Yeah. I think as a woman, and you look at, you look at the, the length of the reign, I think it's like 70 something years or something like that that she reigned. Success, man. Success. She used the church. She used public psychology. Shakespeare, the greatest playwright of all time, under her reign, you know, people were going to plays. And it was, it was a success for her and she was marauding everywhere else, marauding and culling resources for the empire. Just say absolute successful. It's even a token of her success. We don't consider her a dictator.

• 1:48:01Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:01Speaker 01

  She's a dictator. You know, she was queen. This is my thing I love about the feudal system, that these fucking countries still have feudal systems. They're celebrating a horrible thing. Divine right of kings, oppression.

• 1:48:15Speaker 01

  Kings were dictators and now they have fucking ceremonial. Why don't we have a ceremonial Fuhrer? What is in German? He doesn't do any of the bad stuff. He just rolls around and does this and shit. I mean, it's like, what the fuck? There's no difference between Hitler and a fucking king. They did the same horrible shit. Why not a fucking ceremonial conqueror? Alexander the Great walks in, rapes a little bit, but it's all fun. It's for ceremony. He represents the country. Macedonia is Greek.

• 1:48:39Lex Fridman?

  It's interesting to see that some you're starting to see a bit of that in Russia with Stalin. Actually, the celebration of a man that helped win the Great Patriotic War.

• 1:48:52Speaker 01

  Uh oh.

• 1:48:53Lex Fridman?

  Right? So like you're already starting to see that it's very possible in history books. He'll be seen as maybe like a Genghis Khan type of character. And you forget the millions that he tortured.

• 1:49:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:49:04Lex Fridman?

  So you're one of the most successful and brilliant people the world has ever seen. So you're the good person to ask for advice. You know, there's a lot of young people that look up to you. God bless their souls and hearts.

• 1:49:18Speaker 01

  Made the right choice.

• 1:49:19Lex Fridman?

  What advice would you give to a young person? Maybe to yourself, to a young version of yourself? And just how to live a successful, a good life?

• 1:49:29Speaker 01

  Be doggedly you. I think the magic happens when you are stubbornly, doggedly you. And you meet other people who are doing the same. And the real magic of life, the real true currency in this ephemeral life is sort of the communication that happens between people. That's the real currency friendships, love. It's cliche, but it's a, I think the meaning of life is to experience, to experience love. And I think people often mistake, maybe it's because of Hollywood films and things like that, that love is a feeling, but it's not. It's an action. So that took me a while to learn. And I think that's why I've made decisions since that I think have been good for me and healthy for me.

• 1:50:14Speaker 01

  Love is an action. People can say things, you can feel things. That doesn't mean they're necessarily real. It's all chemical reactions. It's all tied to our immaturity and psychological issues and survival. But action, when you do things, when you act. Out of love and you the that's that's what it's about.

• 1:50:38Lex Fridman?

  Is there a times when you're younger where you were kind of this dishonest with who you are to yourself?

• 1:50:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:46Lex Fridman?

  In terms of like, what what kind of things did you have to do to to shake yourself up and be like, OK, I thought? I thought I'm going to be a scientist, but instead I I realized I'm going to do this.

• 1:50:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, my parents.

• 1:50:58Lex Fridman?

  I'm gonna make funny.

• 1:50:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, my my comedy is a hard hard thing to explain to, you know, an immigrant mother who came here and under Nazi occupied Crete and became a human rights lawyer and lawyer and my brother's a lawyer and my father's a lawyer, you know, clawed his way up. His dad was a was a um.

• 1:51:14Lex Fridman?

  So you're a disappointment.

• 1:51:16Speaker 01

  I'm the black sheep. Yeah, my brother went to Oxford Georgetown Law at Brown.

• 1:51:22Speaker 01

  You know, has masters and you know, good law degrees. My mother has follow up for law degrees, you know. She was on the Human Rights Commission in New York up for a judgeship under Dinkins. Wrote a, you know, she was the editor of Unitar. She she wrote a seminal piece on the human rights of children for the United Nations.

• 1:51:42Speaker 01

  And yeah, I was a comedian. I was always a fuck up and the the thing that I was best at, the only thing I was ever decent at was just like making people laugh. I don't know why. I don't know where that comes from, but uh.

• 1:51:53Lex Fridman?

  Was there a question or did was there a moment where you decided this is what I'm gonna do?

• 1:51:56Speaker 01

  There was a moment after I graduated college. Yeah, but I I was thinking about all types of stuff that other people imposed on me and I was honest with myself and once I figured out it was an actual career path. I wasn't even aware. Back then, the internet wasn't huge, you know, late 99, 2000, it wasn't big yet. So I I didn't even I I thought Robin Williams was just like an actor. I didn't know there was comedy clubs and all. So once I learned that, I was just like, I tried it. I I suffered from massive anxiety. I remember the first time I did comedy, my arms went numb. I started having a massive panic attack. I have my first set. I can show it to you. It's like, I suggest I just.

• 1:52:30Lex Fridman?

  On video?

• 1:52:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, on video.

• 1:52:31Lex Fridman?

  Oh, nice.

• 1:52:32Speaker 01

  Thank you, thank you, thank you. And the reason why I kept saying thank you is because I forgot my old jokes. I was so scared. And then they laughed because of the amount of times I said, thank you. And then once they laughed, I was I remembered the whole thing and I did the five minutes. And I remember getting off and for a person who never felt like he had a place anywhere, nothing ever felt right. That felt like, OK, I found it. This is what I'm supposed to do. This is it. It was the only time in my life I felt that. I haven't felt it since. Never felt it before. So that's the only thing I can do. And um.

• 1:53:02Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I had that, you know, it's funny, because there's, I have a similar experience, like immigrant family, and the world tells you to do certain things, and you think that's right, but, but then you put yourself in situations, by luck, probably, where it's like, oh, this, this, this, this feels right. I don't know what this means, but this feels right. I think the, the, the biggest moment like that for me was, I don't know what to make of it exactly, but when I met Spot, the robot, the legged robot, it was like five years ago, it felt like this, the, the depth of fascinating ideas that are yet to be explored with this

• 1:53:43Lex Fridman?

  thing, this felt like a journey. It was like a door that opened. And I was like, I don't want to be a professor. At that point, I realized I don't want to

• 1:53:53Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 1:53:54Lex Fridman?

  do sort of generic stuff. I want to do something crazy. I want to do something big. That's the reason I stepped away from MIT. That's the reason I have this burning desire to do a startup. That's the reason I came to Austin. Yeah, I don't know what the hell it all means, but you just kind of follow that.

• 1:54:10Speaker 01

  That's awesome. That sounds like you're following what's dogged to you. And also, I think, just to, just to piggyback off it, I think that means, no matter what it is, because I think our, the American dream is sold, like, hey, if you're not Beyonce, or if you're not famous, you're not worth it. I hate that. And that's what I love so much about certain countries like Sweden. It's like, it's like, where everyone has healthcare and stuff like that, because everyone's a little, is valued more. It's like, whatever, if you want to be a doorman, do it. Like, it's all the same. Prince was not happy. There's no, just because you're rich or famous, you're still the same guy. Whether your possessions are a lot little, you know, it's like, I, I, I have met some doormen, I have met some

• 1:54:51Speaker 01

  tax collectors that, a lot of you not, are more fascinating. I have, comedians are horrible people. Some, I want to get away from all of them. I have very few friends, Paul Verzi, Tim Dillon, who are comedians, because they're awful, awful people. Some of the people who you know the most, who are the most famous, are not who they say they are. Usually, that's the case. They're putting on that public facade, because they're fucking sociopaths.

• 1:55:16Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:17Speaker 01

  They're horrible people. And some of the most beautiful people I've met, and the most interesting people I've met, have regular jobs. There is no shame in any fucking job. We don't all have to be rappers with like rims. It's just a weird thing.

• 1:55:30Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, fame is a drug. And yeah, comedians, I agree with you. There's some part of me that knows that there'll be a moment in my life when I'm standing there with like a sword or a knife in my stomach and looking at Tim Dillon's smiling face, saying, uh, uh, you shouldn't have trusted me, you stupid fuck. So on that note, Giannis, I've been a huge fan of yours. I love what you're doing with Long Days, now your new podcast. And I obviously love all the stuff you've done before with History Hyenas, the chemistry, the chemistry you have with yourself is also fun to watch. So, man, I'm a huge fan. It's a huge honor that you come down here. Thanks so much for talking to me.

• 1:56:14Speaker 01

  It means so much to me to hear you say that. I really appreciate it. I'm a big fan of yours and having me on has been amazing. And just thank you, man. Thank you for having me on. And people, if they want to watch my special, it's called Blowing the Light. It's on YouTube and please come listen to Long Days of Podcast.

• 1:56:27Lex Fridman?

  And let's go eat some barbecue.

• 1:56:28Speaker 01

  Let's do it.

• 1:56:30Lex Fridman?

  Thanks for listening to this conversation with Giannis Pappas. And thank you to Wine Access, Blinkist, Magic Spoon, and Indeed. Check them out in the description to support this podcast. And now let me leave you with some words from Karl Marx. Revolutions are the locomotives of history. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.