Latest / INSPIRE STORY / #0211_ STORY INSPIRE: Lex Fridman — AI, Technology, Science, Philosophy & Unfiltered Conversations

Transcript

#0211_ STORY INSPIRE: Lex Fridman — AI, Technology, Science, Philosophy & Unfiltered Conversations · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Tim Dillon Show. My
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: voice is slightly... It's suffering right now. We are here
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: with Lex Friedman, who is an incredibly intelligent podcaster, researcher.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: He has a podcast that has probably... Right now, there's...
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: I don't know that you can find a podcast with
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: better guests than yours. If you look at your ability
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: to get... top tier people in every field predominantly the
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: things you're interested in robotics technology science physics but you
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: get everybody i mean you've had richard dawkins you just
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: had elon musk how do you get the top people
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: in those fields and they love coming on and talking
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: to you.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah it's an interesting question i think if there's one
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: universal thing that i've noticed is um somebody close to
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: those folks is just a fan of the podcast. So
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: it's like this momentum that keeps going. And oftentimes it's
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: family members where they say, you know, dad or mom
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: or whatever, this guy's, this guy's all about love and
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: it's kind of an idiot and it's fun to talk to. So,
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: and then it just kind of builds like that. With Elon,
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: a few folks were fans of the lectures I was
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: giving at MIT. And so it's like, Somebody always recommends
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: it to them. Right. And then some of it is
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: also just networking. Like, I just know a lot of
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: people in the tech space. But usually, it's funny. For
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: some of these busy folks, it's somebody close to them.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Somebody they trust, somebody they like will say, hey, you
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: should do this kind of podcast. Because you find a
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: lot of really busy people don't know anything about podcasts.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they're wary of it, right? They're wary of
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: sitting down with somebody they may not know and where
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: that'll go and what they'll end up saying, especially a
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: lot of people that are in positions of power. Usually they're,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: you know, I spent time with the CEO of NBC
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: once for a day. They were doing a sketch, an
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: internal sketch to be played at their board meeting. And
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: they hired me as a comedic actor to play a
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: cab driver in the sketch. Yeah. And the whole sketch
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: was going to be the CEO of NBC universal. He
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: was no longer the CEO, but he was Steve something
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: or other. He was going to roast the, uh, board,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: the people, you know, his people, he was going to
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: roast them in a playful, fun way. And I was
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: going to be the cab driver and they spent tens
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: of thousands of dollars, maybe more, um, that, you know,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: the cab was on a Dolly. It was being carted
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: around New York. Now, What amazed me about spending a
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: few hours with him was how tightly structured his entire
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: life is. He had a lawyer with him at all times.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: He had a personal assistant with him at all times.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: NBCUniversal had an attorney there. The script, which was such
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: a simple script, had gone through 10 or 15 rewrites
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: and redrafts. And he was a very intelligent guy. And
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: his time had such a premium. It adds such value
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: that to say to anybody in that space, come and
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: spend two hours with me and just let it fly. Like,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: I remember the first thing I saw when I, the
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: first thing I said when I saw him, he walked
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: out and he goes, you're the cab driver. And I said, yep,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: last white cab driver in New York.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: And he went, whoa, whoa, that's not.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: In the script, right? I said, no, no, no, no.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: He goes, okay. And he's looking at like his lawyers
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: and his people. He's like, wait a minute. We're not
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: going to say that, right? So, It's very interesting that
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: you have these people that come on and they feel
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: comfortable enough with you to just speak.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: Everything you described with the situation you were in, to me,
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: is toxic for a great conversation. 100%. One of the
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: deeper questions here is how do you talk to these
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: people for two, three, four hours? How do you make
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: sure that nobody else is allowed in the room? I
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: have to vet anyone who's allowed. So no marketing people,
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: no people that have a notebook and they're taking notes
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: about the things you're not supposed to say where they
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: look over. Is that appropriate? None of those people. Sometimes
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: it's cool to have just friends who just make, so
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: you can look over them and laugh like Ben's here.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: You can look over and laugh. That's great. But I,
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: you may be in the first like few dozen conversations.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: I was okay with like people being present, but now
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: I'm like hardcore friends. you started three hours. It has
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: to be three hours.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: It's a Joe Rogan inspired that you could do long
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: form conversations.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: And then say like, it's polite, of course, and respectful,
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: but saying, I have different ways of saying it, but like,
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: I feel most comfortable creatively.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: With just us two in the room. Absolutely. And, and, uh, well, yeah, there's,
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: and then there's the uncomfortable, like pressure saying like, I
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: know what the hell I'm doing. And that, those, that,
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: exact conversation has come up, which is ultimately you have
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: to trust me that I know what the hell I'm doing.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: And then I would bring out the best in this person.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: What's interesting about you, we talked about a little bit
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: before we started, is that you don't own real estate.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: You don't own a property.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: You rent.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: You like the freedom of that. Yes.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: By the way, sorry to interrupt your conversation with Joe
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: about digital real estate. It was quite epic.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: I think it was interesting. And I think a lot
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: of people responded to it. Right now, real life, people
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: tell me all the time, they go, are you kidding
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: or are you serious? And I go, real life right
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: now is living on that line. The things that are
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: real sound like comedy. So I'm talking to Joe and
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: I'm being funny because that's what I try to do.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: But I'm also bringing up real life. actual trends that
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: are happening and people I think are so you know
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: removed from that world that it all sounds like comedy
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: and a lot of it is very funny but it's
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: actually a real thing that is happening but you what's
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: interesting about you is the concept of ownership in the
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: real world you view as kind of a lack of
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: freedom you were saying.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah I think I value freedom to make big leaps
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: into the unknown as exceptionally important. So I also value
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: love and monogamy and relationships, all those kinds of things.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Those put a limit on, for a lot of people,
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: those put a limit on freedom. I don't see it
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: that way. So I think people use that as an excuse.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: In the same way, house ownership, people often use as
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: an excuse to get complacent. to limit themselves. So I
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: don't think ownership in itself is a limit on your freedom,
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: but people get comfortable, they get soft, it becomes a limitation.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: Because I want to be able to tomorrow say, you know,
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: I'm going to start a company and I'm not going
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: to do it in Austin. I'm going to do it
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: in Kansas City. I'm going to do it in San
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: Francisco and move. Just walk away. Cool guys don't look
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: back at explosions. Just walk away.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: Just walk away.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: And that, something about me, I mean, I don't want
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: to generalize, but for me, I probably won't do that.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: But the freedom to do that allows you to think big,
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: to take leaps into the unknown in a way that
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: materializes like the best version of yourself.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, I fully agree.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: As a person who bought a house in Austin.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: Well, I did buy a house in Austin. I think
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: that part of what I like is problems, right? Yes.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Problems are essential for my business.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: What's your business exactly?
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: It's a great question. I think it's, you know, in
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: its very simplest form, it's making people happy. Right?
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: That's like the simplest way to say it.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: And if there are no problems, there's never going to
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: be a reason to make anyone happy. That's why utopians
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: hate comedy, because they think you can create a world
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: in which there will be no pain. So if there
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: is no pain, there's no reason to alleviate that pain
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: through comedy. But I'm someone who realizes that no matter
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: how great you make the world, you're going to have pain.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: You're going to have problems. So one of the reasons
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: that I kind of like entanglements, problems, things like that,
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: is because I see a lot of opportunities in them to.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: You know, release that valve of pressure comedically.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: So you lean into the chaos because from the chaos
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: comes a lot of problems and then you can understand
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: the human condition by analyzing.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: I think that's part of it. I also think I,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: I have to do things to know what they are.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: And part of my job is to hopefully make those
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: things funny. So by, by owning a house, I've, I've
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: owned houses that I've, I mean, I own one house
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: that I lost. I'm, Very open about that during the
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: mortgage crisis. Right. So I went through that. And now
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: I bought a house very responsibly. But when you buy
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: a house very responsibly, it's still very much, a weight.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: It's a weight on you. You feel that weight. But
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: there's value, I think, to weighing yourself down sometimes. Because
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: then you understand what other people are going through. When
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: I'm in a comedy club or a theater, I'm looking
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: out in the audience and I'm going, All of these
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: people have that weight. They have more than that. They
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: have kids. They have jobs. They have family members they support.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: They have lots of weight. So to understand that and
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: to relate to that, for me, I think there's a
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: value to it. But I also agree with you and
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: completely understand that it slows you down. Houses, they slow
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: you down. Families, even though they're amazing and valuable, can
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: have that effect as well. And it's well worth it
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: to be slow. Certain times slowing down, I think is
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: worth it.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: But you also have to be honest with yourself that
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: the slowing down is often artificial. Like it's in your mind,
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: not to be stoic for a second, but like there's
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: no reason you can't sell the house. Well, some of
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: it is you want to make sure you get a
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: house you can actually afford.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: All those kinds of things. But even still, people talk
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: about like FU money, And they use the lack of
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: money or insufficient amount of money as an excuse to
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: stay in the job they don't like, stay in the
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: life they don't like, stay in the marriage they don't like,
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: stay in the house they don't like. When in reality,
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: I think it's an excuse. Most people can take the
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: bold action. It's a huge risk. But take a leap
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: into the unknown, get rid of the house, and go
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: pursue a job that you actually love. And then everything
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: else will just... Do you think everybody loves something? Yes. See,
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: this is a.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Fundamental disagreement that we have.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: They have the capacity to discover something they love, yes.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: Well, that's a different thing.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: So if you think that there's nothing in this world
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: you love outside of chemical depression, so if there's just
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: a chemistry that makes you incapable of seeing some aspect
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: of beauty in the world, I think everybody could discover it.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: And it's a little flame that's in everybody that you just, uh, haven't.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: You ever met stupid people? I think part of when
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: I speak to you, I speak to a guy who's
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: because he's very smart, has had the privilege of speaking
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: to some very, very intelligent people. But have you ever
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: spoken to someone who was not that smart? And I
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: don't mean a bad person. I don't mean a malevolent
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: human being in any way. I mean, someone who's not complex,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: very simple.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah. person i love so let me just make clear
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: that i don't like the quote-unquote intelligent people or the
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: elite people or the rich people i like simple people
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: simple simple people i that's my i see myself as
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: a you say i'm.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah but you're not but this is when this is
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: what i'm gonna this is the you've got a robot
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: on your floor you interviewed the richest man in the
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: world yesterday and this is when we have to stop
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: You're wearing a suit. It's 12. I mean, Rogan thinks
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: he's a simple man, too. He owns the Colorado River.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: Can we stop? This is when, as a comedian, I
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: have to point out how insane this sounds to everyone.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: You're a brilliant guy. You give lectures at MIT. You're
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: just not a simple person. I was in Bucky's yesterday.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: You know what Bucky's is? It's a Walmart competitor, and
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: Bucky is a beaver. And it's a big Walmart, and
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: people go into it, and they buy everything they need,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: and they have Bucky's nuggets. And they're like corn pops,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: a cereal. They're not good for you. They're like potato chips, essentially.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: They're like, you know, these highly processed sugar food and
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: they're so popular. People go to Bucky's and they buy
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: the nuggets and they eat the Bucky's nuggets on their couch.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: Don't you understand that those people fundamentally have some differences
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: with you?
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: No. I mean, okay. I just don't think so. I
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: think they are more like they appreciate life more actually
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: than the That may be true. The people who are
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: in this rat race of like, so the quote unquote
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: smart people are the people who are climbing some kind
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: of career thing. But if you said to.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Some of those people, do what you love, they might say,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: I'm doing what I love. I love the Buc-ee's nuggets
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: and I love my couch.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: First of all, that, yes. If they, well, okay. So
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: I wanted to be a psychiatrist when I was growing up.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: So I would have to have like several months worth
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: of sessions with them to discuss, is it truly what
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: they love?
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: I think on session two, you would realize that you're
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: kind of going up against a brick wall.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Nope.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Not everybody is meant to live this fully, you know,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: like examined life. Many people are quite happy.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: It doesn't have to be examined. You don't have to be,
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: you don't have to read philosophical literature. It can just
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: be honest with yourself, like self-reflect.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: In a simple way about what the hell do you
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: love about life?
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Well, that's fair. And I'm with you on that. Yeah.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: I'm with you on that.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: What I think is what we've done as a society,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: in my estimation, this is one of our fundamental disagreements.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: We agree on many things.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: You mean you and I?
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: I think we agree on a lot.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: But then there's things we disagree on.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: Like such as?
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Well, I think. Love? No, love is important and essential. Okay.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: I have to talk to you about relationships.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: We'll do, we'll do that in a second. But one
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: of the things where me and you have a, a
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: disagreement is this very vague and general advice that we
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: give to people. We tell them your life is not
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: valid or meaningful unless you have this dream that you,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: or this deep love of something that you have to
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: pursue and you have to be on this journey. And
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: to me, I know people who, derive a lot of
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: happiness from the greatest simplicities in their life. Whether that
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: might be, and I'm not saying family is simple, but
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: it might be just having a family. It might be
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: just being sober. It might be just having enough money
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: to pay the rent. So to me, to tell everybody
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: that there's a, um, that they have to love something
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: in a way that motivates them or inspires them to
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: chase it or follow it. I think it's a very,
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: it's a very, it's incomplete. Yeah. As advice. Yeah.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: Maybe, uh, like if there's a goal they have to
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: reach for, you have to improve like new year's resolution
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: style goals.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: Sure. Yeah.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: No, I, um, I was like.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: You know, these great guys, these David Goggins, all these
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: people running backwards on a mountain.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: Totally get it. Right. I mean, that's great. Who is
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: that for? Like, I know it's for people like the
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: people that run up the hill are going to run
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: up the hill. The people that aren't going to run
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: up the hill aren't. Now, sometimes the people that aren't
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: running up the hill will decide to run up the hill.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: For me, the positive aspect of David Goggins is it
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: wakes you up to consider, do I want to be
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: a David Goggins in this world, or do I want
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: to be something else? It just shakes you up. Looking
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: at weirdness.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: That's a good point.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: Just looking at something that's completely out of the ordinary.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: You could just look at any kind of weird video,
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: I suppose, of a human being doing anything weird, and
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: then it reminds you, wait a minute, so people are
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: capable of this, so maybe I'm capable of a lot
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: of stuff, What am I actually interested in? I was
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: just having a conversation with somebody, an older woman. I've
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: been practicing Russian. I've been speaking in Russian with folks.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: What's interesting about you is they hired you at the
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: FSB without even speaking Russian. They just let you. That's odd.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: They just said, you'll figure it out.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. They have a whole program to get you
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: up to speed.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Fair enough.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: So I was talking to her and she said the
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: thing that brings her happiness is is like, this is
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: going to sound a little bit strange, but sort of
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: making dinner for a family, putting everybody to bed, just
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: three kids. Like her husband is like waiting for her
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: in bed or he might be already sleeping and just
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: sitting there at the kitchen table. Oh, also making breakfast
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: and lunch for the next day for the kids. And
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: just everything is done. Everything is clean. Everything is perfect.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: And she's just sitting at the kitchen table and realizing,
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: this is happiness. Right. And that to me was like, yeah,
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: that's another way of happiness. And I, I am the
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: same way to me. Like, I mean, one form of
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: happiness is just being pretty good at whatever I take on.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: So like, uh, I don't know, organizing any kind of stuff.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: I love organizing.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: You couldn't tell it by this place, but like I
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: have an OCD nature and it makes me feel good to, um,
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: to organize stuff like spreadsheets or, data and all those
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: kinds of things. Right. I could, you know, people talk
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: shit about, uh, desk, you know, uh, office work, but
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: I would love that. I would love to be an
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: Excel person where I organize, or you know what? Like
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: somebody's assistant where I like schedule stuff. I love scheduling
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: things like that. Yeah. I love it. I would, uh, yeah.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: You were talking about love earlier and you were saying it's, uh, what,
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: what are your thoughts on that as a organizing principle of,
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: people's lives. And when you see people in relationships, it's
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: very interesting to me I know people that I think
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: are genuinely in love like I think Ben and his
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: wife are genuinely in love but I also see other
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: relationships that are business arrangements and they're also successful truly
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: so it's very interesting Yeah, partnerships. That's right.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: That's different from love. That's right. So broadly, first of all,
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: love to me is much bigger than romantic love.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: Of course.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: So you have to put friendship, like ever since I
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: was young, I was longing for other human beings and
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: that connection you have. You mentioned like sort of, you know,
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: happiness is contrasted to the suffering or whatever, the hardship
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: that people are going through. And that's kind of your job.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: Put yourself in a place of hardship so you can
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: make people happy. But I always saw that there's just
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: unfairness and cruelty and all that kind of stuff in
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: the world. And you could just huddle like penguins together
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: amidst that. And that's what friendship is. But aside from
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: humans also, there's just like sitting at the kitchen table
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: or like looking out at a tree and nature and
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: just appreciating to be alive. That to me is love.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: Like that connection to just, fuck, it's good to be alive.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: That feeling.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: That's huge.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: But romantic love, I just have seen just over and
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: over and over again, hanging out with Rogan and David
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: Goggins in Vegas, just hanging out with their wives and
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: seeing like, holy shit, so much of their success has
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: to do with these people and their relationship.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: That's a huge component.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: And so like I've interacted with a lot of successful
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: people where I don't think it's an accident, where there's
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: this belief in each other, excitement for each other. And
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: it's like you also realize that what the hell are
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: you doing any of this for? It's to your point,
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: like what are we trying to teach people? I think
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: success tastes the best, feels the best when you get
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: to share with people you love.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Yes, 100%.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: And that's, you know, so to me that seems to
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: be essential for a happy life is having like an
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: inner circle, a small collection of people They just love
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: getting excited about shit together with.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: That is absolutely true.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: And sometimes they're, you know, the opposite sex or the
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: same sex, whatever they are, then you have sex with them.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: For many years. Right.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: Let me ask you an interesting question.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: That's how that works.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: In your estimation, I look at Jeffrey and Ghislaine and
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: I say they were in love. That was a very
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: deep and powerful love.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: I see the same... I look at you and Ben
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: the same way.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: He's the just slain, I guess.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: We are not as successful as Jeffrey and just slain.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: By the way.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: The night is still young.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: No, no, no. The word is yet. Yeah. But what
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: I mean about that, right, is you have this... From
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: the outside world, because it's a very interesting conversation, right?
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: Because everything you just said is beautiful and true. But
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: let's look at the other side of that. So to us...
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: You have Jeffrey and Ghislaine. They're having this amazing love affair.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: They genuinely deeply love each other.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: Do you think so, by the way?
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: It seems so.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: Right? I mean, the way they look at each other.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, they really truly seemed to love and trust
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: each other. Yeah.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: They built this empire.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: Nothing bonds you like doing evil onto the world.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: Well, true. So my question is, is that valid, the
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: love that they have for each other? Because it does
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: check a lot of the boxes of what you talked about,
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: where it's like huddling together. It's us against the world. Yeah.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: Is that a valid love?
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. It is. But it can blind you
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: to where you can do evil.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: The harm you're doing to others.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like love of nation is something I also have. Right.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: Which nation?
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: That's funny you should ask. No, of course, man. I'm
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: American through and through, which is what I would say
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: on a podcast that's going to be televised.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: You live in Austin, Texas. Nothing more American than that.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It really sells, I believe. You're shooting guns now.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: I'm going to start wearing a cowboy hat just to
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: make people believe. And can we edit out the part
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: where I said I talk Russian because that's not going
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: to fit the brand of what I'm trying to sell here. No, absolutely.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: You know, you grew up in the Soviet Union where
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: the idea, I grew up in the Soviet Union where
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: the idea of love of country was really powerful. And
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: so much of it is propaganda. But there was, you know,
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: literally the national anthem said, ironically enough, we're the greatest
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: country on earth, indestructible.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: It is the greatest. The Soviet anthem is the greatest
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: anthem ever written. I played in the car with Ben.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: It is the most powerful. You want to talk about
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: musical prowess? I mean, it's amazing.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: And I don't know, you should look at the lyrics
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: because they say we're indestructible. There's a, you know, the
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: American national anthem is kind of polite.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: It's proud. It's beautiful.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: The Soviet national anthem is like, we're the baddest motherfuckers
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: on this planet. Right. You will never destroy us. Of
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: course it collapsed.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: So there you go. They changed it quickly. They changed
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: the national anthem after that. But so that's a love
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: of country. Hitler is an example of somebody that, very
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: effectively sold to the love of country. So love doesn't
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: necessarily create good in the world. This is more kind of.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: Because love is a very powerful force, a blinding force.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: When you talk about propaganda in the Soviet Union, you've
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: lived in both countries. You've seen American propaganda, you've seen
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: Soviet propaganda. How does American propaganda function differently, or does it,
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: than what you remember growing up in the Soviet Union?
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: Maybe you could speak to what you see as propaganda,
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: because there's so many beautiful flavors of propaganda in the
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: United States. What I remember from the Soviet Union, there's
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: a centralized, government-driven propaganda, so it's more boring. Capitalism does
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: everything great, even the propaganda. Right.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: So I guess I would define it kind of loosely
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: as the way that narratives emerge and are sustained in
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: a society. Those narratives could be about the society itself.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: They could be about the way that society interacts with
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: other societies. But that to me is the most enduring
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: form of propaganda is basically these specific belief systems that
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: we have that are sustained through our media, Hollywood, athletics, sports,
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: things like that.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's incomparable to me. So you could say like
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: the mainstream media for a long time was an arm
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: of the propaganda machine or something like that because they
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: would create narratives, maybe like going to war in Afghanistan
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: and Iraq, that was created through propaganda. You can make
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: all those kinds of arguments, but ultimately in the United States,
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: the freedom of speech is obvious. Not just the actual
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: institutions that enable freedom of speech, but the desire in
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: each human heart, in each American, like the obsession with
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: the individualist freedom is like insatiable. So it's amazing to
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: watch actually. And so, it like propaganda takes weird forms here.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: There's just a lot of competing narratives and there's battles.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: And then you realize something like Alex Jones can make
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: a lot of money with one narrative. Then there's like
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: CNN can make a lot of money with another narrative.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: And so it's a competition of narratives, which ones go viral. Right.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: And so ultimately though, it doesn't feel like centralized control
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: in the way the Soviet Union did where everybody legitimately
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: believed that the story told in the United States because
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: of the competing narratives I feel like everybody is constantly
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: skeptical about anything you're.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Very cynical and skeptical to me it feels like the
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: centralized control is not for lack of trying like the
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: lack of centralized control is not for lack of trying
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: it feels like you have this carcass this dead animal
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: by the side of the road which is the media
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: And you have vultures, I'm one of them, that are
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: taking a little bit of it. And the animals may
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: be still alive and it's moaning and go, ooh, ooh.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: And those moans are the stories you get. It does
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: feel like this was a centralized....
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: So the centralized effort is the dead animal on the
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: side of the road? Yeah. And you're the vultures, the
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: freedom of the... We're the people that are.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: Sustaining ourselves by coming in and saying, hey, we possess
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: a technology and the ambition to also have a voice
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: in a very crowded space where a lot of people
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: want a voice. But I think you're absolutely right, but
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: what I see with tech, there's a real danger that
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: we can re-centralize, meaning that You have very few companies
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: that have an enormous amount of power and you have
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: a lot of different people and a lot of different
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: beliefs and narratives. You know, every institution. somebody said this once,
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: and I believe that every institution seeks power through control.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: And that's something that I've seen with the COVID over
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: the last 12 months. You've seen people get banned. You've
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: seen people have their accounts frozen. They've been demonetized. They've
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: lost careers. They've lost their ability to speak because they've
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: had a different opinion and a different view. Robert Malone
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: was banned yesterday from Twitter. This is one of the
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: creators of the mRNA vaccine, right? I don't know why
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: we can't live in a society where Robert Malone is
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: allowed to have an opinion. I don't know why we
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: can't live in a society where Joe Rogan is allowed
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: to have an opinion, right? I mean, he is now, right?
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, wait, just to clarify, you want him to
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: be banned?
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: Who?
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: Joe Rogan. Well... I think the way you made that sound,
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: I wasn't sure if you were doing the joke. No, no, no.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: You know, seeing people get so upset.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: Somebody edits that clip. Yeah.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Well, Joe's show's not big, so I don't think it
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: needs to be banned.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: Oh, so when you get to a certain level... I'm
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: surprised you're not banned yet.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: I know Jack Dorsey pretty well.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: I don't think Jack's the problem. He's not. I think
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: he's like this libertarian guy with a beard who actually
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: does believe in free speech. Twitter was the freest of
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: all of these. I think Zuckerberg's a problem. I think
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: he's isolated. Truly. I think the people in his group
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: are a problem.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: And I think Um, can I ask you a question
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: on that actually? So, um, on, on Zuckerberg, because I
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: have the same kind of intuition, but, um, like, how
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: do we know for sure? Because it feels like some
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: of it is also narratives.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: I think because he wants to be a good guy.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: And I think if you want to be a good
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: guy and you want the world to see you at
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: all times as a good guy, you're going to be
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: very malleable. And if you don't have values that are
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: set in stone at any given time, I mean, look
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: at the last year. In the beginning of the last year,
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: mentioning that the virus came from maybe potentially from a
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: lab in China made you a hysterical racist, some crazy reactionary. Now,
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: it's a pretty well-established, reasonable hypothesis. That's only in 12
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: months you've seen voicing that opinion go from, exiled from
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: polite society to pretty reasonable, rational, mainstream belief. Now, if
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: you believe in freedom of speech, you ride that wave
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: and you say, you're allowed to have this opinion and
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: you're allowed to have this opinion. If you're looking to
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: be a good guy, well, back there, you're going, that
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: opinion's not allowed. But then a year later, you go,
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: we'll allow it now. So if you're constantly going with
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: taking the temperature of public opinion and these institutions that
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: are around you. And when I say public opinion, I
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: don't even mean the public. I mean the small set
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: of people that really define public discourse. That's my worry
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: about Zuckerberg, is that he wants to be seen as
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: good all the time and he wants to be liked
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: all the time. And that can cause you to....
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: But a lot of us want to be liked, right? True.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: I want to be a good person.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: But we don't own Facebook. So the point is that
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: my aunt wants to be liked all the time, but
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: she's unemployed. So when you control one of the most
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: massive exchanges of information in the world, you having a
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: basic human trait can be a lot more dangerous than...
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: a comedian having it who has very little power, you know,
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: in terms of, yeah.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: So your sense is that anybody in Mark Zuckerberg's position,
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: your ability to truly have a good sense of who
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: you are and what the reality is gets corrupted.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's why Jack probably left Twitter.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: He's like, he maybe sensed that something.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: I think Jack was basically like, I can't do it anymore.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: And again, I'm speaking completely out of turn. I've never
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: met him. or spoken to him. But what I do
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: think is that he, from my belief system, did believe
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: in things. Now, it doesn't mean everything he believed in,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: you know, his company did not behave that way all
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: the time. I don't think they executed always. But I
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: think there was some overarching belief in the freedom of
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: people to exchange their opinions. Now that started to get
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: curbed later in his tenure and now he's gone and
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: it scares me what's coming next.
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: So I think sort of the belief in the freedom
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: of speech is an interesting one as a platform because
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: they have a lot of videos of rape, violence being
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: uploaded and they have to remove something from the platform.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: And that becomes a slippery slope for every platform which
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: they realize, every social media platform, even the ones that
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: advocate funeral speech, they have a line that you, if
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: you cross, you don't, I think eight Chan was the
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: one that was created that said, like, we're saying there's
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: no line, but I think even they had a line
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: and that was a big thing.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: Well, I, I, I believe there should be a line, right?
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, in terms of like child pornography, rape, uh, violence,
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: scenes of gratuitous violence, right. Threatening people to a point,
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: you know, doxing people, putting out their personal information, encouraging harm.
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Right.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: There are all these lines that in a society we
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: need to have. What I don't know, I don't think
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: those lines should necessarily be political. And I think that's
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: what I've seen more and more of.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: I think my biggest problem is sort of determining lines
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: from a place of arrogance versus humility. So I really
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: like it when people kind of approach all of this
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: with a high degree of uncertainty about how much they
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: truly understand the world. So to me, the problem isn't
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: the drawing of a line, it's the drawing of a
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: line with arrogance, like as if you know better. And so,
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: I mean, you could see reasonably that quote unquote misinformation
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: about a pandemic could be viewed in a boardroom at
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: Facebook or whatever social media company as something that could
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: lead to the death of millions, right? So from their perspective,
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: they could say, all right, well, we want to stop
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: the spread of misinformation, so we're going to censor everything
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: that uses the word ivermectin or something like that. But
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: you have to have a humility that, wait a minute,
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: maybe we don't perfectly know what are the solutions to
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: this pandemic. We need to be open-minded here. Maybe very
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: specific figures in the scientific community aren't the sole possessors
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: of the truth. Even the, The scientific institutions themselves, maybe
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: they're not the sole possessors of the truth. And having
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: arrogance about that is really dangerous. So to me, the
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: reason I'm bringing all this up is I hope it's
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: possible to be at the scale of Facebook, at the
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: scale of Twitter, and have the humility to actually have
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: a product that does good for the world. Like constantly
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: ask itself, wait a minute, are we doing the right
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: thing here? As opposed to kind of having very specific
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: metrics about engagements and those kinds of things that.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: Why in your estimation did uh is is there in
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: tech just like every business that monopolies are so inevitable
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: seemingly like we have all these smart people in america
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: we have all these you know capable people in tech
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: but all of these massive whether it's amazon or facebook
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: There's really five companies that control everything. And it seems
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: to be that's going to be the way that it'll
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: be forever. And does... I disagree. You disagree. Okay, well,
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: that's good. I would love it to change.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: It's a new... So tech, everything we see with the
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: internet is new. So there's another generation of people coming
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: up that are... I would place the problem... It's complicated,
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: but let me try to explain. I think one of
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: it has to do with money. So what happens is
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: like these big companies, they acquire. The moment you become successful,
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: they start acquiring you. And to me, one of the
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: things that I value, like for me, I have a
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: dream of starting a company and I know for sure
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: I will never sell that company. So you have to
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: believe in your idea. And there's a lot of entrepreneurs
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: that I see now that really believe in an idea.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: And in that way, you can build a larger number
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: of companies that create a market of ideas and how
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: you can do social media, how you can do whatever
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: we're talking about, how you can do platforms that show video,
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: platforms that show images, all those kinds of things. And
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: then you could have a competition in terms of censorship,
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: in terms of how data is stored and shared, how
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: much transparency there is about the data. So I have
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: a hope for that. So I don't think it always
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: has to be that way. One of the problems is
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: that just Facebook keeps acquiring everything that comes up.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: Uh sell they just lose control and whatever that initial
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: idea was gets uh potentially perverted to fit someone else's
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: idea or someone else's profit.
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: Model and there's a kind of complacency within big companies
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: where they don't. They lose track of what made them
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: great in the first place, which is constantly questioning, are
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: we doing the right thing? How can we do this better?
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: So that urgency you have when you're going to go
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: bankrupt if you make the wrong decision, that's what startups have.
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: And you can never lose that urgency. That's what Steve
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: Jobs was great at. Artificially, you're not creating urgency. We
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: need to constantly create a new idea. constantly yes idea
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: and those people are rare and elon's example somebody that.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: I do think that one of the you know the
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: the weaknesses i think of the pro free speech contingent
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: of people is they don't appreciate the complexity of the
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: issue like it is very difficult like the all the
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: things we talked about violence against children uh you know
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: threatening things making people's home addresses available like there is
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: a lot of gray area there always has been so
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: i certainly don't envy the job that somebody like a
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: Jack Dorsey has, right? I don't envy Mark Zuckerberg's job.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: You know, these people are dealing with foreign manipulation. They're
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: dealing with bad actors in their space. They're dealing with
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: organized troll campaigns directed from other places. So I don't
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: envy that. It's an insanely difficult thing to do, especially
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: because we are living more and more online. More and
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: more people, their ability to earn a living, their ability
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: to market themselves to companies, all rests on their ability
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: to have a digital identity. So when you look at
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: this stuff, you go, it's, you know, and all these,
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: you know, things, it's all these like QAnon networks that start,
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: you know, Parler and all these things that are like,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: you know, explicitly political. And they go, well, if you're
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: off Twitter, you can go on Parler. But then you
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: go on Parler and you're like, okay, this is Looney Tunes, right?
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: You're going into this crazy bubble, right? You're going into
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: this crazy bubble where a lot of things are just
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: not based in reality at all.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: It's a hard problem to solve. It's hard. You could
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: see like parlor, you could have hope like, okay, here's
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: a place where freedom of speech reigns. And then you
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: look there and it's like, it's just a bunch of
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: hate and it's not even fun to hang out there.
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: Right. So you go, you need a little bit of hate.
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: You need a little bit of hate.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: And this is my new campaign. It's called A Little
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: Bit of Hate. Because a lot of people are getting
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: rid of hate wholesale in the schools. And I believe
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: I should go back and just go, we need a
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: little bit of hate.
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: That's your TED Talk.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's my TED Talk, A Little Bit of Hate.
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: You need a little bit of hate. You need a
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: little bit of, you know, contention. You need people... who
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: have different ideas to be able to fight it out
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: a little bit without completely saying, you have to use
• 42:36
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• 42:39
  Speaker 2: But it's tough.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: It's difficult.
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: You know Tom Waces?
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, of course.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: Got that song, I Like My Town, with a little
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: drop of poison.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that's true.
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: I actually kind of see you as that person in
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: the tavern. I think it's in Shrek.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: Where there's an old man in a tavern playing a piano.
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: He's got a voice kind of like yours. Yes, it's raspy.
• 43:00
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• 43:02
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  Speaker 1: off their first month at betterhelp.com slash Tim D. What
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: do you think the challenges are for... Because you have
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: this new internet, Web3, as they call it, right? Digital tokens, crypto.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: Are you a believer in this? Are you a skeptic?
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: Web3 or crypto? Well... it's a good, that's a good delineation.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: Web3 is not something to believe in or not, right?
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's just kind of here. Do you believe
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: that crypto is going to be this force that helps
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: things decentralize? Or do you believe that?
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So, you know, I've had a lot of conversations
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: about cryptocurrency, all the, so I could give you the
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: full sort of rundown of all the different cryptocurrencies that
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: are exciting to me. But to me personally, Zero of
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: it has to do with money. So like financial, what
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: do you call it, investment. So a lot of people,
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: that's part of the problem with this space is a
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: lot of people just want to make money and they
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: want to make a quick buck. So their excitement is
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: exaggerated by the fact that they're invested in a particular coin.
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: And so to me what's interesting is the different technologies
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: involved and they're amazing.
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: Explain briefly to people that are unaware of what blockchain
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: technology is. Because maybe they have not come in contact
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: with anyone who has made it their business to yell
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: at them for 10 hours about it.
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: Well, it's a pretty tough task. Maybe one nice way
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: to do it is just to mention some of the
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: key technologies that are competing. So the original implementation of
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: cryptocurrency on a blockchain is Bitcoin. And one of the
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: defining aspects of it is it's proof of work. So
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: it's very difficult. It's grounded to physical reality in the
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: way that gold is grounded to physical reality. And that's
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: really powerful. And also it's powerful because no governments can
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: control it. And so there's a.
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: There's a finite amount of it.
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: And there's a finite amount of it. So the scarcity
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: is enforced. So it's going to hold its value. There's
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: a lot of nice properties to it. And then the
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: negative side is the transactions are very slow and expensive.
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: So people have constructed like layer two technologies, which is
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: using Bitcoin for the great things that Bitcoin does and
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: having the fast transactions that you want. Like if you
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: want to pay for dinner, they have layer two technologies,
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: like Lightning Network is an example. That's what's on top
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: of Bitcoin. Okay. Then there's Ethereum with.
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: Now, blockchain is like a... when people talk about a
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: ledger and what, what would they like, how would you
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: break that down to somebody who's like, wait a minute,
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: what in God's name are you talking about? Uh, so
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: it's a way that all of these transactions are, um,
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: you know, stored. Yeah.
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: So it's, it's basically a database, right? It's a way
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: to store data in a way that cannot be, uh,
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: falsified or, um, sort of attacked and falsified and faked
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: and changed by anybody because there's a lot of people
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: that have a consensus mechanism that are monitoring and have
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: full access to that data. So blockchain just means store
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: of data that has a temporal component so there's a
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: sequence to it and nobody can modify it. Okay. And
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: so this is secure, reliable in the way that physical
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: reality is secure and reliable. If you break a glass,
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: it's broken. That's a fact. Nobody can unbreak that glass
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: and fake it, convince you it never broke, fake news.
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: That reality happened. And in the same way, blockchain is
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: the first technology of its kind that in a digital
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: space that allows you to have that same reliability across
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: the population in the same way that physical reality is
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: reliable blockchain just stores information in a reliable way that
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: nobody can mess with and then everybody just uses that
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: blockchain in different ways and there's.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: Uh is there one blockchain or are there several yeah each.
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: One there's one per Crypto.
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: So Ethereum, a lot of the NFTs that are selling
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: right now, they're on the Ethereum blockchain.
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: Yes. And then Ethereum has a lot of cool properties.
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: Of course, it's evolving. Ethereum 2.0, I think, is supposed
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: to come out 2022.
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: You had the founder on your show.
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a couple of times. Brilliant guy. Really humble. So
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: some of these cryptocurrencies don't have one figurehead. They have
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: a community of people, community of developers. Right. Not obviously,
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: but it's well known that the Bitcoin creator and founder
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: is anonymous, Satoshi Nakamoto.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: Right. That seems to be less true every year.
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't be surprised if you are Satoshi Nakamoto. Oh,
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: you're saying.
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: People are seemingly... They're drawing a line around a group
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: of people. It's got to be one of them, right?
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: It's not like it could be anybody. Well... Right.
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: But that's the beauty of it.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: That you don't know. And that's a powerful idea in itself,
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: the anonymity. But then Vitalik Buterin, who's the co-founder of Ethereum,
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: is kind of like the figurehead and he represents it.
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: And there's a few others. Another co-founder of Ethereum is
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: Charles Hoskinson, who created Cardano. That's a very interesting piece
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: of technology also. So I would say there's smart contracts,
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: which is... ways to use the blockchain to make agreements
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: between people, like exchange assets or do the same kind
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: of contracts you do between people. So that's really interesting.
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: There's moving away from the proof of work, which requires
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: you to use a lot of resources.
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: Explain that. Explain proof of work. When you said it
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: grounds Bitcoin... to the physical reality. Explain proof of work.
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: So proof of work, you have to solve a cryptographic
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: puzzle on a computer. So a computer has to do
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: a really hard thing for a long time to solve it.
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: And so you have to have a giant number of
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: computers doing a giant number of computations.
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: That's why it takes all this energy.
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: It takes all of this energy.
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: But that's why it's very difficult to fake. It's very
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: difficult for a large number of people to get together
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: and say, we're going to create a bunch of fake Bitcoins.
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: So this really grounds it. You always have to come
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: back to this mining effort of performing the computation. There's
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: another- Now, what is it? Is it a math problem, essentially?
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: It's a math. It's a simple math problem. You just
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: have to do a lot of it.
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: To get one Bitcoin.
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: To get one.
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: To mine one Bitcoin. And how many computers have to
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: do this?
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: As many as you want.
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: So you can be mining Bitcoin.
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: With one computer. And it would take a long time.
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: It would take a very long time.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: So how many computers do you need if you want
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: to make quick work of it?
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: It sounds like you're getting ideas in your head.
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: Maybe I am.
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: I think it's getting less and less possible to really
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: make money with this mining effort. I'm actually not paying
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: too much attention with where the major mining facilities are.
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: China recently banned mining. Bitcoin mining. So they banned cryptocurrency
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: and banned mining. So all the mines that were in
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: China had to move elsewhere. But I think it's distributed
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: across the world. I think there's in South America, there's in.
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: And one of the reasons that Elon... There's some here
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: in Austin, sorry to interrupt. Sure, I'm sure there are.
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: Elon made some news by saying it needs to be
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: a greener, more environmentally friendly process. This is maybe last year.
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so what the Bitcoins will say, what the Bitcoin
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: folks will say, is yes, it's not environmentally friendly, but
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: the benefit you get far outweighs the cost. So there's
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: a lot of stuff we do that's not environmentally friendly.
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: Driving cars, eating meat, and their argument is like, well,
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: the benefit to society is much higher than the cost
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: it has to the environment. So don't just find a
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: boogeyman just because you want... They just see it as
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: another way to attack Bitcoin. But yes, it's bad for
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: the environment, but or a lot of things.
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: It's the argument that we make because this has the
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: opportunity to revolutionize the monetary system across the world. So
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: one of the downsides of the way money is used
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: in the world is used by governments to control the populace.
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of people that talk about authoritarian regimes
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: that use inflation, use money to control people. And so
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: Bitcoin allows you.
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: To start wars.
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: To start wars.
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: To do everything. And so to fund gain of function
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: research into diseases that leak out. Yeah. Okay.
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: Allegedly. I've been thinking about whether I want to talk
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: to Fauci. I really don't. He's not going to come on.
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: He will.
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: Do you think he'll come on?
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So this was a discussion here. He said yes.
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: But the problem is he wants to do 15 minutes.
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: So he doesn't know who I am. Or anybody, it's
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: the same podcast problem. And I said, no, it has
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: to be three hours. And so, because I do, this
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: is one example of a person, again, that has a
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: lot of, not again, but there's a lot of positive
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: aspects to him. That he's accomplished a lot of incredible
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: things in his life. He started AIDS. I mean, that's
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: a huge thing.
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: That was a big deal.
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very impactful. Hitler was, I think, man of
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: the century for the 20th century.
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: He killed beagles.
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: Hitler did?
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: No, Fauci.
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: Oh, Fauci.
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: Your friend.
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: He's not my friend.
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: And then him and Bill Gates recently.
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: Pizza?
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: Well, I don't know about that. Okay. But Bill Gates
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: is buying up all the farmland.
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: What's the connection between Fauci and... There must be a connection.
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: They're disease freaks.
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: They like diseases a little too much.
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: Listen, I understand when you spend your life researching pandemics.
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: You get a little, they're a little too excited about it.
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: It's Nietzsche. If you, if you gaze into the abyss,
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: the abyss gazes back into you.
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: Fauci's also an Italian.
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: That's a big problem. They have many defects. That's the
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: first big problem that you mentioned.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: They have many defects.
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And that takes us back.
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: He's more suited to make pizza or be a maitre
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: d' at a restaurant than he is to be a scientist.
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: It makes perfect sense.
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: Italians are criminals. And they're meant to be in... So
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: wherever they are, they're going to commit crime. So if
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: they're in a pizzeria and it's a cash business, they
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: can steal some of the money and feel good about themselves.
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: But when they're put in the government, they can steal
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: so much money, they can have too much power. So
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: Fauci is a problem. Yeah.
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: Primarily because he's Italian. That's a huge.
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: Well, it's a huge part of it. But he's a power-crazed...
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: vaccine Hitler. Go back to the Ethereum and the canary
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: in the coal mine.
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: Let me just wrap up the Fauci thing, though, to
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: quickly say that I do think as a political leader
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: in the response to this pandemic, he did a terrible job. He,
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: to me, does not represent science. There is a lot
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: of good things to say about him. but none of
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: those things come to mind for me in the pandemic response.
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: He did a poor job responding to the pandemic, but
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: I think he did a really good job starting it.
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tim Dillon speaking here. This is our clip.
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: A man who also called them something Hitler. It was beautifully,
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: it was poetic the way you referred to him as Hitler.
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: Me?
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: Fauci, yeah.
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: Vaccine Hitler?
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: Vaccine Hitler, thank you. That was... That was very good.
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: We should have four shots, five shots, six shots. I
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: like to study diseases and then we like to leak
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: them into the population and see what happens. And then
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: Bill and Melinda Gates get divorced because Bill's on Epstein's Island.
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: Fauci didn't even get invited to Epstein's Island. That's how
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: big of a loser he is.
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. I'm sure that that's the reason Bill Gates—
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: So you're a.
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: Big believer in the transformative effect of crypto rather than
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: the investment side.
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: Transition, Tim. Yes. Not like a big, big believer in
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: the way, because big believer in crypto space means something else,
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: because there's really big believers in the crypto space.
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: I'm one of them.
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: I think there's certain cultish aspects to cryptocurrency supporters where
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: they're not able to see not always able to approach
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: things with humility and an open mind.
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: Well, that's why you need humor, right? That's why we
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: need to also poke fun at things. That's what people
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: don't realize, the value in that. The value in not
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: taking yourself so seriously. You know who's great at it?
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: The Winklevoss twins are great. They can make fun of stuff.
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: They get it. Gary Vee is actually really good. I
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: was texting with him. He understands. People that surprise me,
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: people understand humor. And then there's a lot of people
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: that don't understand humor, that don't understand the value. Because humor...
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: at its core, at its base, all it seeks to do, right,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: is to, I think, just take down these sacred cows.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: And it doesn't mean that the sacred cows aren't sacred
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: for a reason, right? Make a joke about Jesus doesn't
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: mean that Jesus wasn't this tremendously impactful figure in history
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: that billions of people have put there. It doesn't mean that.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: What it means is that what humor has this unique
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: ability to do is maybe make anything more um accessible
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: to people i think it makes things accessible it takes
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: kings off thrones yeah and so people that believe so
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: much of bitcoin it can take a joke the crypto
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: world can take.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: A joke yeah and that's what that's why i'm a
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: big fan of you that's why i've been honored that
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: you make fun of me a few times and you
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: love it i love it i i like um.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: And it's never nasty.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: No, no.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: Or mean.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: No, I like smart people acting silly versus silly people
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: acting smart.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: I like that.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: I'm not necessarily saying I'm smart, but I certainly err
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: on the side of the silly. That's why Elon is
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: also an inspiration in that, despite everything else, he's able
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: to be ridiculously silly.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: Well, that's what I like about him. He kind of
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: pokes the bear.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and he doesn't get, like, you've made fun of
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: him a bunch before. Doesn't care. Doesn't care. Not in
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: a Fauci way. I don't think he.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: Knows who I am or even knows that I've made
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: fun of him.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sure that's not true. Actually, but that would
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: be interesting. I'll bring that up.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know if it's on his radar. But
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: I also think if it was on his radar, he
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: wouldn't have me drone-striked. I think he'd just chuckle.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Just chuckle. But, of course, there's different kinds
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: of humor, too. I mean, he's more in the dad
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: jokes category. silly memes category of humor. You're more like,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: I'm going to do a tweet thread on Ghislaine Maxwell
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: and how great Kim Jong-un is for the world. And,
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: He's fat forward.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, fat positive. Fat body positive. Is that a new?
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: Fat forward.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: Okay, fat forward.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: Meaning that he believes the future is fat.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's a progressive fattest.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: I agree.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: Is it interesting to you? You're in worlds with a
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: lot of very interesting people. This technology, the robotics that
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: you're into, all of these countries are competing for I
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: guess the word would be supremacy in a lot of
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: these arenas. If China has the best technology, China's going
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: to export it to everybody.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: If the U.S.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: Has the best technology, the U.S. is going to export
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: it to everybody. There's a lot of intellectual property concerns.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of shadowy intelligence figures that embed themselves
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: in institutions to try to gain access to a lot
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: of like highly sensitive stuff that's being developed and stuff
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: like that. When you look at the landscape and you
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: see a country like China, I've had journalists on my
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: show that have said they believe that China is very
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: influential in terms of like They see a lot of American, U.S.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: corporate interests saying that we have to adopt a lot
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: of these Chinese technologies, surveillance states, social credit scores, things
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: like that, so that we can then export them to
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: the rest of the world. We have that hegemony. Does
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: that worry you at all that we're in a competition
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: with an authoritarian country and that in order to beat them,
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: we may have to become them?
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, of course that worries me. So, for example, in
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: the AI space, there was a recent report from the
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: United States that we're now fully engaged in developing autonomous
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: weapon systems because China is developing them. And the argument
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: was made that, you know, we're willing to go into
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: the race for development of artificial intelligence-driven weapons because that's
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: for the good of the world, because China is doing it.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: So if you don't do it, then they're going to
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: do it. And that's how any kind of, you know,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: bad thing happens. So I'm really worried about that because
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of people saying like, you know, developing
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: like robot dogs, for example, aren't the main concern here. Actually,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: it's drones. Drones are terrifying. People have, there's some kind
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: of magic connection that people have with legged robots, for example,
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: because it just connects them to dogs and cats and
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: humans and but they're not actually very good at committing
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: violence compared to drones.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: Drones are great at it.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the best. So the development of autonomy, currently most
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: drones are remotely controlled and the degree of autonomy is
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: minimal in terms of drones that are doing.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: But we're moving into an arena where you would have
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: drones just deciding who and when to blow people up?
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: Well, it's more and more, it's greater and greater degrees
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: of automation. So you would say, okay, this location, this
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: building has a terrorist, and currently you have remote-controlled operation
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: of the drone to where you can target very precisely
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: that particular building. But then you can start seeing, going
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: to a place where, okay, these are the set of
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: locations we believe the terrorists are located in, but let
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: the drone start to decide what is the most likely
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: of those locations. And then you get to more and
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: more automate the decision about where to launch the bomb
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: or the missile. And then you start to expand the
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: region of automation. Now there will be a set of
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: drones that just monitor the presence of terrorists in a
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: particular city. I mean, it just becomes this slippery slope
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: where when you take the human out of the loop
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: of the decision-making, you start to commit... have the capacity
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: to commit vastly unethical things. So yeah, that really worries me.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: But also another thing that kind of worries me is
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: the warmongering. So on the flip side, I've actually talked
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: to a bunch of folks that live in China that
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: Americans have a way of seeing the rest of the
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: world as kind of flawed and America has the right
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: to answer for everything and how to live life. The
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: the idea of freedom, that we are the good guys.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: I mean, every country has this idea. We have to
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: be careful with that because I think you have to
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: try to understand another culture.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: Agreed.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: So it's not obvious to me that the Chinese government
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: is absolutely unequivocally evil. Right. They have a very different culture.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: I've interacted with folks in many ways their culture is
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: very different. The value of Uniqueness and innovation, for example.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: It's not there in the same way it is in
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: the United States. So Chinese folks, Chinese engineers, Chinese entrepreneurs
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: are more okay with copying ideas. Like legally copying. The
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: way I would say Bill Gates and Microsoft copied ideas.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: Their whole approach was let's see what Apple does and
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: take the best ideas from Apple, from Netscape, from Firefox,
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: from Google. They take ideas and they try to make
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: them better. That kind of way of thinking is just
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: very fundamentally different from the United States. And if you say,
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: if you constantly call them out for like stealing or
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: something like that, it's just constantly trying to create tension
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: where there doesn't necessarily need to exist tension. Now there's
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: obviously a lot of aspects of surveillance state that they're
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: trying to create that are really worrying about human rights.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: But again, I just feel like you have to lead,
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: you have to start by trying to understand them.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: I think one of the things that I like that
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: they do is that when they have a problem with
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: someone in their society, usually a very wealthy person, like
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: a billionaire, instead of beating around the bush, they just
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: disappear that person until they can be reeducated. Now, it's dark,
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: but here's the thing. I think there's a, you know,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: we bring all these billionaires before Congress and we like
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: yell at them. We have like these Midwestern mom congressmen
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: be like, you're making all this money and nobody's got
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: any money. And it goes viral on Twitter and everyone goes, yeah,
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: it's great. But the reality is instead of that, why
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: not kidnap and torture these people?
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: Disappear. Allegedly torture.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: So, I mean, I'm not actually, so that's, that's really...
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: bad if that's happening.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: I'm making light of it, but I'm also saying we
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: seem anemic. This is my serious point behind the joke.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: We seem impotent to control anybody in this country if
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: they've got enough capital. China does not. So that's interesting.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: And currently China is making a lot of centralized decisions
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: that are actually good for its society. So there's a
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: lot of people. That's interesting, right? Like if you set
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: the human rights violation aside for a brief moment, if
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: you look at the markers in terms of the economy,
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: in terms of actually the quality of life across the population,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: it's increasing rapidly. So the problem is, you know, that's
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: the problem with communism. Like, you could do a lot
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: of good in the short term, but it's the slippery
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: slope of power that corrupts people. Yeah, my biggest worry
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: with China is if there's an overbearing government, it's not
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: the disappearing of billionaires. It's the fear that overtakes the
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: populace where they can't speak up. It's the self-censorship. It's
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: not censorship, it's self-censorship.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: What do you think people get wrong about Vladimir Putin?
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: This is a very touchy subject on this particular program.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: Well, what do you mean by that? I haven't.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: Well, you've become, now that Larry King has passed, now
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: you've become the new Larry King. That is true.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: That is unequivocally true, and no one would deny that.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 2: What did they get wrong?
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: Well, because he's a historical figure. Yeah. And a present figure. You,
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: growing up in the Soviet Union, you have an understanding
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: of of him maybe as a leader that other people don't, right?
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: From the West or from outside. One of the things
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: I was highly critical of was when our government, our CIA,
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: was like fomenting coups in the Ukraine, encircling Putin, encircling Russia.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: And then when Putin would respond to that, we'd go,
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: what a monster. But I mean, if he was doing
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: that to us, we'd have the exact same reaction. This
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: is what I mean about propaganda narratives emerging, right? So, however,
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: that being said, it does seem like there's a consolidation
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: of power that is unhealthy.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: So I'll say one, just building on your previous point
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: of the CIA and the FSB and the KGB, there's
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: a game being played there. There's a game being played
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: in the shadows. And there's a bunch of people that
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: are very good at this game. And I think what
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: I could say about Vladimir Putin is I think he's
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: very good at this game. And I personally don't like
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: that such a game is played. That anything is done
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: in the shadows. That there's this manipulation that's happening.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: What would this game be?
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: Just spying on each other. There's cyber attacks in the
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: modern world. Stealing information. Manipulating information. Creating narratives that get
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: the American populace pissed off about something. Right. America creating
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: narratives in Europe that gets Europe pissed off at Russia,
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: all those things. That's a game. That's a game of geopolitics.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: Henry Kissinger is somebody who was incredibly good at this game.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: And the fact that such a game has to be
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: played is deeply dishonest and destructive to the world. But
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: it's a fascinating game. And what troubles me most course
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: is that we know so little about it. There's just
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: a giant number of conspiracy theories, but they're just flirting
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: at the door of truth. These organizations are not transparent, unfortunately.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 2: So I just want to say that there is kind of,
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: in Russia, a discussion, especially amongst young folks, and it's
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 2: certainly in the United States, that sounds similar to the
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: way people analyze Donald Trump, which is saying that Putin
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: is dumb. That Putin is just a lucky idiot.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: That's not true.
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: Well, there's a lot of people that believe this. What
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: I personally believe is he's a very intelligent man. In
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: terms of the game that we were just referring to.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: Of course.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: The other thing I should mention that people might know
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: the reason I find him fascinating as a historical figure
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: is he's able, he is very intelligent in conversation. So
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: he's able to analyze the world in very interesting ways.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: And there's, leaders aren't always that intelligent in conversation or
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: just as, you know, as analysts of history, analysts of
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 2: the present geopolitics of the world, and which you would
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: appreciate humor.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: And like dark humor.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: So that's what makes him really fascinating to me. Um,
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: obviously what also makes me fascinating is that I believe
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: he's been in power for 20 years now, 20, 21 years.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: And I think power has changed him. And it's unclear
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 2: to me in which direction, but it has, I think
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: he was a different man at the, at the beginning
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: of his role. I don't want to say too much
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: on this podcast and sort of what that is because
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: it requires a lot more context. But there was, let
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: me just say that I, as somebody who was in
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: the Soviet Union in the 90s and then the collapse
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: of the Soviet Union, that was true suffering and uncertainty.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 2: That was a really, really difficult time. And what Putin
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: did is there's a significant economic recovery That started the
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: 21st century with him at the role. And so that's
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: why still a lot of people see him as a
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: powerful leader because he saved Russia from the collapse of
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: the Soviet Union, from the destructive aspects of the Soviet Union.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, from the looting that was happening.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: But also the financial system is wrecked.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: The oligarchs just kind of take it more and more, yeah.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: And that's one of the difficult realities you have to
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: see in or think about when you think about Putin
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: is the context in which he operates, the level of
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: corruption all around. There is some aspect to Russia where
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: a strong leader in the short term is necessary to
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: keep the corruption at bay. Now that's a dark reality
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: and I don't think it's a.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: It's grim.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: I think all revolutions are really painful. That doesn't mean
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: you shouldn't go through with them. But if you just
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: analyze the situation as it currently is, Russia is in
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: a very difficult place. And as a human being, just
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 2: for me, it hurts my heart because I know the
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: culture of the 20th century, the Soviet Union. There was
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: so much love for mathematics and science, for poetry and music.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: There's something about the World War where tens of millions
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: of people die that creates some of the most beautiful art,
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 2: great comedy. And so much of that, I think it's
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: just a beautiful place that culturally can flourish and be
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: part of the world. And it currently is not nearly
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: as much a part of the world as it could be.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: So science and tech, there's just so little communication between
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: the United States and the rest of the world with Russia.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: What do you think the next, when Putin steps down,
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: what does the future of that political system look like?
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: This is the scary thing. It's not good. That's why
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 2: a lot of people say, well, my life is good now.
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: And they're afraid of the uncertainty of Putin stepping down.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: Would you have him as a guest on the show?
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: Yes, of course.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: Do you think he would do it?
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: Really? Yeah. When will he do it?
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: You're the Larry King soon.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: Interesting. Yeah. Do you think he will do a podcast tour? Well,
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: he will also do my show and Red Scare and
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: a bunch of other shows.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 2: Red Scare, that's a good one. Well, they're from there. Yeah.
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 2: Probably Joe Rogan first.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: It would be great if he did Rogan.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I told Joe to be a translator. So he
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: speaks pretty good English, actually. But he doesn't speak English well. Publicly,
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 2: because you kind of have to... He only needs to
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: understand one word.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: Yes. Ivermectin.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 2: He would probably say that there's not enough love for
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: the Russian vaccine. Or, you know, there's a Chinese... Yeah,
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: what is the Russian vaccine? I see you brought me
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: onto the show for the scientific analysis of the different vaccines.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: No, I'm just curious, because Sinovac is China, right? What
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: is the Russian vaccine?
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't actually know the details about it.
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: Do we know the name of it even?
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: It's Sputnik 5 or whatever. Sputnik 5.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: I'll get boosted with Sputnik 5.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: Ben, can you fact check me on that?
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: Kovacs. Kovacs.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: That's not the Russian one.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: No, that's not the Russian one, Ben.
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: What kind of mediocre research team do you have here?
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, he's not a research team. Yeah, Sputnik B.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: You got it.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: Thank you. All right. Who's he working for? That's the
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: real question.
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 2: Well, he's the Ghislaine Maxwell of the operation year.
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: She had a lot more class and intelligence than him.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: A lot of people didn't even make resolutions this year.
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  Speaker 2: Who do you think is the brains, honestly?
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: Jeffrey and Ghislaine? Yeah. Neither? Well, here's what I mean
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: by that. Ghislaine's father was intelligence. Ghislaine was very schooled
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: in the world of intelligence. Right. And, you know, understanding
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: like what intelligence is, is the maintenance of relationships essentially. Right.
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: And having leverage over people and how relationships are structured
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: and who has the upper hand at any given time.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: And that could change and blah, blah, blah. And, you know,
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: so Ghislaine understood that her dad was this media mogul,
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: Robert Maxwell was murdered. Um, her sisters are in tech.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: It's an intelligence family. Um, And Epstein was a, you know,
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: kind of, you know, from many people that have met him,
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: sort of, by no means brilliant guy, right? Like, he
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: was not this amazing intellect. However, he had a very
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: good understanding of people, their appetites, their proclivities, their weaknesses,
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: surrounding underage women, surrounding... illicit streams of money where they
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: wanted their money hidden. I'm sure surrounding many other things
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: as well. He was, he seemed to be very good
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: at that. I think the way that they both functioned
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: was a team of people that, you know, ran this very,
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: I think Epstein was the public face of it as
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: a philanthropist, as an investor. I think Ghislaine was just
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: a socialite, but not just to socialite, you know, to
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: the public, just to socialite. But behind the scenes, she
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: was a madam. She was a pimp. She was an
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: access agent. She connected Jeffrey to people that were very
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: powerful in the UK and other places that were friends
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: of her father. And they had an operation that was
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: based on entrapping, blackmailing, gaining leverage over very powerful people So.
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 2: Do you think there was an intelligence connection to all
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 2: of this?
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: Mossad. It was absolutely a Mossad.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 2: So you're with Eric on this?
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: Oh, it was a Mossad operation. But that doesn't mean
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: the CIA didn't know about it and give it its blessing.
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: The CIA ran operations like this in the 80s, in
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: the 90s. These honeypot blackmail operations are not terribly new.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: They were pioneered by the mafia. I mean, this has
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: been going back for a very long time.
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 2: But have so many powerful people involved. The rich people.
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Sure. I mean, that's the point. The point
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: is to all of these institutions, whether it's the Council
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: on Foreign Relations or all these things where people think
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: are very nefarious, whatever it is, Bohemian Grove or Skull
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: and Bones, all these things where they really are, they
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: just create a consensus amongst the wealthiest and most powerful
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: people on the planet. And that consensus becomes our foreign policy,
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: our domestic policy, our corporate policy. So it's just creating
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: a consensus. So if you put a bunch of young
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: guys at Yale together and whatever they do, whatever bonding
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: activities they do to become closer, or if you put
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: them out in the woods in Monterey, California, Bohemian Grove,
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: or if you put them on an island committing crimes,
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: what this does is this fosters a sense of mutually
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: assured destruction, a sense of homogenous... a homogenous ruling class.
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 2: I agree. By the way, I should mention, for the record,
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 2: Ben is wearing a Harvard shirt.
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: Yes, that he was given to by a fat woman
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: who's no longer fat because she had a gastric bypass.
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 2: Well, if you were more fat forward, like your friend,
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 2: you wouldn't even make that comment.
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: But, I mean, I think I'm right about this, where
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: it's like it's an intelligence op. They were the face
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: of it. As they moved into the digital world, it
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: became less necessary to have these physical honeypots.
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you tweeted about this. The true tragedy of Ghislaine
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 2: Maxwell is that it's just yet another human being losing
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 2: out to automation.
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: It's there being replaced by AI. No matter what you
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: think of Jeffrey and Ghislaine, it is a real issue.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: Human trafficking used to involve humans. Yeah. There's a human cost.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: This is absolutely the case. Do you think I'm wrong
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: about anything I've said? Well.
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 2: I'm uncomfortable with the intelligent connection.
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: Why? There's a book about Ghislaine's father called Israel Super Spy. Yeah.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 2: So the father is definitely shady.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: Okay. So the father's in the Mossad.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: No, I don't know about the Mossad thing.
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: You don't know about that.
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 2: There's something about the suicide or whatever, the death. Yeah,
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 2: but it's kind.
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: Of widely believed. You know, he was at the funeral,
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: or I forget, of this big Israeli premiere. I think
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: it's widely accepted.
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 2: But there's a difference between, for example, if I have
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 2: a conversation with Putin, am I part of the FSB? No.
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 2: But that's an important, you know, Elon Musk was once
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 2: at a party with Ghislaine Maxwell at the same party.
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: Everybody was at a party with Ghislaine Maxwell.
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 2: Well, yes. And so the question is, what is the
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 2: depth of the connection?
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: Well, there's a book about it.
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 2: I have a lot of books about a lot of
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: stuff to show you.
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: Well, but written by Seymour Hersh. I mean, Ben, get
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: the title of the book up, right? What is the
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: title of the book? Written by one of America's greatest
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: Pulitzer Prize winning journalists? Okay. Yeah, but also Seymour Hersh
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: wrote something. It might not have been a book, but
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: Seymour Hersh wrote something as well about him. But again,
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: there's an entire book about it.
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 2: So there is evidence. No, I know. So I'm under-informed
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 2: about this topic. I just have a general... Weariness of
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 2: calling people intelligence. Yeah, because it's such a tempting... Whenever I,
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 2: in my mind... feel a temptation to see a conspiracy
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 2: theory in something, I hesitate.
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: So what do you think it would be if it
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: wasn't intelligence? And let's say it's not the Mossad. We'll
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: back that out. Which it was. But it's also CIA
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: and the Mossad and Saudi intelligence are all really tight.
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: And MI6.
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: They're like bros.
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: And then there's Iranian intelligence and Russian intelligence and Syrian
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: intelligence and they're like Cool. They're like friends.
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 2: So this is a view of the world with the
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 2: intelligence organizations as ultra-competent.
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: Yes, they are.
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 2: Okay. Well, this is my view is they're not ultra-competent.
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: Not all of them.
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 2: They're exceptionally well-funded. They're large organizations that have a lot
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 2: of people pushing paper. And they are pretty effective at
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 2: a lot of things, but these are not the A
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 2: students of the world, I believe.
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: Okay. A students don't run the world. C students do.
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: You don't have to be an A student if you're
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: willing to kill someone. Truly. If you're a C student
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: and you're willing to put a gun in someone's mouth,
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: it's actually probably just as good as having an A.
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: What would you say it is? If it's not an
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: intelligence blackmail operation, what would you say that it could be?
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 2: I would say it's... one charismatic person, Jeffrey Epstein, that
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 2: was evil and committed things.
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: But that's a, everyone listening to this, you sound crazy.
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 2: On this show, which is why I enjoy doing it. No,
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 2: but think about it.
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: Everybody.
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 2: I'm a little bit playing devil's advocate here, so I
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 2: don't fully believe this, but there's a sense where I
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 2: feel that there's an important distinction to draw Jeffrey Epstein
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 2: being a complete manufacturing manifestation of an intelligence agency versus
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 2: as one charismatic evil person becomes more and more successful individualist.
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 2: On an individual level, you start meeting powerful people and
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 2: then intelligence does.
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying that it's necessarily the entire intelligence agency, right?
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: These intelligence agencies are bureaucracies, but they do have within
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: them fiefdoms and factions of power. You have bad actors.
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: You have people that are outside of the agency officially.
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: that have all the skills and know all the people.
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: So it's not necessarily as easy as going like it's
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: the entire CIA behind any of these things, right? But
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: there are groups of people. All the intelligence agencies do
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: is they work for billionaires, essentially. They work for American
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: corporate interests. That's what the CIA does. They've overthrown governments
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: at the behest of American corporate interests. This is the
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: CIA works for wealthy people. They essentially are the information,
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: the muscle. And yes, where we cannot do things overtly
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: with our military and with U.S. policy and get things
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: passed through Congress, you have a shadow organization that's able
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: to do that. That's not terribly controversial, right? I mean,
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: that's pretty well known. If you look at all the coups,
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: you know, in other countries that are provable, coups may
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: be in this country that are.
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 2: Well, what's important for me to understand with this is
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's controversial. The question is the scale.
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 2: at which how many people are involved, how much of
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 2: it is at the core of what the CIA does
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 2: versus this is a few people.
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: The core of what the CIA does probably is largely
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: they gather a lot of information and analyze it. But
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: then they're the core of any business, right? So if
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: you looked at Walmart, the core of Walmart is is
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: you going in and buying socks and someone taking your money,
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: you know? But then there's a group of people in
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: Walmart making decisions and charting the direction of the company
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: and what they're going to do for the next five
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: or 10 years. So I think the core of these
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: institutions can be relatively benign, but there's, again, power factions
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: within them that are not all homogenous, right? There's people
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: in the CIA that had no idea what was going on.
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: There's people that would be disgusted by it. There's people
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: that would be repulsed by it. There's no getting around
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: this fact. Blackmail has been, uh, an essential part of
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: the recruitment of agents. It's been an essential part of
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: maintaining relationships with people. This is how intelligence people have
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: often found leverage to gain information.
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is true. Yeah, that's very true. My question
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 2: is how, um, is that increasing or decreasing, the amount
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 2: of that being done? So ultimately my question is about,
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 2: so whenever you think intelligence is running the most powerful
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 2: people in the world, they're blackmailed and everything is being
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 2: controlled by certain very powerful figures, you very naturally lead
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 2: to a cynicism about the future of the world that
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 2: deeply troubles me. So I want to land on an
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 2: optimism with people.
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: Have you tried drugs?
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 2: Not all of them.
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: Drugs are very good for this.
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 2: Optimism.
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: Well, they make you feel a way that reality might not.
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 2: No, I don't think so. I think drugs... I'm not.
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: Saying everything's cynical. I'm not saying everybody's controlled. What I
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: am saying is that one cannot bury their head in
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: the sand when there is an island and a mansion
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: in New York City that has recording equipment. You have
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: a guy that was let off the first time with
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: a very sweetheart deal. who's palling around with prime ministers, kings,
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: and presidents. It's the definition of this looks bad.
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 2: But I would argue it's the Nietzsche gazed into the
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 2: abyss and the abyss gazed back into you. I would
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 2: argue if all you study is the Jeffrey Epstein case,
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 2: you will see devils everywhere.
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: I don't think there's devils everywhere.
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 2: So this is the burden of the great... That's the QAnon. Well,
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 2: that's also, I mean, Alex Jones talks about this.
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: Alex is crazy. I love Alex, but he's nuts.
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 2: When you constantly analyze this stuff, you just, it's, all
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 2: you see is red. And so I.
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: If you don't see any red, that's also a problem.
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: If there's no devils, you go, well, I don't think
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: there's any devils.
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 2: That's an issue. There's definitely a balance strike there. I.
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: It seems unsupported that this is one evil person and
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: another evil person together with no larger... No, no, no.
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 2: The network builds over time.
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 2: And a lot of it is parties and handshakes and
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 2: so on, and you greet each other, politicians. I'm sure... Okay,
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 2: one thing that seems to be the case, because I've
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 2: known people that interact with Jeffrey Epstein... he seems he
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 2: completely diluted them. Like the charisma is there and it
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 2: doesn't have to do with money or women. At the
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 2: core level, it has to do with straight up in
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 2: the room together. Charismatic guy.
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 2: And so I just believe that one charismatic guy can
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 2: do a lot of damage in this world without first
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 2: sort of, being manufactured as a strategic deployment onto the
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 2: United States by some intelligence agency. Now, over time, as
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 2: the interoperability with more and more powerful people, he probably met,
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 2: he probably got some phone calls and probably had some meetings.
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: I don't even think I would say that he was deployed.
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: I think that I don't believe that the way these
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: agencies necessarily operate is that we're thinking of them as
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: you know, custodians of national interest, which I don't think
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: they are, right? I think they are kind of work
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: for hire organizations where there's certain people in those countries
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: that have a lot of money, that have an idea
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: about the way things should be run, that, you know,
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: kind of use these agencies. I don't necessarily think that
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: like all of these agencies all the time are focused
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: on the betterment of any one particular nation state. I
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: think there's a certain group of people that have enough
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: money and enough power that use these agencies as ways
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: to sustain that position in society. So I think Epstein,
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: whether it was in Tel Aviv or in London or
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: in Manhattan, was having conversations with these people whose loyalty
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: is really not to any particular country, but it's to
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: their own interests.
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 2: I just have to say that I am really troubled
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 2: on a personal level.
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 2: That there's a lot of people I respect that when
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 2: they were in a room with Jeffrey Epstein, were not
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 2: able to see through the, were not able to see evil,
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 2: would not have the integrity to.
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: No, because they were looking at pussy.
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 2: Well, this is, this is the, this is the thing is,
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 2: I mean, maybe I'm built different. This is, isn't that
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 2: like a Ford thing or something? Built. Yeah.
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: Like a rock Chevy.
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 2: I just think you can't let, Pussy or money delude
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 2: you and destroy your integrity. Integrity should be above all else.
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 2: And when I see that not being the case with
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 2: Jeffrey Epstein, like people that have spoken with Jeffrey Epstein,
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 2: that really troubles me. That his charisma and manipulation revealed
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 2: the people who lack integrity, in my view. Now, I
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 2: could be naive because... You could be the next Jeffrey
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 2: Epstein and Ben could be the next Ghislaine Maxwell. And
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 2: here I am doing this beautiful podcast and I'm even
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 2: a fan. So maybe it's your charisma.
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: Well, nobody's giving me an island and nobody's giving me
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: the largest, one of the largest pieces of real estate
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: in Manhattan. This is also the problem. When you look
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: at this as just this independent thing, you look at, well,
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: why did Les Wexner, who's the head of the limited brands,
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: gift Jeffrey Epstein these massive, insanely desirable pieces of real estate?
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: It's one in New York City, right? Right. what is
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: the connection there? That connection has not been proven.
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that one. Yeah, what people have spoken about, that's
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 2: really shady.
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: It's just a shady connection, right? So you have this
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: guy who is a well-established human trafficker and you have
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: his biggest benefactor financially not questioned at all in any
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: meaningful way about this. I mean, you can be as
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: averse to conspiracy theories as you want, But a lot
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: of times, unfortunately, they just become the news. And this
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: has kind of become the news. Yeah.
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's become the news.
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: But I understand your thing. I think your thing's valid.
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: The QAnon movement, which is psychotic people whose minds had
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: melted when they got a few nuggets of truth and
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: then they concocted Disney-esque childish stories about good and evil because...
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: They wanted everything in life to have the clarity and
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: certitude of religion. And they created this thing where everyone
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: in Hollywood's evil and everyone's a pedophile. And then dead
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: people are going to come back in JFK Jr. It
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: was a very religious movement. That's what happens to people
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: when they see devils everywhere and they're unable to differentiate
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: fact from fiction.
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 2: And on the other side, there's similar things. And the
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 2: scientific community has really been disappointing to me about the
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 2: level of arrogance, how they dismiss every conspiracy. They just
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 2: dismiss basically everything as a conspiracy theory. That's not like
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 2: very narrowly defined public policy.
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: I watched your interview with the CEO of Pfizer, that guy,
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: the Greek guy who owns a diner. And what I
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: like about that interview was that he was a, um, No,
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: but he's a diner.
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 2: You've offended the Greeks, the Italians. He owns a diner.
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: Even though he's the CEO of Pfizer, he literally owns
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: a diner in Astoria, Queens, where he brings out spanakopita
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: and yells at his wife and their nephews who work
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: at the diner. Yeah.
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 2: By the way- That's the reality. I'm guessing his son
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 2: is a fan of yours because his son mentioned the
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 2: podcast he likes. He's a fan of this podcast or
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 2: my podcast and- It doesn't mean.
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: They're a fan of me. I mean, very smart people
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: listen to you. That doesn't mean they come over to me.
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: They should.
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the next step.
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: But my answer to him is less listening to Lex
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: Friedman and more getting people mozzarella sticks in your father's diner.
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, get back to work.
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: Because when I see that guy, you go, oh, he's
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: the CEO of Pfizer. I go, this is a guy
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: who owns a diner. And it's a struggling diner. But
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: it's good.
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they make good.
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: They get mileage out of the coleslaw. Let me finish
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: up with this. Ben, how long have we done? We've
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: done a while.
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 2: Can I just say before you finish up?
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 2: How much I love Ben. He's really the best part
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 2: of your podcast.
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: Ben is a, that's not true, but Ben is a, no,
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: I love Ben. Ben is essential for me to do
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: what I do.
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 2: He's just a kind soul.
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: He's a kind soul. He's a good hearted person. He's
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: a good hearted person. And, He works very, very hard.
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: And he's one of these people where I'm lucky to
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: have a Ben. Not everybody has a Ben, right? So
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: I'm lucky to have him. Now, that being said, he
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: must be watched very closely. He must be watched very closely.
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 2: Oh, you know who else wore a Harvard sweatshirt?
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: Jeffrey Epstein.
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 2: Is that the reason you.
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: But Ben must be watched like everyone. They must be surveilled.
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So you do like the Chinese government after all.
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: I love the Chinese government. And they're advertising on my
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: podcast next month. No, here's what I say about them.
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: They're going to be tough to beat. They're going to
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: be hard to beat. Because they're willing to do things
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: that we might not be willing to do. And that's,
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: you know, I don't know.
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 2: Can I read you a poem?
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 2: Because this poem makes me think of you.
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: Yes. I like this. I haven't even heard it, but
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: I'm excited. And then I'll read you a poem. So
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: you go first. Okay.
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 2: Is it Cat in the Hat?
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah. All right.
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 2: Well, this is probably my favorite Bukowski poem, and it's
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 2: exactly about you.
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's very sweet.
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 2: There's a kind of Bukowski-esque aspect to your career and
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 2: to who you are.
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay.
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 2: It's called Bluebird. There's a bluebird in my heart that
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 2: wants to get out. but I'm too tough for him.
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 2: I say, stay in there. I'm not going to let
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 2: anybody see you. There's a bluebird in my heart that
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 2: wants to get out, but I pour whiskey on him
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 2: and inhale cigarette smoke, and the whores and the bartenders
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 2: and the grocery clerks never know that he's in there.
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 2: There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out,
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 2: but I'm too tough for him. I say, stay down.
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 2: Do you want to mess me up? You want to
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 2: screw up the works? He went to blow my book
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 2: sales in Europe. There's a bluebird in my heart that
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 2: wants to get out, but I'm too clever. I only
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 2: let him out at night sometimes when everybody's asleep. I say,
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 2: I know that you're there, so don't be sad. Then
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 2: I put him back, but he's singing a little in there.
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 2: I haven't quite let him die, and we sleep together
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 2: like that with our secret pact. And it's nice enough
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 2: to make a man weep, but I don't weep. to
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 2: you Charles Bukowski that's a great.
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: Poem now I want to do a poem for you
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: I love that.
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 2: It's an encouragement to let your the bluebird out yeah
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 2: it's a little bit of love.
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: Okay I mean I want to find this one.
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 2: I'm almost scared.
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: Are you a Bukowski fan Yeah. Badass bitch. Bad attitude.
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: Nails done. Hair done. Ass too. Your baby daddy fucking
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: me and sucking me. He don't answer you, bitch. That's
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: because of me.
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 2: Who's the author of this masterpiece?
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: Young Miami. Okay.
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much for having me on your podcast.
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. Lex Friedman, everyone.