Transcript
00:00:00 The following is a conversation with Dan Carlin,
00:00:03 host of Hardcore History and Common Sense Podcasts.
00:00:08 To me, Hardcore History is one of,
00:00:11 if not the greatest podcast ever made.
00:00:15 Dan and Joe Rogan are probably the two main people
00:00:19 who got me to fall in love with the medium of podcasting
00:00:22 as a fan and eventually as a podcaster myself.
00:00:27 Meeting Dan was surreal.
00:00:29 To me, he was not just a mere human like the rest of us,
00:00:33 since his voice has been a guide
00:00:36 through some of the darkest moments
00:00:37 of human history for me.
00:00:39 Meeting him was like meeting Genghis Khan,
00:00:42 Stalin, Hitler, Alexander the Great,
00:00:45 and all of the most powerful leaders in history all at once
00:00:48 in a crappy hotel room in the middle of Oregon.
00:00:51 It turns out that he is in fact just a human
00:00:55 and truly one of the good ones.
00:00:58 This was a pleasure and an honor for me.
00:01:02 Quick mention of each sponsor,
00:01:04 followed by some thoughts related to the episode.
00:01:07 First is Athletic Greens,
00:01:09 the all in one drink that I start every day with
00:01:11 to cover all my nutritional bases.
00:01:14 Second is SimpliSafe,
00:01:16 a home security company I use to monitor
00:01:18 and protect my apartment.
00:01:20 Third is Magic Spoon,
00:01:22 low carb, keto friendly cereal that I think is delicious.
00:01:26 And finally, Cash App,
00:01:27 the app I use to send money to friends for food and drinks.
00:01:31 Please check out these sponsors in the description
00:01:33 to get a discount and to support this podcast.
00:01:37 As a side note, let me say that I think
00:01:40 we’re living through one of the most challenging moments
00:01:42 in American history.
00:01:44 To me, the way out is through reason and love.
00:01:49 Both require a deep understanding of human nature
00:01:52 and of human history.
00:01:54 This conversation is about both.
00:01:56 I am, perhaps hopelessly, optimistic about our future.
00:02:01 But, if indeed we stand at the precipice
00:02:05 of the great filter, watching our world consumed by fire,
00:02:09 think of this little podcast conversation
00:02:12 as the appetizer to the final meal before the apocalypse.
00:02:17 If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,
00:02:20 review the Five Stars on Apple podcast,
00:02:22 follow on Spotify, support it on Patreon,
00:02:25 or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman.
00:02:28 And now, finally, here’s my conversation
00:02:32 with the great Dan Carlin.
00:02:36 Let’s start with the highest philosophical question.
00:02:39 Do you think human beings are fundamentally good,
00:02:41 or are all of us capable of both good and evil,
00:02:46 and it’s the environment that molds how we,
00:02:50 the trajectory that we take through life?
00:02:53 How do we define evil?
00:02:55 Evil seems to be a situational
00:02:57 eye of the beholder kind of question.
00:03:00 So, if we define evil, maybe I can get a better idea of,
00:03:04 and that could be a whole show, couldn’t it, defining evil.
00:03:08 But when we say evil, what do we mean?
00:03:10 That’s a slippery one, but I think there’s some way
00:03:13 in which your existence, your presence in the world,
00:03:17 leads to pain and suffering and destruction
00:03:22 for many others in the rest of the world.
00:03:25 So, you steal the resources and you use them
00:03:28 to create more suffering than there was before in the world.
00:03:33 So, I suppose it’s somehow deeply connected
00:03:35 to this other slippery word, which is suffering.
00:03:39 As you create suffering in the world,
00:03:41 you bring suffering to the world.
00:03:43 But here’s the problem, I think, with it,
00:03:45 because I fully see where you’re going with that,
00:03:47 and I understand it.
00:03:48 The problem is the question of the reason
00:03:52 for inflicting suffering.
00:03:54 So, sometimes one might inflict suffering
00:03:58 upon one group of individuals
00:04:00 in order to maximize a lack of suffering
00:04:04 with another group of individuals,
00:04:05 or one who might not be considered evil at all
00:04:08 might make the rational, seemingly rational choice
00:04:11 of inflicting pain and suffering
00:04:13 on a smaller group of people
00:04:15 in order to maximize the opposite of that
00:04:17 for a larger group of people.
00:04:19 Yeah, that’s one of the dark things about,
00:04:20 I’ve spoken and read the work of Stephen Kotkin,
00:04:23 I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the historian,
00:04:25 and he’s basically a Stalin, a Joseph Stalin scholar.
00:04:30 And one of the things I realized,
00:04:32 I’m not sure where to put Hitler, but with Stalin,
00:04:37 it really seems that he was sane
00:04:41 and he thought he was doing good for the world.
00:04:44 I really believe from everything I’ve read about Stalin
00:04:47 that he believed that communism is good for the world.
00:04:52 And if you have to kill a few people along the way,
00:04:56 it’s like you said, the small groups,
00:04:57 if you have to sort of remove the people
00:05:01 that stand in the way of this utopian system of communism,
00:05:06 then that’s actually good for the world.
00:05:08 And it didn’t seem to me
00:05:12 that he could even consider the possibility
00:05:14 that he was evil.
00:05:16 He really thought he was doing good for the world.
00:05:18 And that stuck with me because he’s one of the most,
00:05:21 is to our definition of evil,
00:05:24 he seems to have brought more evil onto this world
00:05:29 than almost any human in history.
00:05:32 And I don’t know what to do with that.
00:05:35 Well, I’m fascinated with the concept,
00:05:36 so fascinated by it that the very first
00:05:39 hardcore history show we ever did,
00:05:40 which was a full 15 or 16 minutes,
00:05:42 was called Alexander versus Hitler.
00:05:46 And the entire question about it was the motivations, right?
00:05:51 So if you go to a court of law because you killed somebody,
00:05:55 one of the things they’re going to consider
00:05:56 is why did you kill them, right?
00:05:59 And if you killed somebody, for example, in self defense,
00:06:02 you’re going to be treated differently
00:06:03 than if you malicious killed somebody
00:06:05 maliciously to take their wallet, right?
00:06:08 And in the show, we wondered,
00:06:10 because I don’t really make pronouncements,
00:06:12 but we wondered about if you believe Hitler’s writings,
00:06:17 for example, Mein Kampf, which is written by a guy
00:06:20 who’s a political figure who wants to get,
00:06:22 so I mean, it’s about as believable
00:06:24 as any other political tract would be.
00:06:26 But in his mind, the things that he said that he had to do
00:06:31 were designed for the betterment of the German people, right?
00:06:35 Whereas Alexander the Great, once again,
00:06:37 this is somebody from more than 2000 years ago,
00:06:39 so with lots of propaganda in the intervening years,
00:06:42 but one of the views of Alexander the Great
00:06:44 is that the reason he did what he did
00:06:46 was to, for lack of a better word,
00:06:49 write his name in a more permanent graffiti
00:06:51 on the pages of history, right?
00:06:53 In other words, to glorify himself.
00:06:55 And if that’s the case,
00:06:57 does that make Alexander a worse person than Hitler
00:07:00 because Hitler thought he was doing good,
00:07:02 whereas Alexander, if you believe the interpretation,
00:07:05 was simply trying to exalt Alexander.
00:07:08 So the motivations of the people doing these things,
00:07:11 it seems to me, matter.
00:07:14 I don’t think you can just sit there and go,
00:07:15 the only thing that matters is the end result,
00:07:17 because that might’ve been an unintentional byproduct,
00:07:20 in which case, that person,
00:07:22 had you been able to show them the future,
00:07:25 might have changed what they were doing.
00:07:27 So were they evil or misguided or wrong or made the wrong?
00:07:30 So, and I hate to do that
00:07:32 because there’s certain people like Hitler
00:07:33 that I don’t feel deserve the benefit of the doubt.
00:07:36 At the same time, if you’re fascinated
00:07:38 by the concept of evil and you delve into it deeply enough,
00:07:42 you’re going to want to understand
00:07:43 why these evil people did what they did.
00:07:46 And sometimes it can confuse the hell out of you.
00:07:49 You know, who wants to sit there
00:07:50 and try to see things from Hitler’s point of view
00:07:52 to get a better understanding
00:07:53 and sort of commiserate with.
00:07:54 So, but I’m, obviously, first history show,
00:07:57 I’m fascinated with the concept.
00:07:59 So do you think it’s possible,
00:08:01 if we put ourselves in the mindset
00:08:03 of some of the people that have led,
00:08:05 created so much suffering in the world,
00:08:08 that all of them had their motivations were,
00:08:12 had good intentions underlying them?
00:08:15 No, I don’t, it’s simply because there’s so many,
00:08:17 I mean, the law of averages would suggest
00:08:20 that that’s not true.
00:08:21 I guess it is pure evil possible,
00:08:24 meaning you, again, it’s slippery,
00:08:28 but you, the suffering is the goal.
00:08:31 Suffering, intentional suffering.
00:08:33 Yeah.
00:08:34 Yes, I think that, and I think that there’s historical
00:08:36 figures that one could point,
00:08:38 but that gets to the deeper question of,
00:08:40 are these people sane?
00:08:42 Do they have something wrong with them?
00:08:43 Are they twisted from something in their youth?
00:08:48 You know, these are the kinds of things
00:08:50 where you start to delve into the psychological makeup
00:08:53 of these people.
00:08:53 In other words, is anybody born evil?
00:08:56 And I actually believe that some people are.
00:08:58 I think the DNA can get scrambled up in ways.
00:09:01 I think the question of evil is important too,
00:09:03 because I think it’s an eye of the beholder thing.
00:09:05 I mean, if Hitler, for example, had been successful
00:09:09 and we were today on the sixth or seventh leader
00:09:12 of the Third Reich, since I think his entire history
00:09:16 would be viewed through a different lens,
00:09:18 because that’s the way we do things, right?
00:09:20 Genghis Khan looks different to the Mongolians
00:09:23 than he does to the residents of Baghdad, right?
00:09:25 And I think, so an eye of the beholder question,
00:09:28 I think comes into all these sorts of things.
00:09:30 As you said, it’s a very slippery question.
00:09:32 Where do you put, as somebody who’s fascinated
00:09:35 by military history, where do you put violence
00:09:41 in terms of the human condition?
00:09:43 Is it core to being human or is it just a little tool
00:09:47 that we use every once in a while?
00:09:49 So I’m gonna respond to your question with a question.
00:09:52 What do you see the difference being
00:09:54 between violence and force?
00:09:57 Let me go farther.
00:09:58 I’m not sure that violence is something
00:10:02 that we have to put up with as human beings forever,
00:10:05 that we must resign ourselves to violence forever.
00:10:09 But I have a much harder time seeing us
00:10:12 able to abolish force.
00:10:15 And there’s going to be some ground
00:10:19 where if those two things are not the same,
00:10:21 and I don’t know that maybe they are,
00:10:23 where there’s certainly some crossover.
00:10:25 And I think force, you’re an engineer,
00:10:28 you’ll understand this better than I did,
00:10:30 but think about it as a physical law.
00:10:32 If you can’t stop something from moving
00:10:34 in a certain direction without pushing back
00:10:36 in that same direction, I’m not sure
00:10:40 that you can have a society or a civilization
00:10:44 without the ability to use a counter force
00:10:48 when things are going wrong,
00:10:50 whether it’s on an individual level, right?
00:10:53 A person attacks another person,
00:10:55 so you step in to save that person,
00:10:57 or even at the highest levels of politics or anything else,
00:11:01 a counter force to stop the inertia
00:11:04 or the impetus of another movement.
00:11:07 So I think that force is a simple,
00:11:11 almost law of physics in human interaction,
00:11:13 especially at the civilizational level.
00:11:15 I think civilization requires a certain amount of,
00:11:18 if not violence, then force.
00:11:22 And again, they’ve talked, I mean,
00:11:23 it goes back into St. Augustine,
00:11:25 all kinds of Christian beliefs about the proper use of force
00:11:28 and people have philosophically tried to decide
00:11:31 between can you have sort of an ahimsa,
00:11:35 Buddhists sort of, we will be nonviolent toward everything
00:11:38 and exert no force, or there’s a reason to have force
00:11:42 in order to create the space for good.
00:11:44 I think force is inevitable.
00:11:47 Now, we can talk, and I’ve not come up
00:11:50 to the conclusion myself, if there is a distinction
00:11:52 to be made between force and violence.
00:11:54 I mean, is a nonviolent force enough,
00:11:58 or is violence when done for the cause of good
00:12:02 a different thing than violence done
00:12:03 either for the cause of evil, as you would say,
00:12:05 or simply for random reasons?
00:12:08 I mean, we humans lack control sometimes.
00:12:10 We can be violent for no apparent reason or goal.
00:12:14 And that’s it.
00:12:15 I mean, you look at the criminal justice system alone
00:12:18 and the way we interact with people
00:12:20 who are acting out in ways that we as a society
00:12:23 have decided is intolerable.
00:12:25 Can you deal with that without force
00:12:28 and at some level violence?
00:12:29 I don’t know.
00:12:30 Can you maintain peacefulness without force?
00:12:32 I don’t know.
00:12:34 Just to be a little bit more specific
00:12:36 about the idea of force, do you put force
00:12:40 as general enough to include force in the space of ideas?
00:12:45 So you mentioned Buddhism or religion or just Twitter.
00:12:53 I can think of no things farther apart than that.
00:12:56 Okay.
00:12:58 Is the battles we do in the space of ideas
00:13:03 of the great debates throughout history,
00:13:07 do you put force into that?
00:13:09 Or do you, in this conversation,
00:13:12 are we trying to right now keep it to just physical force
00:13:17 in saying that you have an intuition
00:13:20 that force might be with us much longer than violence?
00:13:25 I think the two bleed together.
00:13:27 So take, because it’s always my go to example.
00:13:33 I’m afraid and I’m sure that the listeners all hate it,
00:13:35 but take Germany during the 1920s, early 1930s,
00:13:40 before the Nazis came to power.
00:13:42 And they were always involved in some level of force,
00:13:45 beating up in the streets or whatever it might be.
00:13:46 But think about it more like an intellectual discussion
00:13:49 until a certain point.
00:13:53 It would be difficult, I imagine,
00:13:55 to keep the intellectual counter force of ideas
00:14:00 from at some point degenerating
00:14:02 into something that’s more coercion, counter force,
00:14:06 if we want to use the phrases we were just talking about.
00:14:09 So I think the two are intimately connected.
00:14:11 I mean, actions follow thought, right?
00:14:14 And at a certain point, I think,
00:14:16 especially when one is not achieving the goals
00:14:20 that they want to achieve through a peaceful discussion
00:14:24 or argumentation or trying to convince the other side,
00:14:27 that sometimes the next level of operations
00:14:30 is something a little bit more physically imposing,
00:14:33 if that makes sense.
00:14:34 We go from the intellectual to the physical.
00:14:36 Yeah, so it too easily spills over into violence.
00:14:39 Yes, and one leads to the other often.
00:14:41 So you kind of implied perhaps a hopeful message.
00:14:45 Let me ask it in the form of a question.
00:14:47 Do you think we’ll always have war?
00:14:51 I think it goes to the first question too.
00:14:52 So for example, what do you do?
00:14:56 I mean, let’s play with nation states now,
00:14:59 although I don’t know that nation states
00:15:02 are something we should think of
00:15:03 as a permanent construct forever.
00:15:06 But how is one nation state
00:15:08 supposed to prevent another nation state
00:15:10 from acting in ways that it would see
00:15:12 as either detrimental to the global community
00:15:14 or detrimental to the interest of their own nation state?
00:15:20 I think we’ve had this question
00:15:22 of going back to ancient times,
00:15:25 but certainly in the 20th century,
00:15:26 this has come up quite a bit.
00:15:27 I mean, the whole Second World War argument
00:15:30 sometimes revolves around the idea
00:15:32 of what the proper counterforce should be.
00:15:34 Can you create an entity, a league of nations,
00:15:37 the United Nations, a one world entity maybe even
00:15:41 that alleviates the need for counterforce
00:15:44 involving mass violence and armies and navies
00:15:46 and those things?
00:15:47 I think that’s an open discussion we’re still having.
00:15:51 It’s good to think through that
00:15:53 because having something like a United Nations,
00:15:57 there’s usually a centralized control.
00:15:59 So there’s humans at the top,
00:16:01 there’s committees and usually like leaders
00:16:05 emerge as singular figures
00:16:07 that then can become corrupted by power.
00:16:10 And it’s just a really important,
00:16:12 it feels like a really important thought experiment
00:16:15 and something to really rigorously think through.
00:16:18 How can you construct systems of government
00:16:21 that are stable enough to push us towards less and less war
00:16:28 and less and less unstable and another tough word,
00:16:33 another tough word which is unfair of application of force?
00:16:39 You know, that’s really at the core of the question
00:16:42 that we’re trying to figure out as humans,
00:16:44 as our weapons get better and better and better
00:16:46 destroying ourselves,
00:16:48 it feels like it’s important to think about
00:16:50 how we minimize the over application
00:16:54 or unfair application of force.
00:16:57 There’s other elements that come into play too.
00:16:59 You and I are discussing this
00:17:00 at the very high intellectual level of things,
00:17:02 but there’s also a tail wagging the dog element to this.
00:17:05 So think of a society of warriors,
00:17:08 a tribal society from a long time ago.
00:17:11 How much do the fact that you have warriors in your society
00:17:15 and that their reason for existing,
00:17:17 what they take pride in, what they train for,
00:17:20 what their status in their own civilization,
00:17:23 how much does that itself
00:17:24 drive the responses of that society, right?
00:17:28 How much do you need war to legitimize warriors?
00:17:33 That’s the old argument that you get to
00:17:34 and we’ve had this in the 20th century too,
00:17:36 that the creation of arms and armies
00:17:39 creates an incentive to use them, right?
00:17:42 And that they themselves can drive that incentive
00:17:45 as a justification for their reasons for existence.
00:17:50 That’s where we start to talk about the interactivity
00:17:52 of all these different elements of society upon one another.
00:17:55 So when we talk about governments and war,
00:17:58 well, you need to take into account
00:18:00 the various things those governments have put into place
00:18:02 in terms of systems and armies and things like that
00:18:05 to protect themselves, right?
00:18:06 For reasons we can all understand,
00:18:08 but they exert a force on your range of choices, don’t they?
00:18:13 It’s true.
00:18:14 You’re making me realize that in my upbringing
00:18:17 and I think upbringing of many, warriors are heroes.
00:18:21 To me, I don’t know where that feeling comes from,
00:18:25 but to sort of die fighting
00:18:29 is an honorable way to die, it feels like that.
00:18:34 I’ve always had a problem with this
00:18:35 because as a person interested in military history,
00:18:38 the distinction is important
00:18:40 and I try to make it at different levels.
00:18:42 So at base level, the people who are out there
00:18:45 on the front lines doing the fighting,
00:18:48 to me, those people can be compared with police officers
00:18:52 and firemen and people, fire persons,
00:18:56 but I mean, people that are involved
00:18:59 in an ethical attempt to perform a task
00:19:05 which ultimately one can see in many situations
00:19:08 as being a saving sort of task, right?
00:19:12 Or if nothing else, a self sacrifice
00:19:15 for what they see as the greater good.
00:19:17 Now, I draw a distinction between the individuals
00:19:20 and the entity that they’re a part of,
00:19:22 a military, and I certainly draw a distinction
00:19:25 between the military and then the entire,
00:19:27 for lack of a better word, military industrial complex
00:19:30 that that service is a part of.
00:19:32 I feel a lot less moral attachment
00:19:37 to those upper echelons than I do the people on the ground.
00:19:40 The people on the ground could be any of us
00:19:42 and have been in a lot of,
00:19:43 we have a very professional sort of military now
00:19:46 where it’s a very, a subset of the population,
00:19:50 but in other periods of time, we’ve had conscription
00:19:53 and drafts and it hasn’t been a subset of the population,
00:19:56 it’s been the population, right?
00:19:58 And so it is the society oftentimes going to war
00:20:01 and I make a distinction between those warriors
00:20:04 and the entities either in the system
00:20:06 that they’re a part of the military
00:20:08 or the people that control the military
00:20:10 at the highest political levels.
00:20:12 I feel a lot less moral attachment to them
00:20:15 and I’m much harsher about how I feel about them.
00:20:19 I do not consider the military itself to be heroic
00:20:25 and I do not consider the military industrial complex
00:20:27 to be heroic.
00:20:28 I do think that is a tail wagging the dog situation.
00:20:31 I do think that draws us into looking at military endeavors
00:20:36 as a solution to the problem much more quickly
00:20:39 than we otherwise might.
00:20:41 And to be honest, to tie it all together,
00:20:42 I actually look at the victims of this
00:20:45 as the soldiers we were talking about.
00:20:47 If you set a fire to send firemen into to fight,
00:20:53 then I feel bad for the firemen.
00:20:55 I feel like you’ve abused the trust
00:20:57 that you give those people, right?
00:20:58 So when people talk about war,
00:21:01 I always think that the people that we have to make sure
00:21:03 that a war is really necessary in order to protect
00:21:07 are the people that you’re gonna send over there
00:21:09 to fight that.
00:21:10 The greatest victims in our society of war
00:21:12 are often the warriors.
00:21:14 So in my mind, when we see these people coming home
00:21:18 from places like Iraq,
00:21:19 a place where I would have made the argument
00:21:21 and did at the time that we didn’t belong.
00:21:24 To me, those people are victims
00:21:26 and I know they don’t like to think about themselves
00:21:28 that way because it runs totally counter to the ethos.
00:21:31 But if you’re sending people to protect this country’s shores,
00:21:35 those are heroes.
00:21:37 If you’re sending people to go do something
00:21:39 that they otherwise probably don’t need to do
00:21:42 but they’re there for political reasons
00:21:43 or anything else you wanna put in
00:21:44 that’s not defense related,
00:21:46 well then you’ve made victims of our heroes.
00:21:48 And so I feel like we do a lot of talk
00:21:52 about our troops and our soldiers and stuff
00:21:54 but we don’t treat them as valuable
00:21:56 as the rhetoric makes them sound.
00:21:59 Otherwise, we would be much more careful
00:22:03 about where we put them.
00:22:05 If you’re gonna send my son,
00:22:06 and I don’t have a son, I have daughters,
00:22:07 but if you’re gonna send my son into harm’s way,
00:22:11 I’m going to demand that you really need
00:22:14 to be sending him into harm’s way
00:22:15 and I’m going to be angry at you
00:22:17 if you put him into harm’s way if it doesn’t warrant it.
00:22:21 And so I have much more suspicion about the system
00:22:23 that sends these people into these situations
00:22:25 where they’re required to be heroic
00:22:28 than I do the people on the ground
00:22:29 that I look at as either the people
00:22:32 that are defending us in situations
00:22:34 like the Second World War, for example,
00:22:37 or the people that turn out to be the individual victims
00:22:41 of a system where they’re just a cog in a machine
00:22:44 and the machine doesn’t really care as much about them
00:22:46 as the rhetoric and the propaganda would insinuate.
00:22:51 Yeah, and as my own family history,
00:22:54 it would be nice if we could talk about
00:22:57 there’s a gray area in the places
00:23:00 that you’re talking about.
00:23:01 There’s a gray area in everything.
00:23:03 In everything.
00:23:05 But when that gray area is part of your own blood,
00:23:08 as it is for me, it’s worth shining a light on somehow.
00:23:16 Sure, give me an example of what you mean.
00:23:17 So you did a program of four episodes
00:23:20 of Ghosts of the Ostfront.
00:23:22 Yeah.
00:23:23 So I was born in the Soviet Union.
00:23:26 I was raised in Moscow.
00:23:27 My dad was born and raised in Kiev.
00:23:30 My grandmother, who just recently passed away,
00:23:33 was raised in Ukraine.
00:23:38 A city.
00:23:39 It’s a small city on the border between Russia and Ukraine.
00:23:44 I have a grandfather born in Kiev.
00:23:45 In Kiev.
00:23:46 The interesting thing about the timing of everything,
00:23:49 as you might be able to connect, is she survived.
00:23:52 She’s the most badass woman I’ve ever encountered in my life
00:23:57 and most of the warrior spirit I carry is probably from her.
00:24:01 She survived Polar Mor, the Ukrainian starvation
00:24:04 of the 30s.
00:24:05 She was a beautiful teenage girl
00:24:08 during the Nazi occupation of,
00:24:11 so she survived all of that.
00:24:14 And of course, family that everybody,
00:24:17 and so many people died through that whole process.
00:24:21 And one of the things you talk about in your program
00:24:25 is that the gray area is, even with the warriors,
00:24:30 it happened to them, just like as you’re saying now,
00:24:33 they didn’t have a choice.
00:24:35 So my grandfather on the other side,
00:24:38 he was a machine gunner that was in Ukraine that.
00:24:45 In the Red Army?
00:24:46 In the Red Army, yeah.
00:24:48 And they threw, like the statement was that there’s,
00:24:54 I don’t know if it’s obvious or not,
00:24:55 but the rule was there’s no surrender.
00:24:57 So you better die.
00:24:59 So you, I mean, you’re basically,
00:25:02 the goal was when he was fighting
00:25:04 and he was lucky enough,
00:25:06 one of the only to survive by being wounded early on
00:25:10 is there was a march of Nazis towards, I guess, Moscow.
00:25:16 And the whole goal in Ukraine was to slow every,
00:25:21 to slow them into the winter.
00:25:23 I mean, I view him as such a hero
00:25:26 and he believed that he’s indestructible,
00:25:31 which is survivor bias.
00:25:33 And that, you know, bullets can’t hurt him.
00:25:37 And that’s what everybody believed.
00:25:39 And of course, basically everyone that,
00:25:43 he quickly rose to the ranks, let’s just put it this way,
00:25:46 because everybody died.
00:25:48 It was just bodies dragging these heavy machine guns,
00:25:53 like always, you know, always slowly retreating,
00:25:56 shooting and retreating, shooting and retreating.
00:25:59 And I don’t know, he was a hero to me, like I always,
00:26:06 I grew up thinking that he was the one
00:26:08 that sort of defeated the Nazis, right?
00:26:11 And, but the reality that there could be another perspective,
00:26:14 which is all of this happened to him
00:26:16 by the incompetence of Stalin, the incompetence
00:26:21 and men of the Soviet Union being used like pawns
00:26:26 in a shittily played game of chess, right?
00:26:30 So like the one narrative is of him as a victim,
00:26:35 as you’re kind of describing.
00:26:37 And then somehow that’s more paralyzing and that’s more,
00:26:43 I don’t know, it feels better to think of him as a hero
00:26:48 and as Russia, Soviet Union saving the world.
00:26:52 I mean, that narrative also,
00:26:53 is in the United States that the United States was key
00:26:57 in saving the world from the Nazis.
00:27:00 It feels like that narrative is powerful for people.
00:27:03 I’m not sure, and I carry it still with me,
00:27:06 but when I think about the right way
00:27:09 to think about that war,
00:27:11 I’m not sure if that’s the correct narrative.
00:27:14 Let me suggest something.
00:27:15 There’s a line that a Marine named Eugene Sledge had to say
00:27:20 once and I keep it on my phone because it’s,
00:27:23 it makes a real distinction.
00:27:25 And he said, the front line is really where the war is.
00:27:30 And anybody, even a hundred yards behind the front line
00:27:33 doesn’t know what it’s really like.
00:27:36 Now, the difference is, is there are lots of people miles
00:27:39 behind the front line that are in danger, right?
00:27:42 You can be in a medical unit in the rear
00:27:44 and artillery could strike you, planes could strike me.
00:27:46 You could be in danger,
00:27:48 but at the front line, there are two different things.
00:27:50 One is that, and at least,
00:27:53 and I’m doing a lot of reading on this right now
00:27:55 and reading a lot of veterans accounts.
00:27:57 James Jones, who wrote books like From Here to Eternity,
00:28:01 fictional accounts of the Second World War,
00:28:03 but he based them on his own service.
00:28:05 He was at Guadalcanal, for example, in 1942.
00:28:08 And Jones had said that the evolution of a soldier
00:28:12 in front line action requires a lot of
00:28:16 front line action requires an almost surrendering
00:28:20 to the idea that you’re going to live,
00:28:22 that you become accustomed to the idea
00:28:24 that you’re going to die.
00:28:26 And he said, you’re a different person
00:28:28 simply for considering that thought seriously,
00:28:31 because most of us don’t.
00:28:32 But what that allows you to do is to do that job
00:28:35 at the front line, right?
00:28:36 If you’re too concerned about your own life,
00:28:40 you become less of a good guy at your job, right?
00:28:44 The other thing that the people in the 100 yards
00:28:47 at the front line do that the people
00:28:49 in the rear medical unit really don’t,
00:28:51 is you kill and you kill a lot, right?
00:28:54 You don’t just, oh, there’s a sniper back here
00:28:55 so I shot him.
00:28:56 It’s we go from one position to another
00:28:58 and we kill lots of people.
00:29:01 Those things will change you.
00:29:02 And what that tends to do, not universally,
00:29:05 because I’ve read accounts from Red Army soldiers
00:29:08 and they’re very patriotic, right?
00:29:10 But a lot of that patriotism comes through years later
00:29:13 as part of the nostalgia and the remembering.
00:29:16 When you’re down at that front 100 yards,
00:29:19 it is often boiled down to a very small world.
00:29:22 So your grandfather, was it your grandfather?
00:29:24 Grandfather.
00:29:25 At the machine gun, he’s concerned about his position
00:29:28 and his comrades and the people
00:29:30 who he owes a responsibility to.
00:29:32 And those, it’s a very small world at that point.
00:29:35 And to me, that’s where the heroism is, right?
00:29:37 He’s not fighting for some giant world,
00:29:39 civilizational thing.
00:29:40 He’s fighting to save the people next to him.
00:29:43 And his own life at the same time
00:29:44 because they’re saving him too.
00:29:46 And that there is a huge amount of heroism to that.
00:29:49 And that gets to our question about force earlier.
00:29:52 Why would you use force?
00:29:53 Well, how about to protect these people
00:29:55 on either side of me, right?
00:29:56 Their lives.
00:29:59 Now, is there hatred?
00:30:01 Yeah, I hated the Germans for what they were doing.
00:30:03 As a matter of fact, I got a note from a poll
00:30:06 not that long ago.
00:30:07 And I have this tendency to refer to the Nazis, right?
00:30:10 The regime that was, and he said,
00:30:12 why do you keep calling them Nazis?
00:30:14 He says, say what they were.
00:30:15 They were Germans.
00:30:17 And this guy wanted me to not absolve Germany
00:30:21 by saying, oh, it was this awful group of people
00:30:23 that took over your country.
00:30:24 He said, the Germans did this.
00:30:26 And there’s that bitterness where he says,
00:30:28 let’s not forget what they did to us
00:30:30 and what we had to do back, right?
00:30:33 So for me, when we talk about these combat situations,
00:30:37 the reason I call these people heroic is because of,
00:30:40 they’re fighting to defend things we could all understand.
00:30:42 I mean, if you come after my brother
00:30:45 and I take a machine gun and shoot you
00:30:48 and you’re gonna overrun me,
00:30:49 I mean, that becomes a situation
00:30:51 where we talked about counterforce earlier.
00:30:55 Much easier to call yourself a hero
00:30:56 when you’re saving people
00:30:57 or you’re saving this town right behind you.
00:30:59 And you know, if they get through your machine gun,
00:31:02 they’re gonna burn these villages.
00:31:03 They’re gonna throw these people out
00:31:04 in the middle of winter, these families.
00:31:06 That to me is a very different sort of heroism
00:31:09 than this amorphous idea of patriotism.
00:31:13 And you know, patriotism is a thing
00:31:14 that we often get used with, right?
00:31:17 People manipulate us through love of country and all this
00:31:21 because they understand
00:31:22 that this is something we feel very strongly,
00:31:24 but they use it against us sometimes
00:31:26 in order to whip up a war fever or to get people.
00:31:29 I mean, there’s a great line
00:31:30 and I wish I could remember it in its entirety
00:31:32 that Herman Goering had said about how easy it was
00:31:35 to get the people into a war.
00:31:37 He says, you know, you just appeal to their patriotism,
00:31:39 you, I mean, there’s buttons that you can push
00:31:41 and they take advantage of things like love of country
00:31:44 and the way we have a loyalty and an admiration
00:31:48 to the warriors who put their lives on the line.
00:31:50 These are manipulatable things in the human species
00:31:53 that reliably can be counted on to move us
00:31:57 in directions that in a more sober, reflective state of mind
00:32:03 we would consider differently.
00:32:05 It gets the, I mean, you get this war fever up
00:32:07 and people wave flags and they start denouncing the enemy
00:32:09 and they start signing, you know, we’ve seen it over
00:32:11 and over and over again in ancient times this happened.
00:32:14 But the love of country is also beautiful.
00:32:17 So I haven’t seen it in America as much.
00:32:19 So people in America love their country,
00:32:22 like this patriotism is strong in America,
00:32:24 but it’s not as strong as I remember,
00:32:27 even with my sort of being younger,
00:32:30 the love of the Soviet Union.
00:32:33 Now, was it the Soviet Union this requires a distinction
00:32:36 or was it mother Russia?
00:32:39 What it really was, was the communist party.
00:32:41 Okay, so it was the system in place, okay.
00:32:43 The system in place, like loving,
00:32:46 I haven’t quite deeply synchronized exactly what you love.
00:32:49 I think you love that like populist message of the worker,
00:32:56 of the common man, the common person.
00:32:59 Let me draw the comparison then.
00:33:01 And I often say this, that the United States
00:33:04 like the Soviet Union is an ideological based society, right?
00:33:09 So you take a country like France,
00:33:13 it doesn’t matter which French government you’re in now.
00:33:16 The French have been the French for a long time, right?
00:33:19 It’s not based on an ideology, right?
00:33:22 Whereas what unites the United States is an ideology,
00:33:26 freedom, liberty, the constitution.
00:33:28 This is what draws, you know,
00:33:29 it’s the e pluribus unum kind of the idea, right?
00:33:32 That out of many one, well, what binds
00:33:34 all these unique different people?
00:33:37 The shared beliefs, this ideology.
00:33:39 The Soviet Union was the same way.
00:33:40 Cause as you know, the Soviet Union,
00:33:42 Russia was merely one part of the Soviet Union.
00:33:45 And if you believe the rhetoric until Stalin’s time,
00:33:49 everybody was going to be united
00:33:52 under this ideological banner someday, right?
00:33:54 It was a global revolution.
00:33:56 So ideological societies are different.
00:33:59 And to be a fan of the ideological framework and goal,
00:34:03 I mean, I’m a Liberty person, right?
00:34:05 I would like to see everybody in the world
00:34:08 have my system of government,
00:34:09 which is part of a bias, right?
00:34:12 Because they might not want that.
00:34:14 But I think it’s better for everyone
00:34:16 cause I think it’s better for me.
00:34:17 At the same time, when the ideology,
00:34:20 if you consider, and you know,
00:34:22 this stems from ideas of the enlightenment
00:34:25 and there’s a bias there.
00:34:26 So my bias are toward the, but you feel,
00:34:28 and this is why you say,
00:34:29 we’re going to bring freedom to Iraq.
00:34:30 We’re going to bring freedom to here.
00:34:31 We’re going to bring freedom
00:34:32 because we think we’re spreading to you
00:34:34 something that is just undeniably positive.
00:34:37 We’re going to free you and give you this.
00:34:42 It’s hard for me to wipe my own bias away from there, right?
00:34:47 Cause if I were in Iraq, for example,
00:34:50 I would want freedom, right?
00:34:51 But if you then leave and let the Iraqis vote
00:34:54 for whomever they want,
00:34:56 are they going to vote for somebody that will,
00:34:58 I mean, you know, you look at Russia now
00:35:01 and I hear from Russians quite a bit
00:35:03 because so much of my views on Russia
00:35:06 and the Soviet Union were formed in my formative years.
00:35:09 And, you know, we were not hearing from many people
00:35:12 in the Soviet Union back then, but now you do.
00:35:14 You hear from Russians today who will say,
00:35:16 your views on Stalin are archaic and cold.
00:35:18 You know, so you try to reorient your beliefs a little bit,
00:35:21 but it goes to this idea of,
00:35:23 if you gave the people in Russia a free and fair vote,
00:35:27 will they vote for somebody who promises them
00:35:29 a free and open society
00:35:30 based on enlightenment democratic principles?
00:35:33 Or will they vote for somebody,
00:35:34 we in the US would go, what are they doing?
00:35:36 They’re voting for some strong man who’s just good.
00:35:38 You know, so I think it’s very hard to throw away
00:35:41 our own biases and preconceptions.
00:35:45 And, you know, it’s an all eye of the beholder kind of thing.
00:35:48 But when you’re talking about ideological societies,
00:35:52 it is very difficult to throw off
00:35:55 all the years of indoctrination
00:35:57 into the superiority of your system.
00:35:59 I mean, listen, in the Soviet Union,
00:36:01 Marxism one way or another was part of every classrooms.
00:36:04 You know, you could be studying geometry
00:36:06 and they’ll throw Marxism in there somehow,
00:36:09 because that’s what united the society.
00:36:11 And that’s what gave it a higher purpose.
00:36:13 And that’s what made it in the minds of the people
00:36:16 who were its defenders,
00:36:17 a superior, morally superior system.
00:36:20 And we do the same thing here.
00:36:21 In fact, most people do, but see, you’re still French,
00:36:24 no matter what the ideology or the government might be.
00:36:28 So in that sense,
00:36:29 it’s funny that there would be a cold war
00:36:31 with these two systems,
00:36:32 because they’re both ideologically based systems
00:36:35 involving peoples of many different backgrounds
00:36:38 who are united under the umbrella of the ideology.
00:36:42 First of all, that’s brilliantly put.
00:36:45 I’m in a funny position that in my formative years,
00:36:48 I came here when I was 13,
00:36:50 is when I, you know, teenage is your first love or whatever,
00:36:55 is I fell in love with the American set of ideas
00:36:59 of freedom and individuals.
00:37:00 They’re compelling, aren’t they?
00:37:01 Yes. They’re compelling, yes.
00:37:02 But I also remember, it’s like you remember
00:37:05 like maybe an ex girlfriend or something like that.
00:37:07 I also remember loving as a very different human,
00:37:13 the Soviet idea, like we had the national anthem,
00:37:17 which is still, I think the most badass national anthem,
00:37:20 which is the Soviet Union,
00:37:22 like saying we’re the indestructible nation.
00:37:24 I mean, just the words are so,
00:37:26 like Americans words are like, oh, we’re nice.
00:37:29 Like we’re freedom,
00:37:31 but like a Russian Soviet Union national anthem was like,
00:37:34 we’re bad motherfuckers.
00:37:35 Nobody will destroy us.
00:37:38 I just remember feeling pride in a nation as a kid,
00:37:41 like dumb not knowing anything
00:37:43 because we all had to recite the stuff.
00:37:45 It was, there’s a uniformity to everything.
00:37:48 There’s pride underlying everything.
00:37:50 I didn’t think about all the destructive nature
00:37:52 of the bureaucracy, the incompetence,
00:37:56 the, you know, all the things that come
00:37:59 with the implementation of communism,
00:38:01 especially around the eighties and nineties.
00:38:06 But I remember what it’s like to love that set of ideas.
00:38:09 So I’m in a funny place of like,
00:38:12 remember like switching the love
00:38:14 because I’m, you know,
00:38:15 I kind of joke around about being Russian,
00:38:18 but you know, my longterm monogamous relationship
00:38:21 is now with the idea, the American ideal.
00:38:23 Like I’m stuck with it in my mind,
00:38:25 but I remember what it was like to love it.
00:38:28 And I think about that too,
00:38:30 when people criticize China or they criticize
00:38:33 the current state of affairs with how Stalin is remembered
00:38:37 and how Putin is to know that the,
00:38:42 you can’t always wear the American ideal of individualism,
00:38:48 radical individualism and freedom
00:38:50 in analyzing the ways of the world elsewhere.
00:38:54 Like in China, in Russia, that it does,
00:38:59 if you don’t take yourself too seriously,
00:39:01 as Americans all do, as I do,
00:39:04 it’s kind of a beautiful love to have for your government,
00:39:09 to believe in the nation, to let go of yourself
00:39:13 and your rights and your freedoms,
00:39:15 to believe in something bigger than yourself.
00:39:18 That’s actually, that’s a kind of freedom.
00:39:22 That’s, you’re actually liberating yourself.
00:39:24 If you think like life is suffering,
00:39:26 you’re giving into the flow of the water,
00:39:30 the flow, the way of the world
00:39:32 by giving away more power from yourself
00:39:35 and giving it to what you would conceive as,
00:39:37 as the power of the people together,
00:39:40 together we’ll do great things
00:39:41 and really believing in the ideals of what,
00:39:46 in this case, I don’t even know what you would call Russia,
00:39:50 but whatever the heck that is,
00:39:51 authoritarian, powerful state, powerful leader,
00:39:56 believing that can be as beautiful
00:40:00 as believing the American ideal.
00:40:02 Not just that, let me add to what you’re saying.
00:40:04 And I’m very, I spend a lot of time
00:40:07 trying to get out of my own biases.
00:40:11 It is a fruitless endeavor longterm,
00:40:14 but you try to be better than you normally are.
00:40:16 One of the critiques that China,
00:40:19 and I always, as an American,
00:40:20 I tend to think about this as their government, right?
00:40:22 This is a rationale that their government puts forward.
00:40:25 But what you just said is actually,
00:40:27 if you can make that viewpoint beautiful
00:40:30 is kind of a beautiful way of approaching it.
00:40:32 The Chinese would say that what we call human rights
00:40:36 in the United States and what we consider
00:40:37 to be everybody’s birthright around the world
00:40:40 is instead Western rights.
00:40:42 That’s the words they use, Western rights.
00:40:44 It’s a fundamentally Western oriented,
00:40:47 and I’ll go back to the enlightenment based ideas,
00:40:52 on what constitutes the rights of man.
00:40:55 And they would suggest that that’s not internationally
00:40:58 and always applicable, right?
00:41:00 That you can make a case, and again, I don’t believe this.
00:41:03 This runs against my own personal views,
00:41:05 but that you could make a case
00:41:07 that the collective wellbeing of a very large group
00:41:10 of people outweighs the individual needs
00:41:14 of any single person, especially if those things
00:41:17 are in conflict with each other, right?
00:41:18 If you cannot provide for the greater good
00:41:21 because everyone’s so individualistic,
00:41:24 well then really what is the better thing to do, right?
00:41:27 Is suppress individualism so everybody’s better off?
00:41:30 I think trying to recognize how someone else might see that
00:41:34 is important if we want to, you know,
00:41:36 you had talked about eliminating war.
00:41:37 We talk about eliminating conflict.
00:41:39 The first need to do that is to try to understand
00:41:42 how someone else might view something differently
00:41:44 than yourself.
00:41:47 I’m famously one of those people who buys in
00:41:50 to the ideas of traditional Americanism, right?
00:41:53 And look, what a lot of people who live today,
00:41:56 I mean, they would seem to think that things like patriotism
00:42:00 requires a belief in the strong military
00:42:04 and all these things we have today,
00:42:05 but that is a corruption of traditional Americanism,
00:42:07 which viewed all those things with suspicion
00:42:10 in the first hundred years of the Republic
00:42:12 because they saw it as an enemy to the very things
00:42:15 that Americans celebrated, right?
00:42:17 How could you have freedom and liberty
00:42:20 and individualistic expression
00:42:23 if you had an overriding military
00:42:24 that was always fighting wars
00:42:26 and the founders of this country looked to other examples
00:42:29 like Europe, for example,
00:42:30 and saw that standing militaries, for example,
00:42:33 standing armies were the enemy of liberty.
00:42:36 Well, we have a standing army now
00:42:38 and one that is totally interwoven in our entire society.
00:42:43 If you could go back in time and talk to John Quincy Adams,
00:42:47 right, early president of the United States
00:42:49 and show him what we have now,
00:42:51 he would think it was awful and horrible
00:42:54 and that somewhere along the line,
00:42:56 the Americans had lost their way
00:42:59 and forgotten what they were all about.
00:43:01 But we have so successfully interwoven
00:43:04 this modern military industrial complex
00:43:08 with the traditional benefits
00:43:11 of the American system and ideology
00:43:14 so that they’ve become intertwined in our thinking,
00:43:16 whereas 150 years ago, they were actually considered
00:43:19 to be at opposite polarities and a threat to one another.
00:43:22 So when you talk about the love of the nation,
00:43:27 I tend to be suspicious of those things.
00:43:29 I tend to be suspicious of government.
00:43:31 I tend to try very hard to not be manipulated
00:43:34 and I feel like a large part of what they do
00:43:37 is manipulation and propaganda.
00:43:40 And so I think a healthy skepticism of the nation state
00:43:45 is actually 100% Americanism
00:43:47 in the traditional sense of the word.
00:43:50 But I also have to recognize,
00:43:51 as you so eloquently stated,
00:43:53 Americanism is not necessarily universal at all.
00:43:58 And so I think we have to try to be more understanding.
00:44:02 See, the traditional American viewpoint
00:44:05 is that if a place like China
00:44:07 does not allow their people individual human rights,
00:44:10 then they’re being denied something.
00:44:12 They’re being denied and 100 years ago,
00:44:14 they would have said they’re God given rights.
00:44:17 Man is born free and if he’s not free,
00:44:19 it’s because of something done to him, right?
00:44:22 The government has taken away his God given rights.
00:44:25 I’m getting excited just listening to that.
00:44:27 Well, but I mean, I think the idea that this is universal
00:44:31 is in and of itself a bias.
00:44:33 Now, do I want freedom for everybody else?
00:44:36 I sure do.
00:44:36 But the people in the Soviet Union
00:44:38 who really bought into that
00:44:40 wanted the workers of the world to unite
00:44:42 and not be exploited by the greedy blood sucking people
00:44:47 who worked them to death and pocketed all of the fruits
00:44:50 of their labor.
00:44:51 If you frame it that way,
00:44:52 that sounds like justice as well, you know?
00:44:55 So it is an eye of the beholder sort of thing.
00:44:58 I’d love to talk to you about Vladimir Putin,
00:45:03 sort of while we’re in this feeling and wave of empathy
00:45:08 and trying to understand others that are not like us.
00:45:12 One of the reasons I started this podcast
00:45:15 is because I believe that there’s a few people
00:45:17 I could talk to.
00:45:18 Some of it is ego.
00:45:21 Some of it is stupidity.
00:45:24 Is there some people I could talk to
00:45:26 that not many others can talk to?
00:45:29 The one person I was always thinking about
00:45:31 was Vladimir Putin.
00:45:33 Do you still speak the language?
00:45:35 I speak the language very well.
00:45:36 That makes it even easier.
00:45:37 I mean, you might be appointed for that job.
00:45:41 That’s the context in which I’m asking you this question.
00:45:43 What are your thoughts about Vladimir Putin
00:45:48 from a historical context?
00:45:51 Have you studied him?
00:45:52 Have you thought about him?
00:45:54 Yes, studied is a loaded word.
00:45:59 And again, I find it hard sometimes
00:46:02 to not filter things through an American lens.
00:46:05 So as an American,
00:46:07 I would say that the Russians should be allowed
00:46:10 to have any leader that they want to have.
00:46:12 But what an American would say is,
00:46:15 but there should be elections, right?
00:46:17 So if the Russians choose Vladimir Putin
00:46:20 and they keep choosing him, that’s their business.
00:46:23 Where as an American, I would have a problem
00:46:26 is when that leader stops letting the Russians
00:46:29 make that decision.
00:46:30 And we would say, well, now you’re no longer
00:46:33 ruling by the consent of the governed.
00:46:36 You’ve become the equivalent of a person
00:46:38 who may be oppressing your people.
00:46:40 You might as well be a dictator, right?
00:46:42 Now there’s a difference between a freely elected
00:46:45 and reelected and reelected and reelected dictator, right?
00:46:49 If that’s what they want.
00:46:50 And look, it would be silly to broad brush the Russians
00:46:54 like it would be silly to broad brush anyone, right?
00:46:56 Millions and millions of people
00:46:57 with different opinions amongst them all.
00:46:59 But they seem to like a strong person at the helm.
00:47:03 And listen, there’s a giant chunk of Americans
00:47:05 who do too in their own country.
00:47:08 But an American would say, as long as the freedom of choice
00:47:12 is given to the Russians to decide this
00:47:15 and not taken away from them, right?
00:47:16 It’s one thing to say he was freely elected,
00:47:18 but a long time ago and we’ve done away with elections
00:47:20 since then is a different story too.
00:47:23 So my attitude on Vladimir Putin
00:47:25 is if that’s who the Russian people want
00:47:27 and you give them the choice, right?
00:47:29 If he’s only there because they keep electing him,
00:47:31 that’s a very different story.
00:47:32 When he stops offering them the option
00:47:36 of choosing him or not choosing him,
00:47:38 that’s when it begins to look nefarious
00:47:40 to someone born and raised with the mindset
00:47:42 and the ideology that is an integral part of yours truly.
00:47:46 And that I can’t, you can see gray areas
00:47:48 and nuance all you like, but it’s hard to escape.
00:47:51 And you alluded to this too.
00:47:52 It’s hard to escape what was indoctrinated
00:47:56 into your bones in your formative years.
00:47:59 It’s like, your bones are growing, right?
00:48:02 And you can’t go back.
00:48:03 So to me, this is so much a part of who I am
00:48:06 that I have a hard time jettisoning that and saying,
00:48:09 oh no, Vladimir Putin not being elected anymore,
00:48:11 it’s just fine.
00:48:12 I’m too much of a product of my upbringing to go there.
00:48:16 Does that make sense?
00:48:17 Yeah, absolutely.
00:48:18 But of course there’s, like we were saying,
00:48:20 there’s gray areas, which is, I believe,
00:48:23 I have to think through this,
00:48:24 but I think there is a point at which Adolf Hitler
00:48:28 became the popular choice in Nazi Germany in the 30s.
00:48:32 There’s a, in the same way, from an American perspective,
00:48:37 you can start to criticize some in a shallow way,
00:48:42 some in a deep way.
00:48:43 The way that Putin has maintained power
00:48:47 is by controlling the press.
00:48:48 So limiting one other freedom that we Americans value,
00:48:51 which is the freedom of the press or freedom of speech
00:48:55 that he, it is very possible.
00:48:57 Now things are changing now,
00:49:00 but for most of his presidency,
00:49:03 he was the popular choice and sometimes by far.
00:49:06 And I have, I actually don’t have real family in Russia
00:49:12 who don’t love Putin.
00:49:15 The only people who write to me about Putin
00:49:17 and not liking him are like sort of activists
00:49:22 who are young, right?
00:49:24 But like to me, they’re strangers.
00:49:26 I don’t know anything about them.
00:49:28 The people I do know who have a big family in Russia,
00:49:32 they love Putin.
00:49:34 They…
00:49:35 Do they miss elections?
00:49:41 Would they want the choice to prove it at the ballot box?
00:49:45 And, or are they so in love with him
00:49:49 that they wouldn’t wanna take a chance
00:49:52 that someone might vote him out?
00:49:54 No, they don’t think of it this way.
00:49:56 And they are aware of the incredible bureaucracy
00:50:00 and corruption that is lurking in the shadows,
00:50:03 which is true in Russia.
00:50:05 Everywhere.
00:50:06 Everywhere.
00:50:07 But like, there’s something about the Russian,
00:50:09 it’s a remnants, corruption is so deeply part of the Russian,
00:50:14 so the Soviet system that even the overthrow of the Soviet,
00:50:18 the breaking apart of the Soviet Union
00:50:21 and Putin coming and reforming a lot of the system,
00:50:27 it’s still deeply in there.
00:50:28 And they’re aware of that.
00:50:31 That’s part of the, like the love for Putin
00:50:33 is partially grounded in the fear of what happens
00:50:38 when the corrupt take over, the greedy take over.
00:50:42 And they see Putin as the stabilizer,
00:50:44 as like a hard like force that says…
00:50:49 A counter force.
00:50:50 Counter force that get your shit together.
00:50:53 Like basically, from the Western perspective,
00:50:56 Putin is terrible, but from the Russian perspective,
00:51:01 Putin is the only thing holding this thing together
00:51:04 before it goes, if it collapses.
00:51:07 Now, from the, like Gary Kasparov has been loud on this,
00:51:11 a lot of people from the Western perspective say,
00:51:14 well, if it has to collapse, let it collapse.
00:51:17 You know, that’s…
00:51:18 That’s easier said than done
00:51:18 when you don’t have to live through that.
00:51:20 Exactly.
00:51:21 And so anyone worrying about their family about…
00:51:23 And they also remember the inflation
00:51:28 and the economic instability
00:51:30 and the suffering and the starvation
00:51:31 that happened in the 90s with the collapse
00:51:33 of the Soviet Union.
00:51:35 And they saw the kind of reform
00:51:36 and the economic vibrancy that happened
00:51:39 when Putin took power,
00:51:40 that they think like, this guy’s holding it together.
00:51:43 And they see elections as potentially
00:51:48 being mechanisms by which the corrupt people
00:51:53 can manipulate the system unfairly,
00:51:55 as opposed to letting the people speak with their voice.
00:51:58 They somehow figure out a way to manipulate the elections,
00:52:03 to elect somebody like one of them Western revolutionaries.
00:52:08 And so I think one of the beliefs
00:52:11 that’s important to the American system
00:52:13 is the belief in the electoral system
00:52:17 that the voice of the people can be heard
00:52:20 in the various systems of government,
00:52:22 whether it’s judicial, whether it’s…
00:52:25 I mean, basically the assumption is
00:52:29 that the system works well enough
00:52:31 for you to be able to elect the popular choice.
00:52:36 Okay, so there’s a couple of things
00:52:38 that come to mind on that.
00:52:40 The first one has to do with the idea of oligarchs.
00:52:45 There’s a belief in political science,
00:52:48 you know, it’s not the overall belief,
00:52:50 but that every society is sort of an oligarchy really,
00:52:53 if you break it down, right?
00:52:55 So what you’re talking about are some of the people
00:52:57 who would form an oligarchic class in Russia,
00:53:02 and that Putin is the guy who can harness
00:53:06 the power of the state to keep those people in check.
00:53:10 The problem, of course, in a system like that,
00:53:12 a strong man system, right?
00:53:13 Where you have somebody who can hold the reins
00:53:16 and steer the ship when the ship is violently in a storm,
00:53:20 is the succession.
00:53:21 So if you’re not creating a system
00:53:25 that can operate without you,
00:53:27 then that terrible instability and that terrible future
00:53:31 that you justify the strong man for
00:53:35 is just awaiting your future, right?
00:53:37 I mean, unless he’s actively building the system
00:53:41 that will outlive him and allow successors
00:53:44 to do what he’s doing,
00:53:46 then what you’ve done here is create a temporary,
00:53:49 I would think, a temporary stability here,
00:53:51 because it’s the same problem you have in a monarchy, right?
00:53:54 Where you have this one king and he’s particularly good,
00:53:57 or you think he’s particularly good,
00:53:59 but he’s gonna turn that job over
00:54:00 to somebody else down the road,
00:54:02 and the system doesn’t guarantee
00:54:04 because no one’s really worked on,
00:54:07 and again, you would tell me,
00:54:08 if Putin is putting into place,
00:54:11 I know he’s talked about it over the years,
00:54:13 putting into place a system that can outlive him
00:54:15 and that will create the stability
00:54:17 that the people in Russia like him for when he’s gone,
00:54:21 because if the oligarchs just take over afterwards,
00:54:24 then one might argue,
00:54:25 well, we had 20 good years of stability,
00:54:28 but I mean, I would say
00:54:29 that if we’re talking about a ship of state here,
00:54:32 the guy steering the ship, maybe,
00:54:34 if you wanted to look at it from the Russian point of view,
00:54:35 has done a great job, maybe, just saying,
00:54:38 but the rocks are still out there,
00:54:39 and he’s not going to be at the helm forever,
00:54:42 so one would think that his job is to make sure
00:54:45 that there’s going to be someone
00:54:47 who can continue to steer the ship
00:54:49 for the people of Russia after he’s gone.
00:54:51 Now, let me ask, because I’m curious,
00:54:55 and ignorant, so is he doing that, do you think?
00:54:58 Is he setting it up so that when there is no Putin,
00:55:02 the state is safe?
00:55:04 From the beginning, that was the idea,
00:55:06 whether one of the fascinating things,
00:55:09 now, I read every biography,
00:55:10 English written biography on Putin,
00:55:12 so I need to think more deeply,
00:55:16 but one of the fascinating things
00:55:17 is how did power change Vladimir Putin?
00:55:20 He was a different man when he took power than he is today.
00:55:24 I actually, in many ways, admire the man that took power.
00:55:29 I think he’s very different than Stalin and then Hitler
00:55:33 at the moment they took power.
00:55:34 I think Hitler and Stalin were both,
00:55:39 in our previous discussion,
00:55:41 already on the trajectory of evil.
00:55:44 I think Putin was a humble, loyal, honest man
00:55:49 when he took power.
00:55:50 The man he is today is worth thinking about and studying.
00:55:54 I’m not sure that that.
00:55:56 That’s an old line, though,
00:55:57 about absolute power corrupting, absolutely.
00:55:59 But it’s kind of a line.
00:56:02 It’s a beautiful quote,
00:56:05 but you have to really think about it.
00:56:07 Like, what does that actually mean?
00:56:10 Like, one of the things I still have to do,
00:56:13 I’ve been focusing on securing the conversation, right?
00:56:15 So I haven’t gone through a dark place yet
00:56:18 because I feel like I can’t do the dark thing for too long.
00:56:21 So I really have to put myself in the mind of Putin
00:56:26 leading up to the conversation.
00:56:27 But for now, my sense is he took power
00:56:32 when Yeltsin gave him,
00:56:34 one of the big sort of acts of the new Russia
00:56:38 was for the first time in its history,
00:56:42 a leader could have continued being in power
00:56:45 and chose to give away power.
00:56:48 That was the George Washington.
00:56:49 Right, we in the United States
00:56:50 would look at that as absolute positive, yeah.
00:56:52 A sign of good things, yes.
00:56:54 And so that was a huge act.
00:56:56 And Putin said that that was the defining thing
00:57:00 that will define Russia for the 21st century,
00:57:03 that act, and he will carry that flag forward.
00:57:07 That’s why in rhetoric, he, after two terms,
00:57:12 he gave away power.
00:57:13 To Medvedev, but it was a puppet, right?
00:57:15 Yeah, yes, but it was,
00:57:17 but like still the story was being told.
00:57:20 I think he believed it early on.
00:57:23 I think he, I believe he still believes it,
00:57:28 but I think he’s deeply suspicious
00:57:30 of the corruption that lurks in the shadows.
00:57:33 And I do believe that,
00:57:34 like as somebody who thinks clickbait journalism is broken,
00:57:38 journalists annoy the hell out of me.
00:57:40 Clickbait journalism’s working perfectly.
00:57:42 Journalism’s broken.
00:57:43 Journalism.
00:57:44 Clickbait thing’s working great.
00:57:45 Exactly.
00:57:46 So I understand from Putin’s perspective
00:57:49 that journalism, journalists can be seen
00:57:52 as the enemy of the state,
00:57:53 because people think journalists write these deep,
00:57:57 beautiful philosophical pieces
00:57:59 about criticizing the structure of government
00:58:02 and the proper policy where, you know,
00:58:04 the steps that we need to take to make a greater nation.
00:58:07 No, they, they’re unfairly take stuff out of context.
00:58:11 They, they’re critical in ways
00:58:13 that’s like shallow and not interesting.
00:58:16 They, they call you a racist or sexist,
00:58:19 or they make up stuff all the time.
00:58:22 So I can put myself in the mindset of a person
00:58:25 that thinks that it is okay to remove
00:58:28 that kind of shallow fake news voice from the system.
00:58:34 The problem is, of course, that is a slippery slope
00:58:36 to then you remove all the annoying people from the system,
00:58:41 and then you change what annoying means,
00:58:43 which annoying starts becoming a thing
00:58:45 that like anyone who opposes the system.
00:58:48 I mean, I get, I get the slippery,
00:58:53 it’s obvious that it becomes a slippery slope,
00:58:55 but I can also put myself in the mindset
00:58:57 of the people that see it’s okay
00:58:59 to remove the liars from the system,
00:59:02 as long as it’s good for Russia.
00:59:04 And, okay, so herein lies, and this again,
00:59:06 the traditional American perspective,
00:59:08 because we’ve had yellow, so called yellow journalism
00:59:11 since the founding of the Republic.
00:59:12 That’s nothing new.
00:59:14 But, but the problem then comes into play,
00:59:16 when you remove journalists, even, you know,
00:59:20 it’s a broad brush thing,
00:59:21 because you remove both the crappy ones who are lying,
00:59:24 and the ones who are telling the truth too,
00:59:26 you’re left with simply the approved government journalists,
00:59:31 right, the ones who are towing the government’s line,
00:59:34 in which case the truth as you see it
00:59:37 is a different kind of fake news, right?
00:59:39 It’s the fake news from the government,
00:59:41 instead of the clickbait news,
00:59:43 and oh yeah, maybe truth mixed into all that too,
00:59:46 in some of the outlets.
00:59:48 The problem I always have with our system
00:59:49 here in the United States right now
00:59:50 is trying to tease the truth out from all the falsehoods.
00:59:55 And look, I’ve got 30 years in journalism.
00:59:58 My job used to be to go through, before the internet,
01:00:01 all the newspapers, and find the,
01:00:03 I used to know all the journalists by name,
01:00:05 and I could pick out, you know, who they were,
01:00:06 and I have a hard time picking out the truth
01:00:11 from the falsehoods, so I think constantly,
01:00:13 how are people who don’t have all this background,
01:00:16 who have lives, or who are trained in other specialties,
01:00:19 how do they do it?
01:00:20 But if the government is the only approved outlet for truth,
01:00:25 a traditional American,
01:00:26 and a lot of other traditional societies
01:00:28 based on these ideas of the Enlightenment
01:00:29 that I talked about earlier,
01:00:31 would see that as a disaster waiting to happen,
01:00:33 or a tyranny in progress.
01:00:35 Does that make sense?
01:00:35 Oh, it totally makes sense,
01:00:37 and I would agree with you, I still agree with you,
01:00:40 but it is clear that something about the freedom
01:00:43 of the press and freedom of speech in today,
01:00:47 like literally the last few years
01:00:49 with the internet is changing,
01:00:52 and the argument, you know,
01:00:53 you could say that the American system
01:00:55 of freedom of speech is broken,
01:00:59 because the, here’s the belief I grew up on,
01:01:04 and I still hold, but I’m starting to be sort of
01:01:07 trying to see multiple views on it.
01:01:09 My belief was that freedom of speech results
01:01:14 in a stable trajectory towards truth always.
01:01:18 So like truth will emerge.
01:01:19 That was my sort of faith and belief
01:01:21 that yeah, there’s going to be lies all over the place,
01:01:24 but there’ll be like a stable thing that is true,
01:01:27 that’s carried forward to the public.
01:01:31 Now it feels like it’s possible to go towards a world
01:01:36 where nothing is true,
01:01:39 where truth is something that groups of people
01:01:44 convince themselves of,
01:01:45 and there’s multiple groups of people,
01:01:48 and the idea of some universal truth,
01:01:51 as I suppose is the better thing,
01:01:53 is something that we can no longer exist under.
01:01:57 Like some people believe that the Green Bay Packers
01:02:00 is the best football team,
01:02:02 and some people can think the Patriots,
01:02:04 and they deeply believe it
01:02:07 to where they call the other groups liars.
01:02:10 Now that’s fun for sports,
01:02:11 that’s fun for favorite flavors of ice cream,
01:02:14 but they might believe that about science,
01:02:17 about the various aspects of politics,
01:02:23 various aspects of sort of different policies
01:02:28 within the function of our government.
01:02:30 And like, that’s not just like
01:02:32 some weird thing we’ll complain about,
01:02:34 but that’ll be the nature of things,
01:02:35 like truth is something we can no longer have.
01:02:38 Well, and let me de romanticize
01:02:41 the American history of this too,
01:02:43 because the American press was often just as biased,
01:02:49 just as, I mean, I always looked to the 1970s
01:02:52 as the high watermark of the American journalistic,
01:02:55 in the post Watergate era,
01:02:57 where it was actively going after the abuses
01:03:02 of the government and all these things.
01:03:04 But there was a famous speech, very quiet though,
01:03:06 very quiet, given by Katherine Graham,
01:03:08 who was a Washington Post editor, I believe.
01:03:11 And I actually, somebody sent it to me,
01:03:13 we had to get it off of a journalism,
01:03:15 like a J store kind of thing.
01:03:16 And she, at a luncheon,
01:03:20 assured to the government people at the luncheon,
01:03:23 don’t worry, this is not gonna be something
01:03:25 that we make a trend.
01:03:27 Because the position of the government
01:03:31 is still something that was carried,
01:03:34 that the newspapers were the water,
01:03:36 and the newspapers were the big thing
01:03:37 up until certainly the late 60s, early 70s.
01:03:40 The newspapers were still the water carrier
01:03:42 of the government, right?
01:03:43 And they were the water carriers
01:03:45 of the owners of the newspaper.
01:03:47 So let’s not pretend there was some angelic, wonderful time.
01:03:51 And I’m saying to me,
01:03:52 cause I was the one who brought it up,
01:03:53 let’s not pretend there was any super age
01:03:56 of truthful journalism and all that.
01:03:58 And I mean, you go to the revolutionary period
01:04:01 in American history,
01:04:02 and it looks every bit as bad as today, right?
01:04:05 That’s a hopeful message, actually.
01:04:06 So things may not be as bad as they look.
01:04:09 Well, let’s look at it more like a stock market,
01:04:11 and that you have fluctuations in the truthfulness
01:04:14 or believability of the press.
01:04:16 And there are periods where it was higher
01:04:18 than other periods.
01:04:19 The funny thing about the so called clickbait era,
01:04:22 and I do think it’s terrible,
01:04:24 but I mean, it resembles earlier eras to me.
01:04:27 So I always compare it to when I was a kid growing up,
01:04:30 when I thought journalism was as good as it’s ever gotten.
01:04:33 It was never perfect.
01:04:36 But it’s also something that you see very rarely
01:04:39 in other governments around the world.
01:04:41 And there’s a reason that journalists
01:04:42 are often killed regularly in a lot of countries.
01:04:46 And it’s because they report on things
01:04:48 that the authorities do not want reported on.
01:04:50 And I’ve always thought that
01:04:51 that was what journalism should do.
01:04:52 But it’s gotta be truthful,
01:04:55 otherwise it’s just a different kind of propaganda, right?
01:04:59 Can we talk about Genghis Khan?
01:05:01 Genghis Khan?
01:05:02 Sure.
01:05:03 By the way, is it Genghis Khan or Genghis Khan?
01:05:05 It’s not Genghis Khan.
01:05:06 It’s either Genghis Khan or Chinggis Khan.
01:05:09 So let’s go with Genghis Khan.
01:05:11 That’s the only thing I’ll be able to say
01:05:12 with any certain, last certain thing I’ll say about it.
01:05:16 It’s like, I don’t know, GIF versus GIF.
01:05:20 I don’t know if you know about those things.
01:05:21 I don’t know how it ever got started the wrong way.
01:05:23 Yeah.
01:05:24 So first of all, your episodes on Genghis Khan
01:05:28 for many people are the favorite.
01:05:31 It’s fascinating to think about events
01:05:33 that had so much like in their ripples,
01:05:36 had so much impact on so much of human civilization.
01:05:40 In your view, was he an evil man?
01:05:45 Let’s go start a discussion of evil.
01:05:48 Another way to put it is I’ve read he’s much loved
01:05:53 in many parts of the world like Mongolia.
01:05:56 And I’ve also read arguments that say
01:05:59 that he was quite a progressive for the time.
01:06:03 So where do you put him?
01:06:04 Is he a progressive or is he an evil destroyer of humans?
01:06:08 As I often say, I’m not a historian,
01:06:10 which is why what I try to bring
01:06:13 to the Hardcore History podcasts are these sub themes.
01:06:17 So each show has, and they’re not,
01:06:19 I try to kind of soft pedal them.
01:06:21 So they’re not always like really right in front
01:06:23 of your face.
01:06:23 In that episode, the soft peddling sub theme had to do
01:06:28 with what we referred to as a historical arsonist.
01:06:32 And it’s because some historians have taken the position
01:06:36 that sometimes, and most of this is earlier stuff,
01:06:38 historians don’t do this very much anymore,
01:06:40 but these were the wonderful questions I grew up with
01:06:43 that blend, it’s almost the intersection
01:06:45 between history and philosophy.
01:06:48 And the idea was that sometimes the world has become
01:06:52 so overwhelmed with bureaucracy or corruption
01:06:56 or just stagnation that somebody has to come in
01:07:00 or some group of people or some force has to come in
01:07:03 and do the equivalent of a forest fire
01:07:06 to clear out all the dead wood
01:07:08 so that the forest itself can be rejuvenated
01:07:11 and society can then move forward.
01:07:13 And there’s a lot of these periods where the historians
01:07:15 of the past will portray these figures who come in
01:07:18 and do horrific things as creating an almost service
01:07:23 for mankind, right?
01:07:25 Creating the foundations for a new world
01:07:28 that will be better than the old one.
01:07:29 And it’s a recurring theme.
01:07:31 And so this was the sub theme of the Khan’s podcast,
01:07:34 because otherwise you don’t need me to tell you the story
01:07:36 of the Mongols, but I’m gonna bring up
01:07:37 the historical arsonist element.
01:07:40 And, but this gets to how the Khan has been portrayed,
01:07:43 right?
01:07:44 If you wanna say, oh yes, he cleared out the dead wood
01:07:46 and made for, well, then it’s a positive thing.
01:07:49 If you say, my family was in the forest fire that he set,
01:07:52 you’re not gonna see it that way.
01:07:55 Much of what Genghis Khan is credited with
01:07:58 on the upside, right?
01:07:59 So things like religious toleration,
01:08:02 and you’ll say, well, he was religiously,
01:08:05 the Mongols were religiously tolerant.
01:08:08 And so this makes them almost like a liberal reformer
01:08:10 kind of thing.
01:08:11 But this needs to be seen within the context
01:08:14 of their empire, which was very much
01:08:17 like the Roman viewpoint,
01:08:18 which is the Romans didn’t care at a lot of time
01:08:20 what your local people worshiped.
01:08:22 They wanted stability.
01:08:24 And if that kept stability and kept you paying taxes
01:08:26 and didn’t require the legionaries to come in,
01:08:29 then they didn’t care, right?
01:08:31 And the Khans were the same way.
01:08:32 Like they don’t care what you’re practicing
01:08:34 as long as it doesn’t disrupt their empire
01:08:36 and cause them trouble.
01:08:37 But what I always like to point out is yes,
01:08:39 but the Khan could still come in with his representatives
01:08:42 to your town, decide your daughter was a beautiful woman
01:08:45 that they wanted in the Khan’s concubine,
01:08:47 and they would take them.
01:08:48 So how liberal an empire is this, right?
01:08:52 So many of the things that they get credit for
01:08:54 as though there’s some kind of nice guys
01:08:56 may in another way of looking at it
01:08:58 just be a simple mechanism of control, right?
01:09:01 A way to keep the empire stable.
01:09:04 They’re not doing it out of the goodness of their heart.
01:09:07 They have decided that this is the best.
01:09:09 And I love because the Mongols were what we would call
01:09:13 a pagan people now.
01:09:15 I love the fact that they, and I think we call it,
01:09:17 I forgot the term we used, had to do with,
01:09:19 like they were hedging their bets religiously, right?
01:09:22 They didn’t know which God was the right one.
01:09:24 So as long as you’re all praying for the health of the Khan,
01:09:27 we’re maximizing the chances that whoever the gods are,
01:09:30 they get the message, right?
01:09:32 So I think it’s been portrayed as something
01:09:34 like a liberal empire.
01:09:36 And the idea of Mongol universality
01:09:40 is more about conquering the world.
01:09:43 And it’s like saying, you know,
01:09:44 we’re gonna bring stability to the world by conquering it.
01:09:46 Well, what if that’s Hitler, right?
01:09:48 He could make the same case,
01:09:50 or Hitler wasn’t really the world conqueror like that
01:09:52 because he wouldn’t have been trying
01:09:54 to make it equal for all peoples.
01:09:55 But my point being that it kind of takes
01:09:58 the positive moral slant out of it
01:10:01 if their motivation wasn’t a positive moral slant
01:10:05 to the motivate, and the Mongols didn’t see it that way.
01:10:09 And I think the way that it’s portrayed is like,
01:10:13 and I always like to use this analogy,
01:10:15 but it’s like shooting an arrow
01:10:17 and painting a bull’s eye around it afterwards, right?
01:10:20 How do we justify and make them look good in a way
01:10:24 that they themselves probably,
01:10:26 and listen, we don’t have the Mongol point of view per se.
01:10:29 I mean, there’s something called the secret history
01:10:31 of the Mongols, and there’s things written down
01:10:33 by Mongolian overlords through people
01:10:36 like Persian and Chinese scribes later.
01:10:38 We don’t have their point of view,
01:10:41 but it sure doesn’t look like this was an attempt
01:10:44 to create some wonderful place
01:10:45 where everybody was living a better life
01:10:47 than they were before.
01:10:48 I think that’s later people putting a nice rosy spin on it.
01:10:53 But there’s an aspect to it, maybe you can correct me,
01:10:57 because I’m projecting sort of my idea
01:10:59 of what it would take to conquer so much land
01:11:04 is the ideology is emergent.
01:11:08 So if I were to guess,
01:11:11 the Mongols started out as exceptionally,
01:11:16 as warriors who valued excellence in skill of killing,
01:11:23 not even killing, but like the actual practice of war.
01:11:27 And you can start out small,
01:11:28 and you can grow and grow and grow.
01:11:30 And then in order to maintain the stability
01:11:32 of the things over which of the conquered lands,
01:11:36 you developed a set of ideas with which you can,
01:11:40 like you said, establish control, but it was emergent.
01:11:43 And it seems like the core first principle idea
01:11:48 of the Mongols is just to be excellent warriors.
01:11:52 That felt to me like the starting point.
01:11:55 It wasn’t some ideology.
01:11:57 Like with Hitler and Stalin,
01:11:59 with Hitler, there was an ideology
01:12:03 that didn’t have anything to do with war underneath it.
01:12:06 It was more about conquering.
01:12:08 It feels like the Mongols started out more organically,
01:12:12 I would say, like this phenomenon started emergently,
01:12:16 and they were just like similar to the Native Americans
01:12:19 with the Comanches, like the different warrior tribes
01:12:21 that Joe Rogan’s currently obsessed with,
01:12:24 that led me to look into it more.
01:12:28 They seem to just start out just valuing the skill
01:12:32 of fighting whatever the tools of war they had,
01:12:35 which were pretty primitive,
01:12:36 but just to be the best warriors
01:12:38 they could possibly be, make a science out of it.
01:12:40 Is that crazy to think that there was no ideology behind it
01:12:44 in the beginning?
01:12:46 I’m gonna back up a second.
01:12:47 I’m reminded of the line said about the Romans,
01:12:49 that they create a wasteland and call it peace.
01:12:52 That is, but there’s a lot of conquerors like that, right?
01:12:57 Where you will sit there, and listen,
01:12:59 historians forever have, it’s the famous trade offs
01:13:03 of empire, and they’ll say, well,
01:13:04 look at the trade that they facilitated,
01:13:07 and look at the religion, all those kinds of things,
01:13:09 but they come at the cost of all those peoples
01:13:13 that they conquered forcibly and by force,
01:13:16 integrated into their empire.
01:13:18 The one thing we need to remember about the Mongols
01:13:20 that makes them different than, say, the Romans,
01:13:22 and this is complex stuff and way above my pay grade,
01:13:26 but I’m fascinated with it,
01:13:27 and it’s more like the Comanches that you just brought up,
01:13:30 is that the Mongols are not a settled society, okay?
01:13:33 They come from a nomadic tradition.
01:13:36 Now, several generations later,
01:13:39 when you have Kublai Khan as the emperor of China,
01:13:44 it’s beginning to be a different thing, right?
01:13:46 And the Mongols, when their empire broke up,
01:13:48 the ones that were in settled,
01:13:50 the so called settled societies, right, Iran,
01:13:53 places like that, they will become more like,
01:13:56 over time, the rulers of those places were traditionally,
01:13:59 and the Mongols in, say, the Khaganate of the Golden Horde,
01:14:03 which is still in their traditional nomadic territories,
01:14:06 will remain traditionally more Mongol,
01:14:09 but when you start talking about who the Mongols were,
01:14:13 I try to make a distinction.
01:14:15 They’re not some really super special people.
01:14:19 They’re just the latest confederacy in an area
01:14:23 that saw nomadic confederacies going back
01:14:27 to the beginning of recorded history.
01:14:30 The Scythians, the Sarmatians, the Avars,
01:14:33 the Huns, the Magyars, I mean, these are all the nomadic,
01:14:37 you know, the nomads of the Eurasian steppe
01:14:39 were huge, huge players in the history of the world
01:14:42 until gunpowder nullified their traditional weapons system,
01:14:49 which I’ve been fascinated with
01:14:50 because their traditional weapons system
01:14:52 is not one you could copy,
01:14:54 because you were talking about being the greatest warriors
01:14:56 you could be.
01:14:57 Every warrior society I’ve ever seen values that.
01:15:02 What the nomads had of the Eurasian steppe
01:15:05 was this relationship between human beings and animals
01:15:10 that changed the equation.
01:15:12 It was how they rode horses.
01:15:15 And societies like the Byzantines,
01:15:18 which would form one flank of the steppe
01:15:20 and then all the way on the other side you had China,
01:15:22 and below that you had Persia,
01:15:24 these societies would all attempt
01:15:27 to create mounted horsemen who used archery.
01:15:30 And they did a good job,
01:15:32 but they were never the equals of the nomads
01:15:35 because those people were literally raised in the saddle.
01:15:38 They compared them to centaurs.
01:15:41 The Comanches, great example,
01:15:42 considered to be the best horse riding warriors
01:15:47 in North America.
01:15:48 The Comanches, I always love watching, there’s paintings.
01:15:51 George Catlin, the famous painter
01:15:54 who painted the Comanches, illustrated it.
01:15:57 But the Mongols and the Scythians and the Avars
01:16:01 and all these people did it too,
01:16:02 where they would shoot from underneath the horse’s neck,
01:16:06 hiding behind the horse the whole way.
01:16:09 You look at a picture of somebody doing that,
01:16:12 and it’s insane.
01:16:13 This is what the Byzantines couldn’t do
01:16:15 and the Chinese couldn’t do.
01:16:17 It was a different level of harnessing
01:16:21 a human animal relationship
01:16:23 that gave them a military advantage
01:16:26 that could not be copied, right?
01:16:28 It could be emulated, but they were never as good, right?
01:16:31 That’s why they always hired these people.
01:16:33 They hired mercenaries from these areas
01:16:35 because they were incomparable, right?
01:16:38 It’s the combination of people who were shooting bows
01:16:40 and arrows from the time they were toddlers,
01:16:43 who were riding from the time they were,
01:16:45 who rode all the time.
01:16:46 I mean, the Huns were bow legged, the Romans said,
01:16:49 because they were never,
01:16:50 they ate, slept, everything in the saddle.
01:16:54 That creates something that is difficult to copy.
01:16:57 And it gave them a military advantage.
01:17:00 I enjoy reading actually about
01:17:02 when that military advantage ended.
01:17:04 So 17th and 18th century,
01:17:07 when the Chinese on one flank and the Russians on the other
01:17:10 are beginning to use firearms and stuff
01:17:12 to break this military power of these various Khans.
01:17:18 The Mongols were simply the most dominating
01:17:20 and most successful of the Confederacies.
01:17:23 But if you break it down,
01:17:24 they really formed the nucleus at the top of the pyramid,
01:17:28 of the apex of the food chain.
01:17:30 And a lot of the people that were known as Mongols
01:17:33 were really lots of other tribes, non Mongolian tribes,
01:17:37 that when the Mongols conquer you,
01:17:38 after they killed a lot of you,
01:17:40 they incorporated you into their Confederacy
01:17:43 and often made you go first.
01:17:45 You’re gonna fight somebody,
01:17:46 we’re gonna make these people go out in front
01:17:48 and suck up all the arrows
01:17:49 before we go in and finish the job.
01:17:51 So to me, and I guess a fan of the Mongols would say
01:17:56 that the difference and what made the Mongols different
01:17:59 wasn’t the weapon system or the fighting
01:18:01 or the warriors or the armor or anything,
01:18:03 it was Genghis Khan.
01:18:05 And if you go look at the other really dangerous,
01:18:07 from the outside world’s perspective,
01:18:09 dangerous step, nomadic Confederacies from past history
01:18:12 was always when some great leader emerged
01:18:16 that could unite the tribes.
01:18:17 And you see the same thing in Native American history
01:18:19 to a degree too.
01:18:21 You had people like Attila, right?
01:18:24 Or there’s one called Tumen.
01:18:26 You go back in history and these people
01:18:28 make the history books because they caused
01:18:30 an enormous amount of trouble for their settled neighbors
01:18:33 that normally, I mean, Chinese Byzantine and Persian
01:18:36 approaches to the steppe people were always the same.
01:18:39 They would pick out tribes to be friendly with,
01:18:42 they would give them money, gifts, hire them,
01:18:43 and they would use them against the other tribes.
01:18:46 And generally Byzantine,
01:18:48 especially in Chinese diplomatic history
01:18:50 was all about keeping these tribes separated.
01:18:54 Don’t let them form confederations of large numbers of them
01:18:57 because then they’re unstoppable.
01:18:59 Attila was a perfect example.
01:19:01 The Huns were another large,
01:19:02 the Turks, another large confederacy of these people.
01:19:05 And they were devastating when they could unite.
01:19:08 So the diplomatic policy was don’t let them.
01:19:10 That’s what made the Mongols different
01:19:12 is Genghis Khan united them.
01:19:14 And then unlike most of the tribal confederacies,
01:19:16 they were able to hold it together for a few generations.
01:19:19 To linger on the little thread that you started pulling
01:19:24 on this man, Genghis Khan, that was a leader.
01:19:28 Temujin, yeah.
01:19:29 What do you think makes a great leader?
01:19:32 Maybe if you have other examples throughout history
01:19:35 and great, again, let’s use that term loosely.
01:19:41 Meaning.
01:19:42 Now I was gonna ask for a definition.
01:19:42 Great uniter of whether it’s evil or good,
01:19:46 it doesn’t matter.
01:19:49 Is there somebody who stands out to you,
01:19:51 Alexander the Great talking about military or ideologies,
01:19:57 some people bring up FDR or, I mean,
01:20:00 you could be the founding fathers of this country,
01:20:03 or we can go to, was he man of the century up there?
01:20:09 Hitler of the 20th century and Stalin
01:20:14 and these people had really amassed the amount of power
01:20:19 that probably has never been seen
01:20:20 in the history of the world.
01:20:22 Is there somebody who stands out to you
01:20:24 by way of trying to define what makes a great uniter,
01:20:28 great leader in one man or woman, maybe in the future?
01:20:34 It’s an interesting question.
01:20:35 And one I’ve thought a lot about,
01:20:36 because let’s take Alexander the Great as an example,
01:20:39 because Alexander fascinated the world of his time,
01:20:41 fascinated, ever since people have been fascinated
01:20:44 with the guy.
01:20:45 But Alexander was a hereditary monarch, right?
01:20:49 Yeah.
01:20:50 He was handed the kingdom.
01:20:52 Which is fascinating.
01:20:53 Right, but he did not need to rise from nothing
01:20:56 to get that job.
01:20:57 In fact, he reminds me of a lot of other leaders
01:21:00 of Frederick the Great, for example, in Prussia.
01:21:03 These are people who inherited
01:21:06 the greatest army of their day.
01:21:09 Alexander, unless he was an imbecile,
01:21:11 was going to be great no matter what,
01:21:14 because I mean, if you inherit the Wehrmacht,
01:21:17 you’re gonna be able to do something with it, right?
01:21:19 Alexander’s father may have been greater, Philip.
01:21:23 Philip II was the guy who literally did create
01:21:27 a strong kingdom from a disjointed group of people
01:21:33 that were continually beset by their neighbors.
01:21:34 He’s the one that reformed that army,
01:21:37 took things that he had learned from other Greek leaders
01:21:41 like the Theban leader at Paminondas,
01:21:44 and then laboriously over his lifetime
01:21:48 stabilized the frontiers, built this system.
01:21:51 He lost an eye doing it.
01:21:53 His leg was made lame.
01:21:55 I mean, this was a man who looked like he built the empire
01:21:58 and led from the front ranks.
01:22:00 I mean, and then who may have been killed by his son,
01:22:04 we don’t know who assassinated Philip,
01:22:06 but then handed the greatest army
01:22:08 the world had ever seen to his son,
01:22:10 who then did great things with it.
01:22:12 You see this pattern many times.
01:22:13 So in my mind, I’m not sure Alexander
01:22:17 really can be that great when you compare him
01:22:20 to people who arose from nothing.
01:22:22 So the difference between what we would call
01:22:24 in the United States the self made man
01:22:27 or the one who inherits a fortune.
01:22:29 There’s an old line that, it’s a slur,
01:22:31 but it’s about rich people.
01:22:33 And it’s like he was born on third base
01:22:37 and thought he hit a triple, right?
01:22:39 Philip was born at home plate and he had to hit.
01:22:42 Alexander started on third base.
01:22:45 And so I try to draw a distinction between them.
01:22:48 Genghis Khan is tough because there’s two traditions.
01:22:51 The tradition that we grew up with here
01:22:53 in the United States and that I grew up learning
01:22:55 was that he was a self made man.
01:22:57 But there is a tradition,
01:22:59 and it may be one of those things that’s put after the fact
01:23:01 because a long time ago, whether or not you had blue blood
01:23:05 in your veins was an important distinction.
01:23:08 And so the distinction that you’ll often hear
01:23:10 from Mongolian history is that this was a nobleman
01:23:14 who had been deprived of his inheritance.
01:23:16 So he was a blue blood anyway.
01:23:18 I don’t know which is true.
01:23:20 There’s certainly, I mean, when you look at a Genghis Khan,
01:23:22 you have to go, that is a wicked amount of things
01:23:26 to have achieved.
01:23:28 He’s very impressive as a figure.
01:23:30 Attila is very impressive as a figure.
01:23:33 Hitler’s an interesting figure.
01:23:35 He’s one of those people,
01:23:36 you know, the more you study about Hitler,
01:23:38 the more you wonder where the defining moment was.
01:23:43 Because if you look at his life,
01:23:46 I mean, Hitler was a relatively common soldier
01:23:50 in the First World War.
01:23:51 I mean, he was brave.
01:23:52 He got some decorations.
01:23:54 In fact, the highest decoration he got
01:23:56 in the First World War was given to him by a Jewish officer.
01:23:59 And he often didn’t talk about that decoration,
01:24:03 even though it was the more prestigious one
01:24:04 because it would open up a whole can of worms
01:24:06 you didn’t wanna get into.
01:24:07 But Hitler’s, I mean, if you said who was Hitler today,
01:24:11 one of the top things you’re gonna say
01:24:12 is he was an anti Semite.
01:24:14 Well, then you have to draw a distinction
01:24:16 between general regular anti Semitism
01:24:19 that was pretty common in the era
01:24:21 and something that was a rabid level of anti Semitism.
01:24:24 But Hitler didn’t seem to show a rabid level
01:24:27 of anti Semitism until after
01:24:29 or at the very end of the First World War.
01:24:31 So if this is a defining part of this person’s character
01:24:34 and much of what we consider to be his evil
01:24:38 stems from that, what happened to this guy
01:24:41 when he’s an adult, right?
01:24:43 He’s already fought in the war to change him so.
01:24:45 I mean, it’s almost like the old,
01:24:47 there was always a movie theme.
01:24:48 Somebody gets hit by something on the head
01:24:50 and their whole personality changes, right?
01:24:52 I mean, it almost seems something like that.
01:24:55 So I don’t think I call that necessarily a great leader.
01:24:58 To me, the interesting thing about Hitler
01:25:00 is what the hell happened to a nondescript person
01:25:03 who didn’t really impress anybody with his skills.
01:25:07 And then in the 1920s, it’s all of a sudden,
01:25:10 as you said, sort of the man of the hour, right?
01:25:12 So that to me is kind of,
01:25:14 I have this feeling that Genghis Khan,
01:25:16 and we don’t really know,
01:25:18 was an impressive human being from the get go.
01:25:20 And then he was raised in this environment
01:25:22 with pressure on all sides.
01:25:23 So you start with this diamond and then you polish it
01:25:26 and you harden it his whole life.
01:25:27 Hitler seemed to be a very unimpressive gemstone
01:25:31 most of his life, and then all of a sudden.
01:25:33 So, I mean, I don’t think I can label great leaders.
01:25:36 And I’m always fascinated by that idea that,
01:25:39 and I’m trying to remember who the quote was by that,
01:25:41 that great men, oh, Lord Acton.
01:25:43 So great men are often not good men.
01:25:47 And that in order to be great,
01:25:49 you would have to jettison many of the moral qualities
01:25:51 that we normally would consider a Jesus or a Gandhi,
01:25:55 or, you know, these qualities that one looks at
01:25:58 as the good upstanding moral qualities
01:26:01 that we should all aspire to as examples, right?
01:26:03 The Buddha, whatever it might be,
01:26:05 those people wouldn’t make good leaders
01:26:07 because what you need to be a good leader
01:26:08 often requires the kind of choices
01:26:10 that a true philosophical diogenes moral man wouldn’t make.
01:26:15 So I don’t have an answer to your question.
01:26:17 How about that?
01:26:18 That’s a long way of saying, I don’t know.
01:26:20 Just linger a little bit.
01:26:22 It does feel like from my study of Hitler
01:26:24 that the time molded the man versus Genghis Khan,
01:26:28 where it feels like he, the man molded his time.
01:26:33 Yes, and I feel that way
01:26:34 about a lot of those nomadic Confederacy builders,
01:26:37 that they really seem to be these figures
01:26:41 that stand out as extraordinary in one way or another.
01:26:45 Remembering, by the way,
01:26:46 that almost all the history of them were written
01:26:48 by the enemies that they so mistreated
01:26:50 that they were probably never gonna get any good press.
01:26:52 They didn’t write themselves.
01:26:53 That’s a caveat.
01:26:54 We should always add to basically all of human history.
01:26:56 Nomadic or Native American peoples
01:26:58 or tribal peoples anywhere
01:26:59 generally do not get the advantage
01:27:01 of being able to write the history of their heroes.
01:27:04 Okay, I’ve recently almost done
01:27:08 with the rise and the fall of the Third Reich.
01:27:11 It’s one of the historical descriptions
01:27:16 of Hitler’s rise to power, Nazi’s rise to power.
01:27:21 There’s a few philosophical things
01:27:23 I’d like to ask you to see if you can help.
01:27:27 Like one of the things I think about
01:27:32 is how does one be a hero in 1930s Nazi Germany?
01:27:37 What does it mean to be a hero?
01:27:41 What do heroic actions look like?
01:27:44 I think about that because I think about
01:27:50 how I move about in this world today.
01:27:56 That we live in really chaotic, intense times
01:28:01 where I don’t think you wanna draw any parallels
01:28:04 between Nazi Germany and modern day
01:28:06 in any of the nations we can think about.
01:28:09 But it’s not out of the realm of possibility
01:28:12 that authoritarian governments take hold,
01:28:18 authoritarian companies take hold.
01:28:21 And I’d like to think that I could be
01:28:24 in my little small way and inspire others
01:28:27 to take the heroic action before things get bad.
01:28:33 And I kind of try to place myself
01:28:36 in what would 1930s Germany look like?
01:28:40 Is it possible to stop a Hitler?
01:28:44 Is it even the right way to think about it?
01:28:47 And how does one be a hero in it?
01:28:51 I mean, you often talk about that living through
01:28:53 a moment in history is very different
01:28:55 than looking at that history,
01:28:57 looking when you look back.
01:29:00 I also think about it, would it be possible
01:29:03 to understand what’s happening
01:29:06 that the bells of war are ringing?
01:29:12 It seems that most people didn’t seem to understand,
01:29:16 you know, late into the 30s that war is coming.
01:29:21 That’s fascinating.
01:29:22 On the United States side, inside Germany,
01:29:25 like the opposing figures,
01:29:27 the German military didn’t seem to understand this.
01:29:30 Maybe the other countries, certainly France
01:29:34 and England didn’t seem to understand this.
01:29:37 That kind of tried to put myself into 90s, 30s Germany
01:29:41 as I’m Jewish, which is another little twist on the whole.
01:29:46 Like what would I do?
01:29:48 What should one do?
01:29:51 Do you have interesting answers?
01:29:54 So earlier we had talked about Putin
01:29:56 and we had talked about patriotism
01:29:57 and love of country and those sorts of things.
01:30:00 In order to be a hero in Nazi Germany
01:30:05 by our views here, you would have had to have been
01:30:11 anti patriotic to the average German’s viewpoint
01:30:15 in the 1930s, right?
01:30:16 You would have to have opposed your own government
01:30:20 and your own country.
01:30:21 And that’s a very, it would be a very weird thing
01:30:24 to go to people in Germany and say,
01:30:26 listen, the only way you’re gonna be seen
01:30:28 as a good German and a hero to the country
01:30:32 that will be your enemies is we think
01:30:35 you should oppose your own government.
01:30:36 It’s a strange position to put the people
01:30:40 in a government saying you need to be against your leader,
01:30:43 you need to oppose your government’s policies,
01:30:45 you need to oppose your government,
01:30:47 you need to hope and work for its downfall.
01:30:49 That doesn’t sound patriotic.
01:30:51 It wouldn’t sound patriotic here in this country
01:30:53 if you made a similar argument.
01:30:55 I will go away from the 1930s and go to the 1940s
01:31:00 to answer your question.
01:31:01 So there is movements like the White Rose Movement
01:31:05 in Germany, which involved young people really,
01:31:09 and from various backgrounds, religious backgrounds often,
01:31:13 who worked openly against the Nazi government
01:31:17 at a time when power was already consolidated,
01:31:19 the Gestapo was in full force and they execute people
01:31:23 who are against the government.
01:31:24 And these young people would go out
01:31:26 and distribute pamphlets and many of them got their heads
01:31:29 cut off with guillotines for their trouble.
01:31:32 And they knew that that was gonna be the penalty.
01:31:35 That is a remarkable amount of bravery and sacrifice
01:31:41 and willingness to die, and almost not even willingness
01:31:44 because they were so open about it,
01:31:46 it’s almost a certainty, right?
01:31:49 That’s incredibly moving to me.
01:31:51 So when we talk, and we had talked earlier
01:31:53 about sort of the human spirit and all that kind of thing,
01:31:57 there are people in the German military who opposed
01:32:01 and worked against Hitler, for example.
01:32:04 But to me, that’s almost cowardly compared
01:32:08 to what these young people did in the White Rose Movement
01:32:10 because those people in the Wehrmacht, for example,
01:32:13 who were secretly trying to undermine Hitler,
01:32:16 they’re not really putting their lives on the line
01:32:18 to the same degree.
01:32:20 And so I think when I look at heroes,
01:32:23 and listen, I remember once saying
01:32:25 there were no conscientious objectors in Germany
01:32:28 as a way to point out to people
01:32:30 that you didn’t have a choice,
01:32:31 you know, you were gonna serve in there.
01:32:32 And I got letters from Jehovah’s Witnesses who said,
01:32:35 yes, there were.
01:32:36 And we got sent to the concentration camps.
01:32:39 Those are remarkably brave things.
01:32:42 It’s one thing to have your own set of standards and values.
01:32:47 It’s another thing to say, oh no,
01:32:50 I’m going to display them in a way
01:32:52 that with this regime, that’s a death sentence.
01:32:54 And not just for me, for my family, right?
01:32:57 In these regimes, there was not a lot of distinction made
01:33:00 between father and son and wives.
01:33:03 That’s a remarkable sacrifice to make.
01:33:05 And far beyond what I think I would even be capable of.
01:33:08 And so the admiration comes from seeing people
01:33:12 who appear to be more morally profound
01:33:16 than you are yourself.
01:33:18 So when I look at this, I look at that kind of thing
01:33:20 and I just say, wow.
01:33:22 And the funny thing is if you’d have gone
01:33:24 to most average Germans on the street in 1942
01:33:29 and said, what do you think of these people?
01:33:31 They’re gonna think of them as traitors
01:33:33 who probably got what they deserved.
01:33:35 So that’s the eye of the beholder thing.
01:33:37 It’s the power of the state to sow propagandize values
01:33:42 and morality in a way that favors the state
01:33:45 that you can turn people who today we look at
01:33:49 as unbelievably brave and moral
01:33:51 and crusading for righteousness
01:33:54 and turn them into enemies of the people.
01:33:58 So, I mean, in my mind, it would be people like that.
01:34:00 See, I think, so hero is a funny word
01:34:05 and we romanticize the notion,
01:34:07 but if I could drag you back to 1930s Germany from 1940s.
01:34:11 Sure.
01:34:13 I feel like the heroic actions that doesn’t accomplish much
01:34:19 is not what I’m referring to.
01:34:21 So there’s many heroes I look up to that,
01:34:27 like David Goggins, for example,
01:34:29 the guy who runs crazy distances.
01:34:31 He runs for no purpose except for the suffering in itself.
01:34:35 And I think his willingness to challenge the limits
01:34:38 of his mind is heroic.
01:34:42 I guess I’m looking for a different term,
01:34:44 which is how could Hitler have been stopped?
01:34:49 My sense is that he could have been stopped
01:34:52 in the battle of ideas where people,
01:34:56 millions of people were suffering economically
01:34:59 or suffering because of the betrayal of World War I
01:35:02 in terms of the love of country
01:35:04 and how they felt they were being treated.
01:35:07 And a charismatic leader that inspired love
01:35:11 and unity that’s not destructive could have emerged.
01:35:15 And that’s where the battle should have been fought.
01:35:18 I would suggest that we need to take into account
01:35:22 the context of the times that led to Hitler’s rise of power
01:35:26 and created the conditions where his message resonated.
01:35:31 That is not a message that resonates at all times, right?
01:35:34 It is impossible to understand the rise of Hitler
01:35:40 without dealing with the First World War
01:35:42 and the aftermath of the First World War
01:35:44 and the inflationary terrible depression in Germany
01:35:46 and all these things and the dissatisfaction
01:35:50 with the Weimar Republic’s government,
01:35:52 which was often seen as something put into,
01:35:55 which it was put into place by the victorious powers.
01:35:59 Hitler referred to the people that signed those agreements
01:36:02 that signed the armistice as the November criminals.
01:36:06 And he used that as a phrase
01:36:08 which resonated with the population.
01:36:10 This was a population that was embittered.
01:36:12 And even if they weren’t embittered,
01:36:14 the times were so terrible.
01:36:15 And the options for operating within the system
01:36:19 in a non radical way seemed totally discredited, right?
01:36:24 You could work through the Weimar Republic,
01:36:25 but they tried and it wasn’t working anyway.
01:36:27 And then the alternative to the Nazis
01:36:29 who were bully boys in the street
01:36:31 were communist agitators
01:36:33 that to the average conservative Germans seem no better.
01:36:36 So you have three options
01:36:38 if you’re an average German person.
01:36:39 You can go with the discredited government
01:36:42 put in power by your enemies that wasn’t working anyway.
01:36:46 You could go with the Nazis
01:36:48 who seemed like a bunch of super patriots
01:36:49 calling for the restoration of German authority,
01:36:54 or you could go with the communists.
01:36:55 And the entire thing seemed like a litany of poor options.
01:37:00 And in this realm, Hitler was able to triangulate,
01:37:03 if you will.
01:37:07 He came off as a person
01:37:08 who was going to restore German greatness
01:37:11 at a time when this was a powerful message.
01:37:13 But if you don’t need German greatness restored,
01:37:16 it doesn’t resonate, right?
01:37:18 So the reason that your love idea and all this stuff,
01:37:23 I don’t think would have worked in the time period
01:37:25 is because that was not a commodity
01:37:27 that the average German was in search of then.
01:37:30 Well, it’s interesting to think about
01:37:33 whether greatness can be restored through mechanisms,
01:37:38 through ideas that are not so,
01:37:41 from our perspective today, so evil.
01:37:46 I don’t know what the right term is.
01:37:48 But the war continued in a way.
01:37:50 So remember that when Germany,
01:37:52 when Hitler is rising to power,
01:37:54 the French are in control of parts of Germany, right?
01:37:58 The Ruhr, one of the main industrial heartlands of Germany,
01:38:01 was occupied by the French.
01:38:02 So there’s never this point
01:38:04 where you’re allowed to let the hate dissipate, right?
01:38:07 Every time maybe things were calming down,
01:38:10 something else would happen to stick the knife in
01:38:13 and twist it a little bit more,
01:38:14 from the average German’s perspective, right?
01:38:16 The reparations, right?
01:38:18 So if you say, okay, well, we’re gonna get back on our feet,
01:38:20 the reparations were crushing.
01:38:22 These things prevented the idea of love or brotherhood
01:38:27 and all these things from taking hold.
01:38:29 And even if there were Germans who felt that way,
01:38:31 and there most certainly were,
01:38:33 it is hard to overcome the power of everyone else.
01:38:38 You know, what I always say
01:38:39 when people talk to me about humanity
01:38:41 is I believe on individual levels,
01:38:44 we’re capable of everything and anything,
01:38:46 good, bad, or indifferent.
01:38:48 But collectively, it’s different, right?
01:38:51 And in the time period that we’re talking about here,
01:38:55 messages of peace on earth and love your enemies
01:38:58 and all these sorts of things
01:39:00 were absolutely deluged and overwhelmed
01:39:03 and drowned out by the bitterness, the hatred,
01:39:06 and let’s be honest,
01:39:07 the sense that you were continually being abused
01:39:10 by your former enemies.
01:39:11 There were a lot of people in the Allied side
01:39:14 that realized this and said, we’re setting up the next war.
01:39:17 This is, I mean, they understood
01:39:18 that you can only do certain things
01:39:20 to collective human populations
01:39:23 for a certain period of time
01:39:24 before it is natural for them to want to.
01:39:26 And there are, you can see German posters from the region,
01:39:29 Nazi propaganda posters that show them
01:39:31 breaking off the chains of their enemies.
01:39:33 And I mean, Germany awake, right?
01:39:35 That was the great slogan.
01:39:37 So I think love is always a difficult option.
01:39:42 And in the context of those times,
01:39:44 it was even more disempowered than normal.
01:39:48 Well, this goes to the,
01:39:51 just to linger on it for a little longer,
01:39:54 the question of the inevitability of history.
01:39:59 Do you think Hitler could have been stopped?
01:40:02 Do you think this kind of force that you’re saying
01:40:04 that there was a pain and it was building,
01:40:07 there was a hatred that was building,
01:40:10 do you think there was a way to avert?
01:40:15 I mean, there’s two questions.
01:40:17 Could have been a lot worse and could have been better
01:40:22 in the trajectory of history in the 30s and 40s.
01:40:25 The most logical, see, we had started this conversation,
01:40:28 it brings a wonderful bow tie into the discussion
01:40:30 and buttons it up nicely.
01:40:32 We had talked about force and counter force earlier.
01:40:35 The most obvious and much discussed way
01:40:38 that Hitler could have been stopped
01:40:39 has nothing to do with Germans.
01:40:42 When he remilitarized the Rhineland,
01:40:45 everyone talks about what a couple of French divisions
01:40:49 would have done had they simply gone in and contested.
01:40:52 And this was something Hitler was extremely,
01:40:54 I mean, it might’ve been the most nervous time
01:40:56 in his entire career because he was afraid
01:40:58 that they would have responded with force
01:41:01 and he was in no position to do anything about it
01:41:03 if they did.
01:41:04 So this is where you get the people who say,
01:41:08 and Churchill’s one of these people too,
01:41:10 where they talk about that he should have been stopped
01:41:13 militarily right at the very beginning when he was weak.
01:41:16 I don’t think…
01:41:20 Listen, there were candidates in the Catholic Center Party
01:41:23 and others in the Weimar Republic
01:41:25 that maybe could have done things
01:41:26 and it’s beyond my understanding of specific German history
01:41:30 to talk about it intelligently.
01:41:32 But I do think that had the French responded militarily
01:41:35 to Hitler’s initial moves into that area,
01:41:38 that he would have been thwarted.
01:41:40 And I think he himself believed,
01:41:42 if I’m remembering my reading,
01:41:44 that this would have led to his downfall.
01:41:46 So the potential…
01:41:47 See, what I don’t like about this
01:41:49 is that it almost legitimizes military intervention
01:41:52 at a very early stage
01:41:54 to prevent worse things from happening,
01:41:56 but it might be a pretty clear cut case.
01:41:58 But it shows we pointed out that there was a lot of sympathy
01:42:01 on the part of the allies for the fact that
01:42:04 the Germans probably should have Germany back
01:42:06 and this is traditional German land.
01:42:08 I mean, they were trying, in a funny way,
01:42:11 it’s almost like the love and the sense of justice
01:42:14 on the allies part may have actually stayed their hand
01:42:18 in a way that would have prevented
01:42:20 much, much, much worse things later.
01:42:22 But if the times were such
01:42:26 that the message of a Hitler resonated,
01:42:28 then simply removing Hitler from the equation
01:42:30 would not have removed the context of the times.
01:42:34 And that means one of two things,
01:42:36 either you could have had another one
01:42:39 or you could have ended up in a situation equally bad
01:42:43 in a different direction.
01:42:44 I don’t know what that means
01:42:46 because it’s hard to imagine anything could be worse
01:42:49 than what actually occurred, but history’s funny that way.
01:42:52 And Hitler’s always everyone’s favorite example
01:42:55 of the difference between the great man theory of history
01:42:58 and the trends and forces theories of history, right?
01:43:01 The times made a Hitler possible
01:43:03 and maybe even desirable to some.
01:43:06 If you took him out of the equation,
01:43:08 those trends and forces are still in place, right?
01:43:12 So what does that mean?
01:43:13 If you take him out and the door is still open,
01:43:16 does somebody else walk through it?
01:43:19 Yeah, it’s mathematically speaking,
01:43:21 the probability of charismatic leaders emerge.
01:43:28 I’m so torn on that at this point.
01:43:32 Here’s another way to look at it.
01:43:33 The institutional stability of Germany
01:43:37 in that time period was not enough to push back.
01:43:41 And there are other periods in German history.
01:43:43 I mean, that Hitler arose in, arisen in 1913,
01:43:47 he doesn’t get anywhere
01:43:49 because Germany’s institutional power
01:43:51 is enough to simply quash that.
01:43:54 It’s the fact that Germany was unstable anyway
01:43:57 that prevented a united front
01:43:59 that would have kept radicalism from getting out of hand.
01:44:02 Does that make sense?
01:44:03 Yes, absolutely.
01:44:04 A tricky question on this,
01:44:06 just to stay on this a little longer
01:44:09 because I’m not sure how to think about it,
01:44:11 is the World War II versus the Holocaust.
01:44:18 We were talking just now
01:44:20 about the way that history unrolls itself
01:44:23 and could Hitler have been stopped?
01:44:26 And I don’t quite know what to think about Hitler
01:44:30 without the Holocaust.
01:44:33 And perhaps in his thinking,
01:44:36 how essential the antisemitism
01:44:39 and the hatred of Jews was.
01:44:44 It feels to me that,
01:44:48 I mean, we were just talking about
01:44:50 where did he pick up his hatred of the Jewish people?
01:44:54 There’s stories in Vienna and so on
01:44:57 that it almost is picking up the idea
01:45:02 of antisemitism as a really useful tool,
01:45:06 as opposed to actually believing it in its core.
01:45:10 Do you think World War II as it turned out
01:45:13 and Hitler as he turned out
01:45:15 would be possible without antisemitism?
01:45:18 Could we have avoided the Holocaust?
01:45:21 Or was it an integral part of the ideology
01:45:26 of fascism and the Nazis?
01:45:29 Not an integral part of fascism
01:45:30 because Mussolini really, I mean,
01:45:32 Mussolini did it to please Hitler,
01:45:34 but it wasn’t an integral part.
01:45:36 What’s interesting to me is that that’s the big anomaly
01:45:40 in the whole question because antisemitism
01:45:42 didn’t need to be a part of this at all, right?
01:45:45 Hitler had a conspiratorial view of the world.
01:45:50 He was a believer that the Jews controlled things, right?
01:45:53 The Jews were responsible for both Bolshevism on one side
01:45:57 and capitalism on the other, they ruled the banks.
01:46:00 I mean, United States was a Jewified country, right?
01:46:03 Bolshevism was a Jewified sort of a political.
01:46:09 In other words, he saw Jews everywhere
01:46:11 and he had that line about it.
01:46:12 The Jews of Europe force another war to Germany,
01:46:15 they’ll pay the price or whatever,
01:46:17 but then you have to believe that they’re capable of that.
01:46:20 The Holocaust is a weird, weird sidebar to the whole thing.
01:46:24 And here’s what I’ve always found interesting.
01:46:25 It’s a sidebar that weakened Germany
01:46:28 because look at the First World War.
01:46:29 The Jews fought for Germany, right?
01:46:31 Who was the most important?
01:46:34 And this is a very arguable point,
01:46:36 but it’s just the first one that pops into my head.
01:46:38 Who was the most important Jewish figure
01:46:41 that would have maybe been on the German side
01:46:45 had the Germans had a non antisemitic?
01:46:48 Well, listen, that whole part.
01:46:49 Yes, it was Einstein, but the whole,
01:46:52 I should point out that to say Germany or Europe
01:46:55 or Russia or any of those things were not antisemitic
01:46:58 is to do injustice to history, right?
01:47:00 Pogroms, I mean, it’s standard operating procedure.
01:47:04 What you see in the Hitlerian era
01:47:06 is an absolute huge spike, right?
01:47:09 Cause the government has a conspiracy theory
01:47:11 that the Jews have.
01:47:12 It’s funny because Hitler both thought of them as weak
01:47:15 and super powerful at the same time, right?
01:47:17 And as an outsider people that weakened Germany,
01:47:20 the whole idea of the blood
01:47:21 and how that connects to Darwinism
01:47:23 and all that sort of stuff is just weird, right?
01:47:26 A real outlier, but Einstein,
01:47:29 let’s just play with Einstein.
01:47:31 If there’s no antisemitism in Germany
01:47:34 or none above the normal level, right?
01:47:38 The baseline level, does Einstein leave
01:47:41 along with all the other Jewish scientists?
01:47:44 And what does Germany have as increased technological
01:47:49 and intellectual capacity if they stay, right?
01:47:52 It’s something that actually weakened that state.
01:47:55 It’s a tragic flaw in the Hitlerian worldview,
01:47:59 but it was so, and let me, you had mentioned earlier,
01:48:03 like maybe it was not integral to his character.
01:48:06 Maybe it was a wonderful tool for power.
01:48:09 I don’t think so.
01:48:10 Somewhere along the line, and really not at the beginning,
01:48:13 this guy became absolutely obsessed with this.
01:48:17 With the conspiracy theory.
01:48:19 And Jews, and he surrounded himself
01:48:22 with people and theorists.
01:48:23 I’m gonna use that word really, really sort of loosely,
01:48:27 who believed this too.
01:48:28 And so you have a cabal of people
01:48:30 who are reinforcing this idea
01:48:33 that the Jews control the world.
01:48:35 He called it international jewelry
01:48:37 was a huge part of the problem.
01:48:39 And because of that, they deserved to be punished.
01:48:40 They were an enemy within all these kinds of things.
01:48:43 It’s a nutty conspiracy theory
01:48:46 that the government of one of the most,
01:48:49 I mean, the big thing with Germany was culture, right?
01:48:51 They were a leading figure in culture and philosophy
01:48:55 and all these kinds of things.
01:48:56 And that they could be overtaken
01:48:59 with this wildly wickedly weird conspiracy theory
01:49:03 and that it would actually determine things.
01:49:05 I mean, Hitler was taking vast amounts of German resources
01:49:08 and using it to wipe out this race
01:49:10 when he needed them for all kinds of other things
01:49:12 to fight a war of annihilation.
01:49:14 So that is the weirdest part of the whole Nazi phenomenon.
01:49:19 It’s the darkest possible silver lining to think about
01:49:25 is that the Holocaust may have been
01:49:27 and the hatred of the Jewish people
01:49:29 may have been the thing that avoided Germany
01:49:32 getting the nuclear weapons first.
01:49:35 And.
01:49:38 Isn’t that a wonderful historical ironic twist
01:49:41 that if it weren’t so overlaid with tragedy,
01:49:43 a thousand years from now will be seen
01:49:45 as something really kind of funny.
01:49:46 Well, that’s true.
01:49:47 It’s fascinating to think as you’ve talked.
01:49:50 So the seeds of his own destruction, right?
01:49:52 The tragic flaw.
01:49:55 And my hope is, this is a discussion I have
01:49:59 with my dad as a physicist,
01:50:04 is that evil inherently contains with it
01:50:09 that kind of incompetence.
01:50:12 So my dad’s discussion, so he’s a physicist
01:50:17 and an engineer, his belief is that at this time
01:50:21 in our history, the reason we haven’t had nuclear
01:50:24 like terrorist blow up a nuclear weapon somewhere
01:50:29 in the world is that the kind of people
01:50:32 that would be terrorists are simply not competent enough
01:50:38 at their job of being a destructive.
01:50:41 So like, there’s a kind of, if you plot it,
01:50:43 the more evil you are, the less able you are.
01:50:47 And by evil, I mean, purely just like we said,
01:50:53 if we were to consider the hatred of Jewish people as evil,
01:50:56 because it’s sort of detached from reality,
01:50:58 it’s like just this pure hatred of something
01:51:02 that’s grounded on things, conspiracy theories.
01:51:07 If that’s evil, then the more you sell yourself,
01:51:11 the more you give into these conspiracy theories,
01:51:13 the less capable you are at actually engineering,
01:51:16 which is very difficult, engineering nuclear weapons
01:51:19 and effectively deploying them.
01:51:20 So that’s a hopeful message that the destructive people
01:51:25 in this world are by their worldview incompetent
01:51:30 in creating the ultimate destruction.
01:51:33 I don’t agree with that.
01:51:35 Oh boy.
01:51:35 I straight up don’t agree with that.
01:51:37 So why are we still here?
01:51:39 Why haven’t we destroyed ourselves?
01:51:41 Why haven’t the terrorists blown, it’s been many decades.
01:51:45 Why haven’t we destroyed ourself to this point?
01:51:49 Well, when you say it’s been many decades, many decades,
01:51:52 that’s like saying in the life of 150 year old person,
01:51:56 we’ve been doing well for a year.
01:51:58 The problem with all these kinds of equations,
01:52:01 and it was Bertrand Russell, right?
01:52:02 The philosopher who said so.
01:52:04 He said, it’s unreasonable to expect a man to walk
01:52:09 on a tight rope for 50 years.
01:52:12 I mean, the problem is that this is a long game.
01:52:15 And let’s remember that up until relatively recently,
01:52:18 what would you say, 30 years ago,
01:52:20 the nuclear weapons in the world
01:52:22 were really tightly controlled.
01:52:24 That was one of the real dangers
01:52:25 in the fall of the Soviet Union.
01:52:26 Remember the worry that all of a sudden
01:52:29 you were gonna have bankrupt former Soviet Republic
01:52:32 selling nuclear weapons to terrorists and whatnot.
01:52:35 I would suggest, and here’s another problem is that
01:52:37 when we call these terrorists evil,
01:52:39 it’s easy for an American, for example,
01:52:42 to say that Osama bin Laden is evil.
01:52:44 Easy for me to say that.
01:52:46 But one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter
01:52:49 as the saying goes, and to other people, he’s not.
01:52:52 What Osama bin Laden did,
01:52:54 and the people that worked with him,
01:52:56 we would call evil genius.
01:52:58 The idea of hijacking planes
01:53:00 and flying them into the buildings like that,
01:53:02 and that he could pull that off,
01:53:04 and that still boggles my mind.
01:53:07 I’m still, it’s funny, I’m still stunned by that.
01:53:10 And yet, the idea, here’s the funny part,
01:53:14 and I hesitate to talk about this
01:53:16 because I don’t wanna give anyone ideas,
01:53:19 but you don’t need nuclear weapons
01:53:22 to do incredibly grave amounts of danger.
01:53:26 I mean, what one can of gasoline and a BIC lighter can do
01:53:30 in the right place and the right time,
01:53:33 and over and over and over again
01:53:36 can bring down societies.
01:53:38 This is the argument behind the importance of the stability
01:53:42 that a nation state provides.
01:53:44 So when we went in and took out Saddam Hussein,
01:53:48 one of the great counter arguments
01:53:50 from some of the people who said,
01:53:51 this is a really stupid thing to do,
01:53:53 is that Saddam Hussein was the greatest anti terror weapon
01:53:57 in that region that you could have
01:53:59 because they were a threat to him.
01:54:01 So he took that, and he did it in a way
01:54:03 that was much more repressive than we would ever be, right?
01:54:07 And this is the old line
01:54:08 about why we supported right wing death squad countries,
01:54:12 because they were taking out people
01:54:14 that would inevitably be a problem for us if they didn’t,
01:54:18 and they were able to do it
01:54:19 in a way we would never be able to do, supposedly.
01:54:21 We’re pretty good at that stuff,
01:54:23 just like the Soviet Union was behind the scenes
01:54:25 and underneath the radar.
01:54:27 But the idea that the stability created
01:54:29 by powerful and strong centralized leadership
01:54:32 allowed them, it’s almost like outsourcing
01:54:35 anti terror activities, allowed them to,
01:54:38 for their own reasons.
01:54:39 I mean, you see the same thing
01:54:41 in the Syria situation with the Assads.
01:54:42 I mean, you can’t have an ISIS in that area
01:54:46 because that’s a threat to the Assad government
01:54:48 who will take care of that for you,
01:54:49 and then that helps us by not having an ISIS.
01:54:51 So I would suggest one, that the game is still on
01:54:56 on whether or not these people get nuclear weapons
01:54:59 in their hands.
01:55:00 I would suggest they don’t need them
01:55:02 to achieve their goals, really.
01:55:05 The crazy thing is if you start thinking
01:55:06 like the Joker in Batman, the terrorist ideas,
01:55:10 it’s funny, I guess I would be a great terrorist
01:55:12 because I’m just full of those ideas.
01:55:13 Oh, you could do this, you could,
01:55:14 it’s scary to think of how vulnerable we are.
01:55:17 But the whole point is that you as the Joker
01:55:22 wouldn’t do the terrorist actions.
01:55:24 That’s the theory that’s so hopeful to me with my dad,
01:55:29 is that all the ideas, your ability to generate good ideas,
01:55:33 forget nuclear weapons, how you can disrupt the power grid,
01:55:37 how you can disrupt the, attack our psychology,
01:55:41 attack like with a can of gasoline, like you said,
01:55:44 somehow disrupt the American system of ideas.
01:55:49 That coming up with good ideas there.
01:55:53 Are we saying evil people can’t come up
01:55:55 with evil genius ideas?
01:55:57 That’s what I’m saying.
01:55:58 We have this Hollywood story.
01:56:00 I don’t think history backs that up.
01:56:02 I mean, I think you can say with the nuclear weapons,
01:56:04 it does, but only because they’re so recent.
01:56:06 But I mean, evil genius, I mean, that’s almost proverbial.
01:56:10 But that’s, okay, so to push back for the fun of it, or.
01:56:13 And I don’t mean to, I don’t want you to leave this
01:56:15 in a terrible mood because I push back
01:56:17 on every hopeful idea you had,
01:56:20 but I tend to be a little cynical about that stuff.
01:56:22 But that goes to the definition of evil, I think,
01:56:26 because I’m not so sure human history
01:56:29 has a lot of evil people being competent.
01:56:33 I do believe that they mostly,
01:56:36 like in order to be good at doing
01:56:38 what may be perceived as evil,
01:56:40 you have to be able to construct an ideology
01:56:43 around which you truly believe
01:56:45 when you look in the mirror by yourself,
01:56:49 that you’re doing good for the world.
01:56:51 And it’s difficult to construct an ideology
01:56:54 where destroying the lives of millions
01:56:59 or disrupting the American system,
01:57:01 I’m already contradicting myself as I’m saying.
01:57:03 I was just gonna say, people have done this already, yes.
01:57:05 So, but then it’s the question of like,
01:57:09 about aliens with the idea that
01:57:16 if the aliens are all out there,
01:57:18 why haven’t they visited us?
01:57:20 The same question, if it’s so easy to be evil,
01:57:25 not easy, if it’s possible to be evil,
01:57:27 why haven’t we destroyed ourselves?
01:57:29 And your statement is from the context of history,
01:57:33 the game is still on.
01:57:34 And it’s just been a few years
01:57:37 since we’ve found the tools to destroy ourselves.
01:57:40 And one of the challenges of our modern time
01:57:44 that we don’t often think about this pandemic
01:57:46 kind of revealed is how soft we’ve gotten
01:57:49 in terms of our deep dependence on the system.
01:57:53 So somebody mentioned to me,
01:57:56 what happens if power goes out for a day?
01:57:59 What happens if power goes out for a month?
01:58:04 Oh, for example, the person that mentioned this
01:58:06 was a Berkeley faculty that I was talking with.
01:58:10 He’s an astronomer who’s observing solar flares.
01:58:13 And it’s very possible that a solar flare,
01:58:16 they happen all the time to different degrees.
01:58:19 To knock out your cell phones.
01:58:20 Yeah, to knock out the power grid for months.
01:58:25 So like, just as a thought experiment,
01:58:29 what happens if just power goes out
01:58:31 for a week in this country?
01:58:33 Like the electromagnetic pulses and the nuclear weapons
01:58:37 and all those kinds of things, yeah.
01:58:38 But maybe that’s an act of nature.
01:58:41 And even just the act of nature will reveal
01:58:46 like a little. The fragility of it all.
01:58:48 And then the evil can emerge.
01:58:50 I mean, the kind of things that might happen
01:58:51 when power goes out, especially during a divisive time.
01:58:56 Well, you won’t have food.
01:58:57 At baseline level, that would mean
01:59:00 that the entire supplies chain begins to break down.
01:59:04 And then you have desperation.
01:59:06 And desperation opens the door to everything.
01:59:09 Can I ask a dark question?
01:59:10 As opposed to the other things we’ve been talking about?
01:59:13 There’s always a thread, a hopeful message.
01:59:16 I think there’ll be a hopeful message on this one too.
01:59:18 You may have the wrong guess.
01:59:19 I’m just saying.
01:59:23 If you were to bet money on the way
01:59:26 that human civilization destroys itself,
01:59:31 or it collapses in some way that is,
01:59:35 where the result would be unrecognizable to us
01:59:38 as anything akin to progress, what would you say?
01:59:42 Is it nuclear weapons?
01:59:46 Is it some societal breakdown
01:59:48 through just more traditional kinds of war?
01:59:51 Is it engineered pandemics, nanotechnology?
01:59:54 Is it artificial intelligence?
01:59:56 Is it something we can’t even expect yet?
01:59:59 Do you have a sense of how we humans will destroy ourselves?
02:00:02 Or might we live forever?
02:00:04 I think what governs my view of this thing
02:00:08 is the ability for us to focus ourselves collectively.
02:00:13 And that gives me the choice of looking at this
02:00:15 and saying, what are the odds we will do X versus Y, right?
02:00:20 So go look at the 62 Cuban Missile Crisis,
02:00:24 where we looked at the potential of nuclear war
02:00:28 and we stared right in the face of that.
02:00:30 To me, I consider that to be,
02:00:32 you wanna talk about a hopeful moment?
02:00:34 That’s one of the rare times in our history
02:00:36 where I think the odds were overwhelmingly
02:00:41 that there would be a nuclear war.
02:00:43 And I’m not the super Kennedy worshiper that,
02:00:46 I grew up in an era where he was,
02:00:48 especially amongst people in the Democratic Party,
02:00:50 he was almost worshiped.
02:00:52 And I was never that guy, but I will say something.
02:00:54 John F. Kennedy by himself probably made decisions
02:01:00 that saved a hundred million or more lives
02:01:02 because everyone around him thought he should be
02:01:06 taking the road that would have led to those deaths.
02:01:08 And to push back against that is,
02:01:11 when you look at it now, I mean, again,
02:01:12 if you were a betting person,
02:01:13 you would have bet against that.
02:01:15 And that’s rare, right?
02:01:17 So when we talk about how the world will end,
02:01:22 the fact that one person actually had that in their hands
02:01:26 meant that it wasn’t a collective decision.
02:01:29 It gave, remember I said,
02:01:30 I trust people on an individual level,
02:01:32 but when we get together, we’re more like a herd
02:01:34 and we devolved down to the lowest common denominator.
02:01:36 That was something where the higher ethical ideas
02:01:40 of a single human being could come into play
02:01:42 and make the decisions that influence the events.
02:01:46 But when we have to act collectively,
02:01:48 I get a lot more pessimistic.
02:01:50 So take what we’re doing to the planet.
02:01:53 And we talk about it always now in terms of climate change,
02:01:56 which I think is far too narrow.
02:01:59 Look at, and I always get very frustrated
02:02:02 when we talk about these arguments about,
02:02:04 is it happening?
02:02:04 Is it human?
02:02:05 Just look at the trash, forget climate for a second.
02:02:09 We are destroying the planet because we’re not taking care
02:02:12 of it and because what it would do to take care of it
02:02:14 would require collective sacrifices
02:02:17 that would require enough of us to say, okay.
02:02:21 And we can’t get enough of us to say, okay,
02:02:24 because too many people have to be on board.
02:02:27 It’s not John F. Kennedy making one decision from one man.
02:02:30 We have to have 85% of us or something around the world.
02:02:34 Not just, you can’t say we’re gonna stop doing damage
02:02:37 to the world here in the United States if China does it.
02:02:41 So the amount of people that have to get on board
02:02:43 that train is hard.
02:02:46 You get pessimistic hoping for those kinds of shifts
02:02:49 unless it’s right, you know, Krypton’s about to explode.
02:02:54 We have, and so I think if you’re talking
02:02:57 about a gambling man’s view of this,
02:03:00 that that’s gotta be the odds on favorite
02:03:02 because it requires such a UNAM.
02:03:05 I mean, and the systems maybe aren’t even in place, right?
02:03:09 The fact that we would need intergovernmental bodies
02:03:12 that are completely discredited now on board
02:03:14 and you would have to subvert the national interests
02:03:17 of nation states, I mean, the amount of things
02:03:20 that have to go right in a short period of time
02:03:23 where we don’t have 600 years to figure this out, right?
02:03:27 So to me, that looks like the most likely
02:03:30 just because the things we would have to do
02:03:31 to avoid it seem the most unlikely.
02:03:33 Does that make sense?
02:03:34 Absolutely.
02:03:35 I believe, call me naive,
02:03:38 in just like you said with the individual,
02:03:41 I believe that charismatic leaders,
02:03:43 individual leaders will save us.
02:03:46 Like this.
02:03:46 What if you don’t get them all at the same time?
02:03:48 What if you get a charismatic leader in one country
02:03:50 but under, or what if you get a charismatic leader
02:03:52 in a country that doesn’t really matter that much?
02:03:54 Well, it’s a ripple effect.
02:03:55 So it starts with one leader
02:03:57 and their charisma inspires other leaders.
02:04:00 So it’s like one ant queen steps up
02:04:05 and then the rest of the ant starts behaving.
02:04:07 And then there’s like little other spikes
02:04:09 of leaders that emerge.
02:04:11 And then that’s where collaboration emerges.
02:04:13 I tend to believe that like when you heat up the system
02:04:16 and shit starts getting really chaotic,
02:04:21 then the leader, whatever this collective intelligence
02:04:24 that we’ve developed, the leader will emerge.
02:04:27 Like there.
02:04:28 Don’t you think there’s just as much of a chance though
02:04:30 that the leader would emerge and say,
02:04:31 the Jews are the people who did all this.
02:04:33 You know what I’m saying?
02:04:34 Is that the idea that they would come up,
02:04:36 you have a charismatic leader
02:04:37 and he’s going to come up with the rights
02:04:39 or she is going to come up with the right solution
02:04:41 as opposed to totally coming up with the wrong solution.
02:04:45 I mean, I guess what I’m saying is you could be right,
02:04:47 but a lot of things have to go the right way.
02:04:50 But my intuition about the evolutionary process
02:04:52 that led to the creation of human intelligence
02:04:55 and consciousness on earth results
02:04:58 in the power of like, if we think of it,
02:05:02 just the love in the system versus the hate in the system,
02:05:05 that the love is greater.
02:05:07 The human kindness potential in the system
02:05:13 is greater than the human hatred potential.
02:05:18 And so the leader that is in the time when it’s needed,
02:05:21 the leader that inspires love and kindness
02:05:25 is more likely to emerge and will have more power.
02:05:30 So you have the Hitlers of the world that emerge,
02:05:34 but they’re actually in a grand scheme of history
02:05:37 are not that impactful.
02:05:40 So it’s weird to say,
02:05:42 but not that many people died in World War II.
02:05:45 If you look at the full range of human history,
02:05:51 it’s up to a hundred million, whatever that is,
02:05:55 with natural pandemics too,
02:05:57 you can have those kinds of numbers,
02:05:58 but it’s still a percentage.
02:06:00 I forget what the percentage is,
02:06:01 maybe three, 5% of the human population on earth.
02:06:04 Maybe it’s a little bit focused on a different region,
02:06:07 but it’s not destructive
02:06:09 to the entirety of human civilization.
02:06:11 So I believe that the charismatic leaders,
02:06:17 when time is needed, that do good for the world
02:06:22 in the broader sense of good
02:06:24 are more likely to emerge
02:06:26 than the ones that say, kill all the Jews.
02:06:29 It’s possible though, and this is just,
02:06:32 I’ve thought about this all of 30 seconds,
02:06:33 but I mean, it seems.
02:06:36 We’re betting money here on the 21st century,
02:06:38 who’s gonna win?
02:06:39 I think maybe you’ve divided this
02:06:42 into too much of a black and white dichotomy,
02:06:45 this love and good on one side and this evil on another.
02:06:48 Let me throw something that might be more
02:06:50 in the center of that linear balancing act,
02:06:54 self interest, which may or may not be good.
02:06:59 The good version of it we call enlightened self interest.
02:07:02 The bad version of it we call selfishness.
02:07:05 But self interest to me seems like something more likely
02:07:09 to impact the outcome than either love on one side
02:07:13 or evil on the other.
02:07:14 Simply a question of what’s good for me
02:07:17 or what’s good for my country
02:07:19 or what’s good from my point of view
02:07:21 or what’s good for my business.
02:07:22 I mean, if you tell me, and maybe I’m a coal miner
02:07:27 or maybe I own a coal mine.
02:07:29 If you say to me, we have to stop using coal
02:07:32 because it’s hurting the earth,
02:07:34 I have a hard time disentangling that greater good question
02:07:39 from my right now good feeding my family question, right?
02:07:43 So I think maybe it’s gonna be a much more banal thing
02:07:48 than good and evil, much more a question
02:07:50 of we’re not all going to decide at the same time
02:07:54 that the interests that we have are aligned.
02:07:57 Does that make sense?
02:07:58 Totally, but I mean, I’ve looked at Ayn Rand
02:08:00 and objectivism and kind of really thought like,
02:08:02 how bad or good can things go
02:08:04 when everybody’s acting selfishly?
02:08:06 But I think we’re just talking two aunts here
02:08:08 with microphones talking about.
02:08:13 But like the question is when this spreads,
02:08:17 so what do I mean by love and kindness?
02:08:23 I think it’s human flourishing on earth
02:08:26 and throughout the cosmos.
02:08:28 It feels like whatever the engine that drives human beings
02:08:33 is more likely to result in human flourishing.
02:08:37 And people like Hitler are not good for human flourishing.
02:08:41 So that’s what I mean by good is there’s a,
02:08:45 I mean, maybe it’s an intuition that kindness
02:08:48 is an evolutionary advantage.
02:08:51 I hate those terms.
02:08:52 I hate to reduce stuff to evolutionary biology always,
02:08:55 but it just seems like for us to multiply
02:08:58 throughout the universe, it’s good to be kind to each other.
02:09:03 And those leaders will always emerge to save us
02:09:06 from the Hitlers of the world that wanna kind of
02:09:09 burn the thing down with a flamethrower.
02:09:11 That’s the intuition.
02:09:12 But let’s talk about, you brought up evolution several times.
02:09:14 Let me play with that for a minute.
02:09:18 I think going back to animal times,
02:09:20 we are conditioned to deal with overwhelming threats
02:09:24 right in front of us.
02:09:25 So I have quite a bit of faith in humanity
02:09:28 when it comes to impending doom right outside our door.
02:09:33 If Krypton’s about to explode,
02:09:35 I think humanity can rouse themselves to great,
02:09:39 and would give power to the people who needed it
02:09:42 and be willing to make the sacrifices.
02:09:44 But that’s what makes, I think,
02:09:45 the pollution slash climate change
02:09:47 slash screwing up your environment threat
02:09:51 so particularly insidious is it happens slowly, right?
02:09:55 It defies fight and flight mechanisms.
02:09:58 It defies the natural ability we have to deal
02:10:01 with the threat that’s right on top of us.
02:10:03 And it requires an amount of foresight
02:10:06 that while some people would be fine with that,
02:10:09 most people are too worried and understandably,
02:10:12 I think too worried about today’s threat
02:10:14 rather than next generation’s threat or whatever it might be.
02:10:18 So I mean, when we talk about when you had said,
02:10:20 what do you think the greatest threat is?
02:10:23 I think with nuclear weapons,
02:10:24 I think could we have a nuclear war?
02:10:26 We darn right could,
02:10:27 but I think that there’s enough of an inertia
02:10:31 where against that because people understand instinctively,
02:10:34 if I decide to launch this attack against China
02:10:37 and I’m India,
02:10:38 we’re gonna have 50 million dead people tomorrow.
02:10:41 Whereas if you say,
02:10:42 we’re gonna have a whole planet of dead people
02:10:44 in three generations if we don’t start now,
02:10:47 I think the evolutionary way that we have evolved
02:10:53 mitigates maybe against that.
02:10:55 In other words, I think I would be pleasantly surprised
02:10:58 if we could pull that off.
02:10:59 Does that make sense?
02:11:01 Totally.
02:11:02 I don’t mean to be like, I’m the sight predicting doom.
02:11:05 It’s fun that way.
02:11:06 I think we’re both,
02:11:07 maybe I’m over the top on the love thing.
02:11:09 Maybe I’m over the top on the doom.
02:11:11 So it makes for a fun chat, I think.
02:11:14 So one guy that I’ve talked to several times
02:11:17 is slowly becoming a friend is a guy named Elon Musk.
02:11:22 He’s a big fan of hardcore history,
02:11:26 especially Genghis Khan series of episodes,
02:11:29 but really all of it,
02:11:31 him and his girlfriend Grimes listen to it, which is.
02:11:34 I know Elon.
02:11:35 Yeah, you know Elon?
02:11:36 Okay, awesome.
02:11:37 So that’s like relationship goals,
02:11:40 like listen to hardcore history on the weekend
02:11:42 with your loved one.
02:11:43 Okay.
02:11:44 So let me, if I were to look at the guy
02:11:48 from a perspective of human history,
02:11:51 it feels like he will be a little speck that’s remembered.
02:11:55 Oh, absolutely.
02:11:56 You think about like the people,
02:11:58 what will we remember from our time?
02:12:01 Who are the people we’ll remember,
02:12:03 whether it’s the Hitlers or the Einsteins,
02:12:07 who’s going to be?
02:12:09 It’s hard to predict when you’re in it,
02:12:11 but it seems like Elon
02:12:13 will be one of those people remembered.
02:12:14 And if I were to guess what he’s remembered for,
02:12:17 it’s the work he’s doing with SpaceX
02:12:20 and potentially being the person.
02:12:23 Now we don’t know,
02:12:24 but the being the person
02:12:26 who launched a new era of space exploration.
02:12:31 If we look centuries from now,
02:12:34 if we are successful as human beings surviving long enough
02:12:37 to venture out into the, you know, toward the stars.
02:12:43 It’s weird to ask you this.
02:12:44 I don’t know what your opinions are,
02:12:46 but do you think humans will be a multi planetary species
02:12:51 in the long arc of history?
02:12:53 Do you think Elon will be successful in his dream?
02:12:56 And he doesn’t shy away from saying it this way, right?
02:12:59 He really wants us to colonize Mars first
02:13:04 and then colonize other Earth like planets
02:13:08 in other solar systems throughout the galaxy.
02:13:11 Do you have a hope that we humans will venture out
02:13:13 towards the stars?
02:13:15 So here’s the thing.
02:13:16 And this actually, again, dovetails
02:13:17 to what we were talking about earlier.
02:13:19 I actually, first of all, I toured SpaceX
02:13:24 and it’s hard to get your mind around
02:13:27 because he’s doing what it took governments to do before.
02:13:30 Yes. Okay.
02:13:30 So it’s incredible that we’re watching individual companies
02:13:33 and stuff doing this.
02:13:34 Doing it faster and cheaper.
02:13:35 Yeah. Well, and pushing the envelope, right?
02:13:38 Faster than the governments at the time we’re moving.
02:13:40 It really is.
02:13:42 I mean, there’s a lot of people who I think,
02:13:45 who think Elon is overrated and you have no idea, right?
02:13:49 When you go see it, you have no idea.
02:13:51 But that’s actually not what I’m most impressed with.
02:13:55 It’s Tesla I’m most impressed with.
02:13:57 And the reason why is because in my mind,
02:14:00 we just talked about what I think is the greatest threat,
02:14:02 the environmental stuff.
02:14:04 And I talked about our inability maybe all at the same time
02:14:08 to be willing to sacrifice our self interests
02:14:11 in order for the goal.
02:14:14 And I don’t wanna put words in Elon’s mouth,
02:14:16 so you can talk to him if you want to.
02:14:18 But in my mind, what he’s done is recognize that problem.
02:14:22 And instead of building a car that’s a piece of crap,
02:14:25 but it’s good for the environment so you should drive it,
02:14:27 he’s trying to create a car that if you’re only motivated
02:14:31 by your self interest, you’ll buy it anyway.
02:14:35 And it will help the environment and help us transition away
02:14:38 from one of the main causes of damage.
02:14:40 I mean, one of the things this pandemic
02:14:42 and the shutdown around the world has done
02:14:45 is show us how amazingly quickly
02:14:48 the earth can actually rejuvenate.
02:14:49 We’re seeing clear skies in places species come
02:14:52 and you would have thought it would have taken decades
02:14:54 for some of this stuff.
02:14:55 So what if to name just one major pollution source,
02:14:59 we didn’t have the pollution caused by automobiles, right?
02:15:03 And if you had said to me, Dan,
02:15:06 what do you think the odds of us transitioning away
02:15:08 from that were 10 years ago,
02:15:09 I would have said, well, people aren’t gonna do it
02:15:10 because it’s inefficient, it’s this, it’s that,
02:15:12 nobody wants to, but what if you created a vehicle
02:15:15 that was superior in every way
02:15:16 so that if you were just a self oriented consumer,
02:15:19 you’d buy it because you wanted that car.
02:15:21 That’s the best way to get around that problem
02:15:24 of people not wanting to, I think he’s identified that.
02:15:28 And as he’s told me before,
02:15:30 when the last time a car company was created
02:15:33 that actually, blah, blah, blah, he’s right.
02:15:36 And so I happen to feel that even though he’s pushing
02:15:39 the envelope on the space thing,
02:15:40 I think somebody else would have done that someday.
02:15:43 I’m not sure because of the various things he’s mentioned,
02:15:46 how difficult it is to start there,
02:15:48 I’m not sure that the industries that create vehicles
02:15:51 for us would have gone where he’s going to lead them
02:15:55 if he didn’t force them there through consumer demand
02:15:57 by making a better car that people wanted anyway.
02:16:00 They’ll follow, they’ll copy, they’ll do all those things.
02:16:03 And yet who was gonna do that?
02:16:06 So I hope he doesn’t hate me for saying this,
02:16:08 but I happen to think the Tesla idea
02:16:12 may alleviate some of the need to get off this planet
02:16:15 because the planet’s being destroyed, right?
02:16:17 And we’re gonna colonize Mars probably anyway
02:16:19 if we live long enough.
02:16:20 And I think the Tesla idea, not just Elon’s version,
02:16:23 but ones that follow from other people
02:16:25 is the best chance of making sure we’re around long enough
02:16:28 to see Mars colonized.
02:16:29 Does that make sense?
02:16:30 Yeah, totally.
02:16:31 And one other thing from my perspective,
02:16:33 because I’m now starting a company,
02:16:35 I think the interesting thing about Elon
02:16:38 is he serves as a beacon of hope, like pragmatically speaking
02:16:43 for people that, sort of to push back
02:16:45 on our Doom conversation from earlier,
02:16:48 that a single individual could build something
02:16:53 that allows us as self interested individuals
02:16:57 to gather together in a collective way
02:17:00 to actually alleviate some of the dangers
02:17:02 that face our world.
02:17:04 So it gives me hope as an individual
02:17:08 that I can build something that can actually have impact
02:17:13 that counteracts the Stalins and the Hitlers
02:17:18 and all the threats that face that human civilization faces,
02:17:24 that an individual has that power.
02:17:26 I didn’t believe that the individual has that power
02:17:29 in the halls of government.
02:17:32 Like, I don’t feel like any one presidential candidate
02:17:34 can rise up and help the world, unite the world.
02:17:38 It feels like from everything I’ve seen
02:17:41 and you’re right with Tesla,
02:17:44 it can bring the world together to do good.
02:17:49 That’s a really powerful mechanism
02:17:50 of whatever you say about capitalism,
02:17:53 that you can build companies that start,
02:17:58 it starts with a single individual.
02:17:59 Of course, there’s a collective that grows around that,
02:18:02 but the leadership of a single individual,
02:18:05 their ideas, their dreams, their vision
02:18:08 can catalyze something that takes over the world
02:18:12 and does good for the entire world.
02:18:14 But if I think, but again, I think the genius of the idea
02:18:18 is that it doesn’t require us
02:18:20 to go head to head with human nature, right?
02:18:23 He’s actually built human nature into the idea
02:18:27 by basically saying, I’m not asking you
02:18:29 to be an environmental activist.
02:18:31 I’m not asking you to sacrifice to make it.
02:18:33 I’m gonna sell you a car you’re going to like better.
02:18:36 And by buying it, you’ll help the environment.
02:18:38 That takes into account our foibles as a species
02:18:42 and actually leverages that to work for the greater good.
02:18:46 And that’s the sort of thing that does turn off
02:18:49 my little doom caster cynicism thing a little bit
02:18:51 because you’re actually hitting us where we live, right?
02:18:55 You’re not, you can take somebody
02:18:57 who doesn’t even believe the environment’s a problem,
02:18:59 but they want a Tesla.
02:19:00 So they’re inadvertently helping anyway.
02:19:03 I think that’s the genius of the idea.
02:19:05 Yeah, and I’m telling you, that’s one way to make love
02:19:09 a much more efficient mechanism of change than hate.
02:19:13 Making it in your self interest to love somebody.
02:19:15 Making it in your self interest, creating a product
02:19:17 that leads to more love than hate.
02:19:21 You’re gonna wanna love your neighbor
02:19:22 because you’re gonna make a fortune.
02:19:23 Exactly.
02:19:24 Right, okay, I get it.
02:19:25 There you go.
02:19:26 That’s why he said.
02:19:26 All right, I’m on board.
02:19:27 That’s why Elon said love is the answer.
02:19:29 That’s, I think, exactly what he meant.
02:19:33 Okay, let’s try something difficult.
02:19:35 You’ve recorded an episode of Steering Into the Iceberg
02:19:41 on your Common Sense program.
02:19:43 Yeah.
02:19:44 That has started a lot of conversations.
02:19:48 It’s quite moving, it was quite haunting.
02:19:51 Got me a lot of angry emails.
02:19:52 Really?
02:19:53 Of course.
02:19:55 I did something I haven’t done in 30 years.
02:19:57 I endorsed a political candidate
02:19:58 from one of the two main parties
02:19:59 and there were a lot of disillusioned people
02:20:01 because of that.
02:20:02 I guess I didn’t hear it as an endorsement.
02:20:05 I just heard it as the similar flavor of conversation
02:20:11 as you have in hardcore history.
02:20:14 It’s almost the speaking about modern times
02:20:19 in the same voice as you speak about
02:20:21 when you talk about history.
02:20:23 So it was just a little bit of a haunting view
02:20:27 of the world today.
02:20:30 I know we were just wearing our doom caster.
02:20:33 Let me put that right back on, are you?
02:20:36 No.
02:20:38 I like the term doom caster.
02:20:44 How do we get love to win?
02:20:47 What’s the way out of this?
02:20:49 Is there some hopeful line that we can walk
02:20:57 to avoid something, and I hate to use the terminology,
02:21:01 but something that looks like a civil war,
02:21:06 not necessarily a war of force,
02:21:08 but a division to a level where it doesn’t any longer feel
02:21:15 like a United States of America with an emphasis on United.
02:21:20 Is there a way out?
02:21:23 I read a book a while back.
02:21:24 I want to say George Friedman, the Stratfor guy wrote it.
02:21:28 It was something called The Next Hundred Years,
02:21:30 I think it was called.
02:21:31 And I remember thinking, I didn’t agree with any of it.
02:21:35 And one of the things I think he said in the book
02:21:37 was that the United States was going to break up.
02:21:39 I’m going from memory here.
02:21:40 He might not have said that at all,
02:21:41 but something was stuck in my memory about that.
02:21:42 And I remember thinking,
02:21:45 but I think some of the arguments were connected
02:21:49 to the differences that we had
02:21:53 and the fact that those differences are being exploited.
02:21:55 So we talked about media earlier
02:21:57 and the lack of truth and everything.
02:21:58 We have a media climate that is incentivized
02:22:03 to take the wedges in our society and make them wider.
02:22:08 And there’s no countervailing force to do the opposite
02:22:11 or to help.
02:22:13 So there was a famous memo
02:22:17 from a group called Project for a New American Century.
02:22:21 And they took it down,
02:22:21 but the Wayback Machine online still has it.
02:22:24 And it happened before 9 11,
02:22:25 spawned all kinds of conspiracy theories
02:22:27 because it was saying something to the effect of,
02:22:30 and I’m really paraphrasing here,
02:22:32 but you know that the United States
02:22:33 needs another Pearl Harbor type event
02:22:36 because those galvanize a country
02:22:39 that without those kinds of events periodically
02:22:41 is naturally geared towards pulling itself apart.
02:22:45 And it’s those periodic events
02:22:47 that act as the countervailing force
02:22:49 that otherwise is not there.
02:22:52 If that’s true,
02:22:53 then we are naturally inclined towards pulling ourselves apart.
02:22:57 So to have a media environment
02:23:01 that makes money off widening those divisions,
02:23:06 which we do.
02:23:07 I mean, I was in talk radio
02:23:08 and it has those people,
02:23:11 the people that used to scream at me
02:23:12 cause I wouldn’t do it.
02:23:13 But I mean, we would have these terrible conversations
02:23:15 after every broadcast
02:23:17 where I’d be in there with the program director
02:23:18 and they’re yelling at me about heat.
02:23:21 Heat was the word they create more heat.
02:23:22 Well, what is heat, right?
02:23:24 Heat is division, right?
02:23:25 And they want the heat,
02:23:26 not because they’re political,
02:23:28 they’re not Republicans or Democrats either.
02:23:32 We want listeners
02:23:33 and we want engagement and involvement.
02:23:36 And because of the constructs of the format,
02:23:39 you don’t have a lot of time to get it.
02:23:40 So you can’t have me giving you like on a podcast
02:23:43 an hour and a half or two hours
02:23:44 where we build a logical argument
02:23:47 and you’re with me the whole way,
02:23:48 your audience is changing every 15 minutes.
02:23:51 So whatever points you make to create interest
02:23:53 and intrigue and engagement have to be knee jerk right now.
02:23:58 Things, they told me once
02:24:00 that the audience has to know
02:24:01 where you stand on every single issue
02:24:04 within five minutes of turning on your show.
02:24:07 In other words, you have to be part
02:24:09 of a linear set of political beliefs
02:24:12 so that if you feel A about subject A,
02:24:15 then you must feel D about subject D.
02:24:18 And I don’t even need to hear your opinion on it
02:24:19 cause if you feel that way about A,
02:24:20 you’re gonna feel that way about D.
02:24:22 This is a system that is designed
02:24:24 to pull us apart for profit,
02:24:26 but not because they wanna pull us apart, right?
02:24:29 It’s a byproduct of the profit.
02:24:32 That’s one little example of 50 examples in our society
02:24:37 that work in that same fashion.
02:24:39 So what that project
02:24:40 for a new American century document was saying
02:24:42 is that we’re naturally inclined towards disunity
02:24:46 and without things to occasionally ratchet
02:24:49 the unity back up again,
02:24:51 so that we can start from the baseline again
02:24:53 and then pull ourselves apart till the next Pearl Harbor,
02:24:55 that you’ll pull yourself apart,
02:24:57 which I think was,
02:24:58 think that’s what the George Friedman book was saying
02:25:01 that I disagreed with so much at the time.
02:25:04 So in answer to your question about civil wars,
02:25:07 we can’t have the same kind of civil war
02:25:09 because we don’t have a geographical division
02:25:12 that’s as clear cut as the one we had before, right?
02:25:13 You had a basically north south line and some border states.
02:25:16 It was set up for that kind of a split.
02:25:18 Now we’re divided within communities, within families,
02:25:22 within gerrymandered voting districts and precincts, right?
02:25:25 So you can’t disengage.
02:25:28 We’re stuck with each other.
02:25:30 So if there’s a civil war now,
02:25:33 for lack of a better word,
02:25:34 what it might seem like is the late 1960s, early 1970s,
02:25:39 where you had the bombings
02:25:42 and let’s call it domestic terrorism and things like that,
02:25:45 because that would seem to be something
02:25:48 that once again, you don’t even need a large chunk
02:25:50 of the country pulling apart.
02:25:52 10% of people who think it’s the end times
02:25:56 can do the damage.
02:25:57 Just like we talked about terrorism before
02:25:59 and a can of gas and a big lighter,
02:26:01 I’ve lived in a bunch of places
02:26:02 and I won’t give anybody ideas
02:26:04 where a can of gas and a big lighter
02:26:06 would take a thousand houses down before you could blink.
02:26:10 Right?
02:26:12 That terrorist doesn’t have to be from the Middle East,
02:26:15 doesn’t have to have some sort of a fundamentalist
02:26:17 or religious agenda.
02:26:18 It could just be somebody really pissed off
02:26:20 about the election results.
02:26:22 So once again, if we’re playing an odds game here,
02:26:25 everybody has to behave for this to work right.
02:26:28 Only a few people have to misbehave
02:26:30 for this thing to go sideways.
02:26:31 And remember, for every action,
02:26:33 there is an equal and opposite reaction.
02:26:36 So you don’t even have to have those people
02:26:38 doing all these things.
02:26:39 All they have to do is start a tit for tat retribution cycle.
02:26:43 And there’s an escalation.
02:26:44 Yes.
02:26:45 And it creates a momentum of its own,
02:26:48 which leads fundamentally,
02:26:49 if you follow the chain of events down there
02:26:51 to some form of dictatorial government
02:26:54 as the only way to create stability, right?
02:26:57 You want to destroy the Republic and have a dictator,
02:26:59 that’s how you do.
02:27:00 And there are parallels to Nazi Germany,
02:27:02 the burning of the Reichstag, blah, blah, blah.
02:27:05 I’m the doom caster again, aren’t I?
02:27:07 And some of it could be manufactured
02:27:09 by those seeking authoritarian power.
02:27:12 Absolutely, like the Reichstag fire was
02:27:14 or the Polish soldiers that fired over the border
02:27:17 before the invasion in 1939.
02:27:20 To fight the devil’s advocate with an angel’s advocate,
02:27:24 I would say just as our conversation about Elon,
02:27:27 it feels like individuals have power to unite us,
02:27:31 to be that force of unity.
02:27:33 So you mentioned the media.
02:27:35 I think you’re one of the great podcasters in history.
02:27:40 Joe Rogan is like a long form, whatever.
02:27:44 It’s not podcasting, it’s actually whatever the, yeah.
02:27:47 Very infrequent is what it is, no matter what it is.
02:27:50 But the basic process of it is you go deep
02:27:53 and you stay deep and the listener stays
02:27:56 with you for a long time.
02:27:57 So I’m just looking at the numbers,
02:28:01 like we’re almost three hours in.
02:28:05 And from previous episodes, I can tell you
02:28:08 that about 300,000 people are still listening
02:28:12 to the sound of our voice three hours in.
02:28:15 So usually it’s 300 to 500,000 people listen
02:28:18 and they tune out.
02:28:19 Congratulations, by the way, that’s wonderful.
02:28:20 Joe Rogan is like 10 times that.
02:28:23 And so he has power to unite.
02:28:30 You have power to unite.
02:28:31 There’s a few people with voices
02:28:34 that it feels like they have power to unite.
02:28:37 Even if you quote unquote endorse a candidate and so on,
02:28:41 there’s still, it feels to me that speaking of,
02:28:47 I don’t wanna keep saying love,
02:28:49 but it’s love and maybe unity more practically speaking
02:28:53 that like sanity, that like respect
02:28:58 for those you don’t agree with or don’t understand.
02:29:04 So empathy, just a few voices of those can help us avoid
02:29:09 the really importantly, not avoid the singular events,
02:29:14 like you said, of somebody starting a fire and so on,
02:29:17 but avoid the escalation of it.
02:29:21 The preparedness of the populace to escalate those events,
02:29:26 to turn a singular event and a single riot or a shooting
02:29:32 or like even something much more dramatic than that,
02:29:35 to turn that into something that creates
02:29:38 like ripples that grow as opposed to ripples that fade away.
02:29:43 And so like, I would like to put responsibility
02:29:46 on somebody like you and on me in some small way.
02:29:51 And Joe, being cognizant of the fact
02:29:55 that a lot of very destructive things
02:29:58 might happen in November.
02:30:01 And a few voices can save us is the feeling I have.
02:30:05 Not by saying who you should vote for
02:30:07 or any of that kind of stuff,
02:30:09 but really by being the voice of calm
02:30:13 that like calms the seas from
02:30:19 or whatever the analogy is from boiling up.
02:30:22 Because I truly am worried about,
02:30:25 this is the first time this year when I,
02:30:30 I sometimes, I somehow have felt
02:30:32 that the American project will go on forever.
02:30:35 When I came to this country, I just believed,
02:30:39 and I still think I’m young, but like,
02:30:42 I have a dream of creating a company
02:30:45 that will do a lot of good for the world.
02:30:47 And I thought that America is the beacon of hope
02:30:51 for the world and the ideas of freedom,
02:30:54 but also the idea of empowering companies
02:30:56 that can do some good for the world.
02:30:58 And I’m just worried about this America that filled me,
02:31:03 a kid that came from, our family came from nothing
02:31:08 and from Russia as it was, Soviet Union as it was,
02:31:11 to be able to do anything in this new country.
02:31:15 I’m just worried about it.
02:31:16 And it feels like a few people
02:31:18 can still keep this project going.
02:31:21 Like people like Elon, people like Joe.
02:31:25 Is there, do you have a bit of that hope?
02:31:34 I’m watching this experiment with social media right now.
02:31:38 And I don’t even mean social media,
02:31:38 really expand that out to,
02:31:41 I mean, I feel like we’re all guinea pigs right now,
02:31:43 watching, you know, I have two kids and just watching,
02:31:45 and there’s a three year space between the two of them,
02:31:48 one’s 18, the other’s 15.
02:31:50 And just, you know, when I was a kid,
02:31:52 a person who was 18 and 15 would not be that different,
02:31:56 just three years difference, more maturity.
02:31:58 But their life experiences,
02:32:00 you would easily classify those two people
02:32:02 as being in the same generation.
02:32:04 Now, because of the speed of technological change,
02:32:08 there is a vast difference between my 18 year old
02:32:11 and my 15 year old, and not in a maturity question,
02:32:13 just in what apps they use, how they relate to each other,
02:32:17 how they deal with their peers, their social skills,
02:32:20 all those kinds of things where you turn around and go,
02:32:22 this is uncharted territory, we’ve never been here,
02:32:25 so it’s gonna be interesting to see
02:32:26 what effect that has on society.
02:32:27 Now, as that relates to your question,
02:32:29 the most upsetting part about all that
02:32:33 is reading how people treat each other online.
02:32:36 And you know, there’s lots of theories about this,
02:32:37 the fact that some of it is just for trolling laughs,
02:32:40 that some of it is just people are not interacting
02:32:42 face to face, so they feel free
02:32:43 to treat each other that way.
02:32:46 And I, of course, I’m trying to figure out how,
02:32:51 if this is how we have always been as people, right?
02:32:55 We’ve always been this way, but we’ve never had the means
02:32:57 to post our feelings publicly about it,
02:32:59 or if the environment and the social media
02:33:02 and everything else has provided a change
02:33:05 and changed us into something else.
02:33:09 Either way, when one reads how we treat one another
02:33:13 and the horrible things we say about one another online,
02:33:17 which seems like it shouldn’t be that big of deal,
02:33:20 they’re just words, but they have a cumulative effect.
02:33:23 I mean, when you, I was reading Meghan Markle,
02:33:27 who I don’t know a lot about,
02:33:28 because it’s too much of the pop side of culture
02:33:30 for me to pay lip, but I read a story the other day
02:33:32 where she was talking about the abuse she took online
02:33:34 and how incredibly overwhelming it was
02:33:37 and how many people were doing it.
02:33:40 And you think to yourself, okay, this is something
02:33:43 that people who are in positions
02:33:44 of what you were discussing earlier
02:33:46 never had to deal with.
02:33:48 Let me ask you something, and boy, this is the ultimate
02:33:50 doomcaster thing of all time to say.
02:33:53 When you think of historical figures
02:33:56 that push things like love and peace
02:34:01 and creating bridges between enemies,
02:34:05 when you think of what happened to those people,
02:34:09 first of all, they’re very dangerous.
02:34:10 Every society in the world has a better time,
02:34:13 easier time dealing with violence and things like that
02:34:15 than they do nonviolence.
02:34:16 Nonviolence is really difficult for governments
02:34:19 to deal with, for example.
02:34:20 What happens to Gandhi and Jesus and Martin Luther King?
02:34:25 And you think about all those people, right?
02:34:27 When they’re that, it’s ironic, isn’t it,
02:34:30 that these people who push for peaceful solutions
02:34:32 are so often killed, but it’s because they’re effective.
02:34:36 And when they’re killed, the effectiveness is diminished.
02:34:40 Why are they killed?
02:34:41 Because they’re effective, and the only way to stop them
02:34:44 is to eliminate them, because they’re charismatic leaders
02:34:47 who don’t come around every day,
02:34:49 and if you eliminate them from the scene,
02:34:51 the odds are you’re not gonna get another one for a while.
02:34:54 I guess what I’m saying is the very things
02:34:56 you’re talking about, which would have the effect
02:34:57 you think it would, right?
02:34:58 They would destabilize systems in a way
02:35:01 that most of us would consider positive,
02:35:03 but those systems have a way of protecting themselves,
02:35:06 right?
02:35:07 And so I feel like history shows,
02:35:10 see, history’s pretty pessimistic, I think, by and large.
02:35:14 If only because we can find so many examples
02:35:16 that just sound pessimistic.
02:35:17 But I feel like people who are dangerous
02:35:19 to the way things are tend to be removed.
02:35:24 Yes, but there’s two things to say.
02:35:26 I feel like you’re right, that history,
02:35:30 I feel like the ripples that love leaves in history
02:35:35 are less obvious to detect,
02:35:37 but are actually more transformational.
02:35:39 Like in this. Well, one could make a case about,
02:35:41 I mean, if you wanna talk about the long term value
02:35:44 of a Jesus, a Gandhi, but yeah, yes,
02:35:45 those people’s ripples are still affecting people today.
02:35:48 I agree with you.
02:35:49 And that’s, you feel those ripples
02:35:50 through the general improvement of the quality of life
02:35:53 that we see throughout the generations.
02:35:56 Like you feel the ripples through the growth.
02:35:58 Yeah, okay, I’ll go along with you on that, okay.
02:35:59 But I would, even if that’s not true,
02:36:04 I tend to believe that, and by the way,
02:36:07 the company that I’m working on as a competitor
02:36:12 is exactly attacking this, which is a competitor to Twitter.
02:36:15 I think I can build a better Twitter as a first step.
02:36:17 There’s a long story in there.
02:36:18 I think a three year old child could build a better,
02:36:21 and this is not to denigrate you,
02:36:22 I’m sure yours would be better than a three year old,
02:36:24 but Twitter is so, and listen, Facebook too,
02:36:27 they’re really awful platforms for intellectual discussion
02:36:30 and meaningful discussion, and I’m on it.
02:36:33 So let me just say, I’m part of the problem.
02:36:34 We’re new to this, so it wasn’t obvious at the time
02:36:36 how to do it, it’s now, and now a three year old can do it.
02:36:41 I tend to believe that we live in a time where the tools
02:36:46 that people that are interested in providing love,
02:36:49 like the weapons of love are much more powerful.
02:36:54 So like the one nice thing about technology
02:36:58 is it allows anyone to build a company
02:37:02 that’s more powerful than any government.
02:37:04 So that could be very destructive,
02:37:06 but it could be also very positive.
02:37:09 And that’s, I tend to believe that somebody like Elon
02:37:12 that wants to do good for the world,
02:37:14 somebody like me and many like me
02:37:16 could have more power than any one government.
02:37:20 And by power, I mean the power to effect change,
02:37:24 which is different from Gandhi.
02:37:25 What do you do with government,
02:37:26 and I don’t mean to interrupt you,
02:37:26 but I’ll forget my train of thought, I’m getting old.
02:37:28 But I mean, how do you deal with the fact
02:37:30 that already governments who are afraid of this
02:37:33 are walling off their own internet systems
02:37:36 as a way to create firewalls simply to prevent you
02:37:40 from doing what you’re talking about?
02:37:42 In other words, there’s an old line
02:37:43 that if voting really changed anything,
02:37:45 they’d never allow it.
02:37:46 If love through a modern day successor to Twitter
02:37:51 would really do what you want it to do,
02:37:53 and this would destabilize governments,
02:37:56 do you think that governments would take countermeasures
02:38:00 to squash that love before it got too dangerous?
02:38:03 There’s several answers.
02:38:04 One, first of all, I don’t actually,
02:38:06 to push back on something you said earlier,
02:38:08 I don’t think love is as much of an enemy of the state
02:38:12 as one would think.
02:38:14 Different states have different views.
02:38:20 I think the states want power,
02:38:22 and I don’t always think that love is in tension with power.
02:38:33 I think it’s not just about love,
02:38:34 it’s about rationality, it’s reason, it’s empathy,
02:38:37 all of those things.
02:38:39 I don’t necessarily think there always have to be
02:38:42 by definition in conflict with each other.
02:38:45 So that’s one sense is I feel like basically
02:38:50 you can Trojan horse love into behind,
02:38:54 but you have to be good at it.
02:38:56 This is the thing,
02:38:58 is you have to be conscious of the way these states think.
02:39:01 So the fact that China bans certain services and so on,
02:39:05 that means the companies weren’t eloquent,
02:39:09 whoever the companies are,
02:39:10 weren’t actually good at infiltrating.
02:39:16 I think, isn’t that a song, like love is a battlefield?
02:39:19 I think it’s all a cap editor.
02:39:22 It’s all a game, and you have to be good at the game.
02:39:25 And just like Elon, we said with Tesla
02:39:28 and saving the environment.
02:39:32 I mean, that’s not just by getting on a stage
02:39:35 and saying it’s important to save the environment,
02:39:37 is by building a product that people can’t help but love
02:39:43 and then convincing Hollywood stars to love it.
02:39:46 Like there’s a game to be played.
02:39:48 Okay, so let me build on that
02:39:50 because I think there’s a way to see this.
02:39:52 I think you’re right.
02:39:53 And so it has to do with a story about the 1960s.
02:39:57 In the vast scheme of things, the 1960s looks like
02:39:59 a revival of neo romantic ideas, right?
02:40:03 I had a buddy of mine several years,
02:40:05 well, two decades older than I was who was in the 60s,
02:40:09 went to the protest, did all those kinds of things.
02:40:11 And we were talking about it and I was romanticizing it.
02:40:14 He said, don’t romanticize it.
02:40:15 He goes, let me tell you, most of the people
02:40:16 that went to those protests and did all those things,
02:40:19 all they were there was to meet girls and have a good time.
02:40:21 And it wasn’t so,
02:40:23 but it became in vogue to have all,
02:40:29 in other words, let’s talk about your empathy and love.
02:40:32 You’re never gonna, in my opinion,
02:40:33 grab that great mass of people that are only in it
02:40:36 for their interest in whatever.
02:40:38 But if meeting girls for a young teenage guy
02:40:42 requires you to feign empathy,
02:40:45 requires you to read deeper subjects
02:40:49 because that’s what people are into,
02:40:52 you can almost, as a silly way to be trendy,
02:40:55 you could make maybe empathy trendy, love trendy,
02:40:59 solutions that are the opposite of that,
02:41:03 the kind of things that people inherently
02:41:05 will not put up with.
02:41:07 In other words, the possibility exists
02:41:09 to change the zeitgeist and reorient it in a way
02:41:13 that even if most of the people aren’t serious about it,
02:41:17 the results are the same.
02:41:19 Does that make sense?
02:41:19 Absolutely. Okay.
02:41:21 Okay, so we’ve found a meeting of the moments.
02:41:23 Yeah, exactly.
02:41:24 Creating incentives that encourage the best
02:41:29 and the most beautiful aspects of human nature.
02:41:32 Even against our will.
02:41:33 It all boils down to meeting girls and boys.
02:41:37 Once again, you’re getting to the bottom
02:41:39 of the evolutionary motivations
02:41:40 and you’re always on safe ground when you do that.
02:41:42 Yeah.
02:41:43 That’s a little difficult for me.
02:41:46 And I’m sure it’s actually difficult for you
02:41:48 to listen to me say complimenting you,
02:41:51 but it’s difficult for both of us, okay?
02:41:57 So, but you and I, as I mentioned to you,
02:42:01 I think off mic, been friends for a long time.
02:42:03 It’s just been one way.
02:42:05 It’s two way now.
02:42:06 It’s two way now.
02:42:08 So that’s the beauty of podcasting.
02:42:10 Now, just been fortunate enough
02:42:12 with this particular podcast
02:42:14 that I see it in people’s eyes when they meet me,
02:42:17 that they’ve been friends with me for a few years now.
02:42:20 And we become fast friends actually after we start talking.
02:42:25 But it’s one way in the vet in that first moment.
02:42:30 You know, like there’s something about
02:42:32 the especially hardcore history that,
02:42:34 you know, I do some crazy challenges and running and stuff.
02:42:37 I remember in particular, probably don’t have time.
02:42:40 One of my favorite episodes, the painful tainment one.
02:42:44 Some people hate that episode.
02:42:46 Because it’s too real.
02:42:47 Yeah, they can’t listen to it.
02:42:49 It’s my darkest one.
02:42:50 We wanted to set a baseline.
02:42:51 That’s the baseline.
02:42:53 But I remember listening to that
02:42:54 when I ran 22 miles for me, that was a long distance.
02:42:58 Holy cow, that’s painful tainment right there.
02:43:00 Yeah, and it just pulls you in.
02:43:03 There’s something so powerful
02:43:06 about this particular creation
02:43:09 that’s bigger than you actually, that you’ve created.
02:43:12 It’s kind of interesting.
02:43:13 I think anything that is successful like that,
02:43:14 like Elon’s stuff too, it becomes bigger than you.
02:43:17 And that’s what you’re hoping for, right?
02:43:18 Absolutely.
02:43:19 Didn’t mean to interrupt you, I apologize.
02:43:20 I guess a question I have, if you look in the mirror,
02:43:26 but you also look at me,
02:43:29 what advice would you give to yourself and to me
02:43:34 and to other podcasters, maybe to Joe Rogan,
02:43:37 about this journey that we’re on?
02:43:40 I feel like it’s something special.
02:43:41 I’m not sure exactly what’s happening.
02:43:44 But it feels like podcasting is special.
02:43:48 What advice, and I’m relatively new to it,
02:43:52 what advice do you have for people
02:43:55 that are carrying this flame and traveling this journey?
02:43:59 Well, I’m often asked for advice by new podcasters,
02:44:03 people just starting out.
02:44:04 And so I have sort of a tried and true list
02:44:08 of do’s and don’ts.
02:44:11 But I don’t have advice or suggestions for you or for Joe.
02:44:18 Joe doesn’t need anything from me.
02:44:19 Joe’s figured it out, right?
02:44:21 I mean, he hasn’t yet.
02:44:22 He’s still a confused kid, curious about the world.
02:44:25 But that’s the genius of it.
02:44:26 That’s what makes it work, right?
02:44:28 That’s what Joe’s brand is, right?
02:44:31 I guess what I’m saying is,
02:44:32 by the time you reach the stage that you’re at,
02:44:35 or Joe’s at, they don’t need it.
02:44:38 They have figured this out.
02:44:39 The people that sometimes need help are brand new people
02:44:41 trying to figure out what do I do with my first show
02:44:43 and how do I talk into them?
02:44:44 And I have standard answers for that.
02:44:47 But you found your niche.
02:44:48 I mean, you don’t need me to tell you what to do.
02:44:51 As a matter of fact, I might ask you questions
02:44:52 about how you do what you do, right?
02:44:55 Well, I guess there’s specific things
02:44:58 like we were talking offline about monetization.
02:45:01 That’s a fascinating one.
02:45:03 Very difficult as an independent, yeah.
02:45:05 And one of the things that Joe is facing
02:45:09 with, I don’t know if you’re paying attention,
02:45:11 but he joined Spotify with a $100 million deal
02:45:15 for going exclusive on their platform.
02:45:18 The idea of exclusivity that,
02:45:19 one, I don’t give a damn about money personally,
02:45:22 but I’m single, and I like living in a shitty place.
02:45:26 So I enjoy, so I guess it makes it easy.
02:45:30 You get the freedom, right, to not care, yeah.
02:45:32 Freedom.
02:45:33 It’s freedom.
02:45:34 Not saving for anybody’s college.
02:45:35 Exactly. Yeah.
02:45:37 Okay, so on that point, but I also,
02:45:40 okay, maybe it’s romanticization,
02:45:41 but I feel like podcasting is pirate radio.
02:45:46 And when I first heard about Spotify partnering up with Joe,
02:45:50 I was like, you know, fuck the man.
02:45:53 I said, I even, I drafted a few tweets and so on,
02:45:57 just like attacking Spotify, then I calmed myself down
02:46:00 that you can’t lock up this special thing we have.
02:46:04 But then I realized that maybe
02:46:07 that these are vehicles for just reaching more people
02:46:11 and actually respecting podcasters more and so on.
02:46:15 So that’s what I mean by it’s unclear what the journey is
02:46:18 because you also serve as beacon for,
02:46:22 now there’s like millions, one million plus podcasters.
02:46:29 I wonder what the journey is.
02:46:31 Do you have a sense,
02:46:32 are you romantic in the same kind of way
02:46:36 in feeling that, because you have a roots in radio too.
02:46:41 Do you feel that podcasting is pirate radio
02:46:43 or is the Spotify thing one possible avenue?
02:46:48 Are you nervous about Joe as a fan, as a friend of Joe
02:46:52 or is this a good thing for us?
02:46:55 So my history of how I got involved
02:46:58 in podcasting is interesting.
02:47:00 Yes.
02:47:01 I was in radio and then I started a company
02:47:04 back in the era where the dot com boom was happening
02:47:08 and everybody was being bought up
02:47:09 and it just seemed like a great idea, right?
02:47:12 I did it with six other people
02:47:14 and the whole goal of the company was,
02:47:18 we had to invent the term.
02:47:19 I’m sure everybody, there’s other places
02:47:20 that invented it at the same time.
02:47:22 But what we were pitching to investors
02:47:25 was something called amateur content.
02:47:26 So this is before YouTube, before podcasting,
02:47:29 before all this stuff.
02:47:30 And my job was to be the evangelist.
02:47:34 And I would go to these people and talk
02:47:36 and sing the praises of all the ways
02:47:39 that amateur content was gonna be great.
02:47:42 And I never got a bite.
02:47:45 And they all told me the same thing.
02:47:46 This isn’t gonna take off
02:47:47 cause anybody who’s good is already gonna be making money
02:47:50 at this.
02:47:51 And I kept saying, forget that.
02:47:53 We’re talking about scale here.
02:47:55 If you have millions of pieces of content
02:47:57 being made every week, a small percentage
02:48:00 is gonna be good no matter what, right?
02:48:01 16 year olds will know what other 16 year olds like.
02:48:03 I kept pushing this nobody bit.
02:48:06 But the podcast grew out of that
02:48:07 because if you’re talking about amateur content in 1999,
02:48:12 well then you’re already, you’re ahead of the game
02:48:16 in terms of not seeing where it’s gonna go financially
02:48:20 but seeing where it’s going to go technologically.
02:48:23 And so when we started the podcast in 2005
02:48:25 and it was the political one, not hardcore history,
02:48:28 which was an outgrowth of the old radio show,
02:48:30 we didn’t have any financial ideas.
02:48:34 We were simply trying to get our handle on the technology
02:48:37 and how you distribute it to people and all that.
02:48:38 And it was years later that we tried to figure out,
02:48:41 okay, how can we get enough money
02:48:43 to just support us while we’re doing this?
02:48:45 And the cheap and the easy way
02:48:46 was just to ask listeners to donate like a PBS kind of model.
02:48:49 And that was the original model.
02:48:52 So then once we started down that,
02:48:55 we figured out other models and there’s the advertising thing
02:48:57 and that we sell the old shows.
02:48:58 And so all these became ways for us to support ourselves.
02:49:03 But as podcasting matured
02:49:06 and as more operating systems developed
02:49:09 and phones were developed and all these kinds of things,
02:49:13 every one of those developments,
02:49:15 which actually made it easier for people to get the podcast
02:49:18 actually made it more complex to make money off of them.
02:49:22 So while our audience was building,
02:49:24 the amount of time and effort we had to put
02:49:26 into the monetization side began to skyrocket.
02:49:29 So to get back to your Spotify question,
02:49:31 to use just one example,
02:49:32 there’s a lot of people who are doing similar things.
02:49:36 In this day and age, we used to just sell MP3 files.
02:49:39 And all you had to have was an MP3 player,
02:49:41 it’s cheap and dirty.
02:49:42 Now, every time there’s an OS upgrade,
02:49:45 something breaks for us.
02:49:46 So we’re having, I mean, my choices are at this point
02:49:49 to start hiring staff, more staff,
02:49:51 and then be a human resources manager.
02:49:54 I mean, the pirate radio side of this
02:49:55 was the pirate radio side of this
02:49:57 because you didn’t need anybody,
02:49:58 but you know, you or you and another,
02:50:00 I mean, you could just do this lean and mean,
02:50:02 and it’s becoming hard to do it lean and mean now.
02:50:05 So if somebody like a Spotify comes in and says,
02:50:07 hey, we’ll handle that stuff for you.
02:50:10 In the past, I would just say,
02:50:12 F off, we don’t need you, I don’t mind.
02:50:15 And I definitely am not making what we could make on this,
02:50:18 but what we would have to do to make that is onerous to me.
02:50:22 But it’s becoming onerous to me day to day anyway.
02:50:25 And so if somebody were to come in and say,
02:50:28 hey, we’ll pick that up for you,
02:50:30 we will not interfere with your content at all,
02:50:32 we won’t, and in my case, you can’t say,
02:50:34 we need to show a month because that ain’t happening, right?
02:50:36 So I mean, everybody’s design is different, right?
02:50:40 So it doesn’t, you know, there’s not one size fits all,
02:50:43 but I guess as a long time pirate podcaster,
02:50:48 we’ve been looking to partner with people,
02:50:50 but nobody’s right for us to partner with.
02:50:51 I mean, so I’m always looking for ways
02:50:55 to take that side of it off my plate
02:50:58 because I’m not interested in that side.
02:50:59 All I wanna do is the shows,
02:51:02 and it’s really at this point,
02:51:04 you shouldn’t call yourself an artist
02:51:06 because that’s something to be decided by others.
02:51:08 But I mean, we’re trying to do art
02:51:11 and there’s something very satisfying in that.
02:51:15 But the part that I can’t stand
02:51:16 is the increasing amount of time
02:51:19 the monetization question takes upon us.
02:51:22 So there’s a case to be made, I guess is what I’m saying,
02:51:26 that if a partnership with some outside firm
02:51:29 enhances your ability to do the art
02:51:32 without disenhancing your ability to do the art,
02:51:36 it’s, the word I’m looking for here is it’s enticing.
02:51:42 I don’t like big companies.
02:51:44 So I’m afraid of whatever strings might come with that.
02:51:49 And if I’m Joe Rogan and I’m talking about subjects
02:51:52 that can make public companies a little nervous,
02:51:55 I would certainly be careful.
02:51:57 But at the same time, people who are not in this game
02:52:00 don’t understand the problems that literally,
02:52:04 I mean, just all the operating systems, all the podcatchers,
02:52:07 every time some new podcatcher comes up,
02:52:09 makes it easier to get the podcast,
02:52:10 that’s something we have to account for on the back end.
02:52:14 And I’m not exactly the technological wizard of all time.
02:52:17 So I think it is maybe, maybe the short answer is,
02:52:21 is that as the medium develops,
02:52:24 it’s becoming something that you have to consider,
02:52:26 not because you wanna sell out,
02:52:28 but because you wanna keep going.
02:52:30 And it’s becoming harder and harder to be pirate like
02:52:34 in this environment.
02:52:35 The thing that convinced me, especially inside Spotify,
02:52:39 is that they understand,
02:52:41 so if you walk into this whole thing with some skepticism,
02:52:45 as you’re saying, of big companies,
02:52:48 then it works because Spotify understands the magic
02:52:52 that makes podcasting, or they appear to in part,
02:52:56 at least they understand enough to respect Joe Rogan.
02:53:00 And despite what, I don’t know if you,
02:53:02 so there’s the internet and there’s people
02:53:04 with opinions on the internet.
02:53:05 Really? Yes.
02:53:06 I’ve not heard about that.
02:53:07 And they have opinions about Joe and Spotify.
02:53:11 But the reality is, there’s two things
02:53:14 in private conversation with Joe,
02:53:16 and in general, there’s two important things.
02:53:19 One, Spotify literally doesn’t tell Joe anything.
02:53:22 Like all the people that think that Spotify
02:53:25 is somehow pushing Joe in this direction.
02:53:28 It’s a contractual, didn’t he insist upon that?
02:53:30 It’s in the contract.
02:53:31 But also, companies have a way of,
02:53:34 even with the contract. They sure do.
02:53:36 To be marketing people, hey, I know we’re not forcing you.
02:53:39 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:53:39 I hate that.
02:53:41 Yeah, I’m with you.
02:53:42 You and Joe are the same,
02:53:44 and Spotify is smart enough
02:53:45 not to send a single email of that kind.
02:53:48 That’s really smart.
02:53:49 And they leave them be.
02:53:51 There is meetings inside Spotify that people complain,
02:53:55 but those meetings never reach Joe.
02:53:58 That’s like company stuff.
02:54:00 And the idea that Spotify is different than pirate radio,
02:54:04 the difficult thing about podcasting
02:54:07 is nobody gives a damn about your podcast.
02:54:10 You’re alone in this.
02:54:11 I mean, there’s fans and stuff, but nobody.
02:54:14 Nobody’s looking out for you.
02:54:15 Yeah. Yeah.
02:54:15 And the nice thing about Spotify
02:54:17 is they want Joe’s podcast to succeed even more.
02:54:21 That’s what Joe talked about
02:54:23 is that’s the difference between YouTube and Spotify.
02:54:27 Spotify wants to be the Netflix of podcasting.
02:54:30 And they, like what Netflix does
02:54:32 is they don’t want to control you in any way,
02:54:37 but they want to create a platform where you can flourish.
02:54:40 Even more.
02:54:41 Because your interests are aligned.
02:54:42 Interests are aligned.
02:54:43 So let me bring up something that,
02:54:45 let’s make a distinction
02:54:46 because not all companies who do this are the same.
02:54:50 And you brought up YouTube and Spotify,
02:54:52 but to me, YouTube is at least more like Spotify
02:54:55 than some of these smaller.
02:54:56 The term is walled garden, right?
02:54:58 You’ve heard the term walled garden?
02:54:59 Yes. Okay.
02:55:00 So I’ve been around podcasting so long now
02:55:04 that I’ve seen rounds of consolidation over the years
02:55:07 and they come in waves and all of a sudden,
02:55:09 so you’ll get, and I’m not going to mention any names,
02:55:12 but up until recently,
02:55:13 the consolidation was happening with relatively small firms
02:55:16 compared to people like Spotify.
02:55:18 And the problem was,
02:55:20 is that by deciding to consolidate your materials
02:55:23 in a walled garden,
02:55:25 you are walling yourself off from audience, right?
02:55:28 So your choice is I’m going to accept this amount of money
02:55:30 from this company,
02:55:31 but the loss is going to be a large chunk of my audience.
02:55:33 And that’s a catch 22
02:55:35 because you’re negotiating power with that company
02:55:37 is based on your audience size.
02:55:39 So signing up with them diminishes your audience size,
02:55:41 you lose negotiating power.
02:55:43 But when you get to the level of the Spotify
02:55:46 to just pick them out, there’s other players,
02:55:49 but you brought up Spotify specifically,
02:55:51 these are people who can potentially,
02:55:54 potentially enhance your audience over time.
02:55:57 And so the risk to you is lower
02:56:00 because if you decide in a year or two,
02:56:03 whatever the licensing agreements term is,
02:56:05 that you’re done with them and you want to leave,
02:56:07 instead of how you would have been
02:56:09 with some of these smaller walled gardens,
02:56:11 where you’re walking away with a fraction of the audience
02:56:14 you walked in with,
02:56:15 you have the potential to walk out
02:56:17 with whatever you got in the original deal,
02:56:19 plus a larger audience,
02:56:21 because their algorithms and everything
02:56:22 are designed to push people to your content
02:56:26 if they think you’d like.
02:56:27 So it takes away some of the downside risk,
02:56:31 which alleviates,
02:56:33 and if you can write an agreement like Joe Rogan,
02:56:35 I mean, where you’ve protected your freedom
02:56:37 to put the content out the way you want.
02:56:39 So, and if some of the downside risk is mitigated,
02:56:42 and if you eliminate the problem of trying to monetize
02:56:45 and stay up with the latest tech,
02:56:47 then it might be worth it.
02:56:49 You know, I’m scared of things like that,
02:56:51 but at the same time,
02:56:51 I’m trying to not be an idiot about it,
02:56:54 and I can be an idiot about it.
02:56:56 And when you’ve been doing it as independently
02:56:59 for as long as I have,
02:57:00 the inertia of that has a force all its own,
02:57:04 but I’m inhibited enough in what I’m trying to do
02:57:09 on this other end,
02:57:10 that it’s opened me at least to listening to people.
02:57:14 But listen, at the same time, I love my audience,
02:57:18 and it sounds like a cliche,
02:57:20 but they’re literally the reason I’m here.
02:57:23 So I wanna make sure that whatever I do,
02:57:26 if I can, is in keeping with a relationship
02:57:29 that I’ve developed with these people over 15 years.
02:57:34 But like you said, no matter what you do,
02:57:36 you are, because see, here’s the thing.
02:57:38 If you don’t sign up with one of those companies
02:57:40 to make it easier for them to get your stuff on this hand,
02:57:42 they might yell at you for how difficult it is,
02:57:45 because the new operating system just updated,
02:57:48 and you said, I can’t get your stuff.
02:57:49 So either way, you’re opening yourself up to ridicule
02:57:52 at this point.
02:57:52 All of that makes it easier to go,
02:57:55 well, if the right deal came along,
02:57:56 and they weren’t screwing me,
02:57:57 and they weren’t screwing my audience, and blah, blah, blah.
02:58:00 I mean, again, in this business,
02:58:01 when you’re talking about cutting edge technology
02:58:03 that is ever changing,
02:58:04 and as you said, a million podcasts and growing,
02:58:08 I think you have to try to maintain flexibility,
02:58:10 and especially if they can mitigate the downside risk,
02:58:14 I think you’d be an idiot to not at least try to stay up
02:58:19 on the current trends.
02:58:20 And look, I’m watching Joe.
02:58:22 I’m going, okay, let’s see how it goes for Joe.
02:58:24 I mean, if he’s like, ah, this is terrible,
02:58:26 I’m getting out of this,
02:58:27 you go, okay, those people are off the list.
02:58:29 So Joe’s put himself out as a guinea pig,
02:58:31 and the rest of us guinea pigs appreciate it.
02:58:34 As a huge, as a fan of your show,
02:58:36 and as a fan of Netflix, the people there,
02:58:40 I think I can speak for like millions of people
02:58:44 in hope that hardcore history comes to Netflix,
02:58:46 or if Spotify becomes the Netflix of podcasting,
02:58:49 then to Spotify.
02:58:50 There’s something at its best
02:58:53 that they bring out the, you said artists,
02:58:56 so I can say it,
02:58:57 is they bring out the best out of the artists.
02:58:59 They remove some of the headache,
02:59:02 and somehow like they put at their best,
02:59:08 Netflix, for example, is able to enforce
02:59:11 and find the beauty and the power
02:59:14 in the creations that you make even better than you.
02:59:17 Like they don’t interfere with the creations,
02:59:20 but they somehow, it’s a branding thing probably too.
02:59:24 Yeah, but interfering would be,
02:59:25 that would be a no go for me.
02:59:26 That’s right, absolutely.
02:59:28 That can’t happen.
02:59:28 But that’s why Netflix is masterful.
02:59:31 They seem to not interfere with the talent,
02:59:34 as opposed to, I could throw other people under the bus,
02:59:36 like Amazon.
02:59:37 There’s a lot of places under the bus
02:59:38 that could be thrown, absolutely.
02:59:39 So I would love, I know there’s probably
02:59:41 people screaming yes right now.
02:59:43 In terms of hardcore history on Netflix,
02:59:45 it would be awesome.
02:59:46 And I don’t love asking this question,
02:59:51 but it’s asked probably the most popular question
02:59:55 that’s unanswerable.
02:59:57 So let me try to ask it in a way
02:59:59 that you would actually answer it,
03:00:01 which is, of course, you said
03:00:02 you don’t release shows very often.
03:00:05 And the question is, or the requests and the questions is,
03:00:08 well, can you tell Dan to do one on the Civil War?
03:00:11 Can you tell Dan to do one on the Napoleon Bonaparte?
03:00:14 Can you tell him to do one?
03:00:16 Every topic, and you’ve spoken to this.
03:00:18 Actually, your answer about the Civil War
03:00:20 is quite interesting.
03:00:21 I didn’t know you knew what my answer
03:00:22 about the Civil War was.
03:00:24 As a military historian, you enjoy, in particular,
03:00:27 when there is differences in the armies,
03:00:29 as opposed to contrasts.
03:00:32 With the Civil War, which blew my mind
03:00:34 when I heard you say there’s not an interesting,
03:00:38 a deep, intricate contrast between the two opposing sides.
03:00:42 It’s like the Roman Civil Wars,
03:00:43 where it’s legionary against legionary.
03:00:45 And you’ve also said that the shows you work on
03:00:49 are ones where you have some roots
03:00:51 of fundamental understanding about that period.
03:00:54 And so, when you work on a show,
03:00:57 it’s basically pulling at those strings further
03:01:00 and refreshing your mind and learning.
03:01:02 You have definitely done the research.
03:01:04 Wow, these are words out of my mouth.
03:01:06 Yeah, you’re right.
03:01:07 But is there something like shower thoughts on Reddit?
03:01:12 Is there some ideas that are lingering in your head
03:01:16 about possible future episodes?
03:01:19 Is there things that, whether you’re not committing
03:01:23 to anything, but whether you’re gonna do it or not,
03:01:27 is there something that makes you think,
03:01:29 hmm, that’ll be interesting to pull at that thread
03:01:34 a little bit?
03:01:35 Oh yeah, we have things we keep in our back pocket
03:01:38 for later.
03:01:39 So, Blueprint for Armageddon, the first World War series
03:01:42 we did, that was in my back pocket the whole time.
03:01:44 And when the centennial of the war happened,
03:01:47 it just seemed to be the likely time to bring out what was.
03:01:50 That was a hell of a series.
03:01:51 That’s probably one of my favorite series.
03:01:53 Take my rear end, man.
03:01:54 I have to tell you.
03:01:55 Psychologically, you mean?
03:01:56 Well, just, you know, when you get to these,
03:01:58 I think, I’m guessing here, I think it’s 26 hours,
03:02:01 all pieces together.
03:02:02 Think about, and we don’t do scripts.
03:02:05 It’s improvised.
03:02:06 So, think about what, I had somebody write on Twitter
03:02:10 just yesterday saying, he said something like,
03:02:13 I’m not seeing the dedication here.
03:02:14 You’re only getting 2.5 shows out a year.
03:02:16 And I wanted to say, man, you have no idea what,
03:02:20 the only people who understand really
03:02:22 are other history podcasters.
03:02:24 And even they don’t generally do 26 hours.
03:02:27 You know, that was a two year endeavor.
03:02:29 As I said, the first show we ever did was like 15 minutes.
03:02:32 I could crank out one of those a month.
03:02:33 But when you’re doing, I mean, the last show we did
03:02:36 on the fall of the Roman Republic was five and a half hours.
03:02:39 That’s a book, right?
03:02:41 And it was part six or something.
03:02:43 So, I mean, you just do the math.
03:02:45 And it felt like you were, sorry to interrupt,
03:02:47 on World War I, it felt like you were emotionally
03:02:51 pulled in to it.
03:02:53 Like, it felt taxing.
03:02:55 I was gonna say, that’s a good thing though,
03:02:56 because that, you know, and I think we said during the show,
03:02:58 that was the feeling that the people at the time have.
03:03:01 And I think at one point we said,
03:03:03 if this is starting to seem gruesomely repetitive,
03:03:06 now you know how the people at the time felt.
03:03:10 So in other words, that had sort of inadvertently,
03:03:13 because when you improvise a show,
03:03:14 some of these things are inadvertent,
03:03:16 but it had inadvertently created the right climate
03:03:20 for having a sense of empathy with the storyline.
03:03:24 And to me, those are the serendipitous moments
03:03:26 that make this art and not some sort of paint by the numbers
03:03:31 kind of endeavor, you know?
03:03:32 And that’s, to me, that wouldn’t have happened
03:03:35 had we scripted it out.
03:03:36 So it’s mostly, you just bring the tools of knowledge
03:03:40 to the table and then in large part improvise,
03:03:44 like the actual wording?
03:03:45 I always say we make it like they made things
03:03:47 like spinal tap and some of those other things
03:03:49 where the material, so I do have notes about things
03:03:52 like on page 427 of this book, you have this quote,
03:03:55 so that I know, aha, I’m at the point
03:03:57 where I can drop that in.
03:03:58 And sometimes I’ll write notes saying,
03:04:00 here’s where you left off yesterday, so I remember.
03:04:03 But in the improvisation, you end up throwing a lot out.
03:04:07 And so like, but it allows us to go off on tangents,
03:04:10 like we’ll try things.
03:04:11 Like I’ll sit there and go,
03:04:12 I wonder what this would sound like.
03:04:14 And I’ll spend two days going down that road
03:04:16 and then I’ll listen to it and go, it doesn’t work.
03:04:18 But that’s, you know, like writers do this all the time.
03:04:20 It’s called killing your babies, right?
03:04:22 You got, can’t, you know, but people go,
03:04:24 so this guy goes, I’m not seeing the dedication.
03:04:26 He has no idea how many things we’re throwing out.
03:04:28 I did an hour and a half,
03:04:30 I had an hour and a half into The Current Show
03:04:32 about two months ago.
03:04:34 And I listened to it and I just went, you know what?
03:04:36 It’s not right.
03:04:37 Boom, out the window.
03:04:37 There goes six weeks of work, right?
03:04:41 But here’s the problem.
03:04:42 Do you trust your, sorry to interrupt,
03:04:43 do you trust your judgment on that?
03:04:45 No, no.
03:04:48 But here’s the thing.
03:04:51 Our show is a little different than other people’s.
03:04:54 Joe Rogan called it evergreen content.
03:04:56 In other words, my political show is like a car you buy.
03:04:59 And the minute you drive it off the lot,
03:05:01 it loses half its value, right?
03:05:03 Cause it’s not current anymore.
03:05:04 These shows are just as good or just as bad
03:05:07 five years from now as they are when we,
03:05:09 although the standards on the internet changed.
03:05:11 So when I listen to my old shows,
03:05:12 I cringe sometimes cause the standards
03:05:14 are so much higher now.
03:05:15 But when you’re creating evergreen content,
03:05:18 you have two audiences to worry about.
03:05:20 You have the audience that’s waiting for the next show
03:05:22 and they’ve already heard the other ones
03:05:23 and they’re impatient and they’re telling you on Twitter,
03:05:25 where is it?
03:05:26 But you have show,
03:05:27 the show is also for people five years from now
03:05:29 who haven’t discovered it yet
03:05:30 and who don’t care a wit for how long it took
03:05:32 cause they’re gonna be able to download the whole,
03:05:34 and all they care about is quality.
03:05:36 And so what I always tell new podcasters is,
03:05:40 they always say, I read all these things,
03:05:41 it’s very important you have a release schedule.
03:05:44 Well, it’s not more important
03:05:45 than putting out a good piece of work.
03:05:47 And the audience will forgive me if it takes too long,
03:05:52 but it’s really good when you get it.
03:05:53 They will not forgive me if I rush it
03:05:55 to get it out on time and it’s a piece of crap.
03:05:58 So for us, and this is why when you brought up
03:06:00 a Spotify deal or anything else,
03:06:02 they can’t interfere with this at all
03:06:04 because my job here, as far as I’m concerned is quality
03:06:07 and everything else goes by the wayside
03:06:10 because the only thing people care about longterm,
03:06:12 the only thing that gives you longevity is how good is it?
03:06:15 How good is that book?
03:06:16 If you read J.R.R. Tolkien’s work tomorrow,
03:06:19 you don’t care how long it took him to write it,
03:06:21 all you care is how good is it today?
03:06:22 And that’s what we try to think too.
03:06:24 And I feel like if it’s good, if it’s really good,
03:06:27 everything else falls into place and takes care of itself.
03:06:30 And so sometimes to push back, sorry to interrupt.
03:06:33 I’ve done it to you a thousand times,
03:06:34 so you can get me back, please.
03:06:36 Sometimes the deadline, some of the greatest movies
03:06:40 and books have been, you think about like Dostoevsky,
03:06:43 I forget which one, notes from underground or something.
03:06:46 He needed the money, so he had to write it real quick.
03:06:49 Sometimes the deadline creates is powerful
03:06:53 at taking a creative mind of an artist
03:06:57 and just like slapping it around
03:06:59 to force some of the good stuff out.
03:07:01 Now, the problem with history, of course,
03:07:02 is there’s different definitions of good
03:07:06 that like it’s not just about which you talk about,
03:07:09 which is the storytelling,
03:07:10 the richness of the storytelling.
03:07:12 And I’m sure you’re, again, not to compliment you too much,
03:07:15 but you’re one of the great storytellers of our time
03:07:18 that I’m sure if you put in a jail cell
03:07:21 and forced like somebody pointed a gun at you,
03:07:24 you could tell one hell of a good story,
03:07:26 but you still need the facts of history
03:07:29 or not necessarily the facts,
03:07:31 but like making sure you’re painting the right full picture,
03:07:36 not perfectly right.
03:07:37 That’s what I meant about the audience
03:07:38 doesn’t understand what a history podcast,
03:07:39 you can’t just riff and be wrong.
03:07:41 So let me both oppose what you just said
03:07:45 and back up what you just said.
03:07:47 So I have a book that I wrote, right?
03:07:49 And in a book you have a hard deadline, right?
03:07:52 So Harper Collins had a hard deadline on that book.
03:07:54 So when I released it, I was mad
03:07:57 because I would have worked on it a lot longer,
03:07:59 which is my style, right?
03:08:00 Get it right.
03:08:02 But we had a chapter in that book
03:08:04 entitled pandemic prologue question mark.
03:08:07 And it was the book about the part about the black death
03:08:10 and the 1918 flu and all that kind of stuff.
03:08:13 And I was just doing an interview
03:08:15 with a Spanish journalist this morning who said,
03:08:18 did you ever think how lucky you got on that?
03:08:20 And first of all, lucky on a pandemic, it strikes you.
03:08:24 But had I had my druthers,
03:08:27 I would have kept that book working
03:08:29 in my study for months more
03:08:32 and the pandemic would have happened.
03:08:34 And that would have looked like a chapter
03:08:36 I wrote after the fact.
03:08:37 I would have had to rewrite the whole thing.
03:08:39 So that argues for what you said.
03:08:42 At the same time, I would have spent months more
03:08:45 working on it because to me,
03:08:47 it didn’t look the way I wanted it to look yet.
03:08:49 Can you drop a hint of the things
03:08:51 that you’re keeping on the shelves?
03:08:53 Oh, the Alexander the Great podcast.
03:08:55 I’ve talked around, I talked to somebody the other day,
03:08:58 he said, do you know that the very first word
03:09:00 in your very first podcast, in the title,
03:09:02 the very first thing that anybody ever saw
03:09:04 with hardcore history is the word Alexander.
03:09:07 Because the show’s entitled Alexander versus Hitler.
03:09:10 I have talked around the career.
03:09:12 I’ve done show after,
03:09:13 I talked about his mother in one episode.
03:09:14 I talked about the funeral games after his death.
03:09:18 I’ve talked around this,
03:09:19 I’ve specifically left this giant Alexandrian size hole
03:09:22 in the middle,
03:09:23 because we’re gonna do that show one day
03:09:24 and I’m going to lovingly enjoy talking about
03:09:27 this crazily interesting figure of Alexander the Great.
03:09:30 So that’s one of the ones that’s on the back pocket list.
03:09:33 And what we try to do is whenever this,
03:09:37 we’re doing Second World War in Asia and the Pacific now,
03:09:40 I’m on part five, whenever the heck we finish this,
03:09:43 the tendency is to then pick a very different period
03:09:46 because we’ve had it and the audience has had it.
03:09:49 So it’s time.
03:09:49 So I will eventually get to the Alexander saga.
03:09:53 What about just one last kind of little part of this is,
03:09:57 what about the other half of that first 10 minute,
03:10:00 15 minute episode?
03:10:02 Which is, so you’ve done quite a bit about the World War.
03:10:05 You’ve done quite a bit about Germany.
03:10:07 Will you ever think about doing Hitler and the Man?
03:10:12 It’s funny because I talked earlier
03:10:14 about how I don’t like to go back to the old shows
03:10:16 cause our standards have changed so much.
03:10:18 Well, a long time ago,
03:10:19 one of my standards for not getting five hour podcasts done
03:10:24 or not getting too deeply into them
03:10:27 was to flip around the interesting points.
03:10:29 We didn’t realize we were gonna get an audience
03:10:32 that wanted the actual history.
03:10:34 We thought we could just go with,
03:10:36 assume the audience knew the details
03:10:38 and just talk about the weird stuff
03:10:39 that only makes up one part of the show now.
03:10:41 So we did a show called Nazi tidbits.
03:10:44 And it was just little things about,
03:10:46 you know, it’s totally out of date now.
03:10:47 Like, you know, you can still buy them,
03:10:49 but they’re out of date.
03:10:51 Where we dealt a little with it.
03:10:53 You know, it would be interesting,
03:10:54 but I’ll give you another example.
03:10:56 I mean, history is not stagnant, as you know.
03:10:59 And we had talked about Stalin earlier
03:11:02 and Ghost of the Ostfront was done years ago.
03:11:04 And people will write me from Russia now and say,
03:11:06 well, your portrayal of Stalin is totally out of,
03:11:09 out of, it’s outdated because there’s all this new stuff
03:11:13 from the former Soviet Union.
03:11:15 And you do, you turn around and you go, okay, they’re right.
03:11:18 And so when you talk about Hitler,
03:11:21 it’s very interesting to think about
03:11:23 how I would do a Hitler show today
03:11:24 versus how I did one 10 years ago.
03:11:27 And you would think, well, what’s new?
03:11:28 I mean, it happens a lot, but there’s lots of new stuff
03:11:30 and there’s lots of new scholarship.
03:11:31 And so, yeah, I would think that would be
03:11:34 an interesting one to do someday.
03:11:36 I haven’t thought about that.
03:11:37 That’s not in the back pocket,
03:11:39 but yeah, that’d be interesting.
03:11:40 I have a disproportionate amount of power
03:11:42 because I trapped you somehow in a room and,
03:11:46 and thereby.
03:11:47 During a pandemic.
03:11:47 During a pandemic.
03:11:49 So like my hope will be stuck in your head,
03:11:51 but after Alexander the Great,
03:11:53 which would be an amazing podcast,
03:11:55 I hope you do give a return to Hitler,
03:11:59 The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which to me,
03:12:04 It’s a contemporary book, basically.
03:12:06 Yeah. Yeah.
03:12:07 And I, exactly.
03:12:08 It’s by a person who was there.
03:12:10 Shira, yeah.
03:12:11 I really loved that study of the man of Hitler.
03:12:16 And I would love to hear your study
03:12:20 of certain aspects of it.
03:12:21 Perhaps even an episode that’s like more focused
03:12:23 on a very particular period.
03:12:27 I just feel like you can tell a story that it’s funny.
03:12:30 Hitler is one of the most studied people.
03:12:32 And I still feel like all the stories
03:12:35 or most of the stories haven’t been told.
03:12:38 Oh, and there’s, listen, I’ve got three books at home.
03:12:40 I’m on all the publishers lists now.
03:12:42 And they just, there’s young Hitler,
03:12:43 there’s this Hitler, there’s that.
03:12:45 I mean, I’ve been reading these books
03:12:46 and I’ve read about Hitler.
03:12:47 I read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
03:12:48 My mother thought I needed to go to a psychologist
03:12:51 because I read it when I was six.
03:12:53 And she said, there’s something wrong with the boy.
03:12:55 And, but, but she was right.
03:12:58 She was absolutely right.
03:12:59 But, but you would think that,
03:13:01 that something like that is pretty established fact.
03:13:04 And yet there’s new stuff coming out all the time.
03:13:06 And needless to say,
03:13:07 Germany’s been investigating this guy forever.
03:13:10 And sometimes it takes years to get the translations.
03:13:13 I took five years of German in school.
03:13:15 I can’t read any of it.
03:13:16 So, I mean, and he is,
03:13:20 when you talk about fascinating figures,
03:13:22 he’s so, the whole thing is so twistedly weird.
03:13:26 There was a, it came out a couple of years ago.
03:13:28 Somebody found a tape of him talking to,
03:13:31 I want to say it was General,
03:13:34 the Finnish General Mannerheim, right?
03:13:36 And he’s just in a very normal conversation
03:13:39 of the sort we’re having now.
03:13:41 And, you know, the Hitler tapes,
03:13:42 when you hear him normally he’s ranting and raving.
03:13:44 But this was a very sedate.
03:13:46 And I wish I’d understood the German well enough
03:13:47 to really get a feel,
03:13:48 because I was reading what Germans said.
03:13:51 And they say, wow, you can really hear the Southern accent.
03:13:55 You know, little things
03:13:56 that only a native speaker would hear.
03:13:58 And I remember thinking,
03:13:59 this is such a different side of this twisted character.
03:14:02 And you would think you would always,
03:14:04 you would think that this was information
03:14:05 that was out in the rise and fall of the Third Reich,
03:14:08 but it wasn’t.
03:14:09 And so this goes along with that stuff
03:14:12 about new stuff coming out all the time.
03:14:14 Alexander, new stuff coming out all the time.
03:14:16 Really?
03:14:17 Well, at least interpretations rather than factual data.
03:14:20 And those color your,
03:14:21 those give depth to your understanding.
03:14:23 Yes, and you want that because of the historiography.
03:14:26 People love that.
03:14:27 And that was a byproduct of my lack of credentials,
03:14:31 where we thought we’re gonna bring in the historians,
03:14:34 and we call them audio footnotes,
03:14:36 right away for me to say, listen, I’m not a historian,
03:14:38 but I’ll quote this guy who is so you can trust him.
03:14:41 But then we would quote other people
03:14:42 who had different views.
03:14:44 And people didn’t realize that, you know,
03:14:46 if they’re not history majors,
03:14:47 that historians don’t always agree on this stuff
03:14:49 and that they have disagreements and they love that.
03:14:52 So I love the fact that there’s more stuff out there
03:14:55 because it allows us to then bring in other points of view
03:14:58 and sort of maybe three dimensionalize
03:15:00 or flesh out the story a little bit more.
03:15:04 Two last questions.
03:15:05 One really simple, one absurdly ridiculous,
03:15:07 and perhaps also simple.
03:15:10 First, who has been and is he real?
03:15:14 I don’t even know what you’re talking about.
03:15:17 Very well.
03:15:18 How’s that for an answer?
03:15:20 It’s like asking me, is Harvey the White Rabbit real?
03:15:22 I don’t know.
03:15:23 There’s carrots all around the production room,
03:15:25 but I don’t know what that means.
03:15:27 Well, a lot of people demanded that I prove,
03:15:30 I somehow figure out a way to prove the existence.
03:15:32 If I said he was real, people would say, no, he’s not.
03:15:35 And if I said he was, if he wasn’t real,
03:15:37 they would say, yes, he is.
03:15:38 So it’s a Santa Claus Easter bunny kind of vibe there.
03:15:42 Yeah.
03:15:43 I mean, what is real anyway?
03:15:44 That’s exactly what I told him if he exists.
03:15:48 Okay.
03:15:49 The most absurd question, I’m very sorry.
03:15:51 Very sorry, but then again, I’m not.
03:15:53 What’s the meaning of it all?
03:15:55 You study history, human history.
03:16:03 Have you been able to make sense of why the hell
03:16:06 we’re here on this spinning rock?
03:16:08 Does any of it even make sense?
03:16:09 What’s the meaning of life?
03:16:13 What I look at sometimes that I find interesting
03:16:16 is certain consistencies that we have over time.
03:16:20 History doesn’t repeat, but it has a constant,
03:16:24 and the constant is us.
03:16:26 Now we change.
03:16:27 I mentioned earlier the wickedly weird time we live in
03:16:31 with what social media is doing to us as guinea pigs,
03:16:33 and that’s a new element, but we’re still people
03:16:37 who are motivated by love, hate, greed, envy, sex.
03:16:41 I mean, all these things that would have connected us
03:16:43 with the ancients, right?
03:16:45 That’s the part that always makes history sound
03:16:48 like it rhymes, you know?
03:16:50 And when you put the constant, the human element,
03:16:54 and you mix it with systems that are similar,
03:16:57 so one of the reasons that the ancient Roman Republic
03:16:59 is something that people point to all the time
03:17:02 as something that seems like we’re repeating history
03:17:05 is because you have humans, just like you had then,
03:17:08 and you have a system that resembles the one we have here.
03:17:12 So you throw the constant in with a system
03:17:14 that is somewhat similar, and you begin to see things
03:17:17 that look like they rhyme a little.
03:17:19 So for me, I’m always trying to figure out more about us,
03:17:23 and when you show us in 500 years ago in Asia,
03:17:28 and 800 years ago in Africa,
03:17:30 and you look at all these different places
03:17:32 that you put the guinea pig in,
03:17:34 and you watch how the guinea pig responds
03:17:37 to the different stimuli and challenges,
03:17:40 I feel like it helps me flesh out a little bit more
03:17:44 who we are in the long timeline.
03:17:47 Not who we are today, specifically,
03:17:49 but who we’ve always been.
03:17:52 It’s a personal quest.
03:17:53 It’s not meant to educate anybody else.
03:17:55 It’s something that fascinates me.
03:17:57 Do you think there’s, in that common humanity
03:18:00 throughout history of the guinea pig,
03:18:03 is there a why underneath it all?
03:18:06 Or is it somehow, like, it feels like
03:18:07 it’s an experiment of some sort?
03:18:10 Oh, now you’re into it.
03:18:11 Elon Musk and I talked about this,
03:18:13 the simulation thing, right?
03:18:14 Nick Bostrom’s, yeah, the idea that there’s some kid,
03:18:17 and we’re the equivalent of an alien’s ant farm, you know?
03:18:21 And we hope he doesn’t throw a tarantula in
03:18:23 just to see what happens.
03:18:26 I think the whys elude us.
03:18:29 And I think that what makes philosophy and religion
03:18:32 and those sorts of things so interesting
03:18:34 is that they grapple with the whys.
03:18:39 But I’m not wise enough to propose a theory
03:18:44 in myself, but I’m interested enough
03:18:46 to read all the other ones out there.
03:18:48 So let’s put it this way.
03:18:51 I don’t think there’s any definitive why
03:18:53 that’s been agreed upon,
03:18:54 but the various theories are fascinating.
03:18:56 Yeah, whatever it is, whoever the kid is
03:18:59 that created this thing, the ant farm,
03:19:03 it’s kind of interesting.
03:19:06 Well, so far, a little bit twisted
03:19:08 and perverted and sadistic, maybe.
03:19:09 That’s what makes it fun, I think.
03:19:12 But then again, that’s the Russian perspective.
03:19:13 I was just gonna say.
03:19:15 It is the Russian perspective.
03:19:18 That’s what makes the Russian.
03:19:21 So Russian history, one day I’ll do some Russian history.
03:19:24 I took it in college.
03:19:26 That’s the ant farm, baby.
03:19:28 That’s an ant farm with a very, very frustrated
03:19:31 young teenage alien kid.
03:19:35 Dan, I can’t say.
03:19:37 I’ve already complimented you way too much.
03:19:39 I’m a huge fan.
03:19:40 This has been an incredible conversation.
03:19:42 It’s a huge gift, your gift of humanity.
03:19:46 I hope you.
03:19:47 Oh, let me cut you off and just say
03:19:49 you’ve done a wonderful job.
03:19:50 This has been fun for me.
03:19:52 The questions, and more importantly,
03:19:54 the questions can come from anybody.
03:19:56 The counter statements, your responses have been wonderful.
03:19:58 You made this a very fun intellectual discussion for me.
03:20:01 Thank you.
03:20:02 Well, let me have the last word and say,
03:20:03 I agree with Elon and despite the doom caster say
03:20:08 that I think we’ve concluded definitively
03:20:10 and you don’t get a chance to respond
03:20:12 that love is in fact the answer and the way forward.
03:20:16 So thanks so much, Dan.
03:20:18 Thank you for having me.
03:20:20 Thanks for listening to this conversation with Dan Carlin
03:20:23 and thank you to our sponsors.
03:20:25 Athletic Greens, the all in one drink
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03:20:29 to cover all my nutritional bases.
03:20:31 Simply Safe, a home security company I use
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03:20:36 Magic Spoon, low carb keto friendly cereal
03:20:39 that I think is delicious.
03:20:41 And finally, Cash App, the app I use
03:20:43 to set my need of friends for food and drinks.
03:20:47 Please check out these sponsors in the description
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03:20:53 If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,
03:20:56 review it with five stars on Apple Podcast,
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03:21:01 or connect with me on Twitter, Alex Friedman.
03:21:04 And now, let me leave you with some words from Dan Carlin.
03:21:09 Wisdom requires a flexible mind.
03:21:12 Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.