Transcript
00:00:00 The following is a conversation with Sagar Anjati.
00:00:03 He is a DC based political correspondent,
00:00:05 host of The Rising with Crystal Ball
00:00:08 and host of the realignment podcast with Marshall Kozloff.
00:00:12 He has interviewed Donald Trump four times
00:00:16 and has interviewed a lot of major political figures
00:00:19 and human beings who wield power.
00:00:23 He loves policy and loves history,
00:00:25 which makes him a great person to sail
00:00:27 through the sometimes stormy waters of political discourse.
00:00:32 He showed up to this conversation with a gift
00:00:35 of the second volume of Ian Kershaw’s biography on Hitler,
00:00:40 a two volume set that is widely acknowledged
00:00:42 as one of the greatest, if not the greatest,
00:00:45 most definitive studies of Hitler.
00:00:48 Nothing wins my heart faster on a first meeting
00:00:51 or first date than a great book about the darkest aspects
00:00:55 of human nature and human history.
00:00:57 I think I started saying that as a joke,
00:00:59 but actually there’s probably a lot of truth to it.
00:01:01 I love it when we skip the small talk
00:01:03 and go straight to the in depth conversation
00:01:05 about the best and worst of human nature.
00:01:09 Quick mention of our sponsors, Jordan Harbinger Show,
00:01:12 Grammarly Grammar Assistant, Eight Sleep Self Cooling Bed
00:01:16 and Magic Spoon Low Carb Cereal.
00:01:19 Click the sponsor links to get a discount
00:01:21 and to support this podcast.
00:01:23 As a side note, let me say that for better or for worse,
00:01:26 I would like to avoid the trap
00:01:27 of surface political bickering of the day.
00:01:30 I do find politics fascinating,
00:01:32 but not the talking points produced
00:01:34 by the industrial engagement complex
00:01:37 of red versus blue division.
00:01:38 Instead, I’m fascinated by human beings who seek power
00:01:42 and how power changes them.
00:01:44 I don’t have a political affiliation
00:01:47 and my ideas, at least I hope so,
00:01:49 are defined more by curiosity and learning
00:01:51 in the face of uncertainty
00:01:53 and less by the echo chambers who tell me
00:01:56 what I’m supposed to think.
00:01:58 I’m constantly evolving, learning,
00:02:00 and doing my best to do so without ego and with empathy.
00:02:04 Please be patient with me.
00:02:05 As far as I’m aware,
00:02:07 I do not have any derangement syndromes,
00:02:09 nor do I get a medical prescription
00:02:11 of blue, red, white, or black pills.
00:02:14 If I say something, I say it because I’m genuinely thinking
00:02:18 and struggling with the ideas.
00:02:21 I have no agenda, just a bit of a hope
00:02:23 to add more love to the world.
00:02:26 If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,
00:02:29 review it on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify,
00:02:32 support it on Patreon, or connect with me
00:02:34 on Twitter at Lex Friedman.
00:02:36 And now, here’s my conversation with Sagar Anjati.
00:02:41 There’s no better gifts in this world
00:02:44 than a book about Hitler, so thank you so much.
00:02:47 I’ve gotten a gift when we were just talking about flying,
00:02:50 the watch from Joe Rogan,
00:02:52 and this almost beats it.
00:02:54 So tell me what this particular book on Hitler is.
00:02:58 So this is volume two.
00:02:59 Yes, so this is Ian Kershaw.
00:03:01 He wrote the famous two volume on Hitler.
00:03:04 I’m a big book nerd,
00:03:05 and I spend a lot of time reading biographies in particular.
00:03:09 So this one, if you need a one volume,
00:03:11 “‘Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,’ right?
00:03:13 I think you talked about that, William Shire,
00:03:15 because that’s like Hitler’s rise,
00:03:17 Nazi Germany, the war, et cetera.
00:03:19 But I like bios because a good biography
00:03:23 is story of the times, right?
00:03:25 And so this one, the first volume, it does exactly that,
00:03:28 which is that it doesn’t just tell the story of Hitler.
00:03:30 It’s the context of this kid in Austria,
00:03:34 and he’s got all these dreams,
00:03:35 but then actually pretty courageous
00:03:37 in terms of World War I, right?
00:03:38 Gets pinned to metal on by the Kaiser.
00:03:40 And then what it’s like to lose World War I,
00:03:44 and actually lose this stain,
00:03:47 and then the rise within, everybody knows that story,
00:03:49 the Beer Hall Putsch and all that.
00:03:51 This one I like, and the reason I like Kershaw
00:03:53 is obviously number one, it’s English,
00:03:55 which is actually hard, right?
00:03:57 Like in order to write that story,
00:03:58 who can do both the primary source material
00:04:01 and then translate it for people like us,
00:04:03 but he tells the dynamic story of Hitler so well
00:04:08 in the second volume, just like the level of detail.
00:04:10 You’ve talked about this, Lex,
00:04:12 like what was it like inside that room,
00:04:14 inside with Chamberlain?
00:04:16 Like what was it like in terms of who was this
00:04:19 like magnetic madman who did convince
00:04:22 the smartest people in the world at the time?
00:04:24 And up until like 1940, the Soviet gamble,
00:04:28 like it took tremendous risks, but like highly calculated,
00:04:34 thinking, no, no, no, I’m not gonna pay for this one.
00:04:36 I’m not gonna pay for this one.
00:04:37 And it put himself, he had a remarkable ability,
00:04:40 not just to put himself in the minds of the German people,
00:04:42 but in terms of his adversaries,
00:04:44 like with when he was across from Mussolini.
00:04:46 Calculate, he’s like, how exactly did Mussolini,
00:04:48 the guy who created fascism,
00:04:49 becomes like second fiddle to Hitler?
00:04:52 Think it’s an amazing bio.
00:04:53 And yeah, like Ian Kershaw, along with Richard Evans,
00:04:57 two of my favorite authors on the Third Reich, no question.
00:05:00 Do you think he was born this way,
00:05:01 that charisma, whatever that is?
00:05:03 Or was it something he developed strategically?
00:05:06 That’s like the question you apply
00:05:07 to some of the great leaders.
00:05:09 Was he just a madman who had the instinct
00:05:13 to be able to control people
00:05:15 in the room together with them?
00:05:16 Or is this like, he worked at it?
00:05:17 I think he worked at it.
00:05:19 But also, there is an innate quality.
00:05:21 I’m forgetting his name, his lifelong,
00:05:24 Rudolf, the one who flew to Berlin in like 1940.
00:05:27 I forget his name, anyway.
00:05:29 So he helped Hitler write Mein Kampf.
00:05:31 And he was like slavishly devoted to him in prison.
00:05:35 This is 1925 or something like that.
00:05:38 And so you read that and you’re like,
00:05:39 well, how does he get this like crank wacko
00:05:42 to basically believe he’s like the second coming,
00:05:45 help him write this book?
00:05:46 I mean, literally, they live together in the prison cell
00:05:49 and they wake up every day.
00:05:50 And as he was composing Mein Kampf
00:05:52 and because of the Beer Hall Putsch and all that,
00:05:54 had this like absolute ability to gather people around him.
00:05:59 I think his greatest skill was,
00:06:00 is he was just a very good politician, truly.
00:06:03 I mean, if you look at his ability
00:06:05 in order to read coalitional politics
00:06:07 and then convince exactly the right people
00:06:10 in order to follow him.
00:06:12 I think I heard you ask this once
00:06:13 and I’ve thought about it a lot,
00:06:14 which is like, who could have stopped Hitler in Germany?
00:06:17 It’s always like the ever present question.
00:06:19 Of course, like the whole baby Hitler thing.
00:06:21 Really the answer is Hindenburg.
00:06:22 Like Hindenburg was the person who could have stopped
00:06:25 and had the immense standing within the German public.
00:06:27 The only real like war hero
00:06:30 definitely was personally skeptical of fascism and Nazism.
00:06:34 And didn’t like Hitler.
00:06:35 And didn’t like him and he knew he was full of shit.
00:06:38 He was like, yeah, I think this guy is dangerous.
00:06:40 I think this guy could do a lot of damage to the Republic.
00:06:43 But he acceded basically to Hitler at the time.
00:06:46 And I think that he was one of the main people
00:06:48 who could have done something about it.
00:06:50 And also he was able to convince the generals, the military.
00:06:53 I mean, that was very interesting.
00:06:56 And to convince Chamberlain and the other political leaders.
00:07:01 That’s something I often think about
00:07:04 because we’re just reading books about these people.
00:07:06 I think about what like Jeffrey Epstein, for example.
00:07:09 Like evil people, not evil,
00:07:12 but people have done evil things.
00:07:14 Let’s not go to the Dan Carlin thing of what is evil.
00:07:19 People that do evil things,
00:07:21 I wonder what they are like in a room
00:07:23 because I know quite a lot of intelligent people
00:07:25 that did not see the evil in Jeffrey Epstein
00:07:33 and spend time with them.
00:07:35 And were not bothered by it.
00:07:37 In the same sense, Hitler,
00:07:40 it seems like he was able to get,
00:07:43 just even before he had power,
00:07:45 because people get intoxicated by power and so on.
00:07:48 They want to be close to power.
00:07:49 But even before he had power,
00:07:51 he was able to convince people.
00:07:53 And it’s unclear,
00:07:55 like is there something that’s more than words?
00:07:58 It’s like the way you,
00:08:01 I mean, people talk, tell stories about like this piercing
00:08:04 look and whatever, all that kind of stuff.
00:08:06 I wonder if that’s somehow a part of it.
00:08:10 Like that has to be the base floor
00:08:12 of any of these charismatic leaders.
00:08:14 You have to be able to, in a room alone,
00:08:17 be able to convince anybody of anything.
00:08:20 So I can tell you from my personal experience,
00:08:23 one of the best educated lessons I got
00:08:26 was when I got to meet Trump.
00:08:29 So I interviewed Trump four different times as a journalist,
00:08:32 spent like two and a half hours with him in the Oval Office,
00:08:36 not alone, but like me and one person
00:08:38 and like the press secretary, and that was it.
00:08:40 So I actually got to observe him.
00:08:42 And as a guy who reads these types of books,
00:08:45 and you think of Trump, obviously most people,
00:08:48 what they see on television, in articles and more,
00:08:51 but being able to observe it like one on one,
00:08:53 I was closer to him than I am right now from you.
00:08:57 That was one of the most educational experiences I got
00:09:01 because it’s like you just said,
00:09:03 the look, the leaning forward,
00:09:05 the way he talks, the way he is a master
00:09:10 at taking the question
00:09:11 and answering exactly which party wants.
00:09:14 And then if you try and follow up,
00:09:15 he’s like, excuse me, you know, like he knows.
00:09:18 And then whenever you’re talking,
00:09:19 it’s not that he’s annoyed about getting interrupted.
00:09:22 If he realizes he’s been mirandering
00:09:24 and then you interrupt him, all good.
00:09:26 But if he’s driving home a point,
00:09:28 which he has to make sure appears in your transcript
00:09:31 or whatever, it really was fascinating for me to look at.
00:09:36 And what was also crazy with Trump
00:09:39 is I realized how much he was living in the moment.
00:09:41 So when I went to the Oval,
00:09:44 I’ve read all these biographies and I walk in,
00:09:46 I’m like, holy shit, you’re like, I’m in the Oval Office.
00:09:50 Were you interviewing him in the Oval Office?
00:09:52 In the Oval, every time, I was in the Oval Office.
00:09:53 You scared shitless?
00:09:54 Well, I wasn’t scared.
00:09:56 I was just, look, it’s the Oval Office, right?
00:09:59 I mean, I’m this nerd.
00:10:01 He was like this kid, I’m so, I will admit this here.
00:10:05 I printed out on my dad’s label maker when I was like seven
00:10:08 and I wrote the Oval Office on my bedroom.
00:10:10 So I was a huge nerd, obviously egomaniacal, even from seven.
00:10:14 But so for this, I mean, it was huge, right?
00:10:16 I’m like this 25 year old kid.
00:10:18 And I walk in there and I see the couch, right?
00:10:22 And I’m like, oh man, that’s Kissinger.
00:10:25 That’s where Kissinger and Nixon got on their knees.
00:10:28 And then you see over by the door and you’re like,
00:10:29 are the scuff marks still there
00:10:31 from when Eisenhower used to play golf?
00:10:33 You know, this is all running through my mind.
00:10:34 With Trump, none of it was there, none of it, right?
00:10:36 So like, even the desk, I put my phone on the desk
00:10:39 to record and I’m like, this is the fucking Resolute desk.
00:10:43 Like, I shouldn’t put my phone on this thing, right?
00:10:46 And I’m like HMS Resolute, you know, all the international.
00:10:49 And even for him, he doesn’t think about any of it.
00:10:51 It was like amazing to me.
00:10:53 Like he had this portrait of Andrew Jackson
00:10:55 right next to his, to the, I think from on the fireplace,
00:10:58 like right here on the right.
00:10:59 And the most revealing question was when I was like,
00:11:02 Mr. President, what are people gonna remember you for
00:11:04 in a hundred years?
00:11:05 And he was like, I don’t know, like veteran’s choice.
00:11:09 He like has a list in front of him of like
00:11:11 his accomplishments, which is staff.
00:11:14 Yeah, well, I mean, that’s what I wanted to know.
00:11:17 And he’s like, veteran’s choice.
00:11:18 And I remember looking at him being like,
00:11:20 it’s not gonna be veteran’s choice.
00:11:22 I’d be like, I’m like, I’m looking at you, Donald Trump,
00:11:25 the harbinger of something new.
00:11:27 We still don’t know what the hell it is.
00:11:29 And so I realized with these guys and their charisma
00:11:33 and more is that they don’t think about themselves
00:11:35 the way that we think about them.
00:11:37 And that was actually important to understand
00:11:38 because a lot of people are like,
00:11:40 Trump is playing all this chess.
00:11:41 I’m like, I assure you he’s not.
00:11:43 Like he’s truly, one time I was interviewing him
00:11:46 and he had like a certificate that he had to sign
00:11:48 or something on his desk.
00:11:49 He’s like, it was like child almost.
00:11:51 Like he got distracted by, he’s like, oh, what’s this?
00:11:53 You know, he’s just like picking up and I was like,
00:11:55 wow, like this, this is the guy.
00:11:57 Like this is what he is.
00:11:59 Well, I wonder if there was a different person
00:12:02 because you were recording then offline at a party.
00:12:05 I can tell you.
00:12:06 Well, here’s the thing though,
00:12:07 because that’s another part of it.
00:12:09 Because that two hours,
00:12:11 I would say like half of that was not on the record.
00:12:13 So like, whenever he’s off the record,
00:12:15 he changes completely, right?
00:12:17 I don’t wanna like go into too much of it or whatever,
00:12:20 but like he, I mean, he is so mindful
00:12:26 of when that camera is on and when the mic is hot
00:12:29 in terms of the language that he uses,
00:12:30 what he’s willing to admit,
00:12:32 what he’s willing to talk about,
00:12:33 how he’s willing to even appear in front of his staff.
00:12:37 I think the most revealing thing Trump ever did
00:12:40 was there was this press conference,
00:12:41 like right after he lost the,
00:12:43 right after the midterm elections in 2018.
00:12:46 And one of the journalists was like,
00:12:47 Mr. President, thank you for doing this press conference.
00:12:50 And he looks at him and he goes,
00:12:51 it’s called earned media, it’s worth billions.
00:12:54 And he just like had so much disdain for him
00:12:57 because he’s like, I’m not doing this for you.
00:12:59 He’s like, I’m doing this for me.
00:13:00 So he’s really aware of the narrative of the story.
00:13:03 I mean, that the people have talked about
00:13:05 that all comes from the tabloid media of the,
00:13:08 from New York and so on.
00:13:09 He’s a master of that.
00:13:10 But I’ve also heard stories of just in private,
00:13:14 he’s a really, I don’t wanna overuse the word charismatic,
00:13:18 but just like, he is a really interesting,
00:13:21 almost like friendly, like a good person.
00:13:25 Like, that’s what I heard.
00:13:28 I’ve heard actually surprising the same thing
00:13:29 about Hillary Clinton.
00:13:32 And like.
00:13:33 That I can’t tell you anything about.
00:13:35 But like the way they present themselves
00:13:37 is perhaps very different than they are
00:13:40 as human beings and one on one.
00:13:42 That’s something, maybe that’s just like a skill thing.
00:13:46 Maybe the way they present themselves in public
00:13:50 is actually their, I mean, almost their real self.
00:13:55 And they’re just really good in private,
00:13:58 one on one to go into this mode
00:14:00 of just being really intimate in some kind of human way.
00:14:03 I think that’s part of it.
00:14:04 Because I noticed that with Trump, you know,
00:14:06 he’s like, it’s almost like a tour guide.
00:14:08 It was very like, it’s very crazy, right?
00:14:11 Cause you’re like, you’re in the Oval.
00:14:12 I mean, it’s his office.
00:14:13 And he’s like, do you guys want anything?
00:14:15 And he’s like, you want a Diet Coke?
00:14:16 Cause he drinks like all this Diet Coke.
00:14:19 You know?
00:14:20 And he’s just like, you guys want a Diet Coke, right?
00:14:23 And you’re sitting there and you’re like,
00:14:26 the way he’s able to like,
00:14:28 like the last time I interviewed him,
00:14:30 he wanted to do it outside.
00:14:33 Because he like, he’s studied himself from all angles.
00:14:36 And he knows exactly how he looks on a camera
00:14:38 and with which lighting.
00:14:39 And so we were supposed to interview him on camera
00:14:42 in the Oval Office, which is actually rare.
00:14:43 Like you don’t usually get that.
00:14:45 And they ended up moving it outside at the last minute.
00:14:48 And he came out and he’s like,
00:14:49 I picked this spot for you.
00:14:50 He’s like, great lighting.
00:14:51 Yeah.
00:14:52 I was like, you are your own like lighting director.
00:14:55 Yeah.
00:14:56 The president, right?
00:14:56 It’s great.
00:14:57 It’s so funny.
00:14:58 But it’s like you said, he’s very charismatic
00:15:02 and friendly.
00:15:04 I mean, you wouldn’t know.
00:15:05 I mean, look, this is what I mean
00:15:07 in terms of the dynamism of these people that gets lost.
00:15:10 And I think even he knows that.
00:15:12 Like, I don’t think he would want that side of him.
00:15:14 That I see, you know, that you see in those
00:15:16 off the record moments and more in order to come out
00:15:18 because he’s very keen about
00:15:21 how exactly he presents to the public.
00:15:23 It’s like, you know, even his presidential portrait,
00:15:25 everybody usually smiles and he refused to smile.
00:15:27 He was like, I want to look like Winston Churchill.
00:15:29 You know, like even he knew that.
00:15:31 Do you think he believes that he,
00:15:34 what he kind of implies that he is one of,
00:15:38 if not the greatest president in American history?
00:15:41 Like people kind of laugh at this,
00:15:43 but there’s quite, I mean, there’s quite a lot of people,
00:15:45 first of all, that make the argument
00:15:47 that he’s the greatest president in history.
00:15:50 Like I’ve heard this argument being made.
00:15:53 And I mean, I don’t know what the,
00:15:55 first of all, I don’t care.
00:15:57 Like, you can’t make an argument
00:16:01 that anyone is the greatest.
00:16:02 That’s just, that just, I come from a school
00:16:05 of like being humble and modest and so on.
00:16:08 It’s like, even Michael, you can’t have that conversation.
00:16:11 Okay, so I like that he’s humble enough to say
00:16:15 like Abraham Lincoln or whatever.
00:16:17 Like, I don’t know.
00:16:18 He says maybe Lincoln.
00:16:19 Maybe. Remember that.
00:16:20 Maybe. He says maybe Lincoln.
00:16:22 Do you think he actually believes that?
00:16:24 Or is that something he understands will create news
00:16:29 and also perhaps more importantly,
00:16:32 piss off a large number of people?
00:16:35 Is he almost like a musician masterfully playing
00:16:38 the emotions of the public?
00:16:41 Or does he, or, and does he believe
00:16:46 when he looks in the mirror,
00:16:47 I’m one of the greatest men in history?
00:16:49 Combination of all three.
00:16:51 I do think he believes it.
00:16:52 And for the reason why is I don’t think he knows
00:16:54 that much about US history.
00:16:55 I really mean that.
00:16:56 Like, and that’s what I meant whenever I was in there
00:16:58 and I realized he was just living in the moment.
00:17:01 I don’t think he knew all that much about why.
00:17:03 I mean, this is why he was elected in many ways, right?
00:17:06 So I’m not saying this is an orbit,
00:17:08 like I’m not making a judgment on this.
00:17:10 I’m just saying, I do think in his mind,
00:17:12 he does think he was one of the best presidents
00:17:15 in American history largely because,
00:17:17 and I encountered this with a lot of people who work for him,
00:17:19 which is that they didn’t really know all that much
00:17:21 kind of about what came before and all that.
00:17:25 And it’s not necessarily to hold it against them
00:17:27 because for in many ways,
00:17:28 that’s what they were elected to do
00:17:30 or elected to be in many ways.
00:17:32 It’s an interesting question whether knowing history,
00:17:35 being a student of history is productive
00:17:39 or counterproductive.
00:17:40 I tend to assume I really respect people
00:17:43 who are deeply like well read in history,
00:17:46 like presidents that are almost like history nerds.
00:17:51 I admire that.
00:17:53 But maybe that gets in the way of governance.
00:17:56 I don’t know.
00:17:57 It’s not, I’m just sort of playing devil’s advocate
00:18:01 to my own beliefs,
00:18:03 but it’s possible that focusing on the moment
00:18:05 and the issues and letting history,
00:18:07 it’s like first principles thinking,
00:18:09 forget the lessons of the past
00:18:12 and just focus on common sense reasoning
00:18:15 through the problems of today.
00:18:16 Yeah, it’s really hard question.
00:18:18 In terms of the modern era,
00:18:19 I mean, Obama was a student of history.
00:18:21 Like he used to have presidential biographers
00:18:25 and people over and I mean, famously,
00:18:27 like Robert de Caro,
00:18:27 one of my favorite presidential biographers,
00:18:29 he was invited to have dinner with Obama
00:18:32 and Obama would like pepper some of his,
00:18:35 it was interesting because he’d try and justify
00:18:36 some of the things he didn’t do by being like,
00:18:38 well, if you look at what they had to do
00:18:40 and what I have to deal with,
00:18:42 mine’s much harder.
00:18:43 So in that way, I was a little pissed off
00:18:44 because I’d be like, no, that actually like,
00:18:47 you’re comparing apples to oranges and all that.
00:18:50 But if you look at Roosevelt,
00:18:53 Teddy Roosevelt in particular,
00:18:54 this was, I mean, a voracious reader,
00:18:57 not of just American history, all history.
00:18:59 That guy’s just such a badass.
00:19:01 Incredible.
00:19:03 The only president who willed himself to greatness.
00:19:07 That’s like the amazing thing about him.
00:19:08 He wasn’t tested by a crisis, right?
00:19:10 Like it wasn’t, no, he didn’t have a civil war.
00:19:12 He didn’t have World War II.
00:19:13 He didn’t have to found the country, literally,
00:19:15 or like, didn’t have to stave off that,
00:19:17 or he didn’t buy Louisiana Purchase, like all that.
00:19:20 He literally came into a pretty static country
00:19:25 and he could have just governed with,
00:19:27 I mean, he was, the person who came before him
00:19:30 was assassinated, like he easily could have coasted,
00:19:33 but he literally willed the country into something more.
00:19:37 And that’s always why I’ve focused a lot on him too,
00:19:40 because I’m like, that, in many ways,
00:19:42 I wouldn’t say it’s easy to be great during crisis.
00:19:44 I mean, like look at Trump, right?
00:19:46 But it can bring out the best within you,
00:19:49 but it’s a whole other level
00:19:51 to bring out the best within yourself
00:19:53 just for the sake of doing it.
00:19:54 That’s, I think is really interesting.
00:19:56 The speeches were amazing.
00:19:58 I’m also a sucker for great speeches
00:20:00 because I tend to see the role of the president
00:20:04 as in part like inspirer in chief,
00:20:08 sort of to be able to, I mean,
00:20:10 that’s what great leaders do,
00:20:12 like CEOs of companies and so on,
00:20:14 establish a vision, a clear vision,
00:20:17 and like hit that hard.
00:20:19 But the way you establish the vision isn’t just like,
00:20:23 not to dig at Joe Biden,
00:20:24 but like sleepy, boring statements.
00:20:29 You have to sell those statements
00:20:31 and you have to do it in a way
00:20:34 where everybody’s paying attention.
00:20:35 Everybody’s excited.
00:20:36 And that, Teddy Roosevelt was definitely one of them.
00:20:40 Obama was, I think, at least early on,
00:20:44 I don’t know, was incredible at that.
00:20:47 It does feel that the modern political landscape
00:20:49 makes it more difficult to be inspirational in a sense
00:20:52 because everything becomes bickering and division.
00:20:55 I do want to ask you about Trump.
00:21:00 So you’re now a successful podcaster.
00:21:03 I’ve talked to Joe about Trump, Joe Rogan,
00:21:07 and Joe’s not interested in talking to Trump.
00:21:11 It’s just fascinating.
00:21:12 I try to dig into like why.
00:21:16 What would you interview Trump on like realignment,
00:21:20 for example, and do you think it’s possible
00:21:24 to do a two, three hour conversation with him
00:21:27 where you will get at something like human
00:21:31 or you get at something, like when we’re talking
00:21:33 about the facade he puts forward,
00:21:35 do you think you could get past that?
00:21:37 No, I don’t.
00:21:39 I look, I was a White House correspondent.
00:21:41 I observed this man very closely.
00:21:45 I interviewed him.
00:21:46 I think if that mic is hot, he knows what he’s doing.
00:21:49 He just, he’s done this too long, Lex.
00:21:52 He just knows.
00:21:52 But do you think he’s a different human now
00:21:54 after the election?
00:21:56 Do you think that?
00:21:56 Yeah, not at all.
00:21:59 I think he’s been the same person since 1976.
00:22:02 I really do.
00:22:03 Like basically, 1976, I studied Trump a lot
00:22:07 and I think he’s basically been the core
00:22:10 of who he is and elements of that.
00:22:12 Ever since he built that, you know,
00:22:14 the ice rink in Central Park and got that media attention,
00:22:18 that was it.
00:22:19 Yeah, he’s a fascinating study.
00:22:20 Still, I feel there’s a hope in me
00:22:24 that there would be a podcast like a Joe Rogan,
00:22:28 like a long form podcast where it’s something could be,
00:22:31 you know, and you’re actually a really good person
00:22:33 to do that, where you can have a real conversation
00:22:37 that looks back at the election and reveal something on us.
00:22:40 But perhaps he’s thinking about running again
00:22:42 and so maybe he’ll never let down that guard.
00:22:46 But like, you know, I just love it when
00:22:49 there’s this switch in people where you start looking back
00:22:55 at your life and wanting to tell stories.
00:22:57 Like, you know, trying to extract wisdom
00:23:01 and like realizing you’re in this new phase of life
00:23:03 where like the battles have all been fought,
00:23:06 now you’re this old, like former warrior
00:23:10 and now you can tell the stories of that time.
00:23:12 And it seems like Trump is still at it,
00:23:14 like the young warrior he is,
00:23:16 he’s not in the mode of telling stories.
00:23:18 You know what I got from Rogan?
00:23:19 He’s the only president who didn’t age well in office.
00:23:22 It’s true, right?
00:23:23 Like, and this is what I mean,
00:23:25 because he lives in the moment, like the job actually
00:23:28 aged Obama, I mean, Bush, same thing, even Clinton.
00:23:32 Clinton was like fat, it looked miserable by like 2000.
00:23:36 HW, like, I mean, Reagan, famous, actually, yeah,
00:23:39 pretty much everybody I think about,
00:23:42 including John F. Kennedy,
00:23:44 who got much sicker while in office.
00:23:45 The job like weighs on you and makes you physically ill.
00:23:49 Trump was, he’s the only person who just didn’t happen to.
00:23:53 He almost gotten stronger and he was one of the most,
00:23:57 like the climate, there’s so many people attacking him,
00:24:00 so much hatred, so much love and hatred.
00:24:03 And it was just, I mean, it was whatever it was,
00:24:06 it was quite masterful and a fascinating study.
00:24:10 If we stick on Hitler for just a minute,
00:24:15 what lessons do you take from that time?
00:24:20 Do you think it’s a unique moment in human history,
00:24:23 that World War II, I mean, both Stalin and Hitler,
00:24:29 you know, is it something that’s just an outlier
00:24:33 in all of human history in terms of the atrocities,
00:24:36 or is there lessons to be learned?
00:24:40 You mentioned offline that you’re not just a student
00:24:45 of the entirety of the history, but you also are fascinated
00:24:47 by just different like policies and stuff.
00:24:50 Like, what’s the immigration policy?
00:24:52 What’s the policy on science?
00:24:53 And…
00:24:54 Third Reich in power, let me plug it,
00:24:55 by Richard Evans, I think is what it was.
00:24:58 Cause that actually will tell you,
00:25:00 like what was it like to live under the Nazi regime
00:25:03 without the war?
00:25:05 Yeah, it’s a hard question in terms of the lessons
00:25:08 that we can learn.
00:25:08 Cause there’s a lot, and it’s actually been over,
00:25:11 it’s been over indexed almost.
00:25:13 Everything comes back to Hitler in a conversation.
00:25:15 So I kind of think of it within Mao, Stalin, and Hitler
00:25:21 as, I don’t wanna say payments for,
00:25:24 but like the end point payment for the sins
00:25:30 and the problems of the monarchical system
00:25:34 that evolve within Europe.
00:25:35 Basically like 1400 and more.
00:25:38 I basically think that 1400,
00:25:41 the wars between France, England, the balance of power,
00:25:45 eventually World War I, and then serfdom within Russia,
00:25:49 the Russian revolution that birthed Stalin.
00:25:52 Same thing, the Kaiser and Imperial Germany
00:25:55 and this like incredibly crazy system of balance of power
00:25:58 in World War I.
00:25:59 And then same thing within China
00:26:01 in terms of the warring states and then the disintegration,
00:26:05 the European, you know, this is how they think of it.
00:26:08 Which is like the century of humiliation
00:26:10 and they had to have something like this.
00:26:12 I think of it, I try to think of it
00:26:14 within the context of that.
00:26:15 I don’t wanna sound like an inevitablist,
00:26:19 but I think of it as, I like to think about systems,
00:26:22 especially here in DC, that’s where I got into politics,
00:26:25 which is that you have to understand systems of power
00:26:29 and the incentives within systems and the disincentives,
00:26:33 the downside risk of what you’re creating
00:26:36 because that is what leads and creates the behavior
00:26:42 within that system.
00:26:43 I was just talking to my girlfriend about this yesterday.
00:26:45 It’s kind of funny, like I read these,
00:26:47 I’m obsessed with these books by Robert Caro,
00:26:50 the biographies of Lyndon Johnson.
00:26:52 He’s written like 5,000 pages so far
00:26:54 and it’s still not done.
00:26:55 Okay, so like these are like books I base my life on.
00:26:59 And look, these are Washington
00:27:02 and the story of the post New Deal era and forward.
00:27:05 Not much has changed.
00:27:06 Like the Senate is still the Senate.
00:27:09 So many of the same problems with the Senate
00:27:10 are still there in some cases.
00:27:13 No, not anymore.
00:27:14 But for a while, some of the people who were there
00:27:16 with Johnson are actually still,
00:27:18 one of them is the president of the United States,
00:27:20 just a joke.
00:27:21 And you think about also,
00:27:24 same with the media relationship, right?
00:27:26 Like there’s this media really,
00:27:27 they may have come and gone.
00:27:29 Like the people who were in the media
00:27:31 and who were cozy with the administration officials,
00:27:34 I mean, they just recreated themselves.
00:27:37 It’s like an ecosystem which doesn’t change.
00:27:41 And that’s why I’m like,
00:27:43 oh, it’s not that was a specific time.
00:27:46 That’s just DC.
00:27:47 Like that is DC because of the way
00:27:51 the system is architected.
00:27:53 It’s pretty much been that way since like 1908,
00:27:55 whenever like Teddy Roosevelt was dining
00:27:58 with these journalists and he would yell at them.
00:27:59 And then he would go over to the society house.
00:28:02 And like in many ways,
00:28:04 that’s now instead of going to Henry Adams’s house,
00:28:06 like the people are congregating in Calorama,
00:28:10 which is the richest neighborhood here
00:28:12 at somebody else’s house.
00:28:13 Like it’s the same thing.
00:28:14 So you have to think about the system
00:28:16 and then the incentives within that system
00:28:18 about what the outcomes that they’re producing.
00:28:20 If you actually wanna think about
00:28:21 how can I change this from the outside?
00:28:23 That’s also why it’s very difficult to change
00:28:25 because the system is designed
00:28:27 in order to produce actually pretty specific outcomes
00:28:31 that can only be changed in extraordinary times.
00:28:33 Yeah, and sometimes it’s hard to predict
00:28:37 what kind of outcomes will result from the incentive,
00:28:41 the system that you create, right?
00:28:42 In the case, because especially
00:28:44 when it’s novel kind of situations.
00:28:46 With Trump, he actually created a pretty novel situation.
00:28:49 And a lot of the things that we’ve seen
00:28:53 in the 20th century were very novel systems
00:28:56 where people were very optimistic about the outcomes, right?
00:28:59 And then it turned out to not have the results
00:29:02 that they predicted.
00:29:04 In terms of things being unchanged
00:29:06 for the past 100 years and so on,
00:29:08 can you like Wikipedia style
00:29:12 or maybe like in a musical form,
00:29:14 like I’m only a bill, describe to me.
00:29:17 I still sing that to my head sometimes.
00:29:20 I’m just a bill.
00:29:25 I don’t know what the rest of the song is,
00:29:27 but let’s leave that to people’s imagination.
00:29:30 How does this whole thing work?
00:29:33 How does the US political system work?
00:29:35 The three branches is how do you think
00:29:37 about the system we have now?
00:29:40 If you were to try to describe,
00:29:42 if aliens showed up and asked you like,
00:29:46 they didn’t have time, so this is an elevator thing.
00:29:49 Should we destroy you as you plead to avoid destruction?
00:29:55 Well, how would you describe how this thing works?
00:29:58 I would say we come together and we pick the people
00:30:02 who make our laws.
00:30:03 Then we pick the guy who executes those laws
00:30:07 and they together pick the people who determine
00:30:11 whether they or the president is breaking the law
00:30:14 at the most basic level.
00:30:16 That’s how I would describe it.
00:30:20 So the people who make the laws are Congress.
00:30:22 The executive is charged with executing the laws
00:30:27 as passed by Congress, the system,
00:30:29 the branches of government,
00:30:30 and the Supreme Court is picked by the president,
00:30:33 confirmed by the Senate,
00:30:34 which then decides whether you or other people
00:30:38 are breaking the law in terms of interpretation of that law.
00:30:41 That’s basically it.
00:30:42 Oh, and they decide whether those laws are in,
00:30:48 they fall within the restrictions
00:30:53 and the want of the founders as expressed
00:30:58 by the Constitution of the United States,
00:31:00 which is a set of principles that we came together in 1787.
00:31:06 I want to make sure I get this right, 1787,
00:31:09 and decided that we were going to live the rest of our lives
00:31:12 barring a revolution and more.
00:31:14 And we’ve made it 200 and something years
00:31:16 in order on under that system.
00:31:18 So there’s a balance of power
00:31:20 that’s because it’s multiple branches.
00:31:22 There’s a tension and a balance to it
00:31:24 as designed by those original documents.
00:31:28 What, which is the most dysfunctional,
00:31:30 the branches, which is your favorite?
00:31:32 Like in terms of talking about systems
00:31:34 and like what’s the greatest of concern
00:31:37 and what is the greatest source of benefit in your view?
00:31:41 The presidency, obviously,
00:31:42 well, the presidency is my favorite to study, obviously,
00:31:46 because it is the one
00:31:48 where there’s the most subjective variable change
00:31:51 in terms of the personality involved
00:31:53 because of so much power imbued within the executive.
00:31:56 The Senate is actually pretty much the same.
00:31:59 That’s one of the things I love
00:32:02 about reading about the Senate and histories of the Senate
00:32:04 is you’re like, oh yeah,
00:32:06 there were always like assholes in the Senate
00:32:08 who were doing their thing
00:32:09 and filibustering constantly based upon this or that.
00:32:15 And then the personalities involved with the Senate
00:32:18 haven’t mattered as much since like pre civil war, right?
00:32:23 Like pre civil war, you had like Henry Clay
00:32:25 and then Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun,
00:32:29 who even in their own way,
00:32:31 they represented like larger constituencies
00:32:33 and they crafted these like compromises
00:32:35 up until the outbreak of the civil war, et cetera.
00:32:37 But like post since then,
00:32:39 you don’t think about like the Titans within the Senate.
00:32:42 Most of that is because a lot of the stuff
00:32:44 that they had power over
00:32:45 has transferred over to the executive.
00:32:47 So I’m most interested in really in like power,
00:32:51 like where it lies.
00:32:52 It’s actually pretty, you know,
00:32:53 throughout American history,
00:32:54 much more used to lie with Congress.
00:32:56 Now it’s obviously just so imbued within the executive
00:33:00 that understanding executive power
00:33:02 is I think the thing I’m probably most interested in here.
00:33:04 Do you think at this point,
00:33:06 the amount of power that the president has is corrupting
00:33:09 to their ability to lead well?
00:33:12 Is this, you know, power corrupts,
00:33:15 absolute power corrupts, absolutely.
00:33:17 Are we, is there too much power in the presidency?
00:33:21 There definitely is.
00:33:22 And part of the problem,
00:33:24 one of the things I try to make come across to people is
00:33:28 if you’re the president,
00:33:29 unless you have a hyper intentional view
00:33:34 of how something must be different in government,
00:33:36 your view doesn’t matter.
00:33:37 So for example, like if you were Trump,
00:33:41 let’s take Trump even,
00:33:42 and even in with a pretty intentional view,
00:33:43 he was like, I’m gonna end the war in Afghanistan
00:33:46 and Iraq, right?
00:33:47 And he came in and he gets these generals in.
00:33:49 He’s like, I wanna end the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
00:33:52 Oh, and I wanna withdraw these troops from Syria.
00:33:54 And they’re like, okay, we’ll give you,
00:33:56 give us like six months.
00:33:57 He’s like, okay.
00:33:58 And this is the thing about Trump.
00:33:58 He doesn’t realize that it’s bullshit.
00:34:00 So they’re like, he’s like,
00:34:01 oh, six months seems fun, right?
00:34:03 So then six months comes and he’s like,
00:34:05 he’s like, so, and then he’ll announce it.
00:34:07 He’ll be like, and we’re getting out of Syria.
00:34:09 It’s great.
00:34:10 And then the generals freak out.
00:34:11 They’re like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
00:34:12 We don’t have a plan for that.
00:34:13 He’s like, but you guys told me six months.
00:34:15 He’s like, I don’t know, now we need another six months
00:34:16 in order to figure this thing out.
00:34:18 And by that time, now you’re midterms.
00:34:19 So now what?
00:34:20 Now you gotta run for reelection.
00:34:22 So more what I mean by that is,
00:34:24 if you don’t have a hyperintentional view
00:34:25 about how to change foreign policy,
00:34:27 if you don’t have a hyperintentional view
00:34:28 about how the Department of Commerce should do its job,
00:34:31 they are just gonna go on autopilot.
00:34:33 So this is part of the problem.
00:34:35 When you asked me about the presidency,
00:34:37 it’s not the presidency itself,
00:34:40 like the president himself, which has become too powerful.
00:34:43 It’s that we have less democratic checks
00:34:46 on the people and the systems that are on autopilot.
00:34:51 And I would say that basically since 2008,
00:34:57 we have voted every single time to disrupt that system,
00:35:01 except in the case of 2020 with Joe Biden,
00:35:04 and there are a lot of different reasons
00:35:05 around why that happened.
00:35:06 And in every single one of those cases,
00:35:09 Obama and Trump, they all failed
00:35:11 in order to radically disrupt that.
00:35:14 And that just shows you how titanic the task is.
00:35:17 And I’m using my language precisely
00:35:19 because I don’t wanna be like deep state,
00:35:21 but obviously there’s deep state.
00:35:22 Deep state, I guess, has conspiratorial intentions to it.
00:35:26 But so what you’re saying is the true power
00:35:29 currently lies with the autopilot, AKA deep state.
00:35:32 Well, but see, this is the thing too I wanna make clear,
00:35:36 because I think people think conspiratorially
00:35:38 that they’re all coming together
00:35:40 to intentionally do something.
00:35:42 No, no, no, no.
00:35:43 They are doing what they know, believe they are right,
00:35:47 and don’t have real democratic checks within that.
00:35:50 And so now they have entire generations of cultures
00:35:53 within each of these bureaucracies where they say,
00:35:55 this is the way that we do things around here.
00:35:59 And that’s the problem, which is that we have a culture
00:36:03 of within many of these agencies and more.
00:36:06 I think the best example for this
00:36:09 would be during the Ukraine gate with Trump and all that,
00:36:13 with the impeachment.
00:36:15 I’m not talking about the politics here,
00:36:16 but the most revealing thing that happened
00:36:18 was when the whistleblower guy, Alexander Vindman,
00:36:21 was like, here you have the president
00:36:24 departing from the policy of the United States.
00:36:27 And I was like, well, let me educate you, Lieutenant Colonel.
00:36:32 The president of the United States
00:36:34 makes American foreign policy.
00:36:36 But it was a very revealing comment
00:36:38 because he and all the people
00:36:41 within national security bureaucracy do think that.
00:36:44 They’re like, this is the policy of the United States.
00:36:46 We have to do this.
00:36:48 That’s where things get screwy.
00:36:49 Well, listen, for me personally,
00:36:51 but also from an engineering perspective,
00:36:53 I just talked to Jim Keller.
00:36:54 It’s just, this is the kind of bullshit that we all hate
00:36:58 when you’re trying to innovate and design new products.
00:37:02 So that’s what first principles thinking requires.
00:37:05 It’s like, we don’t give a shit what was done before.
00:37:09 The point is, what is the best way to do it?
00:37:11 And it seems like the current government,
00:37:14 government in general, probably,
00:37:16 bureaucracies in general,
00:37:18 are just really good at being lazy
00:37:21 without never having those conversations.
00:37:23 And just, it becomes this momentum thing
00:37:26 that nobody has the difficult conversations.
00:37:29 It’s become a game within a certain set of constraints
00:37:32 and they never kind of do revolutionary tasks.
00:37:34 But you did say that the presidency is power,
00:37:37 but you’re saying that more power than the others,
00:37:43 but that power has to be coupled
00:37:44 with focused intentionality.
00:37:46 You have to keep hammering the thing.
00:37:48 If you want it done, it has to be done.
00:37:51 I mean, and you gotta, this is the other part too,
00:37:54 which is that it’s not just that you have to get it done.
00:37:57 You have to pick the 100 people who you can trust
00:38:01 to pick 10 people each to actually do what you want.
00:38:06 One of the most revealing quotes
00:38:08 is from a guy named Tommy Corcoran.
00:38:10 He was the top aide to FDR.
00:38:12 This I’m getting from the Kara books too.
00:38:14 And he said, what is a government?
00:38:17 It’s not just one guy or even 10 guys.
00:38:20 Hell, it’s a thousand guys.
00:38:23 And what FDR did is he masterfully picked the right people
00:38:28 to execute his will through the federal agencies.
00:38:31 Johnson was the same way.
00:38:32 He played these people like a fiddle.
00:38:34 He knew exactly who to pick.
00:38:36 He knew the system and more.
00:38:38 Part of the reason that outsiders
00:38:40 who don’t have a lot of experience in Washington
00:38:43 almost always fail is they don’t know who to pick
00:38:45 or they pick people who say one thing to their face.
00:38:49 And then when it comes time
00:38:50 to carry out the president’s policy
00:38:52 in terms of the government, they just don’t do it.
00:38:55 And the president’s too, think about this.
00:38:57 I think some Rahm Emanuel said this.
00:38:58 He was like, by the time it gets to the president’s desk,
00:39:01 nobody else can solve it.
00:39:02 It’s not easy.
00:39:03 It’s not like a yes or no question.
00:39:05 It’s every single thing that hits the president’s desk
00:39:08 is incredibly hard to do.
00:39:10 And Obama actually even said,
00:39:12 and this was a very revealing quote
00:39:14 about how he thinks about the presidency,
00:39:16 which is he’s like, look, the presidency
00:39:19 is like one of those super tankers.
00:39:21 He’s like, I can come in and I can take it two degrees left
00:39:26 and two degrees right.
00:39:27 In a hundred years, two degrees left,
00:39:29 that’s a whole different trajectory.
00:39:31 Same thing on the right.
00:39:32 And he’s like, that ultimately is really all you can do.
00:39:36 I quibble and disagree with that
00:39:38 in terms of how he could have changed things in 2008,
00:39:41 but there’s a lot of truth to that statement.
00:39:43 Okay, that’s really fascinating.
00:39:44 You make me realize that actually both Obama and Trump
00:39:48 are probably playing victim here to the system.
00:39:52 You’re making me think that maybe you can correct me
00:39:55 that, cause I’m thinking of like Elon Musk,
00:39:59 whose major success despite everything
00:40:01 is hiring the right people.
00:40:03 Exactly.
00:40:04 And like creating those thousands,
00:40:05 that structure of a thousand people.
00:40:08 So maybe a president has power in that
00:40:11 if they were exceptionally good
00:40:12 at hiring the right people.
00:40:13 Personnel is policy, man.
00:40:15 That’s what it comes down to.
00:40:16 But wouldn’t you be able to steer the ship
00:40:18 way more than two degrees if you hire the right people?
00:40:21 So like, it’s almost like Obama was not good
00:40:23 at hiring the right people.
00:40:25 Well, he hired all the Clinton people.
00:40:26 That’s what happened.
00:40:27 What happened with Trump?
00:40:28 He hired all the Bush people.
00:40:29 And then you just sit back and say,
00:40:31 oh, president can’t,
00:40:33 but that means you’re just suck at hiring.
00:40:36 Correct.
00:40:37 Yeah, I mean, look, I know it’s funny.
00:40:38 I’m giving you simultaneously
00:40:40 the nationalist case against Trump
00:40:42 and the progressive case against Obama.
00:40:45 The progressive people are like,
00:40:46 why the fuck are you hiring all these Clinton people
00:40:48 in order to run the government and just recreate,
00:40:51 like why are you hiring Larry Summers,
00:40:53 who was one of the people who worked at all these banks
00:40:56 and didn’t believe that bailouts were gonna be big enough,
00:40:58 and then to come in in the worst economic crisis
00:41:01 in modern American history.
00:41:02 That was 2008.
00:41:03 And Summers actively lobbied against larger bailouts,
00:41:06 which had huge implications for working class people
00:41:09 and pretty much hollowed out America since.
00:41:12 Okay, from Trump, same thing.
00:41:14 You’re like, I’m gonna drain the swamp.
00:41:15 And by doing that,
00:41:16 I’m gonna hire Goldman Sachs’s Gary Cohn
00:41:20 and Steve Mnuchin and all these other absolute bush clowns
00:41:25 in order to run my White House.
00:41:27 Well, yeah, no shit.
00:41:29 The only thing that you accomplished
00:41:31 in your four years in office
00:41:32 is passing a massive tax cut for the rich
00:41:35 and for corporations.
00:41:37 I wonder how that happened.
00:41:38 What role does money play in all of this?
00:41:41 Is money a huge influence in politics,
00:41:44 super PACs, all that kind of stuff?
00:41:46 Or is this more just kind of a narrative that we play with
00:41:50 because from the outsider’s perspective,
00:41:52 it seems to have,
00:41:53 that seems to be one of the fundamental problems
00:41:55 with modern politics.
00:41:56 So I was just having this conversation,
00:41:58 Marshall and I,
00:41:59 Marshall Kosloff, my cohost on The Realignment.
00:42:01 And it’s funny because if you do enough research,
00:42:04 we actually live in the least corrupt age
00:42:08 in American campaign finance,
00:42:10 as in it’s never been more transparent.
00:42:13 It’s never been more up to the FEC and all of that.
00:42:18 If you go back and read not even 50 years ago,
00:42:20 we’re talking about Lyndon B. Johnson,
00:42:22 handing people like literally as he came up in his youth,
00:42:26 paying people for votes,
00:42:28 like the boss of the person who like had
00:42:32 all the Mexican votes,
00:42:33 like the person who had,
00:42:34 and he was like giving out briefcases.
00:42:35 This is like within people’s lifetimes
00:42:37 who are alive in America.
00:42:38 So that doesn’t happen anymore.
00:42:40 But I don’t like to blame everything on money.
00:42:44 Although I do think money is obviously
00:42:46 a huge part of the problem.
00:42:47 I actually look at it in terms of distribution,
00:42:51 which is that how is money distributed within our society?
00:42:55 Because I firmly believe that politics,
00:42:59 this is gonna get complicated,
00:43:00 but I think politics is mostly downstream from culture.
00:43:04 And culture, obviously I’m using economics
00:43:06 because there’s obviously a huge interplay there,
00:43:08 but like in terms of the equitable
00:43:10 or lack of equitable distribution of money
00:43:12 within our politics,
00:43:13 what we’re really pissed off about is we’re like,
00:43:15 our politics only seems to work
00:43:18 for the people who have money.
00:43:20 I think that’s largely true.
00:43:21 I think that the reason why things worked differently
00:43:24 in the past is because our economy was structured
00:43:27 in different ways.
00:43:28 And there’s a reason that our politics today
00:43:31 are very analogous to the last Gilded Age
00:43:34 because we had very similar levels
00:43:37 of economic distribution and cultural problems too
00:43:40 at the same time.
00:43:41 I don’t wanna erase that.
00:43:42 Cause I actually think that’s what’s driving
00:43:43 all of our politics right now.
00:43:44 So that’s interesting.
00:43:47 So in that sense,
00:43:48 the representative government is doing a pretty good job
00:43:50 of representing the state of culture
00:43:52 and the people and so on.
00:43:53 Yeah.
00:43:54 Can I ask you in terms of the deep state
00:43:58 and conspiracy theories,
00:43:59 there’s a lot of talk about,
00:44:02 again, from an outsider’s perspective,
00:44:04 if I were just looking at Twitter,
00:44:06 it seems that at least 90% of people
00:44:08 in government are pedophiles.
00:44:10 90 to 95%, I’m not sure what that number is.
00:44:15 If I were to just look at Twitter, honestly, or YouTube,
00:44:17 I would think most of the world is a pedophile.
00:44:20 I would almost feel like.
00:44:22 Right.
00:44:22 And if you don’t fully believe that, you’re a pedophile.
00:44:25 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:44:26 I would start to wonder like, wait,
00:44:28 like what, am I a pedophile too?
00:44:31 I’m either a communist or a pedophile or both, I guess.
00:44:35 Yeah, that’s gonna be clipped out.
00:44:36 Thank you, internet.
00:44:37 Yeah.
00:44:39 I look forward to your emails.
00:44:42 But is there any kind of shadow conspiracy theories
00:44:47 that give you pause or,
00:44:51 so the flip side,
00:44:52 the response to a lot of conspiracy theories is like,
00:44:55 no, the reason this happened
00:44:57 is because it’s a combination of just incompetence.
00:45:01 So where do you land on some of these conspiracy theories?
00:45:06 I think most conspiracy theories are wrong.
00:45:09 Some are true and those are spectacularly true.
00:45:12 And if that makes sense.
00:45:14 Yeah.
00:45:15 And we don’t know which ones.
00:45:16 I don’t know which ones.
00:45:17 That’s the problem.
00:45:18 I think, well, I mean, look, man, I listened to your podcast.
00:45:21 I think I was a huge nonbeliever in UFOs
00:45:25 and now I’ve probably never believed more in UFOs.
00:45:28 Like I believe in UFOs.
00:45:30 Like I’m very comfortable being like,
00:45:32 not only do I believe in UFOs,
00:45:34 like I think we’re probably being visited
00:45:35 by an alien civilization.
00:45:37 And if you asked me that three years ago,
00:45:39 I would have been like, you’re out of your fucking mind.
00:45:40 Like, what are you talking about?
00:45:42 Well, listen to David Fravor.
00:45:43 That’s all I have to say.
00:45:44 That’s it.
00:45:45 I have the sense that the government has information
00:45:49 that hasn’t revealed,
00:45:50 but it’s not like they’re,
00:45:52 I don’t think they’re holding,
00:45:53 there’s like a green guy sitting there in a room.
00:45:56 They have seen things they don’t know what to do with.
00:45:59 So it’s like, they’re confused.
00:46:01 They’re afraid of revealing that they don’t know.
00:46:04 That’s what I think it is, right?
00:46:05 It’s revealing, yeah, exactly, that they don’t know.
00:46:09 And then in the process,
00:46:10 there’s a lot of fears tied up in that.
00:46:12 First, looking incompetent in the public eye.
00:46:15 Nobody wants to be looked that way.
00:46:17 And the other is like, in revealing it,
00:46:20 even though they don’t know,
00:46:22 maybe China will figure it out.
00:46:23 Exactly.
00:46:24 So like, we don’t want China to figure it out first.
00:46:26 And so all those kinds of things
00:46:28 result in basically secrecy.
00:46:30 Then that damages the trust in institutions
00:46:33 on one of the most fascinating aspects,
00:46:36 like one of the most fascinating mysteries of humankind
00:46:39 of is there life, intelligent life,
00:46:43 out there in the universe?
00:46:44 So that’s one of them.
00:46:45 But there’s other ones, like for me,
00:46:48 when I first came across actually Alex Jones was 9 11.
00:46:53 I remember like, cause I was in Chicago.
00:46:57 I was thinking like, oh shit,
00:46:59 are they gonna hit Chicago too?
00:47:01 That’s what everybody was thinking.
00:47:02 Yeah, everybody.
00:47:03 Everybody was thinking like, what does this mean?
00:47:05 What scale?
00:47:05 What, I mean, trying to interpret it.
00:47:07 And I remember like looking for information desperately,
00:47:10 like what happened?
00:47:12 And I remember not being satisfied
00:47:14 with the quality of reporting
00:47:17 and figuring out like rigorous,
00:47:18 like here’s exactly what happened.
00:47:21 And so people like Alex Jones stepped up
00:47:23 and others that said like,
00:47:25 there’s some shady shit going on.
00:47:27 And it sure as hell looked like
00:47:29 there’s shady shit going on.
00:47:30 Yes.
00:47:31 So like, and I still stand behind the fact
00:47:34 that it seems like there’s not,
00:47:36 there’s not enough, like it wasn’t a good job
00:47:39 of being honest and transparent
00:47:41 and all those kinds of things.
00:47:42 Cause it would implicate the Saudis.
00:47:43 Let’s be honest.
00:47:44 And see, that’s my conspiracy theories.
00:47:46 I’m like, yeah, I think they covered up a lot of stuff
00:47:48 because they wanted to cover up
00:47:49 for the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
00:47:50 Like, I mean, that was a conspiracy theory
00:47:53 not that long ago.
00:47:54 I think it’s true.
00:47:55 I mean, I think it’s a hundred percent true.
00:47:57 Yeah, so those kinds of conspiracy theories are interesting.
00:47:59 I mean, there’s other ones for me personally
00:48:01 that touched the institution that means a lot to me
00:48:06 is the MIT and, you know, Jeffrey Epstein.
00:48:09 Yeah, I wanna hear a lot more.
00:48:10 I wanna hear about, I talk about Epstein a lot.
00:48:12 So I’m like. Oh, you do?
00:48:13 Yeah, and he, I was gonna say,
00:48:15 in terms of conspiracy theory,
00:48:17 that one changed my outlook.
00:48:18 Cause I was like, I was like, whoa,
00:48:20 like you have this dude who convinced
00:48:24 some of the most successful people on earth
00:48:26 that he was like some money manager.
00:48:29 And it looks like it was totally fake.
00:48:31 Like Leon Black.
00:48:32 I mean, this is one of the richest men on wall street,
00:48:34 $9 billion net worth.
00:48:36 Why is he giving him over a hundred million dollars
00:48:40 between 2015 and 2019?
00:48:42 What’s going on here?
00:48:43 Lex Wexner, same thing.
00:48:45 So yeah, I wanna hear,
00:48:46 because you know people who met him.
00:48:48 And the only person I know who met him was Eric Weinstein.
00:48:50 I’ve heard his, right.
00:48:52 Oh boy.
00:48:53 So I, listen, I’m still in and Eric is fascinating
00:48:56 and like Eric is full on saying that.
00:48:59 He was a Mossad or whatever.
00:49:01 Yeah, there’s a front for something,
00:49:04 something much, much bigger.
00:49:06 And there’s a, whatever his name, Robert Maxwell,
00:49:09 all the, all those stories,
00:49:12 like you could dig deeper and deeper
00:49:14 that Jeffrey’s just like the tip of the iceberg.
00:49:17 I just think he’s an exceptionally charismatic,
00:49:20 listen, this isn’t speaking from confidence
00:49:22 or like deep understanding of the situation,
00:49:25 but from my speaking with people,
00:49:28 he just seems like, at least from the side of his influence
00:49:34 and interaction with researchers,
00:49:36 he just seems like somebody
00:49:38 that was exceptionally charismatic
00:49:41 and actually took interest.
00:49:44 He was unable to speak about interesting scientific things,
00:49:49 but he took interest in them.
00:49:51 So he knew how to stroke the egos
00:49:53 of a lot of powerful people, like well,
00:49:56 like in different kinds of ways,
00:49:58 I suppose I don’t know about this
00:50:01 because I don’t have, like if a really,
00:50:04 okay, this is weird to say,
00:50:06 but I have an ability,
00:50:09 okay, I think women are beautiful, I like women,
00:50:12 but like if like a supermodel came to me or something,
00:50:16 like I’m able to reason.
00:50:19 It seems like some people are not able to think clearly
00:50:22 when there’s like an attractive woman in the room.
00:50:25 And I think that was one of the tools he used
00:50:28 to manipulate people.
00:50:29 Interesting.
00:50:30 I don’t know, listen, it’s like the pedophile thing.
00:50:33 I don’t know how many people are complete sex addicts,
00:50:35 but like, it seems like looking out into the world,
00:50:39 like the Me Too movement have revealed
00:50:42 that there’s a lot of like weird,
00:50:44 like creepy people out there.
00:50:47 I don’t know, but I think it was just one of the many tools
00:50:50 that he used to convince people and manipulate people,
00:50:56 but not in some like evil way,
00:51:02 but more just really good at the art of conversation
00:51:07 and just winning people over on the side.
00:51:10 And then by building through that process,
00:51:13 building a network of other really powerful people
00:51:16 and not explicitly, but implicitly having done shady shit
00:51:22 with powerful people, like building up
00:51:26 a kind of implied power of like,
00:51:31 like we did some shady shit together.
00:51:34 So we’re not like, you’re gonna help me out
00:51:37 on this extra thing I need to do now.
00:51:39 And that builds and builds and builds
00:51:41 to where you’re able to actually control,
00:51:44 like have quite a lot of power without explicitly having
00:51:48 like a strategy meeting.
00:51:50 And I think a single person or yeah,
00:51:54 I think a single person can do that,
00:51:55 can start that ball rolling.
00:51:58 And over time it becomes a group thing,
00:52:00 like I don’t know if Jillian Maxwell was involved
00:52:03 or others and yeah, over time that becomes almost
00:52:07 like a really powerful organization
00:52:09 that wasn’t, that’s not a front for something much deeper
00:52:14 and bigger, but it’s almost like maybe it’s
00:52:17 cause I love cellular automata, man.
00:52:19 A system that starts out as a simple thing
00:52:22 with simple rules can create incredible complexity.
00:52:25 And so I just think that we’re now looking in retrospect,
00:52:29 it looks like an incredibly complex system
00:52:31 that’s operating, but like, that’s just because it’s,
00:52:35 there could be a lot of other Jeffrey Epstein’s
00:52:37 in my perspective that the simple thing just was successful
00:52:41 early on and builds and builds and builds and builds
00:52:44 and then there’s a creepy shit that like a lot of aspects
00:52:47 of the system helped it get bigger and bigger
00:52:50 and more powerful and so on.
00:52:52 So the final result is, I mean, listen,
00:52:56 I have a pretty optimistic, I tend to see the good
00:53:00 in people and so it’s been heartbreaking to me in general
00:53:04 just to see people I look up to not have the level
00:53:09 of integrity I thought they would
00:53:11 or like the strength of character, all those kinds of things.
00:53:15 And it seems like you should be able to see the bullshit
00:53:20 that is Jeffrey Epstein, like when you meet him.
00:53:23 We’re not talking about like Eric Weinstein,
00:53:25 like one or two or three or five interactions,
00:53:28 but like there’s people that had like years
00:53:31 of relationship with him.
00:53:33 And I don’t know, I’m not sure.
00:53:35 Even after he was convicted.
00:53:36 After he was convicted.
00:53:38 That guy always gets me.
00:53:39 Yeah, there’s stories, I mean, I don’t need to sort of,
00:53:44 I honestly believe, okay, here’s the open question I have.
00:53:52 I don’t know how many creepy sexual people
00:53:55 that are out there.
00:53:57 Like, I don’t know if there is like,
00:54:00 like the people I know, the faculty and so on,
00:54:03 I don’t know if they have like a kink
00:54:05 that I’m just not aware of that was being leveraged
00:54:08 because to me, it seems like if not everybody’s a pedophile,
00:54:16 then it’s just the art of conversation.
00:54:18 That is just like the art of just like manipulating people
00:54:21 by making them feel good
00:54:23 about like the exciting stuff they’re doing.
00:54:25 Listen, man, academics, people talk about money.
00:54:28 I don’t think academics care about money
00:54:30 as much as people think.
00:54:31 What they care about is like somebody,
00:54:34 they want to be, it’s the same thing
00:54:37 that Instagram models posting their butt pictures,
00:54:41 is they want to be loved.
00:54:42 They want attention.
00:54:43 My parents are professors.
00:54:44 Yeah, I get it.
00:54:45 Yeah.
00:54:47 They, and Jeff Epstein,
00:54:49 like the money is another way to show attention.
00:54:52 Right, it’s a proxy.
00:54:54 My work matters.
00:54:55 And he did that for some of the weirdest,
00:55:00 most brilliant people.
00:55:02 I don’t want to sort of drop names, but everybody knows them.
00:55:06 It’s like people that are the most interesting academics
00:55:09 is the one he cared about.
00:55:11 Like people are thinking about the most difficult questions
00:55:15 in all of science and all of engineering.
00:55:16 So those people are, were kind of outcasts in academia
00:55:21 a little bit because they’re doing the weird shit.
00:55:23 They’re the weirdos.
00:55:24 And he cared about the weirdos and he gave them money.
00:55:26 And that, you know, that’s,
00:55:30 I don’t know if there’s something more nefarious than that.
00:55:33 I hope not, but maybe I’m surprised.
00:55:36 And in fact, half the population of the world is pedophiles.
00:55:39 No, I think it’s what you were talking about,
00:55:41 which is that it’s the,
00:55:44 it’s the implication after the initial, right?
00:55:46 Like you do some shady things together
00:55:48 or you do something that you want out of the public eye
00:55:51 and you’re a public person.
00:55:52 And look, we probably even experienced this
00:55:54 to a limited extent, right?
00:55:55 You’re like, ah, you know, like, I don’t want to,
00:55:57 I don’t know, I almost lost my temper, you know,
00:55:59 one time whenever a car hit me and I’m like,
00:56:00 I can’t freak out in public anymore.
00:56:02 Like, you know, like what if somebody takes a photo
00:56:04 or something?
00:56:05 And so I think that there’s an extent to that
00:56:08 times a billion, literally,
00:56:10 when you have a billion dollars or more.
00:56:12 And you take that all together
00:56:13 and you stack it up on itself.
00:56:15 I saw a story about like Bill Clinton.
00:56:16 Like Bill Clinton was with Epstein or with Ghislaine Maxwell
00:56:20 in a private air terminal or something.
00:56:23 And she had one of their like sex, you know,
00:56:26 one of those girls who was underage,
00:56:28 had her dressed up in a literal like pilot uniform.
00:56:31 And she was underage in order to, you know,
00:56:33 and she was being disguised for being older.
00:56:37 And she was a masseuse, right?
00:56:39 Because that was one of the guises which they got
00:56:41 in order to sexually traffic these women.
00:56:43 And she was like, Bill was like complaining about his neck.
00:56:45 And she’s like, give Bill Clinton a massage, right?
00:56:47 So now there’s a photo of an underage girl
00:56:49 giving a massage to the former president
00:56:51 of the United States.
00:56:52 I don’t think he knew, right?
00:56:54 But like, that looks bad.
00:56:56 And so this is kind of what we’re getting at,
00:56:59 which is that you’re setting it all up
00:57:01 and creating those preconditions or like Prince Andrew.
00:57:04 Do I think Prince Andrew knew
00:57:05 that Virginia Gouffre was underage?
00:57:08 I don’t know.
00:57:10 Probably knew she was pretty young,
00:57:11 which I think is, you know, skeevy enough
00:57:13 where you’re a fucking Prince, you probably know better.
00:57:15 But I don’t think he knew she was underage
00:57:18 or maybe he did.
00:57:19 And if he did, then he’s even more of a piece of shit
00:57:21 than I thought.
00:57:22 But when we look at these things,
00:57:25 the stuff I’m more interested in is like
00:57:27 what you were talking about.
00:57:28 I’m like, Bill Gates, how do you get the richest man
00:57:31 in the world in your house?
00:57:33 Like under what, and Gates is like,
00:57:35 he was talking about financing and all this.
00:57:37 I’m like, you don’t have access to money or bankers?
00:57:40 Like you’re the richest man in the world.
00:57:42 You can call Goldman Sachs anytime you want on a hotline.
00:57:46 Like, why do you need, that’s where I start again
00:57:49 to get more conspiratorial because I’m like,
00:57:51 Bill, dude, you have the gold credit, right?
00:57:54 Like you don’t need Epstein to create
00:57:56 some complicated financing structure.
00:57:59 Or Leon Black, like what is 2015, 2009?
00:58:04 I mean, this is very recent stuff.
00:58:06 Or, and this is the part that really got me
00:58:08 as I read the department,
00:58:09 I think it’s called the Department of Financial Service
00:58:11 report around Deutsche Bank with Epstein.
00:58:15 They knew he was a criminal.
00:58:16 They solicited his business,
00:58:18 explicitly knew that his business meant access
00:58:22 to other high net worth individuals,
00:58:24 consistently doled money out from his account
00:58:27 for hush payments to women in Europe and prostitution rings.
00:58:31 They knew all of this within the bank.
00:58:33 It was elevated multiple times.
00:58:35 Here was the other one.
00:58:36 One of Epstein’s associates was like,
00:58:38 hey, how much money can we take out
00:58:40 before we hit the automatic sensor
00:58:42 before you have to tell the IRS?
00:58:44 And that question by their own standards
00:58:47 is supposed to result in a notification to the feds
00:58:51 and they never did it.
00:58:52 And he was withdrawing like $2 million of cash
00:58:54 in five years for tips to, I’m like, okay,
00:58:58 like something’s going on here.
00:59:00 Like, you see what I’m saying?
00:59:01 There’s a lot of signs that make you think
00:59:03 that there’s a bigger thing at play than just the man,
00:59:08 that there’s some, it does look like a larger organization
00:59:12 is using this front, right?
00:59:15 Again, I don’t know.
00:59:16 I truly don’t know.
00:59:17 And I’m not willing to use the certainty,
00:59:19 which I think a lot of people online are,
00:59:20 to say like, it wants 100%.
00:59:22 The certainty is always the problem
00:59:23 because that’s probably why I hesitate
00:59:26 to touch conspiracy theories
00:59:28 is because I’m allergic to certainty in all forms.
00:59:31 In politics, any kind of discourse.
00:59:33 And people are so sure, in both directions, actually,
00:59:37 it’s kind of hilarious.
00:59:39 Either they’re sure that the conspiracy theory,
00:59:43 particularly whatever the conspiracy theory is, is false.
00:59:45 Like they almost dismiss it like,
00:59:47 like they don’t even want to talk about it.
00:59:50 It’s like the people,
00:59:51 like the way they dismiss that the earth is flat.
00:59:54 Most scientists are like,
00:59:56 they don’t even want to like hear
00:59:59 what the flat earthers are saying.
01:00:02 They don’t have like zero patience for it,
01:00:05 which is like, maybe in that case is deserved.
01:00:09 But everything else, you really like have empathy.
01:00:14 Like consider the fact, you have,
01:00:16 okay, this is weird to say,
01:00:18 but I feel like you have to consider
01:00:22 that the earth may be flat for like one minute.
01:00:26 Like you have to be empathetic.
01:00:27 You have to be open minded.
01:00:29 I don’t see a lot of that
01:00:30 through our cultural taste makers and more.
01:00:32 And that really is what concerns me the most.
01:00:35 Cause it’s just another manifestation
01:00:37 of all of our problems.
01:00:38 Is that we have this completely bifurcating economy,
01:00:41 bifurcating culture, literally,
01:00:44 in terms of we have the middle of the country
01:00:46 and then we have the coast.
01:00:47 And in terms of the population, it’s almost 50, 50.
01:00:51 And with increasing mega cities and urban culture,
01:00:55 like urban monoculture of LA, New York and Chicago
01:00:58 and DC and Boston and Austin,
01:01:01 relative to how an entire other group
01:01:04 of Americans live their lives,
01:01:05 or even the people within them
01:01:07 who aren’t rich and upwardly mobile,
01:01:09 how they live their lives is just completely separating.
01:01:12 And all of our language and communication
01:01:14 in mass media and more is to the top.
01:01:16 And then everybody else is forgotten.
01:01:18 Do you think when you dig to the core,
01:01:21 there is a big gap between left and right?
01:01:25 Is that division that’s perceived currently real
01:01:30 or are most people center left and center right?
01:01:33 It’s so interesting
01:01:34 because that’s such a loaded term, center left.
01:01:37 What does that mean?
01:01:39 Like to you, I think the way you’re thinking of it is,
01:01:42 I’m not like a, well, even this,
01:01:46 like I’m not a radical socialist,
01:01:49 but I’m marginally left on cultural issues
01:01:54 and economic issues.
01:01:56 This is how we’ve traditionally understood things.
01:01:59 And then in popular discourse, like center right,
01:02:02 like what does it mean to be center right?
01:02:03 Like I am marginally right on social issues
01:02:08 and marginally right on economic issues.
01:02:10 But that’s just not, like if you look at survey data,
01:02:14 for example, like stimulus checks,
01:02:18 people who are against stimulus checks are conservative.
01:02:20 Well, 80% of the population is for a stimulus check.
01:02:23 So that means a sizable number of Republicans
01:02:26 are for stimulus checks.
01:02:27 Same thing happens on like a wealth tax.
01:02:30 The same thing happens on, okay, Florida voted for Trump,
01:02:35 3.1%, more than Barack Obama, 2008,
01:02:39 on the same day passes a $15 minimum wage at 67%.
01:02:44 So what’s going on?
01:02:45 So that’s why I.
01:02:46 What is going on?
01:02:47 Oh, that’s my entire career.
01:02:50 But it seems like, so that’s fascinating.
01:02:53 Conversation is different than the policies.
01:02:57 Well, it’s different than reality.
01:02:59 That’s what I would say,
01:02:59 which is that the way we have to understand
01:03:02 American politics today, it didn’t always
01:03:05 used to be this way, is it’s almost entirely long.
01:03:09 Basic, I would say the main divider is,
01:03:12 because even when you talk about class,
01:03:14 this misses it in terms of socioeconomics,
01:03:16 it’s around culture, which is that it’s basically,
01:03:20 if you went to a four year degree granting institution,
01:03:24 you are part of one culture.
01:03:25 If you didn’t, you’re part of another.
01:03:27 I don’t wanna erase the 20% or whatever of people
01:03:31 who did go to a college degree who are Republicans
01:03:33 or vice versa, et cetera, but I’m saying on average,
01:03:37 in terms of the median way that you feel,
01:03:39 we’re basically bifurcating along those lines.
01:03:43 And because people get upset, be like,
01:03:44 oh, well, there are rich people who vote for Trump.
01:03:47 And I’m like, yeah, but you know who they are?
01:03:50 They’re like plumbers or something.
01:03:52 They’re people who make $100,000 a year,
01:03:55 but they didn’t go to a four year college degree
01:03:57 and they might live who are in a place
01:04:00 which is not an urban metro area.
01:04:02 And then at the same time, you have like a Vox writer
01:04:05 who makes like 30 grand,
01:04:08 but they have a lot more cultural power
01:04:10 than like the plumber.
01:04:11 So you have to think about where exactly that line is.
01:04:15 And I think in general, that’s the way that we’re trending.
01:04:18 So that’s why when I say like, what’s going on,
01:04:21 are we divided?
01:04:22 Yeah, like, but it’s not left and right.
01:04:24 I mean, like, and that’s why I hate these labels.
01:04:26 So it’s more just red and blue like teams.
01:04:29 They’re arbitrary teams.
01:04:31 So how arbitrary are these teams,
01:04:33 I guess is another.
01:04:34 Completely arbitrary.
01:04:35 So, well, you kind of imply that there’s,
01:04:37 I don’t know if you’re sort of in post analyzing the patterns
01:04:41 because it seems like there’s a network effects
01:04:45 of like, you just pick the team red or blue
01:04:48 and it might have to do with college.
01:04:50 You might have to do all of those things,
01:04:51 but like, it seems like it’s more about
01:04:56 just the people around you.
01:04:58 Correct.
01:04:59 So less than whether you went to college or not.
01:05:01 I mean, it’s almost like, seems like,
01:05:04 it’s almost like a weird, like network effects that are hard.
01:05:08 There’s certain strong patterns you’re identifying,
01:05:11 but I don’t know.
01:05:13 It’s sad to think that it might be just teams
01:05:15 that have nothing to do with what you actually believe.
01:05:18 Well, it is, Lex.
01:05:20 Look, I mean, I don’t want to believe that,
01:05:22 but the data points me to this, which especially 2020,
01:05:25 I’m one of the people chief among them.
01:05:28 I will own up to it here.
01:05:29 I was totally wrong about why Trump was elected in 2016.
01:05:33 I believed and based a lot of my public commentary beliefs
01:05:36 on this, Trump was elected because of a rejection
01:05:40 of Hillary Clinton neoliberalism on the back
01:05:43 of a pro worker message, which was anti immigration.
01:05:48 It was its pillar, but alongside of it was a rejection
01:05:51 of free trade with China and generally
01:05:56 of the political correctness and globalism,
01:05:58 which has been come in through the uniparty
01:06:02 and same thing here with the military industrial complex
01:06:05 and endless war, he rejected all of that.
01:06:08 Wait, what’s wrong with that prediction?
01:06:10 It’s wrong, man.
01:06:11 And the reason I know this is that it sounds right.
01:06:14 I wish it, I honestly wish it was true,
01:06:16 but here’s the truth.
01:06:17 Trump actually governed largely as a neoliberal Republican
01:06:22 who was meaner online and who departed from orthodoxy
01:06:26 in some very important ways.
01:06:27 Don’t get me wrong.
01:06:28 I will always support the trade war with China.
01:06:31 I will always support not expanding the wars
01:06:33 in Afghanistan and in Iraq.
01:06:35 I will support him moving the Overton window
01:06:38 on a million different things and revealing once
01:06:40 and for all that GOP voters don’t care
01:06:42 about economic orthodoxy necessarily.
01:06:45 But here’s what they do care about.
01:06:47 Trump got more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016,
01:06:50 despite not delivering largely for all the Trump people
01:06:54 out there on that agenda.
01:06:56 He wasn’t more pro union, but he won more union votes.
01:06:59 He wasn’t necessarily more pro worker,
01:07:02 but he actually won more votes in Ohio than he did in 2016.
01:07:07 And he won more Hispanic votes than despite being
01:07:10 all the immigration rhetoric, et cetera.
01:07:13 Here’s why, it’s about the culture,
01:07:16 which is that the culture war is so hot
01:07:19 that negative partisanship is at such high levels.
01:07:22 All of the vote is geared upon what the other guy
01:07:26 might do in office.
01:07:26 And there’s a poll actually just came out
01:07:28 by Echelon Insights.
01:07:29 Crystal and I were talking about it on Rising,
01:07:31 that number one concern amongst Democratic voters
01:07:34 is Trump voters, number one concern.
01:07:37 Not issues like Trump voters.
01:07:41 And number two is white supremacy.
01:07:43 And so like, which is basically code for Trump voters.
01:07:47 And is the same true for the other side?
01:07:48 Also on the right, the number one concern
01:07:50 is illegal immigration.
01:07:52 And number, I think, three or four or whatever is Antifa,
01:07:56 which is code for Democrats.
01:07:58 At least on the right is a policy kind of thing.
01:08:00 Well, yeah, it’s funny.
01:08:01 I saw Ben Shapiro was talking about this.
01:08:03 But the reason why I would functionally say it’s the same
01:08:06 is because, I mean, you can believe whether it’s true or not.
01:08:10 I think it actually largely is true.
01:08:11 But a lot of GOP voters feel like a lot of illegal
01:08:15 immigration is code for people who are coming in,
01:08:17 who are gonna be legalized and are gonna go vote Democrat.
01:08:19 Like, I can just explain it from their point of view.
01:08:22 So like, what does that actually mean?
01:08:25 Each other, like each other,
01:08:27 which is that the number one concern is the other person.
01:08:30 So negative partisanship has never been higher.
01:08:33 And I think people who had my thesis
01:08:36 in terms of why Trump was elected in 2016,
01:08:38 you have to grapple with this.
01:08:39 Like, how did he win 10 million more votes?
01:08:43 He came 44,000 votes away from winning the presidency
01:08:45 across three states.
01:08:46 Like, I don’t, none of our popular discourse reflects
01:08:50 that very stark reality.
01:08:51 And I think so much of it is people really hate liberals.
01:08:57 Like, they just really hate them.
01:08:59 And I was driving through rural Nevada before the election.
01:09:04 And I was like, literally in the middle of nowhere.
01:09:06 And there was this massive sign
01:09:08 this guy had out in front of his house.
01:09:10 And it just said, Trump, colon, fuck your feelings.
01:09:14 And I was like, that’s it.
01:09:16 That is why people voted for Trump.
01:09:18 And I don’t want to denigrate it because they truly feel
01:09:21 they have no cultural power in America,
01:09:24 except to raise the middle finger to the elite class
01:09:28 by pressing the button for Trump.
01:09:30 I get that.
01:09:31 That’s actually a totally rational way to vote.
01:09:35 It’s not the way I wish we did vote,
01:09:37 but like, you know, that’s not my place to say.
01:09:40 So this is interesting.
01:09:41 If you could just psychoanalyze,
01:09:43 I’m again, probably naive about this,
01:09:46 but I’m really bothered by the hatred of liberals.
01:09:52 It’s this amorphous monster that’s mocked.
01:09:57 It’s like the Shapiro liberal tears.
01:10:00 And I’m also really bothered by
01:10:05 probably more of my colleagues and friends,
01:10:07 the hatred of Trump.
01:10:09 Yeah, the Trump and white supremacists.
01:10:15 So apparently there’s 70 million white supremacists,
01:10:19 75 million, sorry.
01:10:21 There’s millions of white supremacists.
01:10:25 And apparently whatever liberal is,
01:10:27 I mean, literally liberal has become
01:10:31 equivalent to white supremacists
01:10:33 in the power of negativity it arouses.
01:10:36 I don’t even know what those,
01:10:38 I mean, honestly, they’ve become swears essentially.
01:10:42 Is that, I mean, how do we get out of this?
01:10:46 Because that’s why I just don’t even say anything
01:10:49 about politics online.
01:10:50 Cause it’s like, really?
01:10:53 Like you can’t, here’s what happens.
01:10:58 Anything you say that’s like thoughtful,
01:11:01 like, hmm, I wonder, immigration, something.
01:11:05 I wonder like why we have these many,
01:11:11 we allow these many immigrants in
01:11:13 or some version of the like thinking through
01:11:16 these difficult policies and so on.
01:11:18 They immediately tried to find like a single word
01:11:22 in something you say that can put you in a bin
01:11:24 of liberal or white supremacists
01:11:28 and then hammer you to death
01:11:30 by saying you’re one of the two.
01:11:32 And then everybody just piles on happily
01:11:35 that we finally nailed this white supremacist or liberal.
01:11:39 And that, is this some kind of weird
01:11:42 like feature of online communication
01:11:44 that we’ve just stumbled upon?
01:11:45 Is there a way or is it possible to argue
01:11:48 that this is like a feature, not a bug?
01:11:51 Like, this is a good thing?
01:11:53 Yeah, well, look, I just think it’s a reflection
01:11:55 of who we are.
01:11:56 People like to blame social media.
01:11:57 I think we’re just incredibly divided right now.
01:11:59 I think we’ve been divided like this for the last 20 years.
01:12:02 And I think that, the reason I focus almost 99%
01:12:06 of my public commentary on economics
01:12:08 is because you asked an important question at the top.
01:12:10 How do we fix this?
01:12:12 What did I say about the stimulus checks?
01:12:14 Stimulus checks have 80% approval rating.
01:12:16 So that’s the type of thing.
01:12:18 If I was Joe Biden and I wanted to actually
01:12:20 heal this country, that’s the very first thing
01:12:22 I would have done when I came into office.
01:12:23 Same thing on when you look at anything
01:12:26 that’s gonna increase wages.
01:12:28 I said on the show, I was like, look,
01:12:30 I think Joe Biden will have an 80% approval rating
01:12:32 if he does two things.
01:12:34 If he gives every American a $2,000 stimulus check
01:12:37 and gives everybody who wants a vaccine a vaccine.
01:12:40 That’s it.
01:12:40 It’s pretty simple.
01:12:41 Cause here’s the thing.
01:12:43 I don’t really like Greg Abbott that much.
01:12:45 We have like very different politics.
01:12:46 I’m from Texas, but my parents got vaccinated
01:12:49 really quickly.
01:12:50 That means something to me.
01:12:51 I’m like, listen, I don’t really care
01:12:54 about a lot of the other stuff.
01:12:55 He got my family vaccinated.
01:12:58 Like that, well, I will forever remember that.
01:13:02 And that’s how we will remember the checks.
01:13:04 This is a part of a reason why Trump
01:13:06 almost won the election and why,
01:13:08 if the Republicans had been smart enough
01:13:10 to give him another round of checks,
01:13:13 100% would have won.
01:13:14 Which is that people were like, look,
01:13:17 I don’t really like Trump, but I got a check
01:13:19 with his name on it.
01:13:20 And that meant something to me and my family.
01:13:24 I’m not saying for all the libertarians out there
01:13:26 that they should go and like endlessly spend money
01:13:29 and buy votes.
01:13:31 What I am saying is lean into the majoritarian positions
01:13:36 without adding your culture war bullshit on top of it.
01:13:40 So for example, what’s the number one concern
01:13:42 that AOC says after the first round of checks got out?
01:13:45 Oh, the checks didn’t go to illegal immigrants.
01:13:47 I’m like, are you out of your fucking mind?
01:13:49 Like this is the most popular policy America
01:13:51 has probably done in 50 years,
01:13:55 since like Medicare and you’re ruining it.
01:14:00 And then on the right is the same thing,
01:14:02 which is that they’ll be like,
01:14:03 these checks are going to like, you know,
01:14:05 low level blah, blah, you know,
01:14:07 people who are lazy and don’t work.
01:14:10 I’m like, oh, there you go, you know,
01:14:11 like you’re just playing a caricature of what you are.
01:14:14 Like if you lean into those issues
01:14:16 and you got to do it clean,
01:14:17 this is what everybody hates about DC,
01:14:19 which is that Biden right now is doing the $1,400 checks,
01:14:23 but he’s looping it in with his COVID relief bill
01:14:26 and all that.
01:14:26 That’s his prerogative, that’s the Democrats prerogative.
01:14:28 They won the election, that’s fine.
01:14:30 But I’ll tell you what I would have done if I was him,
01:14:33 I would have come in and I would have said,
01:14:34 there’s five United States senators
01:14:36 who are on the record, Republicans,
01:14:37 who said they’ll vote for a $2,000 check.
01:14:39 And I would put that on the floor of the United States Senate
01:14:42 on my, you know, first or the first day possible.
01:14:46 And I would have passed it
01:14:47 and I would have forced those Republican senators
01:14:49 to live up to that, vote for this bill,
01:14:52 come to the Oval Office for a signing
01:14:54 so that the very first thing of my presidency
01:14:57 was to say, I’m giving you all this relief check,
01:15:00 this long national nightmare is over.
01:15:03 Take this money, do with it what you need.
01:15:05 We’ve all suffered together.
01:15:07 The thing about Biden is he has a portrait of FDR
01:15:10 and is in the Oval, which kind of bothers me
01:15:13 because he thinks of himself as an FDR like figure.
01:15:16 But this is, you have to understand the majesty of FDR.
01:15:20 We’re talking about a person
01:15:21 who passed a piece of legislation
01:15:23 five days after he became president.
01:15:25 And he passed 15 transformative pieces of legislation
01:15:29 in the first 100 days.
01:15:30 We’re on day like 34, 35, and nothing has passed.
01:15:35 The reconciliation bill will eventually become law,
01:15:37 but it will become law with no Republican votes.
01:15:40 And again, that’s fine.
01:15:42 But it’s not fulfilling that legacy
01:15:44 and the urgency of the action.
01:15:47 And the mandate, which I believe that history has handed,
01:15:50 it handed it to Trump and he fucked it up, right?
01:15:52 He totally screwed it up.
01:15:54 He could have remade America
01:15:55 and made us into the greatest country ever
01:15:57 coming out on the other side of this.
01:15:58 He decided not to do that.
01:16:01 I think Biden was again handed that like a scepter almost.
01:16:04 It’s like all you have to do,
01:16:05 all America wants is for you to raise it up high,
01:16:07 but he’s keeping it within the realm of traditional politics.
01:16:10 I think it’s a huge mistake.
01:16:11 Why, so this is, everything he’s saying
01:16:13 is makes perfect sense, like take, okay.
01:16:16 It’s like, it’s like, again, if the aliens showed up,
01:16:19 it’s like the obvious thing to do is like,
01:16:22 what’s the popular thing?
01:16:25 Like 80% of Americans support this.
01:16:28 Like do that clean.
01:16:31 Also do it like with like grace,
01:16:36 where you’re able to bring people together,
01:16:38 not like in a political way,
01:16:40 but like obvious common sense way.
01:16:44 Like just people, the Republicans and Democrats
01:16:48 just bring them together on a policy and like bold,
01:16:50 just hammer it without the dirt, without the mess,
01:16:54 whatever, try to compromise.
01:16:56 Just the yellow have a good Twitter account,
01:17:00 like loud, very clear.
01:17:03 We’re gonna give a $2,000 or a stimulus check.
01:17:06 Anyone who wants a vaccine gets a vaccine at scale.
01:17:11 What make America, let’s make America great again
01:17:14 by manufacturing.
01:17:16 Like we are manufacturing most of the world’s vaccine
01:17:20 because we’re bad motherfuckers.
01:17:22 And without maybe with more eloquence than that
01:17:26 and just do that.
01:17:27 Why haven’t we seen that for many, for several presidencies?
01:17:32 Because of coalitional politics
01:17:34 and they owe something to somebody else.
01:17:36 For example, Biden has got a lot
01:17:40 of the Democratic constituency has to satisfy
01:17:42 within this bill.
01:17:44 So there’s gonna be a lot of shit that goes in there,
01:17:47 state and local aid, all this stuff.
01:17:49 Again, I’m not even saying this is bad,
01:17:50 but he’s like, his theory is, and this isn’t wrong,
01:17:53 is like we’re gonna take the really popular stuff
01:17:56 and use it as cover for the more downwardly less popular.
01:18:00 And so the Dems could face the accusation,
01:18:03 the people who are on this side,
01:18:05 this is their pushback to me.
01:18:06 They’re like, why would we give away the most popular thing
01:18:08 in the bill and then we would never be able
01:18:10 to pass state and local aid, right?
01:18:13 Why would we do, and the Republicans do the same thing,
01:18:15 right, like Mitch McConnell, because he’s a fucking idiot,
01:18:18 decided to say, we’re gonna pair these $2,000 stimulus checks
01:18:21 with like section 230 repeal.
01:18:24 And it was like, oh, it’s obviously dead, right?
01:18:26 Like it’s not gonna happen together.
01:18:28 That’s largely why I believe Trump lost the election
01:18:31 and why those races down in Georgia
01:18:33 went the way that they did.
01:18:34 Obviously Trump had something to do with it,
01:18:36 but the reason why is they have longstanding things
01:18:39 that they’ve wanted to get done.
01:18:41 And in the words of Rahm Emanuel, never let a good crisis
01:18:43 go to waste and try and get as much as you possibly can done
01:18:47 within a single bill.
01:18:48 My counter would be this,
01:18:51 things have worked this way for too long,
01:18:53 which is that the reconciliation bill
01:18:55 is almost certainly going to be the only large
01:18:59 signature legislative accomplishment
01:19:02 of the Biden presidency.
01:19:03 That’s just how American politics works.
01:19:05 Maybe he gets one more, maybe one.
01:19:07 He has a second reconciliation bill,
01:19:09 then you’re running for midterms, it’s over.
01:19:12 I believe that by trying to change the paradigm
01:19:16 of our politics, leaning into exactly what I’m talking here,
01:19:19 you could possibly transcend that to a new one.
01:19:23 And I’m not naive.
01:19:24 I think people respond to political pressures.
01:19:27 And the way that we found this out was David Perdue,
01:19:30 who was just a total corporate dollar general CEO guy.
01:19:35 He was against the original $1,200 stimulus checks.
01:19:39 But then Trump came out, who’s the single most popular
01:19:42 figure in the Republican party.
01:19:43 He’s like, I want $2,000 stimulus checks.
01:19:45 And all of a sudden, Perdue running in Georgia is like,
01:19:49 yeah, I’m with President Trump,
01:19:51 I want a $2,000 stimulus check.
01:19:53 That was, if you’re an astute observer of politics,
01:19:55 to say, you can see there that you can force people
01:19:59 to do the right thing because it’s the popular thing.
01:20:02 And that if it’s clean, if you don’t give them
01:20:04 any other excuse, they have to do it.
01:20:07 So this is what we’ve been gaslit into our culture war
01:20:11 framework of politics.
01:20:13 And the reason it feels so broken and awful
01:20:17 is because it is, but there is a way out.
01:20:20 It’s just that nobody wants to be, it’s a game of chicken,
01:20:23 because maybe it is true.
01:20:24 Maybe we would never be able to get
01:20:26 your other democratic priorities,
01:20:27 your Republican priorities.
01:20:29 But I think that the country understands
01:20:31 that this is fucking terrible and would be willing
01:20:35 to support somebody who does it differently.
01:20:37 There’s just a lot of disincentives to not stay without,
01:20:41 there’s a lot of incentives to not stray
01:20:43 from the traditional path.
01:20:44 Yeah, is it also possible that the A students
01:20:49 are not participating?
01:20:51 Like we drove all of the superstars away from politics.
01:20:56 So like you just had this argument before.
01:20:58 I mean, everything you’re saying sort of rings true.
01:21:06 Like this is the obvious thing to do.
01:21:08 As a student of history, you can almost like tell,
01:21:10 like, if you look at great people in history,
01:21:14 this is what great leaders in history,
01:21:15 this is what they did.
01:21:17 It’s like clean, bold action, sometimes facing crisis,
01:21:23 but we’re facing a crisis right now.
01:21:24 No, we’re in a crisis.
01:21:25 We’ve been, exactly.
01:21:27 So why don’t we see those leaders step up?
01:21:33 I mean, you say that’s kind of like, it makes sense.
01:21:36 There’s a lot of different interests at play.
01:21:39 You don’t wanna risk too many things, so on and so forth.
01:21:41 But that sounds like the C students.
01:21:45 I don’t think it’s that.
01:21:47 I think it’s that the pipeline of politician creation
01:21:51 is just totally broken from beginning to end.
01:21:54 So it’s not that A students don’t wanna be politicians.
01:21:59 It’s basically the way that our current primary system
01:22:02 is constructed, is what is the greatest threat to you
01:22:05 as a member of Congress?
01:22:07 It’s not losing your reelection.
01:22:10 It’s losing your primary, right?
01:22:13 So that means, especially in a safe district,
01:22:16 you’re most concerned about being hit
01:22:18 if you’re a Republican from the right,
01:22:19 and if you’re a Democrat from the left
01:22:21 for not being a good enough one.
01:22:22 That’s actually what stops people,
01:22:25 heterodox people in particular, from winning primaries
01:22:28 because the people who vote in our primaries
01:22:30 are the party faithful.
01:22:32 That’s how you get the production.
01:22:35 It’s important to understand the production pipeline,
01:22:37 which is that, all right, I’m from Texas,
01:22:39 so that’s what I know best.
01:22:40 So it’s like, if you think in Texas,
01:22:43 if you’re a more heterodox like state legislature
01:22:46 or something who works with the left on this and does that,
01:22:49 you’re gonna get your ass beat in a Republican primary
01:22:52 because they’re gonna be like,
01:22:53 he worked with the left to do this, blah, blah,
01:22:56 take it out of context, and you’re screwed.
01:22:58 And then that means you never ascend up
01:23:01 the next level of the ladder,
01:23:03 and then so on and so forth all the way.
01:23:05 But I do think Trump changed everything.
01:23:08 This is why I have some hope,
01:23:09 which is that he showed me that all the people I listened to
01:23:14 were totally wrong about politics,
01:23:16 and that’s the most valuable lesson you could ever teach me,
01:23:18 which was, I was like, wait,
01:23:20 I don’t really have to listen to these people.
01:23:22 I’m like, they don’t know anything, actually.
01:23:24 That’s powerful, man.
01:23:26 I’m like, he did it.
01:23:27 This guy.
01:23:28 Even if he didn’t do anything with it.
01:23:32 It doesn’t matter.
01:23:33 He showed that it’s possible.
01:23:35 And that means a lot.
01:23:39 You’re absolutely right.
01:23:40 There’s young people right now
01:23:42 that kind of look, turn around and like, huh.
01:23:44 You’re like, wait, I don’t have to comb my hair
01:23:46 a certain way and go to law school and be an asshole
01:23:50 who everybody knows is an asshole.
01:23:52 And then get elected to state legislature.
01:23:55 I mean, look, who’s the number one person
01:23:57 in the New York City primary right now?
01:24:01 Andrew Yang.
01:24:02 He’s polling higher than everybody else in the race.
01:24:05 Look, maybe the polls are totally fucked
01:24:07 and maybe he’ll lose because of ranked choice voting
01:24:09 and all of that.
01:24:10 But I consider Andrew, I mean, I know him a little bit
01:24:12 and I’ve followed his candidacy from the very beginning.
01:24:15 I consider him an inspiration.
01:24:16 He’s the new generation of politics.
01:24:19 Like if I see who’s gonna be president 20 years from now,
01:24:22 it’s gonna be, I’m not saying it’s gonna be Andrew Yang.
01:24:24 I think it’s gonna be somebody like Andrew Yang
01:24:27 outside the political system
01:24:28 who talks in a totally different way, right?
01:24:31 Just a completely, one of my favorite things
01:24:34 that he said on the debate stage,
01:24:35 he’s like, look at us, we’re all wearing makeup.
01:24:37 It’s crazy, you know?
01:24:38 And he like, he like brought that, that he brought that.
01:24:42 And he’s writing like, yeah, why are they all wearing makeup?
01:24:44 He probably arguably hasn’t gone far enough almost.
01:24:47 Yes.
01:24:48 But he showed that it’s possible.
01:24:50 And then you see other, like AOC is a good example
01:24:53 of somebody, at least in my opinion,
01:24:55 is doing the same kind of thing, but going too far in like,
01:24:59 well, I don’t know, she’s doing the Trump thing,
01:25:01 but on the other side.
01:25:02 So I don’t know, what’s too far?
01:25:04 Who knows?
01:25:05 Don’t take a normative judgment of it.
01:25:05 Yeah.
01:25:06 I will tell you the future of politics
01:25:07 looks like AOC. Appreciate the art of it.
01:25:08 Right, no, I do.
01:25:09 Look, I don’t, I’m not a big AOC fan,
01:25:12 but she’s a genius, media genius,
01:25:14 once in a generation talent.
01:25:16 The way that she uses social media, Instagram,
01:25:19 and everybody on the right is like trying to copy her.
01:25:21 Like Matt Gaetz is like, I want to be the conservative AOC.
01:25:24 I’m like, it’s just not going to happen, dude.
01:25:25 Like you just don’t have it.
01:25:27 Like what she has, it’s like, it’s electric.
01:25:29 And Trump had that.
01:25:31 Like I’ve been to a Trump rally,
01:25:33 like to cover as a journalist,
01:25:35 and there’s nothing like it in America.
01:25:37 And Yang is similar.
01:25:39 It’s the same way where you’re like,
01:25:40 there is something going on here,
01:25:43 which is just like, I’ve been doing Obama rally.
01:25:45 I’ve been to a Clinton rally.
01:25:47 I’ve been to several normal politics.
01:25:50 It’s fine, you know, with Trump and with Yang,
01:25:54 it was, it’s another world.
01:25:56 It’s another world.
01:25:57 Yeah, Yang gang.
01:25:57 There’s probably thousands of people listening right now,
01:26:00 who are just like doing a slow clap.
01:26:03 Yes.
01:26:03 I know, I know.
01:26:05 Yang gang forever.
01:26:06 Okay, but yeah, I mean, my worst fear,
01:26:10 I prefer Andrew Yang kind of free improvisational idea,
01:26:19 exchange, all that versus AOC,
01:26:21 who I think no matter what she stands for
01:26:25 is a drama machine, creates dramas just like Trump does.
01:26:29 I would say my worst fear would be in 2024,
01:26:33 is AOC old enough?
01:26:34 It’d be AOC versus Trump.
01:26:36 I don’t think she’s old enough.
01:26:37 I think you’d have to be, I don’t know.
01:26:38 I think she’s 30.
01:26:39 So she needs five more years.
01:26:40 So probably not.
01:26:41 Yeah.
01:26:42 Okay, but that kind of, that’s, or Trump Jr.
01:26:45 Well, AOC probably wouldn’t win a Democratic primary.
01:26:47 So, I mean, look, Joe Biden is, you know,
01:26:49 he’s pretty much showed that.
01:26:50 That’s exactly what you’re saying.
01:26:52 This process grooms you over time.
01:26:55 You see the same thing in academia actually,
01:26:57 which is very interesting,
01:26:59 is the process of getting tenure.
01:27:02 There’s this, it’s like you’re being taught
01:27:06 without explicitly being taught
01:27:10 to behave in the way that everybody’s behaved before.
01:27:14 I’ve heard this, it was funny.
01:27:15 I’ve had a few conversations
01:27:17 that were deeply disappointing,
01:27:22 which involved statements like,
01:27:25 this is what’s good for your career.
01:27:28 This kind of conversation,
01:27:29 almost like mentor to mentee conversation,
01:27:33 or it’s like, there’s a grooming process in the same way.
01:27:36 I guess you’re saying the primary process
01:27:39 does the same kind of thing.
01:27:40 So, I mean, that’s what people have talked about
01:27:42 with Andrew Yang.
01:27:43 He was being suppressed by a bunch of different forces,
01:27:46 the mainstream media and all.
01:27:48 Just the Democratic, just that whole process
01:27:51 didn’t like the honesty that he was showing, right?
01:27:55 For now, but here’s my question to you.
01:27:57 People gotta see, look, Jordan Peterson
01:27:59 is one of the most famous people in America, right?
01:28:01 Like you have a massive podcast.
01:28:03 You’re more famous than half, 99% of the people at MIT.
01:28:07 So like, from that perspective, everything has changed.
01:28:10 And somewhere out there,
01:28:12 there’s a student who’s taking notice.
01:28:14 And I’ve noticed that with my own career,
01:28:16 everybody thought I was crazy
01:28:17 for doing this show with Crystal, The Hill.
01:28:19 They thought I was nuts.
01:28:19 They’re like, what are you doing?
01:28:21 You’re a White House correspondent.
01:28:22 You’ve got a job forever.
01:28:24 The other job offer I had
01:28:25 was being a White House correspondent.
01:28:27 And people thought I was nuts
01:28:29 for not just sticking there and aging out within Washington,
01:28:34 pining for appearances on Fox News and CNN and MSNBC.
01:28:39 But I hated it.
01:28:40 I just hated doing it.
01:28:41 I did not wanna be a company man, like a Washington man,
01:28:44 who’s one of those guys who like brags to his friends
01:28:47 about how many times he’s been on Fox or whatever,
01:28:49 mostly because I just have a rebellious streak
01:28:51 and I hate being at the subject of other people.
01:28:55 I created something new,
01:28:56 which a lot of people watch to get their news.
01:28:58 And I noticed that younger people
01:29:00 who are almost all my audience,
01:29:02 they don’t really look up to any of the people
01:29:05 in traditional, right?
01:29:06 They don’t go and they’re not coming up and being like,
01:29:09 how do I be like Jim Acosta?
01:29:10 You know, they’re like, hey, how did you do what you do?
01:29:13 And the way you did it is by bucking the system.
01:29:16 So I think that we are at a total split point.
01:29:20 And look, there will always be a path for people.
01:29:23 Cause like, I don’t want people to over learn this lesson.
01:29:26 I have people who are like, I’m not gonna go to college.
01:29:27 And I’m like, well, just wait.
01:29:29 Yeah, like, I’m like, just like stop,
01:29:32 just like, just hold on a second.
01:29:34 But there will always be a path for the institutional
01:29:37 that will always be there for you.
01:29:39 But now there’s something else.
01:29:40 Now there’s another game in town.
01:29:42 And that’s more appealing to millions and millions
01:29:45 and millions and millions of people
01:29:46 who feel unserved by the corporate media,
01:29:50 CNN and these people,
01:29:52 possibly who feel unserved in the, you know, the faculty.
01:29:56 Like if you are an up and comer
01:29:59 who wants to teach as many young people as possible,
01:30:02 I think you should be on YouTube, right?
01:30:04 Like look at the Khan Academy guy,
01:30:05 that guy created a huge business.
01:30:07 So I just think we can be cynical
01:30:10 and like upset about what that system is,
01:30:12 but we should also have hope.
01:30:14 Like I have a lot of hope for what can be in the future.
01:30:16 Yeah, there’s a guy people should check out.
01:30:18 So my story is a little bit different
01:30:20 because I basically stepped aside
01:30:24 with the dream of being an entrepreneur
01:30:28 earlier in the pipeline
01:30:30 than like a legitimate, like senior faculty would.
01:30:34 There’s an example of somebody people should check out,
01:30:36 Andrew Huberman from Stanford, who’s a neuroscientist,
01:30:40 who’s as world class as it gets
01:30:42 in terms of like 10 year faculty,
01:30:45 just a really world class researcher.
01:30:48 And now he’s doing YouTube.
01:30:50 Yeah, I see him on Instagram.
01:30:51 Yeah.
01:30:52 And he’s great.
01:30:53 So he not just does Instagram, he now has a podcast
01:30:56 and he’s changing the nature of like,
01:31:00 I believe that Andrew might be the future of Stanford.
01:31:04 And for a lot, it’s funny, like he’s basically,
01:31:08 Joe Rogan is an inspiration to Andrew and to me as well.
01:31:13 And those ripple effects and Andrew is an inspiration
01:31:15 probably just like you’re saying to these young,
01:31:18 like 25 year olds who are soon to become faculty,
01:31:22 if we’re just talking about academia.
01:31:23 And the same is probably happening with government is,
01:31:27 funny enough, Trump probably is inspiring
01:31:31 a huge number of people who are saying, wait a minute,
01:31:34 I don’t have to play by the rules.
01:31:36 And I can think outside the box here and you’re right.
01:31:40 And the institutions we’re seeing
01:31:42 are just probably lagging behind.
01:31:44 So the optimistic view is the future
01:31:48 is going to be full of exciting new ideas.
01:31:50 So Andrew Young is just kind of the beginning
01:31:52 of this whole thing.
01:31:52 He’s the tip of the iceberg.
01:31:54 And I hope that iceberg doesn’t, it’s not this influencer.
01:31:57 One of the things that really bothers me,
01:32:01 I’ve gotten the chance, I should be careful here.
01:32:03 I don’t wanna, I love everybody,
01:32:05 but these people who talk about like,
01:32:09 how to make your first million or how to succeed.
01:32:13 And they’re so, I mean, yeah,
01:32:16 that makes me a little bit cynical
01:32:19 about, I’m worried that the people
01:32:23 that win the game of politics will be ones
01:32:26 that want to win the game of politics.
01:32:29 They are, they are, man.
01:32:31 And like we mentioned, AOC,
01:32:33 I hope they optimize for the 80% populist thing, right?
01:32:39 Like they optimize for that bad thing,
01:32:42 that history will remember you as the great man
01:32:44 or woman that did this thing,
01:32:46 versus how do I maximize engagement today
01:32:50 and keep growing those numbers?
01:32:51 The influencers are so, I’m so allergic to this, man.
01:32:56 They keep saying how many followers they have
01:32:58 on the different accounts.
01:33:00 And it’s like, I don’t think they understand.
01:33:04 Maybe I don’t understand.
01:33:05 I don’t really care.
01:33:07 I think it has destructive psychological effects.
01:33:13 One, like thinking about the number,
01:33:15 like getting excited, your number went from 100 to 101
01:33:19 and being like, and today went out to 105.
01:33:23 Whoa, that’s a big jump.
01:33:24 Then maybe like thinking this way,
01:33:26 like I wonder what I did, I’ll do that again.
01:33:28 In this way, one, it creates anxiety
01:33:31 and those psychological effects, whatever.
01:33:34 The more important thing is it prevents you
01:33:37 from truly thinking boldly in the long arc of history
01:33:42 and creatively, thinking outside the box,
01:33:45 doing huge actions.
01:33:48 And I actually, my optimism is in the sense
01:33:50 that that kind of action will beat out all the influencers.
01:33:54 Well, I don’t know, Lex, this is where my cynicism comes in.
01:33:58 So there’s a guy, Madison Cawthorn,
01:34:00 the youngest member of Congress.
01:34:02 And he, I don’t want to say got caught,
01:34:05 but there was like an email where he was like,
01:34:08 my staff is only oriented around comms.
01:34:11 Like he was basically saying,
01:34:12 he got basically caught saying like,
01:34:14 my staff is only centered on communications.
01:34:19 And that’s the right play.
01:34:21 If you do want to get the benefits
01:34:23 of our current electoral political and engagement system,
01:34:26 which is that what’s the best way to be known
01:34:29 within the right as a right wing politician.
01:34:32 It’s to be a culture warrior, go on Ben Shapiro’s podcast,
01:34:36 be one of the people on Fox News,
01:34:39 go on Sean Hannity’s show, go on Tucker’s show
01:34:41 and all of that, because you become a mini celebrity
01:34:45 within that world.
01:34:46 Left unsaid is that that world is increasingly shrinking
01:34:50 portion of the American population.
01:34:52 And they barely, they can’t even win a popular vote election,
01:34:56 let alone barely win, eke out an electoral college victory
01:34:59 in 2016.
01:35:01 Well, but the incentives are all aligned within that.
01:35:04 And it’s the same thing really on the left,
01:35:06 but you’re right, which is that,
01:35:08 ultimately, and look, this is why geniuses are geniuses
01:35:11 because they buck the short term incentives.
01:35:15 They focus on the long term, they bet big
01:35:18 and they usually fail.
01:35:19 But then when they get big, they succeed spectacularly.
01:35:24 The people I know who have done this the best
01:35:27 are like a lot of the crypto folks that I’ve spoken to.
01:35:30 Like some of the stuff they say, I’m like,
01:35:32 I don’t know if that’s gonna happen,
01:35:34 but look, they’re like billionaires, right?
01:35:36 And you’re like, so they were right.
01:35:38 The way I’ve heard it expressed is you can be wrong a lot,
01:35:43 but when you’re right, you get right big.
01:35:45 And I mean, I’ve seen this in Elon Musk’s career.
01:35:47 I mean, he took spectacular risk, like spectacular risk
01:35:52 and just doubled down, doubled down, doubled down,
01:35:55 doubled down, doubled down.
01:35:56 And you can kind of tell to him,
01:35:57 I mean, you know him better than I do,
01:35:59 but like from my observation,
01:36:00 I don’t think the money matters, right?
01:36:03 I just, like when I see him, I’m like, I don’t,
01:36:07 nobody works as hard as you do
01:36:08 and builds the way that you build
01:36:10 if it’s just about the money.
01:36:12 It just doesn’t happen.
01:36:13 Like nobody wills SpaceX into existence just for the money.
01:36:18 Like it’s not worth it, frankly, right?
01:36:19 Like he probably destroyed years of his life
01:36:21 and like mental sanity.
01:36:23 Money or attention or fame, none of that.
01:36:25 Yeah.
01:36:26 It’s not the primary priority.
01:36:26 Well, that’s what’s so appealing to me,
01:36:28 to me in particular about him, just like in how he built.
01:36:31 Like I read a biography of him
01:36:32 and just like the way that he constructed his life
01:36:34 and like we’re able to hyperfocus
01:36:36 in meeting after meeting and drill down
01:36:38 and also hire all the right people
01:36:40 who execute each one of his tasks discreetly
01:36:43 to his perfection is amazing.
01:36:45 Like that’s actually the mark of a good leader.
01:36:48 But I mean, if you think about his career,
01:36:50 the reason he’s a renegade is cause probably he was told
01:36:53 to like put it in an index fund or whatever.
01:36:55 Like whenever he made his like 29 million
01:36:57 and from PayPal, I don’t know how much he made.
01:36:59 And then just go along that road and he’s like, no.
01:37:01 So he succeeds spectacularly.
01:37:04 So you have to have somebody who’s willing to come in
01:37:07 and buck that system.
01:37:08 So for now, I think our politics are generally frozen.
01:37:12 I think that that model is gonna be most generally appealing
01:37:16 to the mean person, but somebody will come along
01:37:20 and we’ll change everything.
01:37:20 Yeah, I’m just surprised there’s not more of them.
01:37:22 Yeah.
01:37:23 On that topic, it’s now 20, what is it, 21?
01:37:28 Yes.
01:37:28 Let’s make some predictions that you can be wrong about.
01:37:31 Good.
01:37:33 What major political people are you thinking will run
01:37:38 in 2024, including Trump, junior, senior, or Ivanka?
01:37:44 I don’t know.
01:37:46 Any Trump.
01:37:47 Trump.
01:37:49 And who do you think wins?
01:37:52 I think Joe Biden will run again in 2024.
01:37:56 And I think he will run against someone
01:37:57 with the last name Trump.
01:37:59 I do not know whether that is Trump or Trump junior,
01:38:03 but I think one of those people will probably
01:38:06 be the GOP nominee in 2024.
01:38:08 Who is it?
01:38:09 Some prominent political figure, was it Romney?
01:38:11 Somebody like that said that Trump will win the primary
01:38:14 if he runs again.
01:38:15 Of course, that’s not even a question.
01:38:16 Trump is the single most popular figure
01:38:19 in the Republican party by orders of magnitude.
01:38:22 Still.
01:38:23 Oh, I mean, probably more, honestly.
01:38:25 There was a, actually, I can tell you
01:38:26 because I saw the data, which is that pre January 6th,
01:38:30 it was like 54% of Republicans wanted him to run again.
01:38:33 Then it went down eight points after January 6th,
01:38:37 two days later.
01:38:38 And then after impeachment, it went right back up to 54%.
01:38:42 So the exact same number is in February,
01:38:47 post impeachment vote, as it was after November.
01:38:50 Now look, yeah, again, surveys, bullshit, et cetera.
01:38:52 But like, that’s all the data we have.
01:38:54 That’s what I can point you to.
01:38:55 If Trump runs, he will be the nominee
01:38:57 and he will be the 2024 nominee.
01:39:00 I just don’t know if he wants to.
01:39:02 It really depends.
01:39:04 Do you think he wins?
01:39:05 After the Trump vaccine heals all of us,
01:39:09 do you think Trump wins?
01:39:10 It depends on how popular culture functions
01:39:12 over the next four years.
01:39:13 And I can tell you that they are,
01:39:15 because I don’t think Biden has that much to do with it.
01:39:17 Because again, Trump is not a manifestation
01:39:20 of an affirmative policy action.
01:39:22 It is a defensive bulwark wall against cultural liberalism.
01:39:29 So it’s like, this is why it doesn’t matter what Biden does.
01:39:33 If there are more riots,
01:39:35 if there is a more sense of persecution
01:39:38 amongst people who are more lean towards conservative
01:39:42 or like, hey, I don’t know about that, that’s crazy,
01:39:45 then he very well could win.
01:39:48 Okay, let’s say Joe Biden doesn’t run
01:39:50 and they put up like Kamala Harris,
01:39:51 I think he would beat her.
01:39:53 I don’t think there’s a question
01:39:54 that Trump would beat Kamala Harris in 2024.
01:39:57 And you don’t think anybody else,
01:39:59 I don’t know how the process works,
01:40:01 you don’t think anybody else on the Democratic side
01:40:03 can take the…
01:40:04 Well, how could you run against the sitting vice president?
01:40:07 It’s like, Joe Biden has a 98% approval rating
01:40:11 in the Democratic Party.
01:40:12 If he says, she is my heir,
01:40:14 I think enough people will listen to him
01:40:16 in a competitive primary or a noncompetitive primary.
01:40:19 And then there’s all these things
01:40:20 about how primary systems themselves are rigged,
01:40:23 the DNC could make it known
01:40:25 that they’ll blacklist anybody
01:40:26 who does try and primary Kamala Harris.
01:40:29 And look, I mean,
01:40:31 progressives aren’t necessarily all that popular
01:40:33 amongst actual Democrats,
01:40:34 like we found that out during the election.
01:40:37 There’s an entire constituency which loves Joe Biden
01:40:40 and Joe Biden level politics.
01:40:42 And so if he tells them to vote for Kamala,
01:40:44 I think she would probably get it.
01:40:47 But again, there’s a lot of game theory obviously happening.
01:40:49 Well, see, I think you’re talking about
01:40:52 everything you’re saying is correct
01:40:54 about mediocre candidates.
01:40:55 It feels like if there’s somebody like a really strong,
01:40:59 I don’t wanna use this term incorrectly,
01:41:01 but populist, somebody that speaks to the 80%
01:41:05 that is able to provide bold,
01:41:10 eloquently described solutions that are popular.
01:41:15 I think that breaks through all of this nonsense.
01:41:17 How?
01:41:18 How do they break through the primary system?
01:41:19 Cause the problem is the primary system is not populism.
01:41:22 It’s primary.
01:41:24 So it’s like.
01:41:24 But you don’t think they can tweet their way to.
01:41:27 Well, you have to be willing to win a GOP primary.
01:41:30 You basically have to be at,
01:41:32 whoever wins the GOP primary, in my opinion,
01:41:35 will be the person most hated by the left.
01:41:37 One of the people, things that people forget is,
01:41:40 you know who came in second to Trump?
01:41:41 Ted Cruz.
01:41:42 And the reason why is because Ted Cruz
01:41:44 was the second most hated guy by liberals in America.
01:41:48 A second to Trump.
01:41:49 They have nothing in policy in common.
01:41:51 But don’t you think this kind of brilliantly described
01:41:54 system of hate being the main mechanism
01:41:59 of our electoral choices,
01:42:02 don’t you think that just has to do with mediocre candidates?
01:42:08 Basically the field of candidates, including Trump,
01:42:11 including everybody was just like,
01:42:13 didn’t make anyone feel great.
01:42:16 It’s like, really?
01:42:17 This is what we have to choose from?
01:42:19 Maybe a Mark Cuban,
01:42:22 or like a Mark Cuban is a Democrat,
01:42:26 or it would have to be somebody like that.
01:42:29 Somebody who, because here’s the thing about Trump.
01:42:30 It’s not just that it was Trump.
01:42:32 He was so fucking famous.
01:42:34 Like people don’t realize he was so famous.
01:42:36 Like I, even when I first met Trump,
01:42:39 I met a couple of other presidents,
01:42:41 but when I met Trump, even I felt like kind of starstruck.
01:42:44 Cause I was like, yo, this is the guy from The Apprentice.
01:42:47 I’m like, this is the dude.
01:42:49 From The Apprentice?
01:42:50 Cause I’m like, my dad and I used to sit
01:42:53 and watch The Apprentice when I was in high school.
01:42:55 And then one of the guys was from College Station
01:42:57 where I grew up and we’re like,
01:42:58 oh my God, like that guy’s on The Apprentice.
01:43:00 Like it was a phenomenon.
01:43:02 There’s like that level.
01:43:03 It’s kind of like when I met Joe Rogan,
01:43:04 I’m like, holy shit, that’s Joe Rogan.
01:43:06 I don’t feel that way when I meet Mitt Romney,
01:43:08 or Tom Cotton, or Josh Hawley, I met all of them.
01:43:11 But there’s a lot of celebrities, right?
01:43:12 Do you think there’s some celebrities
01:43:13 you were not even thinking about that could step in?
01:43:15 The Rock?
01:43:16 So I was about to say, I think The Rock could do it,
01:43:19 but does he wanna do it?
01:43:20 I mean, it’s terrible.
01:43:21 Like it’s terrible gig.
01:43:23 It’s very hard to do.
01:43:25 I don’t know if The Rock necessarily has
01:43:27 like the formed policy agenda.
01:43:29 Cause then here’s the other problem.
01:43:31 What if we set ourselves up for a system
01:43:32 where like these people keep winning,
01:43:34 but like with Trump, they have no idea
01:43:35 how to run a government.
01:43:37 It’s actually really hard, right?
01:43:38 And you have to have the knowhow and the trust
01:43:41 to find the right people.
01:43:42 This is where the genius element comes in is,
01:43:46 you have to understand that front
01:43:48 and you have to understand how to execute discrete tasks.
01:43:52 Like this is the FDR.
01:43:54 This is why it’s so hard, like FDR, Lincoln, TR.
01:43:58 They were who they were and they live in history
01:44:00 and their name rings like for a reason.
01:44:04 And yeah, I mean, one of the most depressing lessons
01:44:07 I got from 2020 is at almost, it seems like in my opinion,
01:44:11 that we over learn the lesson of our success
01:44:15 and not of our failures.
01:44:16 For example, like we have this narrative in our head
01:44:19 that we always have the right person
01:44:21 at the right time during crisis.
01:44:23 And in some cases it was true.
01:44:25 We didn’t deserve Lincoln.
01:44:26 We didn’t deserve FDR.
01:44:28 We didn’t deserve a lot of presidents at times of crisis.
01:44:33 But then you’re like, okay, George W. Bush, 9 11,
01:44:36 that was terrible.
01:44:38 Reconstruction, Andrew Johnson, awful, right?
01:44:41 Like we had several periods in our history
01:44:44 where the crisis was there, they were called
01:44:48 and they did not show up.
01:44:50 And I really, it hadn’t happened in my lifetime
01:44:54 except for 9 11.
01:44:55 And even then you could kind of see that as an opportunity
01:44:58 for somebody like Obama to come in and fix it.
01:45:01 But then he didn’t do it.
01:45:02 And then Trump didn’t do it.
01:45:04 And you realize, I feel like our politics are most analogous
01:45:09 to like the 1910s, like all in terms of the Gilded Age,
01:45:13 in terms of that, remember there’s that long period
01:45:16 of presidents between like Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.
01:45:22 We were like, wait, like who was president?
01:45:24 Like, or even TR was like an exception
01:45:27 where you’ll have like Calvin Coolidge who like,
01:45:30 silent cow, Grover Cleveland.
01:45:33 That’s kind of how, if I think of us within history,
01:45:36 I feel like we’re in one of those times.
01:45:38 We’re just waiting.
01:45:39 It feels really important to us right now.
01:45:41 Like this is the most important moment in history,
01:45:43 but it might be.
01:45:44 It could just be a blip, right?
01:45:45 20, 30 year blip.
01:45:46 Like when you think about who was president
01:45:48 between 1890 and 19 before, I mean, yeah,
01:45:52 between like 1888 and 1910.
01:45:56 Like nobody really thinks about that period of America,
01:45:58 but like that was an entire lifetime for people, right?
01:46:01 Like what did they, how did they feel
01:46:03 about the country that they were in?
01:46:04 That’s hilarious.
01:46:05 That’s how I kind of think about where we are right now.
01:46:07 It’s funny to think.
01:46:08 I mean, I don’t want to minimize it,
01:46:09 but like we haven’t really gone
01:46:11 through a World War II style crisis.
01:46:13 So like, say that there is a crisis
01:46:17 in like several decades of that level, right?
01:46:21 Existential risks to a large portion of the world.
01:46:26 Then what will be remembered is World War II,
01:46:29 maybe a little bit about Vietnam
01:46:32 and then whatever that crisis is.
01:46:34 And this whole period that we see as dramatic,
01:46:35 even coronavirus.
01:46:37 Even 9 11.
01:46:38 Even 9 11, it’s like, cause you can look
01:46:41 at how many people died and all those kinds of things,
01:46:43 all the drama around the war on terror
01:46:45 and all those kinds of things.
01:46:47 Maybe Obama will be remembered
01:46:49 for being the first African American president,
01:46:52 but then like that’s, yeah, that’s fascinating
01:46:55 to think about, oh man, even Trump will be like,
01:46:59 oh, okay, cool.
01:47:00 That guy.
01:47:01 Yeah, like maybe he’d be remembered
01:47:03 as the first celebrity.
01:47:08 I mean, Reagan was already a governor, right?
01:47:10 Yeah, so like the first apolitical celebrity that was,
01:47:14 so maybe if there’s more celebrities in the future,
01:47:18 they’ll say that Trump was the first person
01:47:19 to pave the way for celebrities to win.
01:47:23 Oh man, yeah.
01:47:25 And yeah, I still hold that this era
01:47:29 will probably be remembered.
01:47:30 You know, people say I talk about Elon way too much,
01:47:34 but the reality is like, there’s not many people
01:47:37 that are doing the kind of things he’s doing
01:47:39 is why I talk about it.
01:47:41 I think this era, it’s not necessarily Elon and SpaceX,
01:47:44 but this era will be remembered by the new,
01:47:48 the like of the space exploration,
01:47:51 of the commercial of companies getting
01:47:54 into space exploration of space travel.
01:47:57 And perhaps like artificial intelligence
01:48:01 around social media, all those kinds of things,
01:48:04 this might be remembered for that.
01:48:06 But every, all the political bickering,
01:48:07 all that nonsense, that might be very well forgotten.
01:48:11 One way to think about it is that the internet is so young.
01:48:16 I think about it, so Jeff Jarvis,
01:48:18 he’s a media scholar I respect.
01:48:20 He’s not the only person to say this,
01:48:22 but many others have, which is that, look,
01:48:23 this is kind of like the printing press.
01:48:25 There was a whole 30 years war
01:48:27 because of the printing press.
01:48:29 It took a long time for shit to sort out.
01:48:31 I think that’s where we’re at with the internet.
01:48:33 Like at a certain level, it disrupts everything.
01:48:36 And that’s a good thing.
01:48:37 It can be very tumultuous.
01:48:39 I never felt like I was living through history
01:48:41 until coronavirus.
01:48:43 Like, you know, like until we were all locked down,
01:48:45 I was like, I’m living through history.
01:48:46 Like this, there’s this very overused cliche in DC
01:48:50 where every comm staffer wants you to think
01:48:52 that what their boss just did is history.
01:48:54 And I’ve always been like, this isn’t history.
01:48:56 This is some like stupid fucking bill, you know, whatever.
01:48:58 But like, that was the first time I was like,
01:49:00 this is history, like this right here.
01:49:03 Well, I was hoping, tragedy aside,
01:49:06 that this, I wish the primaries happened during coronavirus
01:49:10 so that we, because like, then we can see the,
01:49:14 so, okay, here’s a bunch of people facing crisis.
01:49:17 It’s an opportunity for a leader to step up.
01:49:20 Like, I still believe the optimistic view
01:49:22 is the game theory of like influencers
01:49:27 will always be defeated by actual great leaders.
01:49:31 So like, maybe the great leaders are rare,
01:49:34 but I think they’re sufficiently out there
01:49:36 that they will step up, especially in moments of crisis.
01:49:39 And coronavirus is obviously a crisis
01:49:43 where like, you know, mass manufacture of tests,
01:49:48 all kinds of infrastructure building
01:49:50 that you could have done in 2020,
01:49:52 there’s so many possibilities for just like bold action.
01:49:56 And none of that, even just,
01:50:00 forget actually doing the action, advocating for it.
01:50:04 Just saying like this, we need to do this.
01:50:07 And none of that, like the speeches that Biden made,
01:50:11 I don’t even remember a single speech that Biden made
01:50:14 because there’s zero bold, I mean, their strategy
01:50:17 was to be quiet and let Donald Trump.
01:50:21 Polarize the electorate.
01:50:23 Polarize the electorate and hope that results
01:50:25 in them winning because of the high unemployment numbers
01:50:30 and all those kinds of things,
01:50:31 as opposed to like, let’s go big,
01:50:34 let’s go with a big speech.
01:50:36 Like, you know, that, yeah,
01:50:39 it’s a lost opportunity in some sense.
01:50:42 So we talked a bunch about politics,
01:50:44 but one of the other interesting things
01:50:45 is that you’re involved with is,
01:50:48 or involved with defining the future of as journalism.
01:50:53 I suppose you can think of podcasts
01:50:55 as a kind of journalism,
01:50:56 but also just writing in general,
01:50:58 just whatever the hell the future of this thing looks like
01:51:02 is up to be defined by people like you.
01:51:05 So what do you think is broken about journalism
01:51:09 and what do you think is the future of journalism?
01:51:11 I think the future of journalism looks much more like
01:51:14 what we, you and I are doing here right now.
01:51:17 And journalism is gonna be downstream from a culture
01:51:20 that can be a good and a bad thing
01:51:22 depending on how you look at it.
01:51:23 We are gonna look at our media,
01:51:26 our media is gonna look much more like it did
01:51:29 pre mass media.
01:51:31 And the way that I mean that is that back in the 18,
01:51:35 in the 1800s in particular,
01:51:38 especially after the invention of the telegraph
01:51:40 when information itself was known.
01:51:43 So for example, like you and I don’t need to,
01:51:46 let’s say you and I are competing journalists.
01:51:47 You and I are no longer competing quote unquote
01:51:50 to tell the public X event happened.
01:51:54 All journalism today is largely explaining
01:51:58 why did X happen.
01:52:01 And part of the problem with that is that
01:52:04 that means that it’s all up for partisan interpretation.
01:52:08 Now you can say that that’s a bad thing.
01:52:09 I think it’s a great thing
01:52:11 because the highest level of literacy
01:52:13 and news viewership in America
01:52:17 was during the time of yellow journalism,
01:52:19 was during the time of partisan journalism.
01:52:22 Not a surprise.
01:52:23 People like to read the news from people
01:52:25 that they agree with.
01:52:26 You could say that’s bad, echo chambers, et cetera.
01:52:29 That’s the downside of it.
01:52:31 The upside is more people are more educated.
01:52:33 More people are interested in the news.
01:52:36 So I think the proliferation of mass media,
01:52:40 I mean, sorry, of this format
01:52:41 of niching, of not just long form.
01:52:45 Dude, I do updates on Instagram, which are five minutes.
01:52:48 Are you considered like Instagram, almost even Twitter?
01:52:51 Oh, of course, Twitter.
01:52:53 Twitter is where I get my news from.
01:52:54 I don’t read the paper.
01:52:55 I have literally, Twitter is my news aggregator.
01:52:57 It’s called my wire where I find out about hard events.
01:53:01 Like the president has departed the White House.
01:53:03 But not only that, I don’t know about you,
01:53:04 but I also looked at Twitter
01:53:06 to the exact thing you’re saying,
01:53:07 which is the response to the news,
01:53:09 like the thoughtful sounds ridiculous,
01:53:12 but you can be pretty thoughtful in a single tweet.
01:53:15 If you follow the right people, you can get that.
01:53:18 And so that is the future of media,
01:53:21 which is that the future of media
01:53:22 is it will be much larger amounts of people,
01:53:27 which are famous to smaller groups.
01:53:29 So Walter Cronkite’s never gonna happen again,
01:53:32 at least probably within our lifetimes,
01:53:34 where everybody in America knows who this guy is.
01:53:37 That age is over.
01:53:39 I think that’s a good thing
01:53:40 because now people are gonna get the news
01:53:42 from the people that they trust.
01:53:44 Yes, some of it will be opinionated.
01:53:46 I’m in my program.
01:53:49 Crystal and I are like, she’s coming from this view.
01:53:53 I’m coming from this view.
01:53:55 That’s our bias when we talk about information
01:53:57 and we’re gonna talk about the information
01:53:59 that we think is important.
01:54:00 And it has garnered a large audience.
01:54:02 I think that’s very much where the future is gonna be.
01:54:06 And the reason why I think that’s a good thing
01:54:08 is because people will be engaged more within it
01:54:13 rather than the current system
01:54:14 where news is highly concentrated, highly consolidated,
01:54:17 has group think,
01:54:19 has the same elite production pipeline problem
01:54:22 of everybody knows journalists all come
01:54:25 from the same socioeconomic background
01:54:27 and they all party together here in DC or in New York
01:54:30 or in LA or wherever,
01:54:31 and they’re part of the same monoculture
01:54:33 and that affects what they report.
01:54:37 This will cause a total dispersion of all of that.
01:54:40 The battle of our age is gonna be the guild
01:54:44 versus the non guild.
01:54:46 So like what we see right now
01:54:48 with the New York Times and Clubhouse,
01:54:50 this is a very, very, very, very, very intentional thing
01:54:54 that is happening,
01:54:55 which is that the Times talking
01:54:58 about unfettered conversations,
01:55:00 that’s happening on Clubhouse for people who aren’t aware.
01:55:03 This is important because they need
01:55:06 to be the fetters of conversation.
01:55:08 They need to be the inter agent.
01:55:11 That’s where they get their power.
01:55:12 They get their power from convincing Facebook
01:55:15 that they are the ones who can fact check stuff.
01:55:18 They are the ones who can tell you
01:55:20 whether something is right or wrong.
01:55:23 That battle over unimpeded conversation
01:55:27 and the explosion of a format
01:55:28 that you and I are doing really well in,
01:55:30 and then this more consolidated one,
01:55:32 which holds cultural power and elite power
01:55:35 and more importantly, money, right?
01:55:37 Over you and I, that’s the battle
01:55:39 that we’re all gonna play out.
01:55:40 Do you think unfettered conversations
01:55:41 have a chance to win this battle?
01:55:43 Yes, I do in the long run.
01:55:45 In the long run, the internet is simply too powerful.
01:55:48 But here’s the mistake everybody makes.
01:55:50 The New York Times will never lose.
01:55:52 It will just become one of us.
01:55:53 See.
01:55:54 You think so?
01:55:55 They already are.
01:55:56 They are the largest.
01:55:57 The daily?
01:55:57 The daily, look at the daily.
01:55:58 Not even that.
01:55:59 Think about it not in podcasting.
01:56:01 The Times is not a mass media product.
01:56:04 It is a subscription product
01:56:06 for upper middle class largely white liberals
01:56:10 who live the same circumstances
01:56:12 across the United States and in Europe.
01:56:15 There’s nothing wrong with that.
01:56:16 But here’s the thing.
01:56:17 You can’t be the paper of record
01:56:19 when you’re actually the paper
01:56:21 of upper middle class white America.
01:56:23 Your job is to report on the news from that angle
01:56:27 and deliver them the product that they want.
01:56:29 There’s nothing wrong with that.
01:56:30 Their stock price is higher than ever.
01:56:32 They’re making 10 times more money than they did
01:56:35 10 years ago, but it comes at the cost
01:56:38 of not having a mass application audience.
01:56:41 So like when people, I think people in our space
01:56:44 are always like, the New York Times is gonna be destroyed.
01:56:46 No, it’s actually even better.
01:56:48 They will just become one of us.
01:56:50 They already are.
01:56:51 They’re a subscription platform.
01:56:53 Well, yes, in terms of the actual mechanism.
01:56:54 But you know, New York Times is still,
01:56:58 and I don’t think I’m speaking about a particular sector.
01:57:00 I think it, as a brand, it does have the level
01:57:06 of credibility assigned to it still.
01:57:08 There’s politicization of it.
01:57:10 Totally.
01:57:11 But there’s a credibility.
01:57:13 Like it has much more credibility than,
01:57:16 forgive me, than I think you and I have.
01:57:18 No, you’re right.
01:57:19 In terms of your podcast, like people are not going
01:57:23 to be like, they’re gonna say at the New York Times
01:57:27 versus what you said on the podcast for an opinion.
01:57:33 I wonder in the sense of battles,
01:57:35 whether on Federated Conversations, whether Joe Rogan,
01:57:37 whether your podcast can become the,
01:57:41 have the same level of legitimacy or the flip side,
01:57:45 New York Times loses legitimacy to be at the same level
01:57:49 of in terms of how we talk about it.
01:57:52 It’s a long battle, right?
01:57:54 It’s gonna take a long time.
01:57:55 And I’m saying, this is where I think the end state is going
01:57:58 and look at what the Times is doing.
01:57:59 They’re leaning into podcasting for a reason,
01:58:01 but not just podcasting as in NPR level,
01:58:06 like here’s what’s happening.
01:58:07 Michael Barbaro is a fucking celebrity, right?
01:58:10 The guy who does the daily.
01:58:11 That guy’s famous amongst these people
01:58:14 because they’re like, oh my God, I love Michael.
01:58:16 Like, I love the way he does this stuff.
01:58:18 Again, that’s fine.
01:58:19 More people are listening to the news.
01:58:20 I think that’s a good thing.
01:58:22 And then who else do they hire?
01:58:23 Ezra Klein from Vox, Kara Swisher, also from Vox,
01:58:27 who does Pivot, which is an amazing podcast.
01:58:30 Or Jane Coaston, same thing.
01:58:32 It’s personalities who are becoming bundled together
01:58:36 within this brand, right?
01:58:38 Here’s, okay, maybe I’m just a hater.
01:58:42 Cause I love podcasting from the beginning.
01:58:45 I love Green Day before the recall, man.
01:58:48 But I am bothered by it.
01:58:50 Like why doesn’t Kara Swisher, she’s done successfully.
01:58:53 I think in her own, no, she was always a part
01:58:55 of some kind of institution.
01:58:56 I’m not sure.
01:58:57 But she started her own thing, I think.
01:59:00 It would.
01:59:00 Recode, right, yeah.
01:59:01 Recode, I don’t know if that’s her own thing.
01:59:03 Yeah, yeah.
01:59:04 So she was very successful there.
01:59:06 Why the hell did she join the New York Times
01:59:08 with the new podcast?
01:59:09 Why is Michael Barbaro not do his own thing?
01:59:13 Cause he gets paid and because he has,
01:59:14 he wants the elite cache that you just referenced
01:59:17 within his social circle in New York,
01:59:19 which is that I think the biggest mistake
01:59:21 that some of the venture people make is
01:59:23 if we give everybody the tools
01:59:25 that those people are all gonna leave
01:59:27 to like go substack and go independent,
01:59:29 within their social circle,
01:59:31 sacrificing some money from being independent is worth it
01:59:35 to be a part of the New York Times.
01:59:38 That’s sad to me because it propagates old thinking,
01:59:43 like it propagates old institutions.
01:59:46 And you could say that New York Times
01:59:47 is going to evolve quickly and so on,
01:59:49 but I would love it if there was a mechanism
01:59:54 for reestablishing, like for building new New York Times
01:59:58 in terms of public legitimacy.
01:59:59 And I suppose that’s a wishful thinking
02:00:02 cause it takes time to build trust in institutions
02:00:06 and it takes time to build new institutions.
02:00:08 My main thing I would say is public legitimacy
02:00:10 as a concept is not gonna be there in mass media anymore
02:00:13 because of the balkanization of audiences.
02:00:15 I mean, think about it, right?
02:00:16 Like this is like Lesion, the classic stuff
02:00:20 around a thousand true fans,
02:00:21 or no, sorry, like a hundred true fans even now.
02:00:24 Like you can make a living on the internet
02:00:26 just talking to a hundred people.
02:00:27 If as long as they’re all high frequency traders,
02:00:29 some of the highest paid people on substack,
02:00:32 they don’t have that many subs.
02:00:34 It’s just that they’re Wall Street guys, right?
02:00:36 So people pay a lot of money.
02:00:37 Again, that’s great.
02:00:38 So what you will have is an increasing balkanization
02:00:42 of the internet, of audiences and of niches.
02:00:46 People will become increasingly famous within us.
02:00:48 You will become astoundingly famous.
02:00:51 I’m sure you’ve noticed this with your fan base.
02:00:52 I certainly have with mine.
02:00:53 Like 99% of people have no idea who I am,
02:00:56 but when somebody meets, they’re like,
02:00:57 oh my God, I watch your show every day, right?
02:01:01 Like it’s the only thing I watch for news, right?
02:01:04 Like instead of casually famous, if that makes sense,
02:01:07 but like, oh yeah, it’s like Alec Baldwin, you know?
02:01:09 Whoa, shit, that’s Alec Baldwin.
02:01:10 But you’re not like, oh shit, I love you Alec Baldwin.
02:01:14 This is a Ben Smith of the New York Times,
02:01:16 actually he wrote this column.
02:01:17 He’s like, the future is everybody will be famous,
02:01:20 but only to a small group of people.
02:01:22 And I think that is true.
02:01:24 But again, I don’t decry it.
02:01:26 I think it’s great because I think that the more
02:01:28 that that happens, the more engaged people will be
02:01:31 and it empowers different voices to be able to come in
02:01:34 and then possibly, I wouldn’t say destroy,
02:01:36 but compete against.
02:01:37 I mean, look at Joe.
02:01:39 Joe is more powerful than CNN and MSNBC and Fox
02:01:44 all put together.
02:01:45 That gives me like immense inspiration.
02:01:47 Like he created the space for me to succeed.
02:01:50 And I told him that when I met him, I was like,
02:01:52 dude, like I listened to his podcast when I was like young.
02:01:55 And like, and I remember like when I got to meet him
02:01:58 and all that, and I told him this on this pod,
02:02:00 I was like, I didn’t know people were millions
02:02:02 were willing to listen to a guy talk about chimps
02:02:05 for three straight hours, including me.
02:02:08 I didn’t know that I could be one of those people.
02:02:09 Yeah, me too.
02:02:10 I learned something about myself from his show, yeah.
02:02:12 And so by creating that space, I’d be like, wait,
02:02:16 there’s a hunger here.
02:02:17 Like he showed us all the way
02:02:20 and none of us will ever again be as famous as Rogan
02:02:22 because he was the first and that’s fine
02:02:24 because he created the umbrella ecosystem
02:02:27 for us all to thrive.
02:02:29 That is where I see like a great amount of hope
02:02:32 within that story.
02:02:33 Yeah, and the cool thing, he also supports that ecosystem.
02:02:35 He’s such a. He’s so generous.
02:02:38 One of the things he paved the way out for me
02:02:40 is to show that you can just be honest, publicly honest,
02:02:47 and not jealous of other people’s success,
02:02:51 but instead be supportive and all those kinds of things,
02:02:54 just like loving towards others.
02:02:56 He’s been an inspiration.
02:02:57 I mean, to the comics community,
02:03:01 I think there are a bunch of, before that,
02:03:04 I think there were all a bunch of competitive haters
02:03:06 towards each other.
02:03:07 Yeah, and now he’s like just injected love.
02:03:11 They’re like, they’re still like many are still resistant,
02:03:13 but they’re like, they can’t help it
02:03:15 because he’s such a huge voice.
02:03:17 He like forces them to be like loving towards each other.
02:03:20 And the same, I tried to,
02:03:22 one of the reasons I wanted to start this podcast
02:03:26 was to try to, I wanted to be like do what Joe Rogan did,
02:03:31 but for the scientific community,
02:03:33 like my little circle of scientific community of like,
02:03:37 like let’s support each other.
02:03:38 Yeah, well, like Avi Loeb,
02:03:40 I would have no idea who he was if it wasn’t for you.
02:03:42 I mean, I assume you put him in touch with Joe.
02:03:44 He went on Joe’s show.
02:03:45 I had him on my show.
02:03:46 Like millions of people would have no idea who he was
02:03:49 if it wasn’t for you.
02:03:50 Just by the way, in terms of deep state
02:03:51 and shadow government, Avi Loeb has to do with aliens.
02:03:54 You better believe Joe.
02:03:56 Dude, the last thing I sent to him
02:03:58 was the American Airlines audio.
02:04:00 Did you see that?
02:04:02 The pilots who were, oh my God, dude, this is amazing.
02:04:04 So like, this American Airlines flight crew
02:04:09 was over New Mexico, this happened five or six days ago.
02:04:12 And the guy comes and he goes,
02:04:14 hey, do you have any targets up here?
02:04:16 A large cylindrical object just flew over me.
02:04:20 Okay, so this happens, so this happens.
02:04:23 Then a guy or like a radio catcher
02:04:26 records this and posts it online.
02:04:28 American Airlines confirms that this is authentic audio.
02:04:33 And they go, all further questions
02:04:35 should be referred to the FBI.
02:04:37 So then, okay, American Airlines just confirmed
02:04:39 it’s a legitimate transmission.
02:04:41 FBI, then the FAA comes out and says,
02:04:45 we were tracking no objects in the vicinity of this plane
02:04:51 at the time of the transmission.
02:04:52 So the only plausible explanation that online sleuths
02:04:55 have been able to say is maybe he saw a Learjet,
02:04:58 which was, you know, using like open source data.
02:05:02 FAA rules that out.
02:05:03 So what was it?
02:05:05 He saw a large cylindrical object.
02:05:07 While he was mid flight, American Airlines,
02:05:09 but you can go online, listen to the audio yourself.
02:05:12 This is a 100% no shit transmission
02:05:15 confirmed by American Airlines of a commercial pilot
02:05:19 over New Mexico, seeing a quote unquote,
02:05:23 large cylindrical object in the air.
02:05:26 Like I said, when we first started talking,
02:05:28 I’ve never believed more in UFOs and aliens.
02:05:31 Yeah, this is awesome.
02:05:33 I just wish both American Airlines, FBI,
02:05:37 and government would be more transparent.
02:05:40 Like there would be voices, and I know it sounds ridiculous,
02:05:43 but the kind of transparency that you see,
02:05:45 maybe not Joe Rogan, he’s like overly transparent.
02:05:48 He’s just a comic really, but just the, I don’t know,
02:05:52 like a podcast from the FBI, just like being honest,
02:05:56 like excited, confused.
02:05:58 I’m sure that they’re being overly cautious
02:06:03 about their release information.
02:06:04 I’m sure there’s a lot of information
02:06:05 that would inspire the public,
02:06:07 that would inspire trust in institutions
02:06:09 that will not damage national security.
02:06:12 Like it seems to me obvious,
02:06:14 and the reason they’re not sharing it
02:06:15 is because of this momentum of bureaucracy,
02:06:17 of caution and so on.
02:06:19 But there’s probably so much cool information
02:06:21 that the government has.
02:06:22 The way I almost, I wouldn’t say it confirmed it’s real,
02:06:26 but Trump didn’t declassify it.
02:06:28 Like you know that if there was ever a president
02:06:31 that actually wanted to get to the bottom of it, it was him.
02:06:34 I mean, he didn’t declassify it, man.
02:06:37 And people begged him to.
02:06:38 I know for a fact,
02:06:39 because I pushed to try and make this happen,
02:06:41 that some people did speak to him about it.
02:06:44 And he was like, no, I’m not gonna do it.
02:06:46 So.
02:06:47 He might be afraid.
02:06:48 That’s what I mean, though.
02:06:49 They were probably all telling him,
02:06:50 they’re like, sir, you can’t do this, you know, all this,
02:06:52 like, wow, and I get that.
02:06:53 And there’s this legislation written at COVID
02:06:56 that like they have six months to release it, man.
02:06:58 Is that real?
02:06:59 What is that?
02:07:00 Is that a bunch of bullshit?
02:07:01 I think it’s bullshit.
02:07:01 There’s so many different levels of classification
02:07:04 that people need to understand.
02:07:05 I mean, look, I read John Podesta.
02:07:07 He was the chief of staff to Bill Clinton.
02:07:10 He’s a big UFO guy.
02:07:11 He tried.
02:07:12 Like him and Clinton tried to get some of this information
02:07:15 and they could not get any of it.
02:07:17 And we’re talking about the president
02:07:19 and the White House chief of staff.
02:07:21 Well, there’s a whole bureaucracy,
02:07:22 but just like you were saying, with intent.
02:07:24 You have to be like, that has to be your focus
02:07:27 because there’s a whole bureaucracy built around secrecy
02:07:29 for probably for a good reason.
02:07:31 So to get through to the information,
02:07:33 there’s a whole like paperwork process,
02:07:35 all that kind of stuff.
02:07:36 You can’t just walk in and get the,
02:07:37 unless again, with intention, that becomes your thing.
02:07:40 Like let’s revolutionize this thing.
02:07:43 And then you get only so many things.
02:07:45 It’s sad that the bureaucracy has gotten so bulky,
02:07:50 but I think the hopeful messages
02:07:53 from earlier in our conversation,
02:07:54 it seems like a single person can’t fix it,
02:07:57 but if you hire the right team, it feels like you can.
02:08:01 Can’t fix everything.
02:08:03 I don’t wanna give people unrealistic expectations.
02:08:05 You can fix a lot, especially in crisis,
02:08:07 you can remake America.
02:08:09 Yeah.
02:08:10 And the reason I know that
02:08:10 is because it’s already happened twice.
02:08:12 FDR, or in modern history, FDR and JFK.
02:08:17 Sorry, FDR and JFK’s assassination, LBJ.
02:08:20 Two hyper competent men who understood government,
02:08:25 who understood personnel,
02:08:27 and coincidentally were friends.
02:08:28 I love this.
02:08:29 I don’t think actually people understand this.
02:08:31 FDR met Johnson three days after he won his election
02:08:37 to Congress, special election.
02:08:38 He was only 29 years old.
02:08:40 And he left that meeting and called somebody and said,
02:08:44 this young man is gonna be president
02:08:45 of the United States someday.
02:08:46 Like even then, like what was within him
02:08:50 to understand and to recognize that.
02:08:51 And sometimes Johnson, as a young member of Congress,
02:08:54 would come and have breakfast with FDR,
02:08:56 like just to the great political minds of the 20th century,
02:09:00 just sitting there talking.
02:09:01 Like I would give anything to know what was happening.
02:09:04 Yeah, I hope they were real with each other.
02:09:06 And there was like a genuine human connection, right?
02:09:08 That seems to be the…
02:09:09 Well, Johnson wasn’t a genuine guy,
02:09:11 so probably certainly not.
02:09:13 Well, I need to read those thousands of pages.
02:09:16 I’ve been way too focused on Hitler.
02:09:20 I was gonna say, one of my goals in coming to this
02:09:22 is I was like, I gotta get Lex into two things,
02:09:24 because I know he’ll love it.
02:09:25 I know he’ll love LBJ,
02:09:27 if he takes the time to read the books.
02:09:29 Really?
02:09:30 100%.
02:09:31 He’s the most…
02:09:32 Of all the presidents…
02:09:32 I didn’t say you’ll love him,
02:09:33 but you’ll love the books about him.
02:09:34 Because the books are a story of America,
02:09:37 the story of politics, the story of power.
02:09:39 This is the guy who wrote the Power Broker.
02:09:41 These books are up there with
02:09:44 Decline and Follow the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon,
02:09:47 in terms of how power works.
02:09:48 Study of power.
02:09:49 Exactly.
02:09:50 No, that’s why Carroll wrote the books.
02:09:52 And that’s why the books are not really about LBJ,
02:09:55 they’re about power in Washington,
02:09:57 and about the consolidation of power post New Deal,
02:10:00 the consolidation then,
02:10:01 where they’re using the levers of power like Johnson knew
02:10:04 in order to change the House of Representatives,
02:10:07 the Senate of the United States,
02:10:09 and ultimately the presidency of the United States,
02:10:11 which ended in failure and disaster with Vietnam.
02:10:13 Don’t get me wrong.
02:10:14 But he’s overlooked for so many of the incredible things
02:10:18 that he did with civil rights.
02:10:19 Nobody else could have done it.
02:10:21 No one else could have gotten it done.
02:10:23 And the second thing is,
02:10:25 we gotta get you into World War I.
02:10:27 We gotta get you more into World War I,
02:10:29 because I think that’s a rabbit hole,
02:10:31 which I know you’re a Dan Carlin fan.
02:10:33 So blueprint for Armageddon.
02:10:35 Yeah, it’s good.
02:10:36 Guaranteed.
02:10:36 But…
02:10:37 But there’s fewer evil people there.
02:10:39 Yes, but…
02:10:41 But that’s what actually…
02:10:43 There’s a banality of that evil,
02:10:45 of the Kaiser and of the Austro Hungarians.
02:10:50 And of…
02:10:51 See, I like World War I more because it was unresolved.
02:10:54 It’s one of those periods I was talking to you about,
02:10:56 about sometimes you’re called and you fail.
02:10:58 That’s what happened.
02:10:59 I mean, 50 million people were killed
02:11:02 in the most horrific way.
02:11:03 People literally drowned in the mud,
02:11:06 like an entire generation.
02:11:09 One stat I love is that,
02:11:11 Britain didn’t need a draft till 1916.
02:11:14 Like they went two years of throwing people
02:11:18 into barbed wire voluntarily.
02:11:20 And because people love their country
02:11:22 and they love the king,
02:11:23 and they thought they were going against the Kaiser.
02:11:26 It’s just like that conflict to me,
02:11:28 I just can’t read enough about it.
02:11:30 Also just like births Russian Revolution, you know.
02:11:33 Yeah, I mean…
02:11:34 Hitler.
02:11:35 You can’t talk about World War II without World War I.
02:11:37 Right.
02:11:37 And I’m obsessed with the conflict.
02:11:39 I’ve read way too many books about it.
02:11:40 For this reason is, it’s unresolved.
02:11:42 And like the roots of so much of even our current problems
02:11:46 are happened in Versailles, right?
02:11:47 Like Vietnam is because of the Treaty of Versailles.
02:11:51 Many ways the Middle Eastern problems
02:11:53 and the division of the states there.
02:11:55 The Treaty of Versailles
02:11:56 in terms of the penalties against Germany.
02:11:58 But also they fall out from those wars
02:12:01 on the French and the German population,
02:12:03 or the French and the British populations
02:12:05 and their reluctance for war in 1939 or 1938.
02:12:10 When Neville Chamberlain goes, right?
02:12:12 Like that’s one of the things people don’t understand
02:12:14 is the actual appetite of the British public at that time.
02:12:16 They didn’t want to go to war.
02:12:17 Only Churchill, he was the only one
02:12:19 in the gathering storm, right?
02:12:21 Like being like, hey, this is really bad and all of that.
02:12:24 And then even in the United States,
02:12:26 our streak of isolationism, which sweat.
02:12:28 I mean, things were because of that conflict.
02:12:32 We were convinced as a country
02:12:34 that we wanted nothing to do with Europe and its problems.
02:12:37 And in many ways that contributed
02:12:39 to the proliferation of Hitler and more.
02:12:41 So like I’m obsessed with World War I for this reason,
02:12:43 which is that it’s just like the root.
02:12:46 It’s like the culmination of the monarchies,
02:12:48 then the fall, and then just all the shit spills out
02:12:52 from there for like a hundred years.
02:12:53 So World War I is like the most important shift
02:12:56 in human history versus World War II
02:12:58 is like a consequence of that.
02:13:00 Yeah, so I have a degree in security studies
02:13:03 from Georgetown.
02:13:03 And one of the thing is that we would focus a lot on that
02:13:06 is like war and, but also like the complexity around war.
02:13:11 And it’s funny.
02:13:12 We never spent that much time on World War II
02:13:15 because it was actually quite of a clean war.
02:13:17 It’s a very atypical war as in the war object,
02:13:21 which we learned from World War I
02:13:23 is we must inflict suffering on the German people
02:13:26 and invade the borders of Germany and destroy Hitler.
02:13:30 Like the center of gravity is the Nazi regime and Hitler.
02:13:34 So it had a very basic begin and end.
02:13:37 Begin, liberate France, invade Germany,
02:13:40 destroy Hitler, reoccupy, rebuild.
02:13:44 World War I, what are you fighting for?
02:13:46 Like, are you, I mean, and nobody even knew.
02:13:49 You can go to the German general staff.
02:13:51 They were like, even in 1917, they’re like,
02:13:53 the war was worth it because now we have Luxembourg.
02:13:56 I’m like, really?
02:13:57 Like you killed 2 million of your citizens
02:13:58 for fucking Luxembourg and like half of Belgium,
02:14:01 which is now like a pond.
02:14:02 And same thing, the French are like,
02:14:04 well, the French more so they’re defending their borders,
02:14:07 but like, what are the British fighting for?
02:14:09 Why did hundreds of thousands of British people die?
02:14:11 In order to preserve the balance of power in Europe
02:14:14 and prevent the Kaiser from having a port
02:14:17 on the English Channel?
02:14:19 Like really, that’s why?
02:14:21 That’s more what wars are is they become these like
02:14:24 atypical, they become these protracted conflicts
02:14:29 with a necessary diplomatic resolution.
02:14:33 It’s not clean, it’s very dirty.
02:14:36 It usually leads in the outbreak of another war
02:14:38 and another war and another war
02:14:39 and a slow burn of ethnic conflict, which bubbles up.
02:14:43 So that’s why I look at that one even,
02:14:45 because it’s more typical of warfare and how it works.
02:14:49 Exactly, it’s kind of interesting.
02:14:51 You’re making me realize that World War II
02:14:54 is one of the rare wars where you can make a strong case
02:14:57 for it’s a fight of good versus evil.
02:14:59 Yeah, just war theory, obviously.
02:15:01 Like, yeah, they’re literally slaughtering Jews.
02:15:02 Like, we have to kill them.
02:15:04 And there’s one person doing it.
02:15:05 I mean, there’s one person at the core.
02:15:08 Yeah, that’s fascinating.
02:15:11 And it’s short and there’s a clear aggression.
02:15:15 It’s interesting that Dan Carlin
02:15:18 has been avoiding Hitler as well.
02:15:20 Yeah, probably for this reason.
02:15:23 Probably for this reason.
02:15:25 I mean, but it’s complicated too,
02:15:27 because there’s a pressure.
02:15:28 That guy has his demons.
02:15:30 I love Dan so much.
02:15:31 So this is the, I don’t know if you feel this pressure,
02:15:36 but as a creative, he feels the pressure
02:15:39 of being maybe not necessarily correct,
02:15:43 but maybe correct in the sense that his understanding,
02:15:48 he gets to the bottom of why something happened,
02:15:53 of why something happened, of what really happened.
02:15:57 Get to the bottom of it
02:15:59 before he can say something publicly about it.
02:16:02 And he is tortured by that burden.
02:16:04 I know, you know, he takes so much shit
02:16:06 from the historical community for no reason.
02:16:09 I think he’s the greatest popularizer, quote unquote,
02:16:12 of history.
02:16:13 And I wish more people in history understood it that way.
02:16:17 He was an inspiration to me.
02:16:18 I mean, I do some videos sometimes on my Instagram now
02:16:21 where I’ll do like a book tour.
02:16:22 I’ll be like, here’s my bookshelf of these presidents.
02:16:24 And like, here’s what I learned from this book
02:16:26 and this book and this.
02:16:26 And that was very much like a skill I learned from him
02:16:30 of being like, you know, as a historian writes.
02:16:33 You know, I just love the way he talks.
02:16:35 He’s like, in the mud.
02:16:38 I mean, you know, he’ll be like, quote, quote.
02:16:40 I just, I love, he inspires me, man.
02:16:44 He really does to like learn more.
02:16:46 And I’ve read, I bought a lot of books because of Dan Carlin.
02:16:49 He’ll be, you know, because of this guy,
02:16:50 because of that guy, in terms of, you know,
02:16:53 another thing he does, which nobody else,
02:16:54 and I’m probably guilty of this,
02:16:56 he focuses on the actual people involved.
02:16:59 Like he would tell the story of actual British soldiers
02:17:03 in World War I.
02:17:04 And I probably, and maybe you’re guilty of this too,
02:17:07 we over focus on what was happening
02:17:09 in the German general staff,
02:17:11 what was happening in the British general staff.
02:17:12 And he doesn’t make that mistake.
02:17:14 That’s why he tells real history.
02:17:16 Yeah, and it gives it a feeling.
02:17:18 The result is that there’s a feeling,
02:17:20 you get the feeling of what it was like to be there.
02:17:22 Exactly.
02:17:24 You know, you’re becoming,
02:17:25 quickly becoming more and more popular.
02:17:30 Speaking about political issues in part,
02:17:34 do you feel a burden, like almost like
02:17:39 the prison of your prior convictions
02:17:43 of having to, being popular with a certain kind of audience
02:17:47 and thereby unable to really think outside the box?
02:17:51 I had, I’ve really struggled with this.
02:17:54 I came up in right wing media.
02:17:56 I came up a much more doctrinaire conservative
02:18:01 in my professional life.
02:18:02 I wasn’t always conservative.
02:18:02 We can get to that later if you want.
02:18:05 And I did feel an immense pressure after the election
02:18:13 by people to say, wanted me to say the election was stolen.
02:18:17 And I knew that I had a sizable part of my audience.
02:18:21 Oh, well, here’s the benefit.
02:18:22 Most people know me from Rising,
02:18:24 which is with Crystal and me.
02:18:26 That is inherently a left right program.
02:18:29 So it’s a large audience.
02:18:31 So I felt comfortable and I knew that I could still be fine
02:18:35 in terms of my numbers, whatever,
02:18:37 because a lot, many people knew me who were on the left.
02:18:40 And if really, you know,
02:18:41 my right listeners abandoned me, so be it.
02:18:44 I was, had the luxury of able to take that choice,
02:18:47 but I still felt an immense amount of pressure
02:18:50 to say the election was stolen,
02:18:52 to give credence to a lot of the stuff that Trump was doing,
02:18:55 to downplay January 6th,
02:18:57 to downplay many of the Republican senators
02:19:00 or justify many of the Republican senators,
02:19:01 some of whom I know who objected
02:19:04 to the electoral college certification
02:19:06 and who stoked some of the flames
02:19:08 that have eaten the Republican base.
02:19:11 And I just wouldn’t do it.
02:19:13 And that was hard, man.
02:19:15 Like I feel more politically homeless right now
02:19:19 than I ever have,
02:19:21 but I have realized in the last couple of months
02:19:24 that’s the best thing that ever happened to me.
02:19:26 It’s freedom.
02:19:27 It’s true freedom.
02:19:28 I now, I say exactly what I think.
02:19:32 And it’s not that I wasn’t doing that before.
02:19:34 It’s maybe I would avoid certain topics
02:19:38 or like I would think about things
02:19:40 more from a team perspective of like,
02:19:42 am I making sure that, it’s,
02:19:45 I’m not saying I didn’t fight it.
02:19:46 And I still, I criticize the right plenty
02:19:48 and Trump plenty before the election and more.
02:19:51 It’s more just like,
02:19:52 I no longer feel as if I even have the illusion
02:19:56 of a stake within the game.
02:19:58 I’m like, I only look at myself as an outside observer
02:20:02 and I will only call it as I see it truly.
02:20:05 And I was aspiring to that before,
02:20:08 but I had to have, in a way,
02:20:11 Trump stop the steal thing.
02:20:13 It like took my shackles off 100%.
02:20:16 Cause I was like, no, this is bullshit.
02:20:17 And I’m going to say it’s bullshit.
02:20:18 And I think it’s bad.
02:20:20 And I think it’s bad for the Republican party.
02:20:22 And if people in the Republican party
02:20:24 don’t agree with me on that, that’s fine.
02:20:26 I’m just not going to be necessarily like
02:20:29 associated with you anymore.
02:20:30 This is probably one of the first political
02:20:32 liberal politics related conversations we’ve had.
02:20:35 I mean, unless you count Michael Malice, who.
02:20:38 He was great.
02:20:39 Yeah.
02:20:41 He’s the funny guy.
02:20:42 He’s not so much political as he is like burning down, man.
02:20:47 He leans too far in anarchy for me.
02:20:49 Yeah.
02:20:50 I think he’s.
02:20:51 There’s a place for that.
02:20:53 It’s almost, well, first of all,
02:20:54 he’s working on a new book, which I really appreciate.
02:20:57 Outside of the, he’s working on like a big book
02:21:00 for a while, which is White Pill.
02:21:02 He’s also working on this like short little thing,
02:21:07 which is like anarchist handbook or something like that.
02:21:11 It’s like Anarchy for Idiots or something like that,
02:21:14 which I think is really.
02:21:19 Well, me being an idiot and being curious
02:21:21 about anarchy seems useful.
02:21:23 So I like those kinds of books.
02:21:24 That’s Russian heritage, man.
02:21:26 Anarchist 101.
02:21:29 I find those kinds of things a useful thought experiment
02:21:33 because that’s why it’s frustrating to me
02:21:37 when people talk about communism, socialism,
02:21:40 or even capitalism,
02:21:42 where they can’t enjoy the thought experiment
02:21:44 of like why did communism fail
02:21:50 and maybe ask the question of like,
02:21:53 is it possible to make communism succeed
02:21:55 or are there good ideas in communism?
02:21:57 Like I enjoy the thought experiment,
02:21:58 like the discourse of it,
02:22:01 like the reasoning and like devil’s advocate and all that.
02:22:04 People have like, seem to not have patience for that.
02:22:07 They’re like, communism bad, red.
02:22:09 I was obsessed with the question and still am.
02:22:11 I will never be,
02:22:13 I will never quench my thirst for Russian history.
02:22:18 I love that period of 1890 to 1925.
02:22:26 It’s just like, it’s so fucking crazy.
02:22:30 Like the autocracy embodied in Czar Alexander.
02:22:35 And then you get this like weird fail son, Nicholas,
02:22:38 who is kind of a good guy, but also terrible.
02:22:42 And also Russian autocracy itself is terrible.
02:22:44 And then I just became obsessed with the question of like,
02:22:47 why did the Bolshevik revolution succeed?
02:22:49 Because like people in Russia
02:22:51 didn’t necessarily want Bolshevism.
02:22:53 People suffered a lot under Bolshevism
02:22:56 and it led to Stalinism.
02:22:58 How did Vladimir Lenin do it, right?
02:23:01 Like, and I became obsessed with that question.
02:23:04 And it’s still, I find it so interesting,
02:23:06 which is that series of accidents of history,
02:23:10 incredible boldness by Lenin,
02:23:13 incredible real politic, smart,
02:23:17 unpopular decisions made by Trotsky and Stalin,
02:23:21 and just like the arrogance of the Czars
02:23:25 and of the Russian like autocracy.
02:23:31 But at the same time,
02:23:32 there’s all these like cultural implications of this, right?
02:23:35 In terms of like how it became hollowed out
02:23:37 post Catherine the Great and all that.
02:23:40 I was obsessed with autocracy
02:23:41 because Russia wasn’t actual autocracy.
02:23:44 And like actually, and I’m like, it was there.
02:23:46 Like they didn’t even remove serfdom
02:23:49 to like the civil war in America.
02:23:51 Like that’s crazy.
02:23:52 Like, you know, and nobody really talks about it.
02:23:55 And I just became, yeah, I was like,
02:23:57 was Bolshevism a natural reaction
02:24:01 to the excesses of Czarism?
02:24:03 There is a convenient explanation where that is true.
02:24:07 But there were also a series of decisions
02:24:09 made by Lenin and Stalin
02:24:11 to kill many of the people in the center left
02:24:13 and marginalized them
02:24:15 and also not to associate with the more
02:24:18 quote unquote, like amenable communists
02:24:23 in order to make sure that their pure strain of Bolshevism
02:24:26 was the only thing.
02:24:28 And the reason I like that is because it comes back
02:24:29 to a point I made earlier.
02:24:31 It’s all about intentionality,
02:24:32 which is that you actually can will something into existence
02:24:36 even if people don’t want it.
02:24:38 That was the craziest thing.
02:24:39 Like nobody wanted this,
02:24:41 but it’s still ruled for half a century, more actually.
02:24:45 I mean, almost 75 years.
02:24:47 To think that there could have been a history
02:24:50 of the Soviet Union that was dramatically different
02:24:56 than Leninism, Stalinism, that was completely different.
02:25:00 Like almost would be the American story.
02:25:03 Yeah, easily.
02:25:04 I mean, there’s a world where,
02:25:06 and I don’t have all the characters,
02:25:07 there’s like Kerensky and then there was like
02:25:10 whoever Lenin’s number two, Stalin’s chief rival.
02:25:12 And even, I mean, look, even a Soviet Union led by Trotsky,
02:25:15 that’s a whole other world, right?
02:25:17 Like literally a whole other world.
02:25:19 And yeah, it’s just, I don’t know.
02:25:21 I find it so interesting.
02:25:22 I will never not be fascinated by Russia.
02:25:24 I always will.
02:25:25 It’s funny that I get to talk to you.
02:25:26 Cause it’s like, I read this book.
02:25:28 I forget what it’s called.
02:25:29 It won, I think it won a Pulitzer prize.
02:25:31 And it was like the story of,
02:25:34 I tried to understand Russia post Crimea.
02:25:37 Cause I came up amongst people
02:25:40 who are much more like neoconservative
02:25:41 and they’re like, fuck Russia, Russia bad.
02:25:43 And I was like, okay, like what do these people think?
02:25:46 And we have this narrative
02:25:48 of like the fall of the Soviet Union.
02:25:49 And then I read this book from the perspective of Russians
02:25:52 who lived through the fall.
02:25:54 And they were like, this is, I was like, this is terrible.
02:25:56 Like actually the introduction of capitalism was awful.
02:25:59 And like the rise of all these crazy oligarchs.
02:26:03 That’s why Putin was, came to power to like restore,
02:26:08 restore order to the oligarchy.
02:26:11 And he still talks to this day.
02:26:13 Do you guys, I mean, that’s always the threat of like,
02:26:15 do you want to return to the nineties?
02:26:17 Do you want to return to Yeltsin?
02:26:20 But the thing is in the West,
02:26:21 we have this like our own propaganda of like,
02:26:23 no, Yeltsin was great.
02:26:25 That was the golden age.
02:26:25 What could have been with Russia?
02:26:27 And I was like, well, what do actual Russians think?
02:26:29 And so that, yeah, I’ll always be fascinated by it.
02:26:34 And then just like to understand the idea
02:26:37 of feeling encircled by NATO and all of that,
02:26:41 you have to understand like Russian defense theory
02:26:44 all the way of going back to the czars
02:26:46 has always been defense in depth
02:26:48 in terms of having Estonia, Lithuania,
02:26:51 and more as like protection of the heartland.
02:26:54 I’m not justifying in this.
02:26:55 So NATO shills like, please don’t come after me.
02:26:57 But look, Estonians like NATO.
02:27:01 They want to be in NATO.
02:27:02 So I don’t want to minimize that.
02:27:03 I’m more just saying like,
02:27:04 I understand him and Russia much better having done that.
02:27:08 And we are very incapable in America.
02:27:11 I think this is probably because my parents are immigrants
02:27:13 and I’ve traveled a lot.
02:27:14 Of like putting yourself in the mind of people
02:27:17 who aren’t Western and haven’t lived a history,
02:27:21 especially our lives of America’s fucking awesome.
02:27:23 We’re the number one country in the world.
02:27:24 Like we’re literally better than you, like in many ways.
02:27:27 And they can’t empathize with people
02:27:31 who have suffered so much.
02:27:33 And I just, yeah, it’s just so interesting to me.
02:27:36 What about if we could talk for just a brief moment
02:27:38 about the human of Putin and power, you are clearly
02:27:45 fascinated by power.
02:27:48 Do you think power changed Putin?
02:27:51 Do you think power changes leaders?
02:27:54 If you look at the great leaders in history,
02:27:57 whether it’s LBJ, FDR, do you think power really
02:28:02 changes people?
02:28:03 Like, is there a truth to that kind of old proverb?
02:28:06 It reveals, I think that’s what it is.
02:28:08 It reveals.
02:28:09 So Putin was a much more deft politician,
02:28:13 much more amenable to the West.
02:28:15 If you think back, you know, to 2001 and more,
02:28:18 right when he came, cause he was still,
02:28:19 cause at that time his biggest problem
02:28:21 was intra Russian politics, right?
02:28:24 Like it was all consolidating power within the oligarchy.
02:28:27 Once he did that by around like 2007,
02:28:31 there’s that famous time when he spoke out against the West
02:28:34 at the Munich security conference.
02:28:36 I forget when it was.
02:28:37 And that’s when everybody in the audience was like, whoa.
02:28:40 And he was talking about like NATO encirclement
02:28:42 and like, we will not be beaten back by the West.
02:28:45 Very shortly afterwards, like the Georgia invasion happens.
02:28:49 And that was like a big wake up call of like,
02:28:51 we will not be pushed around anymore.
02:28:53 I mean, he said before publicly, like the worst thing
02:28:55 that ever happened was the fall.
02:28:57 Or what did he say?
02:28:58 He was like, the fall of the Soviet Union was a tragedy,
02:29:00 right?
02:29:01 Of course, people in the West were like, what?
02:29:02 I’m like, I get it, right?
02:29:04 Like they were a superpower.
02:29:05 And now their population is declining.
02:29:08 Like it’s like a Petro state.
02:29:09 It sucks.
02:29:10 Like, I understand.
02:29:12 I understand like how somebody could feel about that.
02:29:15 I think it revealed his character,
02:29:18 which is that I think he thinks of himself probably
02:29:23 as he always has since 2001 as like this benevolent,
02:29:27 almost as a benevolent dictator.
02:29:29 He’s like, without me, the whole system would collapse.
02:29:31 I’m the only guy keeping all these people in check.
02:29:35 Most Russians probably do support Putin
02:29:38 because they feel like they support some form
02:29:41 of functional government.
02:29:43 And they view it as like a check against that,
02:29:46 which is a long, has a long history within Russia too.
02:29:50 So I don’t know if it changed him.
02:29:53 I think it just revealed him because it’s not like he,
02:29:55 I mean, he has a bill.
02:29:56 You know, Navalny has put that like billion dollar palace
02:29:59 and all that.
02:30:00 I don’t know.
02:30:01 Sometimes I feel like Putin does that for show.
02:30:03 He doesn’t seem like somebody who indulges
02:30:05 in all that stuff.
02:30:06 Or maybe we just don’t see it.
02:30:07 Like, I don’t know.
02:30:08 Well, I don’t, it’s very difficult for me to understand.
02:30:11 I’ve been hanging out, thanks to Clubhouse.
02:30:13 A lot of, I’ve gotten to learn a lot about the Navalny folks
02:30:18 and it’s been very educational.
02:30:21 Made me ask a lot of important questions about what,
02:30:25 you know, question a lot of my assumptions
02:30:27 about what I do and don’t know.
02:30:29 But I’ll just say that I do believe, you know,
02:30:34 there’s a lot of the Navalny folks say
02:30:36 that Putin is incompetent and is a bad executive,
02:30:40 like is bad at basically running government.
02:30:44 But to me.
02:30:46 Well, why do Russians not think that?
02:30:48 Right?
02:30:49 Well, they probably say propaganda.
02:30:50 They would say it’s the press.
02:30:51 Yeah, they would say the control.
02:30:52 There is a strong either control or pressure on the press,
02:30:56 but I think there is a legitimate support and love
02:30:59 of Putin in Russia that is not grounded
02:31:02 in just misinformation and propaganda.
02:31:05 There’s legitimacy there.
02:31:07 Mostly I tried to remain apolitical
02:31:09 and actually genuinely remain apolitical.
02:31:12 I am legitimately not interested
02:31:15 in the politics of Russia of today.
02:31:18 I feel I have some responsibility
02:31:20 and I’ll take that responsibility on as I need to.
02:31:23 But my fascination as it is perhaps with you
02:31:26 in part is in the historical figure of Putin.
02:31:30 I know he’s currently president,
02:31:32 but I’m almost looking like as if I was a kid
02:31:34 in 30 years from now reading about him,
02:31:37 studying the human being,
02:31:40 the games of power that are played
02:31:43 that got him to gain power, to maintain power,
02:31:47 what that says about his human nature,
02:31:51 the nature of the bureaucracy that’s around him,
02:31:54 the nature of Russia, the people, all those kinds of things,
02:31:58 as opposed to the politics and the manipulation
02:32:00 and the corruption and the control of the media
02:32:03 that results in misinformation.
02:32:05 Those are the bickering of the day,
02:32:07 just like we were saying,
02:32:08 what will actually be remembered
02:32:10 about this moment in history?
02:32:11 Totally, he’s a transformational figure in Russian history.
02:32:14 Really, like the bridge between the fall of the Soviet Union
02:32:16 and the chaos of Yeltsin,
02:32:18 that will be how he’s remembered.
02:32:21 The only question is what comes next
02:32:22 and what he wants to come next.
02:32:24 I’m always, I’m like, he’s getting up.
02:32:26 How old are you, 60 something?
02:32:27 Yeah, 60.
02:32:28 So he would be, I think he would be 80.
02:32:31 So with the change of the constitution,
02:32:34 he cannot be president until 2034, I think it is.
02:32:44 So he would be like 80 something
02:32:46 and he would be in power for over 30 years,
02:32:48 which is longer than Stalin.
02:32:51 But he still seems to be.
02:32:54 Seems fit.
02:32:56 I think he’s gonna be around for a long time.
02:32:57 But this is a fascinating question that you ask,
02:32:59 which is like, what does he want?
02:33:01 I don’t know.
02:33:02 Yeah, that’s the question.
02:33:03 I don’t, and this is where I think,
02:33:06 given all of his behavior and more,
02:33:07 I don’t know if it’s about money.
02:33:09 I don’t know if it’s about enriching himself.
02:33:11 Obviously he did, to the tune of billions and billions
02:33:13 and billions of dollars.
02:33:15 But I think he probably,
02:33:17 he’s as close to like an actual Russian nationalist,
02:33:20 like at the top, who really does believe in Russia
02:33:23 as its rightful superpower.
02:33:26 Everything he does seems to stem from that opposition
02:33:29 to NATO, intro to Syria,
02:33:31 like wanting to play a large role in affairs,
02:33:35 deeply distrustful and yet coveting of the European powers.
02:33:40 Like, I could describe every czar in those same language.
02:33:44 Like every czar falls into the exact same category.
02:33:47 Yeah, and I mean, it makes me wonder,
02:33:49 looking at some of the biggest leaders in human history,
02:33:52 to ask the question of what was the motivation?
02:33:55 What was the motivation for even just the revolutionaries
02:33:58 like Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin?
02:34:00 What was the motivation?
02:34:02 Because it sure as hell seems like the motivation
02:34:05 was at least in part driven by the idea,
02:34:11 by ideas, not self interest of like power.
02:34:15 For Lenin, it was, I think he was a true believer
02:34:18 and an actual narcissist
02:34:19 who thought he was the only one who could do it.
02:34:21 Stalin, I do think just wanted power.
02:34:23 And realized, well, I don’t know.
02:34:25 Look, he wrote very passionately when he was young.
02:34:27 And he was, he really believed in communism.
02:34:30 In the beginning he did.
02:34:31 I’m always fascinated as I’m like,
02:34:34 around 1920, what happened, right?
02:34:36 Post revolution, you crushed the whites.
02:34:40 Now it’s all about consolidation.
02:34:42 That’s where the games really began.
02:34:44 And I’m like, I don’t think that was about communism.
02:34:47 Yeah.
02:34:48 Yeah, maybe it became a useful propaganda tool,
02:34:53 but it still seemed like he believed in it.
02:34:55 Whether it was, of course, this is the question.
02:34:58 I mean, this is the problem with conspiracy theories for me.
02:35:02 And this is legitimate criticism towards me
02:35:04 about conspiracy theories,
02:35:06 which is just because you’re not like this
02:35:09 doesn’t mean others aren’t like this.
02:35:11 So like, I can’t believe that somebody be
02:35:14 like deeply two faced.
02:35:16 Oh, I’ve met them, you’re welcome to Washington.
02:35:18 Yeah.
02:35:20 But like, I think that I would be able to detect like, no.
02:35:27 Well, this, my question is, well, so there’s differences.
02:35:30 There’s two face, like there’s different levels of two face.
02:35:35 Like what I mean is to be killing people
02:35:39 and it’s like house of cards style, right?
02:35:43 And still present a front like you’re not killing people.
02:35:49 I don’t know if, I guess it’s possible,
02:35:52 but I just don’t see that at scale.
02:35:55 Like there’s a lot of people like that.
02:35:56 And I don’t, I have trouble imagining
02:36:01 some, that’s such a compelling narrative
02:36:04 that people like to say.
02:36:06 Like people, that’s the conspiratorial mindset.
02:36:09 I think that skepticism was really powerful
02:36:11 and important to have because it’s true.
02:36:14 A lot of powerful people abuse their power,
02:36:15 but saying that about, I feel like people over assume that.
02:36:21 It’s like, I see that with use of steroids often in sports.
02:36:25 People seem to make that claim about like everybody
02:36:29 who’s successful and I want to be very, I don’t know.
02:36:32 Something about me wants to be cautious
02:36:34 because I want to give people a chance.
02:36:37 Being purely cynical isn’t helpful.
02:36:39 People say this about me.
02:36:40 He’s only saying this to do this.
02:36:42 But at the same time, being naively optimistic
02:36:44 about everything is also a kind of pedophilic scheme.
02:36:47 People are going to fuck you over.
02:36:49 And more importantly, that doesn’t bother me.
02:36:52 More importantly, you’re not going to be able to reason
02:36:53 about how to create systems that are going to be robust
02:36:56 to corruption, to malevolent parties.
02:37:01 So in order to create, you have to have a healthy balance
02:37:05 of both, I suppose, especially if you want to actually
02:37:08 engineer things that work in this world that has evil in it.
02:37:13 I can’t believe there’s a book of Hitler on the desk.
02:37:17 We’ve mentioned a lot of books throughout this conversation.
02:37:20 I wonder, and this makes me really curious to explore
02:37:25 in a lot of depth the kind of books
02:37:28 that you’re interested in.
02:37:30 I think you mentioned in your show
02:37:32 that you provide recommendations.
02:37:35 Yes, I do.
02:37:37 In the form of spoken word,
02:37:39 can you beyond what we’ve already recommended
02:37:42 mention books, whether it is historical, nonfiction,
02:37:47 or whether it’s more like philosophical or even fiction
02:37:50 that had a big impact on your life?
02:37:52 Is there a few that you can mention?
02:37:53 Sure.
02:37:54 I already talked about the Johnson books,
02:37:55 so I’ll leave that alone.
02:37:56 Robert A. Caro, he’s still alive, thank God.
02:37:59 He’s finishing the last book.
02:38:01 I hope he makes it.
02:38:03 So those Johnson books.
02:38:05 Second, can I ask you a question about those books?
02:38:07 Yes.
02:38:08 What the hell do you fit into so many pages?
02:38:11 Everything, man.
02:38:12 Let me tell you this.
02:38:13 So I’ll just give you an anecdote.
02:38:14 This is why I love these books.
02:38:16 The beginning, the first book is about Lyndon Johnson.
02:38:19 His life, when he gets elected to Congress,
02:38:22 the book begins with a history of Texas
02:38:26 and its weather patterns,
02:38:27 and then of his great, great grandfather moving to Texas.
02:38:32 Then the story of that, about a hundred or so pages in,
02:38:35 you get to Lyndon Johnson.
02:38:38 That’s how you do it.
02:38:39 Which is you get.
02:38:40 It’s like a Tolstoy style retelling.
02:38:42 This is the thing, it’s not a biography,
02:38:44 it’s a story of the times.
02:38:45 That’s a great biography.
02:38:47 So another one, this isn’t part of my list,
02:38:49 so don’t do it,
02:38:52 is Grant, Ron Chernow.
02:38:54 Ron Chernow’s Grant, it’s a thousand pages.
02:38:57 And the reason I tell everybody to read it
02:38:59 is it’s not just the story of Grant,
02:39:01 it is the story of pre civil war America,
02:39:04 the Mexican American war, the civil war and reconstruction,
02:39:08 all told in the life of one person
02:39:10 who was involved in all three.
02:39:12 Most people don’t know anything
02:39:13 about the Mexican American war.
02:39:14 It’s fascinating.
02:39:15 Most people don’t know anything about reconstruction.
02:39:18 Now more so because people are talking,
02:39:19 it’s a hot topic now.
02:39:21 I’ve been reading about it for years.
02:39:22 That is another thing people need to learn a lot more about.
02:39:26 In terms of non history books,
02:39:28 the book that probably had the most impact on me,
02:39:31 which is also a historical nonfiction
02:39:34 is I am obsessed with Antarctic exploration.
02:39:40 And it all began with a book
02:39:43 called Shackleton’s Incredible Journey,
02:39:45 which is the collection of diaries
02:39:48 of everybody who was on Shackleton’s journey.
02:39:51 For those who don’t know,
02:39:52 Shackleton was the last explorer
02:39:56 of the heroic age of Antarctic exploration.
02:39:59 He led a ship called the Endurance,
02:40:03 which froze in the ice off the coast of Antarctica in 1914.
02:40:10 And they didn’t have radios over the last exploration,
02:40:13 the last one without the age of radio.
02:40:16 And he happens to freeze in the ice.
02:40:18 And then the ship collapses after a year frozen in the ice.
02:40:23 And this man leads his entire crew from that ship
02:40:28 onto the ice with a team of dogs,
02:40:31 survives out on the ice for another year
02:40:34 with three little lifeboats
02:40:36 and is able to get all of his men,
02:40:38 every single one of them alive to an island
02:40:41 hundreds of miles away called Elephant Island.
02:40:44 And when they got there,
02:40:46 he had to leave everybody behind except for six people.
02:40:50 And him and two other guys, I’m forgetting their names,
02:40:54 navigated by the stars 800 miles through the Drake Passage
02:41:00 with seas of hundreds of feet to Prince,
02:41:03 I think it’s called Prince George’s Island.
02:41:05 And then when they got to Prince George’s Island,
02:41:08 they landed on the wrong side
02:41:10 and they had to hike from one side to the other
02:41:14 to go and meet the whalers.
02:41:15 And every single one of those things
02:41:17 was supposed to be impossible.
02:41:18 Nobody was ever supposed to hike that island.
02:41:21 It wasn’t done again until like the 1980s
02:41:24 with professional equipment.
02:41:25 He did it after two years of starvation.
02:41:28 Nobody was ever supposed to make it
02:41:30 from Elephant Island to Prince George.
02:41:33 The guy, they had to hold him steady, his legs,
02:41:36 so that he could chart the stars.
02:41:38 And if they miss this island, they’re into open sea.
02:41:41 They’re dead.
02:41:42 And then before that,
02:41:44 how do you survive for a year on the ice?
02:41:46 On seals.
02:41:47 And before that, he kept his crew from depression
02:41:51 frozen one year in the ice.
02:41:53 It’s just an amazing story.
02:41:55 And it made me obsessed with Antarctic exploration.
02:41:58 So I’ve read like 15 books on it.
02:42:00 What the hell is it about the human spirit?
02:42:01 It’s amazing.
02:42:02 That’s the thing about Antarctica
02:42:03 is it brings it out of you.
02:42:05 So for example, I read another one recently
02:42:06 called Mawson’s Will.
02:42:08 Douglas Mawson, he was an Australian.
02:42:10 He was on one of the first Robert Frost expeditions.
02:42:15 He leads an expedition down to the South.
02:42:17 Him and a partner, they’re leading explorations,
02:42:21 1908, something like that.
02:42:23 They’re going around Antarctica with dog teams.
02:42:27 And what happens is they keep going over these snow bridges
02:42:32 where there’s a crevice, but it’s covered in snow.
02:42:34 And so one of the lead driver,
02:42:38 the dogs go over and they plummet.
02:42:40 And that sled takes with it.
02:42:43 So the guy survives, but that sled takes all their food,
02:42:47 half the dogs, their stove, the camping tent,
02:42:52 the tent specifically designed for the snow, everything.
02:42:56 And they’re hundreds of miles away from base camp.
02:42:59 He and this guy have to make it back there
02:43:02 in time before the ship comes to come get them
02:43:05 on an agreed upon date.
02:43:07 And he makes it.
02:43:08 But the guy he was with, he dies.
02:43:11 And it’s a crazy story.
02:43:12 First of all, they have to eat the dogs.
02:43:14 A really creepy part of Antarctic exploration
02:43:16 is everyone ends up eating dogs at different points.
02:43:20 And part of the theory, which is so crazy,
02:43:22 is that the guy he was with was dying
02:43:25 because they were eating dog liver.
02:43:28 And dog liver has a lot of vitamin E,
02:43:31 which if you eat too much of it,
02:43:32 can give you like a poisoning.
02:43:34 And so Mawson, by trying to help his friend,
02:43:38 was giving him more liver.
02:43:38 Of all the things that kills you.
02:43:40 I know, it’s dog liver.
02:43:42 And so his friend ends up dying,
02:43:44 have a horrific heart attack, all of that.
02:43:46 Mawson crawls back hundreds of miles away,
02:43:49 makes it back to base camp hours after the ship leaves.
02:43:54 And two guys or a couple of guys stayed behind for him.
02:43:57 And he basically has to recuperate for like six months
02:44:01 before he can even walk again.
02:44:02 But it’s like you were saying about the human spirit.
02:44:04 It’s like Antarctica brings that out of people.
02:44:07 Or Amundsen, the guy who made it to the South Pole,
02:44:10 Robert Amundsen, oh my God.
02:44:12 Like this guy trained his whole life in the ice
02:44:16 from Norway to make it to the South Pole.
02:44:20 And he beat Robert Frost, the British guy
02:44:22 with all this money and all these,
02:44:24 I could go on this forever.
02:44:26 I’m obsessed with it.
02:44:27 Well, first of all, I’m gonna take this part of the podcast.
02:44:31 I’m gonna set it to music.
02:44:32 I’m gonna listen to it.
02:44:33 Cause I’ve been whining and bitching
02:44:35 about running 48 miles of Goggins this next weekend.
02:44:39 And this is gonna be so easy.
02:44:41 I’m just gonna listen to this over and over in my head.
02:44:43 You’re gonna be.
02:44:44 Elon’s obsessed with Shackleton.
02:44:45 He talks about him all the time.
02:44:46 He uses, I was gonna ask you about that.
02:44:48 He uses an example of that as an example
02:44:53 of what Mars colonization would be like.
02:44:57 He’s right.
02:44:58 No, Antarctica is as close to you can simulate that.
02:45:03 Antarctica is as close to what you could simulate
02:45:05 what it would get.
02:45:06 That Nat Geo series on Mars, I’m not sure
02:45:09 if you watched it, it’s incredible.
02:45:10 Elon’s actually in it.
02:45:11 And it’s like, they get there, everything goes wrong.
02:45:15 Somebody dies, like it’s horrible.
02:45:19 They can’t find any water.
02:45:20 It’s not working.
02:45:21 So what is it?
02:45:22 Is it like simulating the experience
02:45:23 of what it’d be like to colonize?
02:45:25 So it’s like a docu series where the fictionalized part
02:45:28 is the like astronauts on Mars,
02:45:32 but then they’re interviewing people like Elon Musk
02:45:34 and others who were the ones who like paved the way
02:45:37 to get to Mars.
02:45:38 So it’s a really interesting concept.
02:45:40 I think it’s on Netflix.
02:45:41 And yeah, I agree with him 100%,
02:45:44 which is that the first guys to make,
02:45:46 like for example, Robert Frost, who went to Australia,
02:45:51 sorry, to Antarctica, the British explorer
02:45:54 who was beaten to the South Pole three weeks
02:45:56 by Robert Amundsen, he died on the way back.
02:45:59 And the reason why is because he wasn’t well prepared.
02:46:01 He was arrogant.
02:46:02 He didn’t have the proper amounts of supplies.
02:46:06 His team had terrible morale.
02:46:08 Antarctica is a brutal place.
02:46:09 If you fuck up one time, you die.
02:46:12 And it’s like, and this is what you read a lot about,
02:46:14 which is the reason why such heroic characters
02:46:17 like Shackleton Shine is a lot of people died.
02:46:20 Like there were some people who got frozen in the eye.
02:46:23 I mean, man, this again also came to the North exploration.
02:46:27 So I read a lot about like the exploration
02:46:29 of the North Pole and same thing.
02:46:32 These unextraordinary men take people out into the ice
02:46:36 and get frozen out there for years and shit goes so bad.
02:46:40 They end up eating each other.
02:46:42 They all die.
02:46:43 There’s a famous, one I’m forgetting his name,
02:46:45 the British Franklin expedition,
02:46:47 where they went searching for them for like 20 years.
02:46:50 And they eventually came across a group of Inuit
02:46:52 who were like, oh yeah, we saw some weird white men here
02:46:55 like 15 years ago.
02:46:56 And they find their bones and there’s like saw marks,
02:46:59 which showed that they were eating each other.
02:47:01 I mean.
02:47:01 So history remembers the ones who didn’t eat each other.
02:47:03 Yeah, well, yeah, we remember the ones who made it,
02:47:06 but there are.
02:47:09 And that would be the story of Mars as well.
02:47:11 That will be the story of Mars.
02:47:12 But, and nevertheless, that’s the interesting thing
02:47:14 about Antarctica.
02:47:16 Nevertheless, something about human nature
02:47:19 drives us to explore it.
02:47:21 Yes.
02:47:22 And that seems to be like, you know,
02:47:23 a lot of people have this kind of,
02:47:26 to me, frustrating conversations like,
02:47:28 well, Earth is great, man.
02:47:31 Why do we need to colonize Mars?
02:47:33 You just don’t get it.
02:47:34 I don’t know.
02:47:35 I mean, I don’t know.
02:47:36 It’s the same people that say like, why are you running?
02:47:39 Like, why are you running a marathon?
02:47:41 What are you running from, man?
02:47:43 I don’t know.
02:47:44 It’s pushing the limits of the human mind
02:47:48 of what’s possible.
02:47:51 It’s George Mallory because it’s there.
02:47:54 Yeah. It’s simple.
02:47:55 And that’s somehow actually the result of that,
02:47:59 if you want to be pragmatic about it,
02:48:01 there’s something about pushing that limit
02:48:04 that has side effects that you don’t expect
02:48:06 that will create a better world back home
02:48:08 for the people, not necessarily on Earth,
02:48:11 but like just in general,
02:48:13 it raises the quality of life for everybody,
02:48:16 even though the initial endeavor doesn’t make any sense.
02:48:19 The very fact of pushing the limits of what’s possible
02:48:24 then has side effects of benefiting everybody.
02:48:28 And it’s difficult to predict ahead of time
02:48:32 what those benefits will be.
02:48:33 Say with colonizing Mars,
02:48:35 it’s unclear what the benefits will be for Earth
02:48:37 or in general with struggling.
02:48:39 What did we get from the moon?
02:48:41 What did we get from Apollo, right?
02:48:43 Technically, and there were a lot of socialists
02:48:45 at the time making this argument.
02:48:46 They’re like, all this money going, you know what?
02:48:49 We went to the fucking moon in 1969.
02:48:52 That was amazing.
02:48:53 The greatest feat in human history, period.
02:48:57 What did we learn from it?
02:48:59 We learned about interstellar or interplanetary travel.
02:49:04 We learned that we could do something
02:49:06 off of a device less powerful than the computer in my pocket.
02:49:10 Like the amount of potential locked within my pocket
02:49:15 and your pocket, I mean, this is,
02:49:17 if you were to define my policies in one way,
02:49:19 it’s greatness, like national,
02:49:21 a quest for national greatness.
02:49:23 There is no greatness without fulfilling
02:49:26 the ultimate calling of the human spirit,
02:49:28 which is more, it’s not enough.
02:49:31 And why should it be?
02:49:32 It wasn’t enough.
02:49:34 Our ancestors could have been content to sit,
02:49:38 well, actually many of them were,
02:49:39 were content to sit and say,
02:49:41 these berries will be here for a long time.
02:49:43 And they got eaten and they died.
02:49:44 And it’s the ones who got out and went to the next place
02:49:48 and the next place and went across the Siberian land bridge
02:49:51 and went across more.
02:49:53 And it just did extraordinary things.
02:49:55 The craziest ones, we are their offspring
02:49:58 and we fail them if we don’t go into space.
02:50:01 That’s how I would put it.
02:50:03 You should run for president.
02:50:05 I’m just pro space, man.
02:50:07 I love space.
02:50:08 No, you’re pro doing difficult things
02:50:10 and pushing, exploring the world in all of its forms.
02:50:14 I hope that kind of spirit permeates politics too.
02:50:18 That same kind of a…
02:50:20 Can, can.
02:50:21 I, well, it can, and I hope so.
02:50:24 I don’t know if you want to stay on it,
02:50:25 but I think that was book number one or two.
02:50:28 Oh, shit.
02:50:28 Yeah, okay.
02:50:29 All right, all right.
02:50:30 Is there something else?
02:50:31 Well, this one is second,
02:50:32 this actually is a corollary to that, which is sapiens.
02:50:34 And I know that’s a very normal, normie answer.
02:50:37 One of the best selling book.
02:50:38 I think there’s a reason for that.
02:50:40 Yuval Noah Harari.
02:50:41 Oh, cool.
02:50:42 Okay, look, yes, he didn’t do any new research.
02:50:44 I get that.
02:50:45 All he did was aggregate.
02:50:46 I’m sure he’s very controversial in the scientific community,
02:50:49 but guess what?
02:50:49 He wrote a great book.
02:50:50 It’s a very easy to read general explanation
02:50:56 of the rise of human history.
02:50:58 And it helps challenge a lot of preconceptions.
02:51:00 Are we special?
02:51:01 Are we an accident?
02:51:02 Are we more like a parasite?
02:51:04 Are we not?
02:51:05 What, is there a destiny to all of us?
02:51:07 I don’t know.
02:51:08 You know, if anything, it’s like what I just described,
02:51:10 which is more.
02:51:12 Move, move out.
02:51:14 The evolution of money.
02:51:15 Like, I know he gets a lot of hate,
02:51:17 but I think that he writes it so clearly and well
02:51:21 that for your average person to be able to read that,
02:51:23 you will come away with a more clear understanding
02:51:26 of the human race than before.
02:51:28 And I think that that’s why it’s worth it.
02:51:30 I agree with you 100%.
02:51:32 I’m ashamed to, I usually don’t bring up sapiens
02:51:35 because it’s like.
02:51:36 Yeah, it’s like, everybody’s uncle has read it,
02:51:38 but that’s a good thing.
02:51:40 It is one of the, I think it’ll be remembered
02:51:43 as one of the great books of this particular era.
02:51:46 Yeah, because it’s so clearly,
02:51:48 it’s like the selfish gene with Dawkins.
02:51:50 I mean, it just aggregates so many ideas together
02:51:53 and puts language to it
02:51:54 that makes it very useful to talk about.
02:51:57 So it is one of the great books.
02:51:59 100%.
02:52:00 Another one is definitely Born to Run for the same reason
02:52:04 by Christopher McDougall, which is that.
02:52:06 I’m just gonna listen to this whole podcast next week.
02:52:09 You have to.
02:52:09 Well, you should because it,
02:52:11 you are inheriting our most basic skill, which is running.
02:52:15 And reimagining human history
02:52:19 or reimagining like what we were
02:52:22 as opposed to what we are is very useful
02:52:25 because it helps you understand
02:52:27 how to tap into primal aspects of your brain,
02:52:31 which just drive you.
02:52:32 And the reason I love McDougall’s writing is because
02:52:35 I love anybody who writes like this.
02:52:37 Malcolm Gladwell, who else?
02:52:39 Michael Lewis, people who find characters
02:52:42 to tell a bigger story.
02:52:43 Michael Lewis finds characters to tell us the story
02:52:45 of the financial crisis.
02:52:48 Malcolm Gladwell writes, finds characters to tell us
02:52:50 the story of learning new skills and outliers
02:52:53 and whatever his latest book is,
02:52:55 I forget what it’s called.
02:52:56 But McDougall tells the vignettes
02:53:00 and a tiny story of a single person
02:53:02 in the history of running
02:53:04 and like how it’s baked into your DNA.
02:53:07 And I think there was just something very useful
02:53:10 to that for me for being like,
02:53:11 I don’t need to go to the gym
02:53:13 or like, I’m not saying, you should still go to the gym.
02:53:15 I’ll be clear.
02:53:16 I’m saying like, in order to fulfill like who you are,
02:53:19 you can actually tap into something that’s the most basic.
02:53:23 I don’t know if, I’m sure if you listened
02:53:24 to the David Cho episode with Joe Rogan.
02:53:28 You know what I mean?
02:53:29 Oh, where he’s the animal.
02:53:30 Yeah, right.
02:53:31 With the baboon.
02:53:32 When he goes hunting.
02:53:32 And there’s something to that, man.
02:53:33 There’s something to that.
02:53:34 Where it’s just like, they are living the way
02:53:37 that we were supposed to.
02:53:39 We’re not supposed, well,
02:53:40 I don’t wanna put a normative judgment on it.
02:53:42 They’re living the way that we used to.
02:53:45 There’s something very fun.
02:53:46 It feels more honest somehow to our true nature.
02:53:48 There’s a guy I follow on Instagram.
02:53:50 I’ve come from, Paul Saladino, Carnivore MD.
02:53:53 He just went over there to the Hadza to live with them.
02:53:57 And I was watching his stuff just like,
02:53:59 I was like, man, there’s something in you that wants to go.
02:54:03 I’m like, I wanna do that.
02:54:05 I wouldn’t be very good at it, but like I want to.
02:54:07 I’m so glad that somebody who thinks deeply about politics
02:54:10 is so fascinated with exploration
02:54:12 and with the very basic nature,
02:54:17 like human nature, nature of our existence.
02:54:20 I love that.
02:54:21 There’s something in you.
02:54:23 And still you’re stuck in DC.
02:54:25 For now, for now.
02:54:26 Speaking of which, you’re from Texas.
02:54:32 What do you make of the future of Texas politically,
02:54:35 culturally, economically?
02:54:39 I am in part moving, well, I’m moving to Austin.
02:54:43 Congrats.
02:54:44 But I’m also doing the Eric Weinstein advice,
02:54:46 which is like, dude, you’re not married.
02:54:49 You don’t have kids.
02:54:51 There’s no such thing as moving.
02:54:52 What are you moving?
02:54:54 You’re like your three suits and some shirts and underwear.
02:54:59 What exactly is the move entail?
02:55:02 So I have nothing.
02:55:03 So I’m basically, it’s very just remain mobile,
02:55:07 but there’s a promise, there’s a hope to Austin.
02:55:12 Outside of just like friendships,
02:55:17 I have no, it’s a very different culture
02:55:18 that Joe Rogan is creating.
02:55:20 I’m mostly interested in what the next Silicon Valley
02:55:24 will be, what the next hub of technological innovation.
02:55:28 And there’s a promise, maybe a dream
02:55:32 for Austin being that next place.
02:55:34 It’s very possible.
02:55:35 Doesn’t have the baggage of some of the political things,
02:55:40 maybe some of the sort of things that hold back
02:55:46 the beauty of, that makes capitalism,
02:55:49 that makes innovation so powerful,
02:55:51 which is like meritocracy, which is excellence.
02:55:55 Diversity is exceptionally important,
02:55:57 but it should not be the only priority.
02:56:01 It has to be something that coexists
02:56:05 with a like insatiable drive towards excellence.
02:56:10 And it seems like Texas is a nice place,
02:56:13 like having a Austin, which is like a kind of this weird,
02:56:19 I hope it stays weird, man.
02:56:20 I love weird people.
02:56:21 I don’t know about that, but we can get into it.
02:56:24 But there’s this hope is it remains this weird place
02:56:29 of brilliant innovation amidst a state
02:56:35 that’s like more conservative.
02:56:36 So like there’s a nice balance of everything.
02:56:38 What are your thoughts about the future of Texas?
02:56:40 I think it’s so fascinating to me
02:56:43 because I never thought I would want to move back,
02:56:46 but now I’m beginning to be convinced.
02:56:50 So I’m going to stick to this clip.
02:56:53 I am, I’m being honest
02:56:55 and many Texas will hate me for this.
02:56:56 But Texas was not a place that was kind to me, quote unquote.
02:57:00 And this is because of my own parent.
02:57:04 Look, I was raised in College Station, Texas,
02:57:07 which is a town of 50,000.
02:57:08 It’s a university town.
02:57:10 It exists only for the university.
02:57:13 So it was a very,
02:57:14 I did not get the full Texas experience
02:57:16 purely speaking from a College Station experience.
02:57:19 But growing up first generation, or I forget what it is,
02:57:25 I’m the first American.
02:57:26 I was born and raised in College Station.
02:57:27 My parents are from India.
02:57:30 Being raised in a town where the dominant culture
02:57:34 was predominantly like white evangelical Christian was hard.
02:57:38 Like it was just difficult.
02:57:40 And I think of it,
02:57:43 in the beginning, I would say like ages,
02:57:46 like zero to like eight,
02:57:48 it was like cultural ignorance,
02:57:50 as in like they just don’t know how to interact with you.
02:57:53 And there was a level of,
02:57:55 always there was like the evangelical kind of antipathy
02:57:58 towards like you being not Christian.
02:58:01 You know, my parents are Hindu.
02:58:02 Like that’s how I was raised.
02:58:03 And so like, there was that.
02:58:05 But 9 11 was very difficult.
02:58:08 Like 9 11 happened when I was in third or fourth grade.
02:58:13 And that changed everything, man.
02:58:15 Like, I mean, our temple had to like print out T shirts.
02:58:18 And I’m not saying this is a sob story, to be clear.
02:58:20 I’ve still actually largely for my adult life
02:58:23 identified on the political right.
02:58:24 So don’t take this as some like, you know, race manifesto.
02:58:27 I’m just telling it like, this is what happened,
02:58:29 which is that like we had,
02:58:32 it was just hard to be proud, frankly,
02:58:35 and to have some of the fallout from 9 11 and during Iraq.
02:58:40 And the reason I am political is because I realize in myself,
02:58:46 I have a strong rebellious nature
02:58:49 against systems and structures of power.
02:58:52 And the first people I ever rebelled against
02:58:55 were all the people telling me to shut up
02:58:58 and not question the Iraq war.
02:59:00 So the reason I am in politics
02:59:02 is because I hated George W. Bush with a passion
02:59:07 and I hated the war.
02:59:08 And I was so, again, my entire background
02:59:10 is largely in national security for this reason,
02:59:12 which is I was obsessed with the idea of like,
02:59:15 how do we get people who are not gonna get us
02:59:18 into these quagmire situations in positions of power?
02:59:21 That’s how I became fascinated by power in the first place
02:59:24 was all a question of how do this happen?
02:59:27 Like, how did this catastrophe happen?
02:59:30 I realized it’s not as bad as like, you know,
02:59:32 previous conflicts, but this one was mine.
02:59:34 And to see how it changed our domestic politics forever.
02:59:38 And so that was my rebellion.
02:59:40 But it’s funny,
02:59:41 because I identified on the left when I was growing up,
02:59:44 up until I was 18, I had also a funny two year stint.
02:59:48 This is where everything kind of changed for me
02:59:50 when I was 16, actually.
02:59:51 I moved to Qatar, to Doha, Qatar,
02:59:53 because my dad was a dean or associate dean
02:59:57 of Texas A&M University at Doha.
03:00:00 So my last two years of high school were at this.
03:00:02 I went from this small town in Texas,
03:00:04 and I love my parents because they could recognize
03:00:07 that I had within me that I was not a small town kid.
03:00:10 So they took me out of this country every chance they got.
03:00:13 I traveled everywhere and constantly let me go.
03:00:16 And so I went from school in College Station
03:00:20 to like this ritzy private school, American school.
03:00:24 Best thing that ever happened to me,
03:00:26 because first of all, it got me out of College Station.
03:00:29 Second, at that time, I had this annoying streak of,
03:00:34 I wouldn’t call it being anti America,
03:00:36 but you don’t appreciate America.
03:00:38 Let me tell everybody out there listening,
03:00:40 leave for a while, you will miss it so much.
03:00:44 You do not know what it is like
03:00:47 to not have freedom of speech until you don’t have it.
03:00:50 And I was going to high school
03:00:55 with these guys in the Qatari royal family.
03:00:57 And all I wanted to do was speak out
03:00:59 of how they were pieces of shit
03:01:01 for the way that they treated Indian citizens
03:01:03 in that country who are basically used as slave labor.
03:01:06 And I could not say one word
03:01:08 because I knew I would be deported
03:01:10 and I knew my dad would lose his job
03:01:12 and my mom would lose her job
03:01:13 and we would be forced out of the country.
03:01:15 You don’t know what it’s like to live like that.
03:01:17 Or to be in a society where like,
03:01:20 you have like a high school girlfriend or something
03:01:22 and you can’t even touch in public
03:01:25 or you’re lectured for public decency.
03:01:27 Like, listen, I’ve lived under a Gulf monarchy now.
03:01:31 And that turned me into the most pro America guy ever.
03:01:36 Like I came back so like Merica,
03:01:40 like I still am because of that experience.
03:01:43 Living abroad, like that will do it to you.
03:01:46 Live in a non democracy.
03:01:48 You have, even in Europe, I would say,
03:01:51 you guys aren’t living as free as we are here.
03:01:53 It’s awesome and I love it.
03:01:55 You’re ultimately another human being
03:01:56 than the one who left Texas.
03:01:58 Yeah.
03:01:59 So, I mean, have you actually considered moving to Texas
03:02:03 and broadly just outside of your own story,
03:02:05 what do you think is the future of Texas?
03:02:07 What is the future of Austin?
03:02:08 There’s so much transformation seemingly happening now
03:02:12 related to Silicon Valley, to California.
03:02:15 That’s what’s been so hard to me,
03:02:16 which is that since I left, it’s changed dramatically,
03:02:18 which is that it used to be like this conservative state
03:02:22 where the main money to be made was oil.
03:02:25 And everybody knew that.
03:02:26 Petro, it was a Petro state, Houston, all of that.
03:02:30 Austin was always weird, but it was more of a music town
03:02:33 and a university town.
03:02:34 It was not a tech town.
03:02:35 But in the 10 years or so since I left,
03:02:39 I have begun to realize, I’m like,
03:02:40 well, the Texas I grew up in is over.
03:02:43 It is not a deep red state in any sense of the term.
03:02:48 The number one Uhaul route in the country pre pandemic
03:02:51 already was San Francisco to Austin, okay?
03:02:54 So like you have this massive influx of people
03:02:57 from California and New York.
03:03:00 And the state, the composition of it
03:03:03 is changed dramatically.
03:03:04 The intra composition and the ultra, yeah.
03:03:08 So the intra composition, it’s become way more urban.
03:03:10 It’s from when I grew up, Texas was a much more rural state.
03:03:13 Its politics were much more static.
03:03:15 It looked much more like Rick Perry,
03:03:17 like he was a very accurate representation of who we were.
03:03:22 Now, I don’t think that that’s the case.
03:03:25 Texas is now a dynamic economy,
03:03:28 not just 100% reliant on oil because of its kind of like,
03:03:33 I would call it like regulatory arbitrage
03:03:35 relative to California and New York
03:03:38 offers a large incentive to people who are more,
03:03:41 I wouldn’t say culturally liberal,
03:03:43 but they’re not necessarily like culturally conservative,
03:03:45 like the people who I grew up with.
03:03:47 That’s changed the whole state’s politics.
03:03:49 Beto came two points away from beating Ted Cruz.
03:03:51 I’m not saying the state’s gonna go blue.
03:03:53 I think the Republican party will just change
03:03:55 and we’ll have to readjust.
03:03:57 But the re urbanization of Texas has made it,
03:04:01 I’ll put it in this way,
03:04:03 much more attractive to me than the place that I grew up.
03:04:09 And then from my perspective,
03:04:11 well, first of all,
03:04:12 I love some of the cowboy things that Texas stands for,
03:04:16 but for more practically, from my perspective,
03:04:18 the injection of the tech innovation
03:04:23 that’s moving to Texas has made it very exciting to me.
03:04:27 It seems like outside of all that,
03:04:29 maybe you can speak to the weird in Austin.
03:04:32 It seems like I know that Joe Rogan is a rich,
03:04:39 sort of almost like mainstream at this point,
03:04:42 but he’s also attracting a lot of weirdos.
03:04:45 And so is Elon and a lot of those weirdos are my friends
03:04:48 and they’re like Michael Malice, like those weirdos.
03:04:53 And it’s like, I have a hope for Austin
03:04:55 that all kinds of different flavors of weirdos
03:04:57 will get injected.
03:04:59 It’s possible.
03:05:00 I actually think the most significant thing that happened
03:05:02 were Tesla moving there.
03:05:06 The reason why is I love Joe, obviously,
03:05:08 but he can only attract X amount of people.
03:05:11 Elon actually employs thousands of people.
03:05:14 And then you will also Oracle.
03:05:16 Oracle’s decision to move to Austin is just as important
03:05:20 because those two men, Larry, was it Ellison, right?
03:05:25 Ellison and Elon,
03:05:27 they actually employ tens of thousands of people
03:05:30 collectively, that can change the nature of the city.
03:05:33 So you combine that with Joe bringing
03:05:36 this entire new entertainment complex
03:05:39 with the bodies of people who will appreciate
03:05:42 said entertainment complex.
03:05:44 Spend money on the entertainment.
03:05:46 Exactly, you just remade the entire city.
03:05:48 And that’s why I’m fascinated.
03:05:50 And obviously there’s network effects,
03:05:52 which is now that all those people are down there,
03:05:54 I mean, if I were Elon Musk,
03:05:55 I would donate a shit ton of money
03:05:57 to the University of Texas
03:05:58 and I would turn it into my Stanford for Silicon Valley.
03:06:01 Let’s introduce some competition
03:06:03 and let UT Austin hire the best software developers,
03:06:07 engineers, professors, and more,
03:06:08 and turn Texas into a true like Austin revolving door hub
03:06:12 where people come to UT Austin to get an internship at Tesla
03:06:16 and then become an executive there
03:06:18 and then create their own company
03:06:19 in their own garage in Austin,
03:06:22 which is the next Facebook, Twitter.
03:06:24 That’s how it happens.
03:06:25 This is why I’m much more skeptical of Miami.
03:06:27 There’s a whole like tech Miami crew.
03:06:29 I’m like, yeah, like there’s no university.
03:06:32 It’s very inorganic.
03:06:34 Look, I think Miami is awesome.
03:06:35 I just like, I don’t know if the same building blocks
03:06:38 are there and also no multi billion dollar companies
03:06:42 which employ thousands of people are coming there.
03:06:44 That’s the ingredient.
03:06:45 It’s not just Joe Rogan.
03:06:47 It’s not just even Elon Musk
03:06:48 if he’s still operated in California.
03:06:50 It’s all the people he employs.
03:06:52 I think that is where, I think Texas is going
03:06:56 to dramatically change within the next 10 years.
03:06:59 Alternative to, it’s already become a more urbanized state
03:07:03 that’s moved away from oil and gas
03:07:05 in terms of like its emphasis,
03:07:07 not necessarily in terms of his real economics.
03:07:09 And 10 years from now,
03:07:11 I don’t think it will be necessarily the name prop
03:07:14 like of the town.
03:07:16 The only question to me is how that manifests politically
03:07:19 because it’s very possible though,
03:07:22 because a lot of these workers themselves
03:07:24 are California culturally liberal.
03:07:27 You could see a Gavin Newsom type person
03:07:29 getting elected governor of Texas
03:07:31 or like the mayor of Austin.
03:07:34 I mean, look, mayor of Austin is already a Democrat, right?
03:07:36 Like, I mean, Joe has his own problems with Austin.
03:07:39 It’s funny, I remember him leaving LA
03:07:41 and I’m like, I don’t know, have you been to Austin?
03:07:43 Like, it’s not everything it’s cracked up to be,
03:07:48 necessarily.
03:07:49 But no matter what, a new place allows the possibility
03:07:52 for new ideas, even if they’re somehow left leaning
03:07:57 and all those kinds of things.
03:07:58 I do think the only two things missing
03:08:00 from Austin and Texas are two dudes in a suit
03:08:05 that sometimes have a podcast
03:08:07 talking a bunch of nonsense on a mic.
03:08:08 So let’s bring the best suit game to Texas.
03:08:11 I hope you do make it to Texas at some point.
03:08:15 Thanks so much for talking to me.
03:08:17 Thanks for listening to this conversation
03:08:18 with Sagar and Jetty.
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03:08:32 and to support this podcast.
03:08:34 And now let me leave you with some words
03:08:36 from Martin Luther King Jr.
03:08:38 About the idea that what is just and what is legal
03:08:42 are not always the same thing.
03:08:44 He said, never forget that what Hitler did in Germany
03:08:49 was legal.
03:08:50 Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.