back to indexDan Carlin: Hardcore History | Lex Fridman Podcast #136
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The following is a conversation with Dan Carlin,
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host of Hardcore History and Common Sense Podcasts.
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To me, Hardcore History is one of,
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if not the greatest podcast ever made.
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Dan and Joe Rogan are probably the two main people
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who got me to fall in love with the medium of podcasting
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as a fan and eventually as a podcaster myself.
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Meeting Dan was surreal.
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To me, he was not just a mere human like the rest of us,
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since his voice has been a guide
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through some of the darkest moments
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of human history for me.
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Meeting him was like meeting Genghis Khan,
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Stalin, Hitler, Alexander the Great,
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and all of the most powerful leaders in history all at once
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in a crappy hotel room in the middle of Oregon.
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It turns out that he is in fact just a human
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and truly one of the good ones.
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This was a pleasure and an honor for me.
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Quick mention of each sponsor,
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followed by some thoughts related to the episode.
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First is Athletic Greens,
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the all in one drink that I start every day with
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to cover all my nutritional bases.
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Second is SimpliSafe,
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a home security company I use to monitor
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and protect my apartment.
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Third is Magic Spoon,
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low carb, keto friendly cereal that I think is delicious.
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And finally, Cash App,
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the app I use to send money to friends for food and drinks.
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Please check out these sponsors in the description
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to get a discount and to support this podcast.
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As a side note, let me say that I think
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we're living through one of the most challenging moments
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in American history.
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To me, the way out is through reason and love.
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Both require a deep understanding of human nature
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and of human history.
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This conversation is about both.
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I am, perhaps hopelessly, optimistic about our future.
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But, if indeed we stand at the precipice
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of the great filter, watching our world consumed by fire,
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think of this little podcast conversation
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as the appetizer to the final meal before the apocalypse.
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If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,
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review the Five Stars on Apple podcast,
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follow on Spotify, support it on Patreon,
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or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman.
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And now, finally, here's my conversation
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with the great Dan Carlin.
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Let's start with the highest philosophical question.
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Do you think human beings are fundamentally good,
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or are all of us capable of both good and evil,
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and it's the environment that molds how we,
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the trajectory that we take through life?
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How do we define evil?
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Evil seems to be a situational
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eye of the beholder kind of question.
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So, if we define evil, maybe I can get a better idea of,
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and that could be a whole show, couldn't it, defining evil.
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But when we say evil, what do we mean?
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That's a slippery one, but I think there's some way
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in which your existence, your presence in the world,
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leads to pain and suffering and destruction
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for many others in the rest of the world.
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So, you steal the resources and you use them
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to create more suffering than there was before in the world.
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So, I suppose it's somehow deeply connected
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to this other slippery word, which is suffering.
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As you create suffering in the world,
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you bring suffering to the world.
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But here's the problem, I think, with it,
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because I fully see where you're going with that,
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and I understand it.
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The problem is the question of the reason
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for inflicting suffering.
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So, sometimes one might inflict suffering
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upon one group of individuals
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in order to maximize a lack of suffering
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with another group of individuals,
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or one who might not be considered evil at all
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might make the rational, seemingly rational choice
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of inflicting pain and suffering
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on a smaller group of people
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in order to maximize the opposite of that
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for a larger group of people.
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Yeah, that's one of the dark things about,
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I've spoken and read the work of Stephen Kotkin,
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I'm not sure if you're familiar with the historian,
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and he's basically a Stalin, a Joseph Stalin scholar.
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And one of the things I realized,
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I'm not sure where to put Hitler, but with Stalin,
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it really seems that he was sane
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and he thought he was doing good for the world.
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I really believe from everything I've read about Stalin
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that he believed that communism is good for the world.
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And if you have to kill a few people along the way,
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it's like you said, the small groups,
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if you have to sort of remove the people
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that stand in the way of this utopian system of communism,
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then that's actually good for the world.
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And it didn't seem to me
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that he could even consider the possibility
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He really thought he was doing good for the world.
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And that stuck with me because he's one of the most,
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is to our definition of evil,
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he seems to have brought more evil onto this world
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than almost any human in history.
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And I don't know what to do with that.
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Well, I'm fascinated with the concept,
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so fascinated by it that the very first
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hardcore history show we ever did,
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which was a full 15 or 16 minutes,
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was called Alexander versus Hitler.
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And the entire question about it was the motivations, right?
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So if you go to a court of law because you killed somebody,
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one of the things they're going to consider
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is why did you kill them, right?
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And if you killed somebody, for example, in self defense,
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you're going to be treated differently
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than if you malicious killed somebody
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maliciously to take their wallet, right?
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And in the show, we wondered,
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because I don't really make pronouncements,
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but we wondered about if you believe Hitler's writings,
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for example, Mein Kampf, which is written by a guy
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who's a political figure who wants to get,
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so I mean, it's about as believable
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as any other political tract would be.
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But in his mind, the things that he said that he had to do
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were designed for the betterment of the German people, right?
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Whereas Alexander the Great, once again,
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this is somebody from more than 2000 years ago,
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so with lots of propaganda in the intervening years,
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but one of the views of Alexander the Great
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is that the reason he did what he did
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was to, for lack of a better word,
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write his name in a more permanent graffiti
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on the pages of history, right?
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In other words, to glorify himself.
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And if that's the case,
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does that make Alexander a worse person than Hitler
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because Hitler thought he was doing good,
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whereas Alexander, if you believe the interpretation,
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was simply trying to exalt Alexander.
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So the motivations of the people doing these things,
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it seems to me, matter.
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I don't think you can just sit there and go,
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the only thing that matters is the end result,
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because that might've been an unintentional byproduct,
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in which case, that person,
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had you been able to show them the future,
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might have changed what they were doing.
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So were they evil or misguided or wrong or made the wrong?
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So, and I hate to do that
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because there's certain people like Hitler
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that I don't feel deserve the benefit of the doubt.
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At the same time, if you're fascinated
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by the concept of evil and you delve into it deeply enough,
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you're going to want to understand
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why these evil people did what they did.
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And sometimes it can confuse the hell out of you.
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You know, who wants to sit there
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and try to see things from Hitler's point of view
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to get a better understanding
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and sort of commiserate with.
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So, but I'm, obviously, first history show,
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I'm fascinated with the concept.
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So do you think it's possible,
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if we put ourselves in the mindset
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of some of the people that have led,
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created so much suffering in the world,
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that all of them had their motivations were,
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had good intentions underlying them?
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No, I don't, it's simply because there's so many,
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I mean, the law of averages would suggest
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that that's not true.
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I guess it is pure evil possible,
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meaning you, again, it's slippery,
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but you, the suffering is the goal.
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Suffering, intentional suffering.
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Yes, I think that, and I think that there's historical
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figures that one could point,
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but that gets to the deeper question of,
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are these people sane?
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Do they have something wrong with them?
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Are they twisted from something in their youth?
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You know, these are the kinds of things
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where you start to delve into the psychological makeup
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In other words, is anybody born evil?
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And I actually believe that some people are.
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I think the DNA can get scrambled up in ways.
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I think the question of evil is important too,
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because I think it's an eye of the beholder thing.
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I mean, if Hitler, for example, had been successful
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and we were today on the sixth or seventh leader
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of the Third Reich, since I think his entire history
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would be viewed through a different lens,
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because that's the way we do things, right?
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Genghis Khan looks different to the Mongolians
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than he does to the residents of Baghdad, right?
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And I think, so an eye of the beholder question,
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I think comes into all these sorts of things.
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As you said, it's a very slippery question.
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Where do you put, as somebody who's fascinated
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by military history, where do you put violence
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in terms of the human condition?
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Is it core to being human or is it just a little tool
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that we use every once in a while?
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So I'm gonna respond to your question with a question.
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What do you see the difference being
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between violence and force?
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Let me go farther.
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I'm not sure that violence is something
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that we have to put up with as human beings forever,
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that we must resign ourselves to violence forever.
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But I have a much harder time seeing us
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able to abolish force.
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And there's going to be some ground
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where if those two things are not the same,
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and I don't know that maybe they are,
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where there's certainly some crossover.
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And I think force, you're an engineer,
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you'll understand this better than I did,
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but think about it as a physical law.
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If you can't stop something from moving
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in a certain direction without pushing back
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in that same direction, I'm not sure
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that you can have a society or a civilization
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without the ability to use a counter force
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when things are going wrong,
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whether it's on an individual level, right?
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A person attacks another person,
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so you step in to save that person,
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or even at the highest levels of politics or anything else,
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a counter force to stop the inertia
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or the impetus of another movement.
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So I think that force is a simple,
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almost law of physics in human interaction,
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especially at the civilizational level.
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I think civilization requires a certain amount of,
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if not violence, then force.
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And again, they've talked, I mean,
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it goes back into St. Augustine,
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all kinds of Christian beliefs about the proper use of force
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and people have philosophically tried to decide
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between can you have sort of an ahimsa,
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Buddhists sort of, we will be nonviolent toward everything
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and exert no force, or there's a reason to have force
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in order to create the space for good.
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I think force is inevitable.
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Now, we can talk, and I've not come up
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to the conclusion myself, if there is a distinction
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to be made between force and violence.
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I mean, is a nonviolent force enough,
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or is violence when done for the cause of good
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a different thing than violence done
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either for the cause of evil, as you would say,
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or simply for random reasons?
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I mean, we humans lack control sometimes.
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We can be violent for no apparent reason or goal.
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I mean, you look at the criminal justice system alone
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and the way we interact with people
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who are acting out in ways that we as a society
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have decided is intolerable.
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Can you deal with that without force
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and at some level violence?
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Can you maintain peacefulness without force?
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Just to be a little bit more specific
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about the idea of force, do you put force
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as general enough to include force in the space of ideas?
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So you mentioned Buddhism or religion or just Twitter.
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I can think of no things farther apart than that.
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Is the battles we do in the space of ideas
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of the great debates throughout history,
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do you put force into that?
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Or do you, in this conversation,
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are we trying to right now keep it to just physical force
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in saying that you have an intuition
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that force might be with us much longer than violence?
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I think the two bleed together.
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So take, because it's always my go to example.
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I'm afraid and I'm sure that the listeners all hate it,
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but take Germany during the 1920s, early 1930s,
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before the Nazis came to power.
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And they were always involved in some level of force,
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beating up in the streets or whatever it might be.
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But think about it more like an intellectual discussion
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until a certain point.
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It would be difficult, I imagine,
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to keep the intellectual counter force of ideas
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from at some point degenerating
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into something that's more coercion, counter force,
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if we want to use the phrases we were just talking about.
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So I think the two are intimately connected.
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I mean, actions follow thought, right?
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And at a certain point, I think,
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especially when one is not achieving the goals
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that they want to achieve through a peaceful discussion
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or argumentation or trying to convince the other side,
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that sometimes the next level of operations
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is something a little bit more physically imposing,
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if that makes sense.
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We go from the intellectual to the physical.
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Yeah, so it too easily spills over into violence.
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Yes, and one leads to the other often.
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So you kind of implied perhaps a hopeful message.
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Let me ask it in the form of a question.
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Do you think we'll always have war?
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I think it goes to the first question too.
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So for example, what do you do?
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I mean, let's play with nation states now,
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although I don't know that nation states
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are something we should think of
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as a permanent construct forever.
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But how is one nation state
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supposed to prevent another nation state
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from acting in ways that it would see
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as either detrimental to the global community
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or detrimental to the interest of their own nation state?
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I think we've had this question
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of going back to ancient times,
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but certainly in the 20th century,
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this has come up quite a bit.
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I mean, the whole Second World War argument
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sometimes revolves around the idea
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of what the proper counterforce should be.
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Can you create an entity, a league of nations,
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the United Nations, a one world entity maybe even
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that alleviates the need for counterforce
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involving mass violence and armies and navies
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I think that's an open discussion we're still having.
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It's good to think through that
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because having something like a United Nations,
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there's usually a centralized control.
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So there's humans at the top,
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there's committees and usually like leaders
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emerge as singular figures
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that then can become corrupted by power.
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And it's just a really important,
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it feels like a really important thought experiment
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and something to really rigorously think through.
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How can you construct systems of government
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that are stable enough to push us towards less and less war
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and less and less unstable and another tough word,
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another tough word which is unfair of application of force?
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You know, that's really at the core of the question
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that we're trying to figure out as humans,
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as our weapons get better and better and better
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destroying ourselves,
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it feels like it's important to think about
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how we minimize the over application
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or unfair application of force.
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There's other elements that come into play too.
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You and I are discussing this
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at the very high intellectual level of things,
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but there's also a tail wagging the dog element to this.
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So think of a society of warriors,
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a tribal society from a long time ago.
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How much do the fact that you have warriors in your society
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and that their reason for existing,
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what they take pride in, what they train for,
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what their status in their own civilization,
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how much does that itself
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drive the responses of that society, right?
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How much do you need war to legitimize warriors?
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That's the old argument that you get to
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and we've had this in the 20th century too,
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that the creation of arms and armies
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creates an incentive to use them, right?
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And that they themselves can drive that incentive
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as a justification for their reasons for existence.
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That's where we start to talk about the interactivity
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of all these different elements of society upon one another.
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So when we talk about governments and war,
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well, you need to take into account
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the various things those governments have put into place
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in terms of systems and armies and things like that
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to protect themselves, right?
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For reasons we can all understand,
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but they exert a force on your range of choices, don't they?
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You're making me realize that in my upbringing
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and I think upbringing of many, warriors are heroes.
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To me, I don't know where that feeling comes from,
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but to sort of die fighting
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is an honorable way to die, it feels like that.
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I've always had a problem with this
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because as a person interested in military history,
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the distinction is important
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and I try to make it at different levels.
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So at base level, the people who are out there
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on the front lines doing the fighting,
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to me, those people can be compared with police officers
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and firemen and people, fire persons,
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but I mean, people that are involved
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in an ethical attempt to perform a task
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which ultimately one can see in many situations
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as being a saving sort of task, right?
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Or if nothing else, a self sacrifice
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for what they see as the greater good.
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Now, I draw a distinction between the individuals
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and the entity that they're a part of,
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a military, and I certainly draw a distinction
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between the military and then the entire,
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for lack of a better word, military industrial complex
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that that service is a part of.
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I feel a lot less moral attachment
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to those upper echelons than I do the people on the ground.
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The people on the ground could be any of us
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and have been in a lot of,
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we have a very professional sort of military now
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where it's a very, a subset of the population,
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but in other periods of time, we've had conscription
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and drafts and it hasn't been a subset of the population,
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it's been the population, right?
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And so it is the society oftentimes going to war
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and I make a distinction between those warriors
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and the entities either in the system
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that they're a part of the military
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or the people that control the military
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at the highest political levels.
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I feel a lot less moral attachment to them
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and I'm much harsher about how I feel about them.
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I do not consider the military itself to be heroic
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and I do not consider the military industrial complex
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I do think that is a tail wagging the dog situation.
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I do think that draws us into looking at military endeavors
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as a solution to the problem much more quickly
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than we otherwise might.
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And to be honest, to tie it all together,
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I actually look at the victims of this
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as the soldiers we were talking about.
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If you set a fire to send firemen into to fight,
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then I feel bad for the firemen.
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I feel like you've abused the trust
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that you give those people, right?
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So when people talk about war,
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I always think that the people that we have to make sure
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that a war is really necessary in order to protect
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are the people that you're gonna send over there
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The greatest victims in our society of war
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are often the warriors.
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So in my mind, when we see these people coming home
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from places like Iraq,
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a place where I would have made the argument
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and did at the time that we didn't belong.
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To me, those people are victims
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and I know they don't like to think about themselves
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that way because it runs totally counter to the ethos.
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But if you're sending people to protect this country's shores,
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If you're sending people to go do something
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that they otherwise probably don't need to do
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but they're there for political reasons
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or anything else you wanna put in
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that's not defense related,
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well then you've made victims of our heroes.
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And so I feel like we do a lot of talk
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about our troops and our soldiers and stuff
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but we don't treat them as valuable
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as the rhetoric makes them sound.
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Otherwise, we would be much more careful
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about where we put them.
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If you're gonna send my son,
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and I don't have a son, I have daughters,
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but if you're gonna send my son into harm's way,
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I'm going to demand that you really need
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to be sending him into harm's way
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and I'm going to be angry at you
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if you put him into harm's way if it doesn't warrant it.
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And so I have much more suspicion about the system
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that sends these people into these situations
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where they're required to be heroic
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than I do the people on the ground
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that I look at as either the people
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that are defending us in situations
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like the Second World War, for example,
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or the people that turn out to be the individual victims
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of a system where they're just a cog in a machine
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and the machine doesn't really care as much about them
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as the rhetoric and the propaganda would insinuate.
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Yeah, and as my own family history,
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it would be nice if we could talk about
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there's a gray area in the places
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that you're talking about.
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There's a gray area in everything.
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But when that gray area is part of your own blood,
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as it is for me, it's worth shining a light on somehow.
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Sure, give me an example of what you mean.
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So you did a program of four episodes
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of Ghosts of the Ostfront.
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So I was born in the Soviet Union.
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I was raised in Moscow.
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My dad was born and raised in Kiev.
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My grandmother, who just recently passed away,
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was raised in Ukraine.
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It's a small city on the border between Russia and Ukraine.
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I have a grandfather born in Kiev.
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The interesting thing about the timing of everything,
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as you might be able to connect, is she survived.
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She's the most badass woman I've ever encountered in my life
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and most of the warrior spirit I carry is probably from her.
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She survived Polar Mor, the Ukrainian starvation
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She was a beautiful teenage girl
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during the Nazi occupation of,
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so she survived all of that.
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And of course, family that everybody,
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and so many people died through that whole process.
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And one of the things you talk about in your program
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is that the gray area is, even with the warriors,
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it happened to them, just like as you're saying now,
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they didn't have a choice.
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So my grandfather on the other side,
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he was a machine gunner that was in Ukraine that.
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In the Red Army, yeah.
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And they threw, like the statement was that there's,
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I don't know if it's obvious or not,
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but the rule was there's no surrender.
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So you better die.
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So you, I mean, you're basically,
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the goal was when he was fighting
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and he was lucky enough,
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one of the only to survive by being wounded early on
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is there was a march of Nazis towards, I guess, Moscow.
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And the whole goal in Ukraine was to slow every,
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to slow them into the winter.
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I mean, I view him as such a hero
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and he believed that he's indestructible,
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which is survivor bias.
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And that, you know, bullets can't hurt him.
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And that's what everybody believed.
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And of course, basically everyone that,
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he quickly rose to the ranks, let's just put it this way,
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because everybody died.
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It was just bodies dragging these heavy machine guns,
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like always, you know, always slowly retreating,
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shooting and retreating, shooting and retreating.
link |
And I don't know, he was a hero to me, like I always,
link |
I grew up thinking that he was the one
link |
that sort of defeated the Nazis, right?
link |
And, but the reality that there could be another perspective,
link |
which is all of this happened to him
link |
by the incompetence of Stalin, the incompetence
link |
and men of the Soviet Union being used like pawns
link |
in a shittily played game of chess, right?
link |
So like the one narrative is of him as a victim,
link |
as you're kind of describing.
link |
And then somehow that's more paralyzing and that's more,
link |
I don't know, it feels better to think of him as a hero
link |
and as Russia, Soviet Union saving the world.
link |
I mean, that narrative also,
link |
is in the United States that the United States was key
link |
in saving the world from the Nazis.
link |
It feels like that narrative is powerful for people.
link |
I'm not sure, and I carry it still with me,
link |
but when I think about the right way
link |
to think about that war,
link |
I'm not sure if that's the correct narrative.
link |
Let me suggest something.
link |
There's a line that a Marine named Eugene Sledge had to say
link |
once and I keep it on my phone because it's,
link |
it makes a real distinction.
link |
And he said, the front line is really where the war is.
link |
And anybody, even a hundred yards behind the front line
link |
doesn't know what it's really like.
link |
Now, the difference is, is there are lots of people miles
link |
behind the front line that are in danger, right?
link |
You can be in a medical unit in the rear
link |
and artillery could strike you, planes could strike me.
link |
You could be in danger,
link |
but at the front line, there are two different things.
link |
One is that, and at least,
link |
and I'm doing a lot of reading on this right now
link |
and reading a lot of veterans accounts.
link |
James Jones, who wrote books like From Here to Eternity,
link |
fictional accounts of the Second World War,
link |
but he based them on his own service.
link |
He was at Guadalcanal, for example, in 1942.
link |
And Jones had said that the evolution of a soldier
link |
in front line action requires a lot of
link |
front line action requires an almost surrendering
link |
to the idea that you're going to live,
link |
that you become accustomed to the idea
link |
that you're going to die.
link |
And he said, you're a different person
link |
simply for considering that thought seriously,
link |
because most of us don't.
link |
But what that allows you to do is to do that job
link |
at the front line, right?
link |
If you're too concerned about your own life,
link |
you become less of a good guy at your job, right?
link |
The other thing that the people in the 100 yards
link |
at the front line do that the people
link |
in the rear medical unit really don't,
link |
is you kill and you kill a lot, right?
link |
You don't just, oh, there's a sniper back here
link |
It's we go from one position to another
link |
and we kill lots of people.
link |
Those things will change you.
link |
And what that tends to do, not universally,
link |
because I've read accounts from Red Army soldiers
link |
and they're very patriotic, right?
link |
But a lot of that patriotism comes through years later
link |
as part of the nostalgia and the remembering.
link |
When you're down at that front 100 yards,
link |
it is often boiled down to a very small world.
link |
So your grandfather, was it your grandfather?
link |
At the machine gun, he's concerned about his position
link |
and his comrades and the people
link |
who he owes a responsibility to.
link |
And those, it's a very small world at that point.
link |
And to me, that's where the heroism is, right?
link |
He's not fighting for some giant world,
link |
civilizational thing.
link |
He's fighting to save the people next to him.
link |
And his own life at the same time
link |
because they're saving him too.
link |
And that there is a huge amount of heroism to that.
link |
And that gets to our question about force earlier.
link |
Why would you use force?
link |
Well, how about to protect these people
link |
on either side of me, right?
link |
Now, is there hatred?
link |
Yeah, I hated the Germans for what they were doing.
link |
As a matter of fact, I got a note from a poll
link |
not that long ago.
link |
And I have this tendency to refer to the Nazis, right?
link |
The regime that was, and he said,
link |
why do you keep calling them Nazis?
link |
He says, say what they were.
link |
They were Germans.
link |
And this guy wanted me to not absolve Germany
link |
by saying, oh, it was this awful group of people
link |
that took over your country.
link |
He said, the Germans did this.
link |
And there's that bitterness where he says,
link |
let's not forget what they did to us
link |
and what we had to do back, right?
link |
So for me, when we talk about these combat situations,
link |
the reason I call these people heroic is because of,
link |
they're fighting to defend things we could all understand.
link |
I mean, if you come after my brother
link |
and I take a machine gun and shoot you
link |
and you're gonna overrun me,
link |
I mean, that becomes a situation
link |
where we talked about counterforce earlier.
link |
Much easier to call yourself a hero
link |
when you're saving people
link |
or you're saving this town right behind you.
link |
And you know, if they get through your machine gun,
link |
they're gonna burn these villages.
link |
They're gonna throw these people out
link |
in the middle of winter, these families.
link |
That to me is a very different sort of heroism
link |
than this amorphous idea of patriotism.
link |
And you know, patriotism is a thing
link |
that we often get used with, right?
link |
People manipulate us through love of country and all this
link |
because they understand
link |
that this is something we feel very strongly,
link |
but they use it against us sometimes
link |
in order to whip up a war fever or to get people.
link |
I mean, there's a great line
link |
and I wish I could remember it in its entirety
link |
that Herman Goering had said about how easy it was
link |
to get the people into a war.
link |
He says, you know, you just appeal to their patriotism,
link |
you, I mean, there's buttons that you can push
link |
and they take advantage of things like love of country
link |
and the way we have a loyalty and an admiration
link |
to the warriors who put their lives on the line.
link |
These are manipulatable things in the human species
link |
that reliably can be counted on to move us
link |
in directions that in a more sober, reflective state of mind
link |
we would consider differently.
link |
It gets the, I mean, you get this war fever up
link |
and people wave flags and they start denouncing the enemy
link |
and they start signing, you know, we've seen it over
link |
and over and over again in ancient times this happened.
link |
But the love of country is also beautiful.
link |
So I haven't seen it in America as much.
link |
So people in America love their country,
link |
like this patriotism is strong in America,
link |
but it's not as strong as I remember,
link |
even with my sort of being younger,
link |
the love of the Soviet Union.
link |
Now, was it the Soviet Union this requires a distinction
link |
or was it mother Russia?
link |
What it really was, was the communist party.
link |
Okay, so it was the system in place, okay.
link |
The system in place, like loving,
link |
I haven't quite deeply synchronized exactly what you love.
link |
I think you love that like populist message of the worker,
link |
of the common man, the common person.
link |
Let me draw the comparison then.
link |
And I often say this, that the United States
link |
like the Soviet Union is an ideological based society, right?
link |
So you take a country like France,
link |
it doesn't matter which French government you're in now.
link |
The French have been the French for a long time, right?
link |
It's not based on an ideology, right?
link |
Whereas what unites the United States is an ideology,
link |
freedom, liberty, the constitution.
link |
This is what draws, you know,
link |
it's the e pluribus unum kind of the idea, right?
link |
That out of many one, well, what binds
link |
all these unique different people?
link |
The shared beliefs, this ideology.
link |
The Soviet Union was the same way.
link |
Cause as you know, the Soviet Union,
link |
Russia was merely one part of the Soviet Union.
link |
And if you believe the rhetoric until Stalin's time,
link |
everybody was going to be united
link |
under this ideological banner someday, right?
link |
It was a global revolution.
link |
So ideological societies are different.
link |
And to be a fan of the ideological framework and goal,
link |
I mean, I'm a Liberty person, right?
link |
I would like to see everybody in the world
link |
have my system of government,
link |
which is part of a bias, right?
link |
Because they might not want that.
link |
But I think it's better for everyone
link |
cause I think it's better for me.
link |
At the same time, when the ideology,
link |
if you consider, and you know,
link |
this stems from ideas of the enlightenment
link |
and there's a bias there.
link |
So my bias are toward the, but you feel,
link |
and this is why you say,
link |
we're going to bring freedom to Iraq.
link |
We're going to bring freedom to here.
link |
We're going to bring freedom
link |
because we think we're spreading to you
link |
something that is just undeniably positive.
link |
We're going to free you and give you this.
link |
It's hard for me to wipe my own bias away from there, right?
link |
Cause if I were in Iraq, for example,
link |
I would want freedom, right?
link |
But if you then leave and let the Iraqis vote
link |
for whomever they want,
link |
are they going to vote for somebody that will,
link |
I mean, you know, you look at Russia now
link |
and I hear from Russians quite a bit
link |
because so much of my views on Russia
link |
and the Soviet Union were formed in my formative years.
link |
And, you know, we were not hearing from many people
link |
in the Soviet Union back then, but now you do.
link |
You hear from Russians today who will say,
link |
your views on Stalin are archaic and cold.
link |
You know, so you try to reorient your beliefs a little bit,
link |
but it goes to this idea of,
link |
if you gave the people in Russia a free and fair vote,
link |
will they vote for somebody who promises them
link |
a free and open society
link |
based on enlightenment democratic principles?
link |
Or will they vote for somebody,
link |
we in the US would go, what are they doing?
link |
They're voting for some strong man who's just good.
link |
You know, so I think it's very hard to throw away
link |
our own biases and preconceptions.
link |
And, you know, it's an all eye of the beholder kind of thing.
link |
But when you're talking about ideological societies,
link |
it is very difficult to throw off
link |
all the years of indoctrination
link |
into the superiority of your system.
link |
I mean, listen, in the Soviet Union,
link |
Marxism one way or another was part of every classrooms.
link |
You know, you could be studying geometry
link |
and they'll throw Marxism in there somehow,
link |
because that's what united the society.
link |
And that's what gave it a higher purpose.
link |
And that's what made it in the minds of the people
link |
who were its defenders,
link |
a superior, morally superior system.
link |
And we do the same thing here.
link |
In fact, most people do, but see, you're still French,
link |
no matter what the ideology or the government might be.
link |
it's funny that there would be a cold war
link |
with these two systems,
link |
because they're both ideologically based systems
link |
involving peoples of many different backgrounds
link |
who are united under the umbrella of the ideology.
link |
First of all, that's brilliantly put.
link |
I'm in a funny position that in my formative years,
link |
I came here when I was 13,
link |
is when I, you know, teenage is your first love or whatever,
link |
is I fell in love with the American set of ideas
link |
of freedom and individuals.
link |
They're compelling, aren't they?
link |
Yes. They're compelling, yes.
link |
But I also remember, it's like you remember
link |
like maybe an ex girlfriend or something like that.
link |
I also remember loving as a very different human,
link |
the Soviet idea, like we had the national anthem,
link |
which is still, I think the most badass national anthem,
link |
which is the Soviet Union,
link |
like saying we're the indestructible nation.
link |
I mean, just the words are so,
link |
like Americans words are like, oh, we're nice.
link |
Like we're freedom,
link |
but like a Russian Soviet Union national anthem was like,
link |
we're bad motherfuckers.
link |
Nobody will destroy us.
link |
I just remember feeling pride in a nation as a kid,
link |
like dumb not knowing anything
link |
because we all had to recite the stuff.
link |
It was, there's a uniformity to everything.
link |
There's pride underlying everything.
link |
I didn't think about all the destructive nature
link |
of the bureaucracy, the incompetence,
link |
the, you know, all the things that come
link |
with the implementation of communism,
link |
especially around the eighties and nineties.
link |
But I remember what it's like to love that set of ideas.
link |
So I'm in a funny place of like,
link |
remember like switching the love
link |
because I'm, you know,
link |
I kind of joke around about being Russian,
link |
but you know, my longterm monogamous relationship
link |
is now with the idea, the American ideal.
link |
Like I'm stuck with it in my mind,
link |
but I remember what it was like to love it.
link |
And I think about that too,
link |
when people criticize China or they criticize
link |
the current state of affairs with how Stalin is remembered
link |
and how Putin is to know that the,
link |
you can't always wear the American ideal of individualism,
link |
radical individualism and freedom
link |
in analyzing the ways of the world elsewhere.
link |
Like in China, in Russia, that it does,
link |
if you don't take yourself too seriously,
link |
as Americans all do, as I do,
link |
it's kind of a beautiful love to have for your government,
link |
to believe in the nation, to let go of yourself
link |
and your rights and your freedoms,
link |
to believe in something bigger than yourself.
link |
That's actually, that's a kind of freedom.
link |
That's, you're actually liberating yourself.
link |
If you think like life is suffering,
link |
you're giving into the flow of the water,
link |
the flow, the way of the world
link |
by giving away more power from yourself
link |
and giving it to what you would conceive as,
link |
as the power of the people together,
link |
together we'll do great things
link |
and really believing in the ideals of what,
link |
in this case, I don't even know what you would call Russia,
link |
but whatever the heck that is,
link |
authoritarian, powerful state, powerful leader,
link |
believing that can be as beautiful
link |
as believing the American ideal.
link |
Not just that, let me add to what you're saying.
link |
And I'm very, I spend a lot of time
link |
trying to get out of my own biases.
link |
It is a fruitless endeavor longterm,
link |
but you try to be better than you normally are.
link |
One of the critiques that China,
link |
and I always, as an American,
link |
I tend to think about this as their government, right?
link |
This is a rationale that their government puts forward.
link |
But what you just said is actually,
link |
if you can make that viewpoint beautiful
link |
is kind of a beautiful way of approaching it.
link |
The Chinese would say that what we call human rights
link |
in the United States and what we consider
link |
to be everybody's birthright around the world
link |
is instead Western rights.
link |
That's the words they use, Western rights.
link |
It's a fundamentally Western oriented,
link |
and I'll go back to the enlightenment based ideas,
link |
on what constitutes the rights of man.
link |
And they would suggest that that's not internationally
link |
and always applicable, right?
link |
That you can make a case, and again, I don't believe this.
link |
This runs against my own personal views,
link |
but that you could make a case
link |
that the collective wellbeing of a very large group
link |
of people outweighs the individual needs
link |
of any single person, especially if those things
link |
are in conflict with each other, right?
link |
If you cannot provide for the greater good
link |
because everyone's so individualistic,
link |
well then really what is the better thing to do, right?
link |
Is suppress individualism so everybody's better off?
link |
I think trying to recognize how someone else might see that
link |
is important if we want to, you know,
link |
you had talked about eliminating war.
link |
We talk about eliminating conflict.
link |
The first need to do that is to try to understand
link |
how someone else might view something differently
link |
I'm famously one of those people who buys in
link |
to the ideas of traditional Americanism, right?
link |
And look, what a lot of people who live today,
link |
I mean, they would seem to think that things like patriotism
link |
requires a belief in the strong military
link |
and all these things we have today,
link |
but that is a corruption of traditional Americanism,
link |
which viewed all those things with suspicion
link |
in the first hundred years of the Republic
link |
because they saw it as an enemy to the very things
link |
that Americans celebrated, right?
link |
How could you have freedom and liberty
link |
and individualistic expression
link |
if you had an overriding military
link |
that was always fighting wars
link |
and the founders of this country looked to other examples
link |
like Europe, for example,
link |
and saw that standing militaries, for example,
link |
standing armies were the enemy of liberty.
link |
Well, we have a standing army now
link |
and one that is totally interwoven in our entire society.
link |
If you could go back in time and talk to John Quincy Adams,
link |
right, early president of the United States
link |
and show him what we have now,
link |
he would think it was awful and horrible
link |
and that somewhere along the line,
link |
the Americans had lost their way
link |
and forgotten what they were all about.
link |
But we have so successfully interwoven
link |
this modern military industrial complex
link |
with the traditional benefits
link |
of the American system and ideology
link |
so that they've become intertwined in our thinking,
link |
whereas 150 years ago, they were actually considered
link |
to be at opposite polarities and a threat to one another.
link |
So when you talk about the love of the nation,
link |
I tend to be suspicious of those things.
link |
I tend to be suspicious of government.
link |
I tend to try very hard to not be manipulated
link |
and I feel like a large part of what they do
link |
is manipulation and propaganda.
link |
And so I think a healthy skepticism of the nation state
link |
is actually 100% Americanism
link |
in the traditional sense of the word.
link |
But I also have to recognize,
link |
as you so eloquently stated,
link |
Americanism is not necessarily universal at all.
link |
And so I think we have to try to be more understanding.
link |
See, the traditional American viewpoint
link |
is that if a place like China
link |
does not allow their people individual human rights,
link |
then they're being denied something.
link |
They're being denied and 100 years ago,
link |
they would have said they're God given rights.
link |
Man is born free and if he's not free,
link |
it's because of something done to him, right?
link |
The government has taken away his God given rights.
link |
I'm getting excited just listening to that.
link |
Well, but I mean, I think the idea that this is universal
link |
is in and of itself a bias.
link |
Now, do I want freedom for everybody else?
link |
But the people in the Soviet Union
link |
who really bought into that
link |
wanted the workers of the world to unite
link |
and not be exploited by the greedy blood sucking people
link |
who worked them to death and pocketed all of the fruits
link |
If you frame it that way,
link |
that sounds like justice as well, you know?
link |
So it is an eye of the beholder sort of thing.
link |
I'd love to talk to you about Vladimir Putin,
link |
sort of while we're in this feeling and wave of empathy
link |
and trying to understand others that are not like us.
link |
One of the reasons I started this podcast
link |
is because I believe that there's a few people
link |
Some of it is ego.
link |
Some of it is stupidity.
link |
Is there some people I could talk to
link |
that not many others can talk to?
link |
The one person I was always thinking about
link |
was Vladimir Putin.
link |
Do you still speak the language?
link |
I speak the language very well.
link |
That makes it even easier.
link |
I mean, you might be appointed for that job.
link |
That's the context in which I'm asking you this question.
link |
What are your thoughts about Vladimir Putin
link |
from a historical context?
link |
Have you studied him?
link |
Have you thought about him?
link |
Yes, studied is a loaded word.
link |
And again, I find it hard sometimes
link |
to not filter things through an American lens.
link |
So as an American,
link |
I would say that the Russians should be allowed
link |
to have any leader that they want to have.
link |
But what an American would say is,
link |
but there should be elections, right?
link |
So if the Russians choose Vladimir Putin
link |
and they keep choosing him, that's their business.
link |
Where as an American, I would have a problem
link |
is when that leader stops letting the Russians
link |
make that decision.
link |
And we would say, well, now you're no longer
link |
ruling by the consent of the governed.
link |
You've become the equivalent of a person
link |
who may be oppressing your people.
link |
You might as well be a dictator, right?
link |
Now there's a difference between a freely elected
link |
and reelected and reelected and reelected dictator, right?
link |
If that's what they want.
link |
And look, it would be silly to broad brush the Russians
link |
like it would be silly to broad brush anyone, right?
link |
Millions and millions of people
link |
with different opinions amongst them all.
link |
But they seem to like a strong person at the helm.
link |
And listen, there's a giant chunk of Americans
link |
who do too in their own country.
link |
But an American would say, as long as the freedom of choice
link |
is given to the Russians to decide this
link |
and not taken away from them, right?
link |
It's one thing to say he was freely elected,
link |
but a long time ago and we've done away with elections
link |
since then is a different story too.
link |
So my attitude on Vladimir Putin
link |
is if that's who the Russian people want
link |
and you give them the choice, right?
link |
If he's only there because they keep electing him,
link |
that's a very different story.
link |
When he stops offering them the option
link |
of choosing him or not choosing him,
link |
that's when it begins to look nefarious
link |
to someone born and raised with the mindset
link |
and the ideology that is an integral part of yours truly.
link |
And that I can't, you can see gray areas
link |
and nuance all you like, but it's hard to escape.
link |
And you alluded to this too.
link |
It's hard to escape what was indoctrinated
link |
into your bones in your formative years.
link |
It's like, your bones are growing, right?
link |
And you can't go back.
link |
So to me, this is so much a part of who I am
link |
that I have a hard time jettisoning that and saying,
link |
oh no, Vladimir Putin not being elected anymore,
link |
I'm too much of a product of my upbringing to go there.
link |
Does that make sense?
link |
But of course there's, like we were saying,
link |
there's gray areas, which is, I believe,
link |
I have to think through this,
link |
but I think there is a point at which Adolf Hitler
link |
became the popular choice in Nazi Germany in the 30s.
link |
There's a, in the same way, from an American perspective,
link |
you can start to criticize some in a shallow way,
link |
some in a deep way.
link |
The way that Putin has maintained power
link |
is by controlling the press.
link |
So limiting one other freedom that we Americans value,
link |
which is the freedom of the press or freedom of speech
link |
that he, it is very possible.
link |
Now things are changing now,
link |
but for most of his presidency,
link |
he was the popular choice and sometimes by far.
link |
And I have, I actually don't have real family in Russia
link |
who don't love Putin.
link |
The only people who write to me about Putin
link |
and not liking him are like sort of activists
link |
who are young, right?
link |
But like to me, they're strangers.
link |
I don't know anything about them.
link |
The people I do know who have a big family in Russia,
link |
Do they miss elections?
link |
Would they want the choice to prove it at the ballot box?
link |
And, or are they so in love with him
link |
that they wouldn't wanna take a chance
link |
that someone might vote him out?
link |
No, they don't think of it this way.
link |
And they are aware of the incredible bureaucracy
link |
and corruption that is lurking in the shadows,
link |
which is true in Russia.
link |
But like, there's something about the Russian,
link |
it's a remnants, corruption is so deeply part of the Russian,
link |
so the Soviet system that even the overthrow of the Soviet,
link |
the breaking apart of the Soviet Union
link |
and Putin coming and reforming a lot of the system,
link |
it's still deeply in there.
link |
And they're aware of that.
link |
That's part of the, like the love for Putin
link |
is partially grounded in the fear of what happens
link |
when the corrupt take over, the greedy take over.
link |
And they see Putin as the stabilizer,
link |
as like a hard like force that says...
link |
Counter force that get your shit together.
link |
Like basically, from the Western perspective,
link |
Putin is terrible, but from the Russian perspective,
link |
Putin is the only thing holding this thing together
link |
before it goes, if it collapses.
link |
Now, from the, like Gary Kasparov has been loud on this,
link |
a lot of people from the Western perspective say,
link |
well, if it has to collapse, let it collapse.
link |
You know, that's...
link |
That's easier said than done
link |
when you don't have to live through that.
link |
And so anyone worrying about their family about...
link |
And they also remember the inflation
link |
and the economic instability
link |
and the suffering and the starvation
link |
that happened in the 90s with the collapse
link |
of the Soviet Union.
link |
And they saw the kind of reform
link |
and the economic vibrancy that happened
link |
when Putin took power,
link |
that they think like, this guy's holding it together.
link |
And they see elections as potentially
link |
being mechanisms by which the corrupt people
link |
can manipulate the system unfairly,
link |
as opposed to letting the people speak with their voice.
link |
They somehow figure out a way to manipulate the elections,
link |
to elect somebody like one of them Western revolutionaries.
link |
And so I think one of the beliefs
link |
that's important to the American system
link |
is the belief in the electoral system
link |
that the voice of the people can be heard
link |
in the various systems of government,
link |
whether it's judicial, whether it's...
link |
I mean, basically the assumption is
link |
that the system works well enough
link |
for you to be able to elect the popular choice.
link |
Okay, so there's a couple of things
link |
that come to mind on that.
link |
The first one has to do with the idea of oligarchs.
link |
There's a belief in political science,
link |
you know, it's not the overall belief,
link |
but that every society is sort of an oligarchy really,
link |
if you break it down, right?
link |
So what you're talking about are some of the people
link |
who would form an oligarchic class in Russia,
link |
and that Putin is the guy who can harness
link |
the power of the state to keep those people in check.
link |
The problem, of course, in a system like that,
link |
a strong man system, right?
link |
Where you have somebody who can hold the reins
link |
and steer the ship when the ship is violently in a storm,
link |
is the succession.
link |
So if you're not creating a system
link |
that can operate without you,
link |
then that terrible instability and that terrible future
link |
that you justify the strong man for
link |
is just awaiting your future, right?
link |
I mean, unless he's actively building the system
link |
that will outlive him and allow successors
link |
to do what he's doing,
link |
then what you've done here is create a temporary,
link |
I would think, a temporary stability here,
link |
because it's the same problem you have in a monarchy, right?
link |
Where you have this one king and he's particularly good,
link |
or you think he's particularly good,
link |
but he's gonna turn that job over
link |
to somebody else down the road,
link |
and the system doesn't guarantee
link |
because no one's really worked on,
link |
and again, you would tell me,
link |
if Putin is putting into place,
link |
I know he's talked about it over the years,
link |
putting into place a system that can outlive him
link |
and that will create the stability
link |
that the people in Russia like him for when he's gone,
link |
because if the oligarchs just take over afterwards,
link |
then one might argue,
link |
well, we had 20 good years of stability,
link |
but I mean, I would say
link |
that if we're talking about a ship of state here,
link |
the guy steering the ship, maybe,
link |
if you wanted to look at it from the Russian point of view,
link |
has done a great job, maybe, just saying,
link |
but the rocks are still out there,
link |
and he's not going to be at the helm forever,
link |
so one would think that his job is to make sure
link |
that there's going to be someone
link |
who can continue to steer the ship
link |
for the people of Russia after he's gone.
link |
Now, let me ask, because I'm curious,
link |
and ignorant, so is he doing that, do you think?
link |
Is he setting it up so that when there is no Putin,
link |
the state is safe?
link |
From the beginning, that was the idea,
link |
whether one of the fascinating things,
link |
now, I read every biography,
link |
English written biography on Putin,
link |
so I need to think more deeply,
link |
but one of the fascinating things
link |
is how did power change Vladimir Putin?
link |
He was a different man when he took power than he is today.
link |
I actually, in many ways, admire the man that took power.
link |
I think he's very different than Stalin and then Hitler
link |
at the moment they took power.
link |
I think Hitler and Stalin were both,
link |
in our previous discussion,
link |
already on the trajectory of evil.
link |
I think Putin was a humble, loyal, honest man
link |
when he took power.
link |
The man he is today is worth thinking about and studying.
link |
I'm not sure that that.
link |
That's an old line, though,
link |
about absolute power corrupting, absolutely.
link |
But it's kind of a line.
link |
It's a beautiful quote,
link |
but you have to really think about it.
link |
Like, what does that actually mean?
link |
Like, one of the things I still have to do,
link |
I've been focusing on securing the conversation, right?
link |
So I haven't gone through a dark place yet
link |
because I feel like I can't do the dark thing for too long.
link |
So I really have to put myself in the mind of Putin
link |
leading up to the conversation.
link |
But for now, my sense is he took power
link |
when Yeltsin gave him,
link |
one of the big sort of acts of the new Russia
link |
was for the first time in its history,
link |
a leader could have continued being in power
link |
and chose to give away power.
link |
That was the George Washington.
link |
Right, we in the United States
link |
would look at that as absolute positive, yeah.
link |
A sign of good things, yes.
link |
And so that was a huge act.
link |
And Putin said that that was the defining thing
link |
that will define Russia for the 21st century,
link |
that act, and he will carry that flag forward.
link |
That's why in rhetoric, he, after two terms,
link |
he gave away power.
link |
To Medvedev, but it was a puppet, right?
link |
Yeah, yes, but it was,
link |
but like still the story was being told.
link |
I think he believed it early on.
link |
I think he, I believe he still believes it,
link |
but I think he's deeply suspicious
link |
of the corruption that lurks in the shadows.
link |
And I do believe that,
link |
like as somebody who thinks clickbait journalism is broken,
link |
journalists annoy the hell out of me.
link |
Clickbait journalism's working perfectly.
link |
Journalism's broken.
link |
Clickbait thing's working great.
link |
So I understand from Putin's perspective
link |
that journalism, journalists can be seen
link |
as the enemy of the state,
link |
because people think journalists write these deep,
link |
beautiful philosophical pieces
link |
about criticizing the structure of government
link |
and the proper policy where, you know,
link |
the steps that we need to take to make a greater nation.
link |
No, they, they're unfairly take stuff out of context.
link |
They, they're critical in ways
link |
that's like shallow and not interesting.
link |
They, they call you a racist or sexist,
link |
or they make up stuff all the time.
link |
So I can put myself in the mindset of a person
link |
that thinks that it is okay to remove
link |
that kind of shallow fake news voice from the system.
link |
The problem is, of course, that is a slippery slope
link |
to then you remove all the annoying people from the system,
link |
and then you change what annoying means,
link |
which annoying starts becoming a thing
link |
that like anyone who opposes the system.
link |
I mean, I get, I get the slippery,
link |
it's obvious that it becomes a slippery slope,
link |
but I can also put myself in the mindset
link |
of the people that see it's okay
link |
to remove the liars from the system,
link |
as long as it's good for Russia.
link |
And, okay, so herein lies, and this again,
link |
the traditional American perspective,
link |
because we've had yellow, so called yellow journalism
link |
since the founding of the Republic.
link |
That's nothing new.
link |
But, but the problem then comes into play,
link |
when you remove journalists, even, you know,
link |
it's a broad brush thing,
link |
because you remove both the crappy ones who are lying,
link |
and the ones who are telling the truth too,
link |
you're left with simply the approved government journalists,
link |
right, the ones who are towing the government's line,
link |
in which case the truth as you see it
link |
is a different kind of fake news, right?
link |
It's the fake news from the government,
link |
instead of the clickbait news,
link |
and oh yeah, maybe truth mixed into all that too,
link |
in some of the outlets.
link |
The problem I always have with our system
link |
here in the United States right now
link |
is trying to tease the truth out from all the falsehoods.
link |
And look, I've got 30 years in journalism.
link |
My job used to be to go through, before the internet,
link |
all the newspapers, and find the,
link |
I used to know all the journalists by name,
link |
and I could pick out, you know, who they were,
link |
and I have a hard time picking out the truth
link |
from the falsehoods, so I think constantly,
link |
how are people who don't have all this background,
link |
who have lives, or who are trained in other specialties,
link |
how do they do it?
link |
But if the government is the only approved outlet for truth,
link |
a traditional American,
link |
and a lot of other traditional societies
link |
based on these ideas of the Enlightenment
link |
that I talked about earlier,
link |
would see that as a disaster waiting to happen,
link |
or a tyranny in progress.
link |
Does that make sense?
link |
Oh, it totally makes sense,
link |
and I would agree with you, I still agree with you,
link |
but it is clear that something about the freedom
link |
of the press and freedom of speech in today,
link |
like literally the last few years
link |
with the internet is changing,
link |
and the argument, you know,
link |
you could say that the American system
link |
of freedom of speech is broken,
link |
because the, here's the belief I grew up on,
link |
and I still hold, but I'm starting to be sort of
link |
trying to see multiple views on it.
link |
My belief was that freedom of speech results
link |
in a stable trajectory towards truth always.
link |
So like truth will emerge.
link |
That was my sort of faith and belief
link |
that yeah, there's going to be lies all over the place,
link |
but there'll be like a stable thing that is true,
link |
that's carried forward to the public.
link |
Now it feels like it's possible to go towards a world
link |
where nothing is true,
link |
where truth is something that groups of people
link |
convince themselves of,
link |
and there's multiple groups of people,
link |
and the idea of some universal truth,
link |
as I suppose is the better thing,
link |
is something that we can no longer exist under.
link |
Like some people believe that the Green Bay Packers
link |
is the best football team,
link |
and some people can think the Patriots,
link |
and they deeply believe it
link |
to where they call the other groups liars.
link |
Now that's fun for sports,
link |
that's fun for favorite flavors of ice cream,
link |
but they might believe that about science,
link |
about the various aspects of politics,
link |
various aspects of sort of different policies
link |
within the function of our government.
link |
And like, that's not just like
link |
some weird thing we'll complain about,
link |
but that'll be the nature of things,
link |
like truth is something we can no longer have.
link |
Well, and let me de romanticize
link |
the American history of this too,
link |
because the American press was often just as biased,
link |
just as, I mean, I always looked to the 1970s
link |
as the high watermark of the American journalistic,
link |
in the post Watergate era,
link |
where it was actively going after the abuses
link |
of the government and all these things.
link |
But there was a famous speech, very quiet though,
link |
very quiet, given by Katherine Graham,
link |
who was a Washington Post editor, I believe.
link |
And I actually, somebody sent it to me,
link |
we had to get it off of a journalism,
link |
like a J store kind of thing.
link |
And she, at a luncheon,
link |
assured to the government people at the luncheon,
link |
don't worry, this is not gonna be something
link |
that we make a trend.
link |
Because the position of the government
link |
is still something that was carried,
link |
that the newspapers were the water,
link |
and the newspapers were the big thing
link |
up until certainly the late 60s, early 70s.
link |
The newspapers were still the water carrier
link |
of the government, right?
link |
And they were the water carriers
link |
of the owners of the newspaper.
link |
So let's not pretend there was some angelic, wonderful time.
link |
And I'm saying to me,
link |
cause I was the one who brought it up,
link |
let's not pretend there was any super age
link |
of truthful journalism and all that.
link |
And I mean, you go to the revolutionary period
link |
in American history,
link |
and it looks every bit as bad as today, right?
link |
That's a hopeful message, actually.
link |
So things may not be as bad as they look.
link |
Well, let's look at it more like a stock market,
link |
and that you have fluctuations in the truthfulness
link |
or believability of the press.
link |
And there are periods where it was higher
link |
than other periods.
link |
The funny thing about the so called clickbait era,
link |
and I do think it's terrible,
link |
but I mean, it resembles earlier eras to me.
link |
So I always compare it to when I was a kid growing up,
link |
when I thought journalism was as good as it's ever gotten.
link |
It was never perfect.
link |
But it's also something that you see very rarely
link |
in other governments around the world.
link |
And there's a reason that journalists
link |
are often killed regularly in a lot of countries.
link |
And it's because they report on things
link |
that the authorities do not want reported on.
link |
And I've always thought that
link |
that was what journalism should do.
link |
But it's gotta be truthful,
link |
otherwise it's just a different kind of propaganda, right?
link |
Can we talk about Genghis Khan?
link |
By the way, is it Genghis Khan or Genghis Khan?
link |
It's not Genghis Khan.
link |
It's either Genghis Khan or Chinggis Khan.
link |
So let's go with Genghis Khan.
link |
That's the only thing I'll be able to say
link |
with any certain, last certain thing I'll say about it.
link |
It's like, I don't know, GIF versus GIF.
link |
I don't know if you know about those things.
link |
I don't know how it ever got started the wrong way.
link |
So first of all, your episodes on Genghis Khan
link |
for many people are the favorite.
link |
It's fascinating to think about events
link |
that had so much like in their ripples,
link |
had so much impact on so much of human civilization.
link |
In your view, was he an evil man?
link |
Let's go start a discussion of evil.
link |
Another way to put it is I've read he's much loved
link |
in many parts of the world like Mongolia.
link |
And I've also read arguments that say
link |
that he was quite a progressive for the time.
link |
So where do you put him?
link |
Is he a progressive or is he an evil destroyer of humans?
link |
As I often say, I'm not a historian,
link |
which is why what I try to bring
link |
to the Hardcore History podcasts are these sub themes.
link |
So each show has, and they're not,
link |
I try to kind of soft pedal them.
link |
So they're not always like really right in front
link |
In that episode, the soft peddling sub theme had to do
link |
with what we referred to as a historical arsonist.
link |
And it's because some historians have taken the position
link |
that sometimes, and most of this is earlier stuff,
link |
historians don't do this very much anymore,
link |
but these were the wonderful questions I grew up with
link |
that blend, it's almost the intersection
link |
between history and philosophy.
link |
And the idea was that sometimes the world has become
link |
so overwhelmed with bureaucracy or corruption
link |
or just stagnation that somebody has to come in
link |
or some group of people or some force has to come in
link |
and do the equivalent of a forest fire
link |
to clear out all the dead wood
link |
so that the forest itself can be rejuvenated
link |
and society can then move forward.
link |
And there's a lot of these periods where the historians
link |
of the past will portray these figures who come in
link |
and do horrific things as creating an almost service
link |
for mankind, right?
link |
Creating the foundations for a new world
link |
that will be better than the old one.
link |
And it's a recurring theme.
link |
And so this was the sub theme of the Khan's podcast,
link |
because otherwise you don't need me to tell you the story
link |
of the Mongols, but I'm gonna bring up
link |
the historical arsonist element.
link |
And, but this gets to how the Khan has been portrayed,
link |
If you wanna say, oh yes, he cleared out the dead wood
link |
and made for, well, then it's a positive thing.
link |
If you say, my family was in the forest fire that he set,
link |
you're not gonna see it that way.
link |
Much of what Genghis Khan is credited with
link |
on the upside, right?
link |
So things like religious toleration,
link |
and you'll say, well, he was religiously,
link |
the Mongols were religiously tolerant.
link |
And so this makes them almost like a liberal reformer
link |
But this needs to be seen within the context
link |
of their empire, which was very much
link |
like the Roman viewpoint,
link |
which is the Romans didn't care at a lot of time
link |
what your local people worshiped.
link |
They wanted stability.
link |
And if that kept stability and kept you paying taxes
link |
and didn't require the legionaries to come in,
link |
then they didn't care, right?
link |
And the Khans were the same way.
link |
Like they don't care what you're practicing
link |
as long as it doesn't disrupt their empire
link |
and cause them trouble.
link |
But what I always like to point out is yes,
link |
but the Khan could still come in with his representatives
link |
to your town, decide your daughter was a beautiful woman
link |
that they wanted in the Khan's concubine,
link |
and they would take them.
link |
So how liberal an empire is this, right?
link |
So many of the things that they get credit for
link |
as though there's some kind of nice guys
link |
may in another way of looking at it
link |
just be a simple mechanism of control, right?
link |
A way to keep the empire stable.
link |
They're not doing it out of the goodness of their heart.
link |
They have decided that this is the best.
link |
And I love because the Mongols were what we would call
link |
a pagan people now.
link |
I love the fact that they, and I think we call it,
link |
I forgot the term we used, had to do with,
link |
like they were hedging their bets religiously, right?
link |
They didn't know which God was the right one.
link |
So as long as you're all praying for the health of the Khan,
link |
we're maximizing the chances that whoever the gods are,
link |
they get the message, right?
link |
So I think it's been portrayed as something
link |
like a liberal empire.
link |
And the idea of Mongol universality
link |
is more about conquering the world.
link |
And it's like saying, you know,
link |
we're gonna bring stability to the world by conquering it.
link |
Well, what if that's Hitler, right?
link |
He could make the same case,
link |
or Hitler wasn't really the world conqueror like that
link |
because he wouldn't have been trying
link |
to make it equal for all peoples.
link |
But my point being that it kind of takes
link |
the positive moral slant out of it
link |
if their motivation wasn't a positive moral slant
link |
to the motivate, and the Mongols didn't see it that way.
link |
And I think the way that it's portrayed is like,
link |
and I always like to use this analogy,
link |
but it's like shooting an arrow
link |
and painting a bull's eye around it afterwards, right?
link |
How do we justify and make them look good in a way
link |
that they themselves probably,
link |
and listen, we don't have the Mongol point of view per se.
link |
I mean, there's something called the secret history
link |
of the Mongols, and there's things written down
link |
by Mongolian overlords through people
link |
like Persian and Chinese scribes later.
link |
We don't have their point of view,
link |
but it sure doesn't look like this was an attempt
link |
to create some wonderful place
link |
where everybody was living a better life
link |
than they were before.
link |
I think that's later people putting a nice rosy spin on it.
link |
But there's an aspect to it, maybe you can correct me,
link |
because I'm projecting sort of my idea
link |
of what it would take to conquer so much land
link |
is the ideology is emergent.
link |
So if I were to guess,
link |
the Mongols started out as exceptionally,
link |
as warriors who valued excellence in skill of killing,
link |
not even killing, but like the actual practice of war.
link |
And you can start out small,
link |
and you can grow and grow and grow.
link |
And then in order to maintain the stability
link |
of the things over which of the conquered lands,
link |
you developed a set of ideas with which you can,
link |
like you said, establish control, but it was emergent.
link |
And it seems like the core first principle idea
link |
of the Mongols is just to be excellent warriors.
link |
That felt to me like the starting point.
link |
It wasn't some ideology.
link |
Like with Hitler and Stalin,
link |
with Hitler, there was an ideology
link |
that didn't have anything to do with war underneath it.
link |
It was more about conquering.
link |
It feels like the Mongols started out more organically,
link |
I would say, like this phenomenon started emergently,
link |
and they were just like similar to the Native Americans
link |
with the Comanches, like the different warrior tribes
link |
that Joe Rogan's currently obsessed with,
link |
that led me to look into it more.
link |
They seem to just start out just valuing the skill
link |
of fighting whatever the tools of war they had,
link |
which were pretty primitive,
link |
but just to be the best warriors
link |
they could possibly be, make a science out of it.
link |
Is that crazy to think that there was no ideology behind it
link |
I'm gonna back up a second.
link |
I'm reminded of the line said about the Romans,
link |
that they create a wasteland and call it peace.
link |
That is, but there's a lot of conquerors like that, right?
link |
Where you will sit there, and listen,
link |
historians forever have, it's the famous trade offs
link |
of empire, and they'll say, well,
link |
look at the trade that they facilitated,
link |
and look at the religion, all those kinds of things,
link |
but they come at the cost of all those peoples
link |
that they conquered forcibly and by force,
link |
integrated into their empire.
link |
The one thing we need to remember about the Mongols
link |
that makes them different than, say, the Romans,
link |
and this is complex stuff and way above my pay grade,
link |
but I'm fascinated with it,
link |
and it's more like the Comanches that you just brought up,
link |
is that the Mongols are not a settled society, okay?
link |
They come from a nomadic tradition.
link |
Now, several generations later,
link |
when you have Kublai Khan as the emperor of China,
link |
it's beginning to be a different thing, right?
link |
And the Mongols, when their empire broke up,
link |
the ones that were in settled,
link |
the so called settled societies, right, Iran,
link |
places like that, they will become more like,
link |
over time, the rulers of those places were traditionally,
link |
and the Mongols in, say, the Khaganate of the Golden Horde,
link |
which is still in their traditional nomadic territories,
link |
will remain traditionally more Mongol,
link |
but when you start talking about who the Mongols were,
link |
I try to make a distinction.
link |
They're not some really super special people.
link |
They're just the latest confederacy in an area
link |
that saw nomadic confederacies going back
link |
to the beginning of recorded history.
link |
The Scythians, the Sarmatians, the Avars,
link |
the Huns, the Magyars, I mean, these are all the nomadic,
link |
you know, the nomads of the Eurasian steppe
link |
were huge, huge players in the history of the world
link |
until gunpowder nullified their traditional weapons system,
link |
which I've been fascinated with
link |
because their traditional weapons system
link |
is not one you could copy,
link |
because you were talking about being the greatest warriors
link |
Every warrior society I've ever seen values that.
link |
What the nomads had of the Eurasian steppe
link |
was this relationship between human beings and animals
link |
that changed the equation.
link |
It was how they rode horses.
link |
And societies like the Byzantines,
link |
which would form one flank of the steppe
link |
and then all the way on the other side you had China,
link |
and below that you had Persia,
link |
these societies would all attempt
link |
to create mounted horsemen who used archery.
link |
And they did a good job,
link |
but they were never the equals of the nomads
link |
because those people were literally raised in the saddle.
link |
They compared them to centaurs.
link |
The Comanches, great example,
link |
considered to be the best horse riding warriors
link |
The Comanches, I always love watching, there's paintings.
link |
George Catlin, the famous painter
link |
who painted the Comanches, illustrated it.
link |
But the Mongols and the Scythians and the Avars
link |
and all these people did it too,
link |
where they would shoot from underneath the horse's neck,
link |
hiding behind the horse the whole way.
link |
You look at a picture of somebody doing that,
link |
This is what the Byzantines couldn't do
link |
and the Chinese couldn't do.
link |
It was a different level of harnessing
link |
a human animal relationship
link |
that gave them a military advantage
link |
that could not be copied, right?
link |
It could be emulated, but they were never as good, right?
link |
That's why they always hired these people.
link |
They hired mercenaries from these areas
link |
because they were incomparable, right?
link |
It's the combination of people who were shooting bows
link |
and arrows from the time they were toddlers,
link |
who were riding from the time they were,
link |
who rode all the time.
link |
I mean, the Huns were bow legged, the Romans said,
link |
because they were never,
link |
they ate, slept, everything in the saddle.
link |
That creates something that is difficult to copy.
link |
And it gave them a military advantage.
link |
I enjoy reading actually about
link |
when that military advantage ended.
link |
So 17th and 18th century,
link |
when the Chinese on one flank and the Russians on the other
link |
are beginning to use firearms and stuff
link |
to break this military power of these various Khans.
link |
The Mongols were simply the most dominating
link |
and most successful of the Confederacies.
link |
But if you break it down,
link |
they really formed the nucleus at the top of the pyramid,
link |
of the apex of the food chain.
link |
And a lot of the people that were known as Mongols
link |
were really lots of other tribes, non Mongolian tribes,
link |
that when the Mongols conquer you,
link |
after they killed a lot of you,
link |
they incorporated you into their Confederacy
link |
and often made you go first.
link |
You're gonna fight somebody,
link |
we're gonna make these people go out in front
link |
and suck up all the arrows
link |
before we go in and finish the job.
link |
So to me, and I guess a fan of the Mongols would say
link |
that the difference and what made the Mongols different
link |
wasn't the weapon system or the fighting
link |
or the warriors or the armor or anything,
link |
it was Genghis Khan.
link |
And if you go look at the other really dangerous,
link |
from the outside world's perspective,
link |
dangerous step, nomadic Confederacies from past history
link |
was always when some great leader emerged
link |
that could unite the tribes.
link |
And you see the same thing in Native American history
link |
You had people like Attila, right?
link |
Or there's one called Tumen.
link |
You go back in history and these people
link |
make the history books because they caused
link |
an enormous amount of trouble for their settled neighbors
link |
that normally, I mean, Chinese Byzantine and Persian
link |
approaches to the steppe people were always the same.
link |
They would pick out tribes to be friendly with,
link |
they would give them money, gifts, hire them,
link |
and they would use them against the other tribes.
link |
And generally Byzantine,
link |
especially in Chinese diplomatic history
link |
was all about keeping these tribes separated.
link |
Don't let them form confederations of large numbers of them
link |
because then they're unstoppable.
link |
Attila was a perfect example.
link |
The Huns were another large,
link |
the Turks, another large confederacy of these people.
link |
And they were devastating when they could unite.
link |
So the diplomatic policy was don't let them.
link |
That's what made the Mongols different
link |
is Genghis Khan united them.
link |
And then unlike most of the tribal confederacies,
link |
they were able to hold it together for a few generations.
link |
To linger on the little thread that you started pulling
link |
on this man, Genghis Khan, that was a leader.
link |
What do you think makes a great leader?
link |
Maybe if you have other examples throughout history
link |
and great, again, let's use that term loosely.
link |
Now I was gonna ask for a definition.
link |
Great uniter of whether it's evil or good,
link |
it doesn't matter.
link |
Is there somebody who stands out to you,
link |
Alexander the Great talking about military or ideologies,
link |
some people bring up FDR or, I mean,
link |
you could be the founding fathers of this country,
link |
or we can go to, was he man of the century up there?
link |
Hitler of the 20th century and Stalin
link |
and these people had really amassed the amount of power
link |
that probably has never been seen
link |
in the history of the world.
link |
Is there somebody who stands out to you
link |
by way of trying to define what makes a great uniter,
link |
great leader in one man or woman, maybe in the future?
link |
It's an interesting question.
link |
And one I've thought a lot about,
link |
because let's take Alexander the Great as an example,
link |
because Alexander fascinated the world of his time,
link |
fascinated, ever since people have been fascinated
link |
But Alexander was a hereditary monarch, right?
link |
He was handed the kingdom.
link |
Which is fascinating.
link |
Right, but he did not need to rise from nothing
link |
In fact, he reminds me of a lot of other leaders
link |
of Frederick the Great, for example, in Prussia.
link |
These are people who inherited
link |
the greatest army of their day.
link |
Alexander, unless he was an imbecile,
link |
was going to be great no matter what,
link |
because I mean, if you inherit the Wehrmacht,
link |
you're gonna be able to do something with it, right?
link |
Alexander's father may have been greater, Philip.
link |
Philip II was the guy who literally did create
link |
a strong kingdom from a disjointed group of people
link |
that were continually beset by their neighbors.
link |
He's the one that reformed that army,
link |
took things that he had learned from other Greek leaders
link |
like the Theban leader at Paminondas,
link |
and then laboriously over his lifetime
link |
stabilized the frontiers, built this system.
link |
He lost an eye doing it.
link |
His leg was made lame.
link |
I mean, this was a man who looked like he built the empire
link |
and led from the front ranks.
link |
I mean, and then who may have been killed by his son,
link |
we don't know who assassinated Philip,
link |
but then handed the greatest army
link |
the world had ever seen to his son,
link |
who then did great things with it.
link |
You see this pattern many times.
link |
So in my mind, I'm not sure Alexander
link |
really can be that great when you compare him
link |
to people who arose from nothing.
link |
So the difference between what we would call
link |
in the United States the self made man
link |
or the one who inherits a fortune.
link |
There's an old line that, it's a slur,
link |
but it's about rich people.
link |
And it's like he was born on third base
link |
and thought he hit a triple, right?
link |
Philip was born at home plate and he had to hit.
link |
Alexander started on third base.
link |
And so I try to draw a distinction between them.
link |
Genghis Khan is tough because there's two traditions.
link |
The tradition that we grew up with here
link |
in the United States and that I grew up learning
link |
was that he was a self made man.
link |
But there is a tradition,
link |
and it may be one of those things that's put after the fact
link |
because a long time ago, whether or not you had blue blood
link |
in your veins was an important distinction.
link |
And so the distinction that you'll often hear
link |
from Mongolian history is that this was a nobleman
link |
who had been deprived of his inheritance.
link |
So he was a blue blood anyway.
link |
I don't know which is true.
link |
There's certainly, I mean, when you look at a Genghis Khan,
link |
you have to go, that is a wicked amount of things
link |
He's very impressive as a figure.
link |
Attila is very impressive as a figure.
link |
Hitler's an interesting figure.
link |
He's one of those people,
link |
you know, the more you study about Hitler,
link |
the more you wonder where the defining moment was.
link |
Because if you look at his life,
link |
I mean, Hitler was a relatively common soldier
link |
in the First World War.
link |
I mean, he was brave.
link |
He got some decorations.
link |
In fact, the highest decoration he got
link |
in the First World War was given to him by a Jewish officer.
link |
And he often didn't talk about that decoration,
link |
even though it was the more prestigious one
link |
because it would open up a whole can of worms
link |
you didn't wanna get into.
link |
But Hitler's, I mean, if you said who was Hitler today,
link |
one of the top things you're gonna say
link |
is he was an anti Semite.
link |
Well, then you have to draw a distinction
link |
between general regular anti Semitism
link |
that was pretty common in the era
link |
and something that was a rabid level of anti Semitism.
link |
But Hitler didn't seem to show a rabid level
link |
of anti Semitism until after
link |
or at the very end of the First World War.
link |
So if this is a defining part of this person's character
link |
and much of what we consider to be his evil
link |
stems from that, what happened to this guy
link |
when he's an adult, right?
link |
He's already fought in the war to change him so.
link |
I mean, it's almost like the old,
link |
there was always a movie theme.
link |
Somebody gets hit by something on the head
link |
and their whole personality changes, right?
link |
I mean, it almost seems something like that.
link |
So I don't think I call that necessarily a great leader.
link |
To me, the interesting thing about Hitler
link |
is what the hell happened to a nondescript person
link |
who didn't really impress anybody with his skills.
link |
And then in the 1920s, it's all of a sudden,
link |
as you said, sort of the man of the hour, right?
link |
So that to me is kind of,
link |
I have this feeling that Genghis Khan,
link |
and we don't really know,
link |
was an impressive human being from the get go.
link |
And then he was raised in this environment
link |
with pressure on all sides.
link |
So you start with this diamond and then you polish it
link |
and you harden it his whole life.
link |
Hitler seemed to be a very unimpressive gemstone
link |
most of his life, and then all of a sudden.
link |
So, I mean, I don't think I can label great leaders.
link |
And I'm always fascinated by that idea that,
link |
and I'm trying to remember who the quote was by that,
link |
that great men, oh, Lord Acton.
link |
So great men are often not good men.
link |
And that in order to be great,
link |
you would have to jettison many of the moral qualities
link |
that we normally would consider a Jesus or a Gandhi,
link |
or, you know, these qualities that one looks at
link |
as the good upstanding moral qualities
link |
that we should all aspire to as examples, right?
link |
The Buddha, whatever it might be,
link |
those people wouldn't make good leaders
link |
because what you need to be a good leader
link |
often requires the kind of choices
link |
that a true philosophical diogenes moral man wouldn't make.
link |
So I don't have an answer to your question.
link |
That's a long way of saying, I don't know.
link |
Just linger a little bit.
link |
It does feel like from my study of Hitler
link |
that the time molded the man versus Genghis Khan,
link |
where it feels like he, the man molded his time.
link |
Yes, and I feel that way
link |
about a lot of those nomadic Confederacy builders,
link |
that they really seem to be these figures
link |
that stand out as extraordinary in one way or another.
link |
Remembering, by the way,
link |
that almost all the history of them were written
link |
by the enemies that they so mistreated
link |
that they were probably never gonna get any good press.
link |
They didn't write themselves.
link |
We should always add to basically all of human history.
link |
Nomadic or Native American peoples
link |
or tribal peoples anywhere
link |
generally do not get the advantage
link |
of being able to write the history of their heroes.
link |
Okay, I've recently almost done
link |
with the rise and the fall of the Third Reich.
link |
It's one of the historical descriptions
link |
of Hitler's rise to power, Nazi's rise to power.
link |
There's a few philosophical things
link |
I'd like to ask you to see if you can help.
link |
Like one of the things I think about
link |
is how does one be a hero in 1930s Nazi Germany?
link |
What does it mean to be a hero?
link |
What do heroic actions look like?
link |
I think about that because I think about
link |
how I move about in this world today.
link |
That we live in really chaotic, intense times
link |
where I don't think you wanna draw any parallels
link |
between Nazi Germany and modern day
link |
in any of the nations we can think about.
link |
But it's not out of the realm of possibility
link |
that authoritarian governments take hold,
link |
authoritarian companies take hold.
link |
And I'd like to think that I could be
link |
in my little small way and inspire others
link |
to take the heroic action before things get bad.
link |
And I kind of try to place myself
link |
in what would 1930s Germany look like?
link |
Is it possible to stop a Hitler?
link |
Is it even the right way to think about it?
link |
And how does one be a hero in it?
link |
I mean, you often talk about that living through
link |
a moment in history is very different
link |
than looking at that history,
link |
looking when you look back.
link |
I also think about it, would it be possible
link |
to understand what's happening
link |
that the bells of war are ringing?
link |
It seems that most people didn't seem to understand,
link |
you know, late into the 30s that war is coming.
link |
That's fascinating.
link |
On the United States side, inside Germany,
link |
like the opposing figures,
link |
the German military didn't seem to understand this.
link |
Maybe the other countries, certainly France
link |
and England didn't seem to understand this.
link |
That kind of tried to put myself into 90s, 30s Germany
link |
as I'm Jewish, which is another little twist on the whole.
link |
Like what would I do?
link |
What should one do?
link |
Do you have interesting answers?
link |
So earlier we had talked about Putin
link |
and we had talked about patriotism
link |
and love of country and those sorts of things.
link |
In order to be a hero in Nazi Germany
link |
by our views here, you would have had to have been
link |
anti patriotic to the average German's viewpoint
link |
in the 1930s, right?
link |
You would have to have opposed your own government
link |
and your own country.
link |
And that's a very, it would be a very weird thing
link |
to go to people in Germany and say,
link |
listen, the only way you're gonna be seen
link |
as a good German and a hero to the country
link |
that will be your enemies is we think
link |
you should oppose your own government.
link |
It's a strange position to put the people
link |
in a government saying you need to be against your leader,
link |
you need to oppose your government's policies,
link |
you need to oppose your government,
link |
you need to hope and work for its downfall.
link |
That doesn't sound patriotic.
link |
It wouldn't sound patriotic here in this country
link |
if you made a similar argument.
link |
I will go away from the 1930s and go to the 1940s
link |
to answer your question.
link |
So there is movements like the White Rose Movement
link |
in Germany, which involved young people really,
link |
and from various backgrounds, religious backgrounds often,
link |
who worked openly against the Nazi government
link |
at a time when power was already consolidated,
link |
the Gestapo was in full force and they execute people
link |
who are against the government.
link |
And these young people would go out
link |
and distribute pamphlets and many of them got their heads
link |
cut off with guillotines for their trouble.
link |
And they knew that that was gonna be the penalty.
link |
That is a remarkable amount of bravery and sacrifice
link |
and willingness to die, and almost not even willingness
link |
because they were so open about it,
link |
it's almost a certainty, right?
link |
That's incredibly moving to me.
link |
So when we talk, and we had talked earlier
link |
about sort of the human spirit and all that kind of thing,
link |
there are people in the German military who opposed
link |
and worked against Hitler, for example.
link |
But to me, that's almost cowardly compared
link |
to what these young people did in the White Rose Movement
link |
because those people in the Wehrmacht, for example,
link |
who were secretly trying to undermine Hitler,
link |
they're not really putting their lives on the line
link |
to the same degree.
link |
And so I think when I look at heroes,
link |
and listen, I remember once saying
link |
there were no conscientious objectors in Germany
link |
as a way to point out to people
link |
that you didn't have a choice,
link |
you know, you were gonna serve in there.
link |
And I got letters from Jehovah's Witnesses who said,
link |
And we got sent to the concentration camps.
link |
Those are remarkably brave things.
link |
It's one thing to have your own set of standards and values.
link |
It's another thing to say, oh no,
link |
I'm going to display them in a way
link |
that with this regime, that's a death sentence.
link |
And not just for me, for my family, right?
link |
In these regimes, there was not a lot of distinction made
link |
between father and son and wives.
link |
That's a remarkable sacrifice to make.
link |
And far beyond what I think I would even be capable of.
link |
And so the admiration comes from seeing people
link |
who appear to be more morally profound
link |
than you are yourself.
link |
So when I look at this, I look at that kind of thing
link |
and I just say, wow.
link |
And the funny thing is if you'd have gone
link |
to most average Germans on the street in 1942
link |
and said, what do you think of these people?
link |
They're gonna think of them as traitors
link |
who probably got what they deserved.
link |
So that's the eye of the beholder thing.
link |
It's the power of the state to sow propagandize values
link |
and morality in a way that favors the state
link |
that you can turn people who today we look at
link |
as unbelievably brave and moral
link |
and crusading for righteousness
link |
and turn them into enemies of the people.
link |
So, I mean, in my mind, it would be people like that.
link |
See, I think, so hero is a funny word
link |
and we romanticize the notion,
link |
but if I could drag you back to 1930s Germany from 1940s.
link |
I feel like the heroic actions that doesn't accomplish much
link |
is not what I'm referring to.
link |
So there's many heroes I look up to that,
link |
like David Goggins, for example,
link |
the guy who runs crazy distances.
link |
He runs for no purpose except for the suffering in itself.
link |
And I think his willingness to challenge the limits
link |
of his mind is heroic.
link |
I guess I'm looking for a different term,
link |
which is how could Hitler have been stopped?
link |
My sense is that he could have been stopped
link |
in the battle of ideas where people,
link |
millions of people were suffering economically
link |
or suffering because of the betrayal of World War I
link |
in terms of the love of country
link |
and how they felt they were being treated.
link |
And a charismatic leader that inspired love
link |
and unity that's not destructive could have emerged.
link |
And that's where the battle should have been fought.
link |
I would suggest that we need to take into account
link |
the context of the times that led to Hitler's rise of power
link |
and created the conditions where his message resonated.
link |
That is not a message that resonates at all times, right?
link |
It is impossible to understand the rise of Hitler
link |
without dealing with the First World War
link |
and the aftermath of the First World War
link |
and the inflationary terrible depression in Germany
link |
and all these things and the dissatisfaction
link |
with the Weimar Republic's government,
link |
which was often seen as something put into,
link |
which it was put into place by the victorious powers.
link |
Hitler referred to the people that signed those agreements
link |
that signed the armistice as the November criminals.
link |
And he used that as a phrase
link |
which resonated with the population.
link |
This was a population that was embittered.
link |
And even if they weren't embittered,
link |
the times were so terrible.
link |
And the options for operating within the system
link |
in a non radical way seemed totally discredited, right?
link |
You could work through the Weimar Republic,
link |
but they tried and it wasn't working anyway.
link |
And then the alternative to the Nazis
link |
who were bully boys in the street
link |
were communist agitators
link |
that to the average conservative Germans seem no better.
link |
So you have three options
link |
if you're an average German person.
link |
You can go with the discredited government
link |
put in power by your enemies that wasn't working anyway.
link |
You could go with the Nazis
link |
who seemed like a bunch of super patriots
link |
calling for the restoration of German authority,
link |
or you could go with the communists.
link |
And the entire thing seemed like a litany of poor options.
link |
And in this realm, Hitler was able to triangulate,
link |
He came off as a person
link |
who was going to restore German greatness
link |
at a time when this was a powerful message.
link |
But if you don't need German greatness restored,
link |
it doesn't resonate, right?
link |
So the reason that your love idea and all this stuff,
link |
I don't think would have worked in the time period
link |
is because that was not a commodity
link |
that the average German was in search of then.
link |
Well, it's interesting to think about
link |
whether greatness can be restored through mechanisms,
link |
through ideas that are not so,
link |
from our perspective today, so evil.
link |
I don't know what the right term is.
link |
But the war continued in a way.
link |
So remember that when Germany,
link |
when Hitler is rising to power,
link |
the French are in control of parts of Germany, right?
link |
The Ruhr, one of the main industrial heartlands of Germany,
link |
was occupied by the French.
link |
So there's never this point
link |
where you're allowed to let the hate dissipate, right?
link |
Every time maybe things were calming down,
link |
something else would happen to stick the knife in
link |
and twist it a little bit more,
link |
from the average German's perspective, right?
link |
The reparations, right?
link |
So if you say, okay, well, we're gonna get back on our feet,
link |
the reparations were crushing.
link |
These things prevented the idea of love or brotherhood
link |
and all these things from taking hold.
link |
And even if there were Germans who felt that way,
link |
and there most certainly were,
link |
it is hard to overcome the power of everyone else.
link |
You know, what I always say
link |
when people talk to me about humanity
link |
is I believe on individual levels,
link |
we're capable of everything and anything,
link |
good, bad, or indifferent.
link |
But collectively, it's different, right?
link |
And in the time period that we're talking about here,
link |
messages of peace on earth and love your enemies
link |
and all these sorts of things
link |
were absolutely deluged and overwhelmed
link |
and drowned out by the bitterness, the hatred,
link |
and let's be honest,
link |
the sense that you were continually being abused
link |
by your former enemies.
link |
There were a lot of people in the Allied side
link |
that realized this and said, we're setting up the next war.
link |
This is, I mean, they understood
link |
that you can only do certain things
link |
to collective human populations
link |
for a certain period of time
link |
before it is natural for them to want to.
link |
And there are, you can see German posters from the region,
link |
Nazi propaganda posters that show them
link |
breaking off the chains of their enemies.
link |
And I mean, Germany awake, right?
link |
That was the great slogan.
link |
So I think love is always a difficult option.
link |
And in the context of those times,
link |
it was even more disempowered than normal.
link |
Well, this goes to the,
link |
just to linger on it for a little longer,
link |
the question of the inevitability of history.
link |
Do you think Hitler could have been stopped?
link |
Do you think this kind of force that you're saying
link |
that there was a pain and it was building,
link |
there was a hatred that was building,
link |
do you think there was a way to avert?
link |
I mean, there's two questions.
link |
Could have been a lot worse and could have been better
link |
in the trajectory of history in the 30s and 40s.
link |
The most logical, see, we had started this conversation,
link |
it brings a wonderful bow tie into the discussion
link |
and buttons it up nicely.
link |
We had talked about force and counter force earlier.
link |
The most obvious and much discussed way
link |
that Hitler could have been stopped
link |
has nothing to do with Germans.
link |
When he remilitarized the Rhineland,
link |
everyone talks about what a couple of French divisions
link |
would have done had they simply gone in and contested.
link |
And this was something Hitler was extremely,
link |
I mean, it might've been the most nervous time
link |
in his entire career because he was afraid
link |
that they would have responded with force
link |
and he was in no position to do anything about it
link |
So this is where you get the people who say,
link |
and Churchill's one of these people too,
link |
where they talk about that he should have been stopped
link |
militarily right at the very beginning when he was weak.
link |
Listen, there were candidates in the Catholic Center Party
link |
and others in the Weimar Republic
link |
that maybe could have done things
link |
and it's beyond my understanding of specific German history
link |
to talk about it intelligently.
link |
But I do think that had the French responded militarily
link |
to Hitler's initial moves into that area,
link |
that he would have been thwarted.
link |
And I think he himself believed,
link |
if I'm remembering my reading,
link |
that this would have led to his downfall.
link |
So the potential...
link |
See, what I don't like about this
link |
is that it almost legitimizes military intervention
link |
at a very early stage
link |
to prevent worse things from happening,
link |
but it might be a pretty clear cut case.
link |
But it shows we pointed out that there was a lot of sympathy
link |
on the part of the allies for the fact that
link |
the Germans probably should have Germany back
link |
and this is traditional German land.
link |
I mean, they were trying, in a funny way,
link |
it's almost like the love and the sense of justice
link |
on the allies part may have actually stayed their hand
link |
in a way that would have prevented
link |
much, much, much worse things later.
link |
But if the times were such
link |
that the message of a Hitler resonated,
link |
then simply removing Hitler from the equation
link |
would not have removed the context of the times.
link |
And that means one of two things,
link |
either you could have had another one
link |
or you could have ended up in a situation equally bad
link |
in a different direction.
link |
I don't know what that means
link |
because it's hard to imagine anything could be worse
link |
than what actually occurred, but history's funny that way.
link |
And Hitler's always everyone's favorite example
link |
of the difference between the great man theory of history
link |
and the trends and forces theories of history, right?
link |
The times made a Hitler possible
link |
and maybe even desirable to some.
link |
If you took him out of the equation,
link |
those trends and forces are still in place, right?
link |
So what does that mean?
link |
If you take him out and the door is still open,
link |
does somebody else walk through it?
link |
Yeah, it's mathematically speaking,
link |
the probability of charismatic leaders emerge.
link |
I'm so torn on that at this point.
link |
Here's another way to look at it.
link |
The institutional stability of Germany
link |
in that time period was not enough to push back.
link |
And there are other periods in German history.
link |
I mean, that Hitler arose in, arisen in 1913,
link |
he doesn't get anywhere
link |
because Germany's institutional power
link |
is enough to simply quash that.
link |
It's the fact that Germany was unstable anyway
link |
that prevented a united front
link |
that would have kept radicalism from getting out of hand.
link |
Does that make sense?
link |
A tricky question on this,
link |
just to stay on this a little longer
link |
because I'm not sure how to think about it,
link |
is the World War II versus the Holocaust.
link |
We were talking just now
link |
about the way that history unrolls itself
link |
and could Hitler have been stopped?
link |
And I don't quite know what to think about Hitler
link |
without the Holocaust.
link |
And perhaps in his thinking,
link |
how essential the antisemitism
link |
and the hatred of Jews was.
link |
It feels to me that,
link |
I mean, we were just talking about
link |
where did he pick up his hatred of the Jewish people?
link |
There's stories in Vienna and so on
link |
that it almost is picking up the idea
link |
of antisemitism as a really useful tool,
link |
as opposed to actually believing it in its core.
link |
Do you think World War II as it turned out
link |
and Hitler as he turned out
link |
would be possible without antisemitism?
link |
Could we have avoided the Holocaust?
link |
Or was it an integral part of the ideology
link |
of fascism and the Nazis?
link |
Not an integral part of fascism
link |
because Mussolini really, I mean,
link |
Mussolini did it to please Hitler,
link |
but it wasn't an integral part.
link |
What's interesting to me is that that's the big anomaly
link |
in the whole question because antisemitism
link |
didn't need to be a part of this at all, right?
link |
Hitler had a conspiratorial view of the world.
link |
He was a believer that the Jews controlled things, right?
link |
The Jews were responsible for both Bolshevism on one side
link |
and capitalism on the other, they ruled the banks.
link |
I mean, United States was a Jewified country, right?
link |
Bolshevism was a Jewified sort of a political.
link |
In other words, he saw Jews everywhere
link |
and he had that line about it.
link |
The Jews of Europe force another war to Germany,
link |
they'll pay the price or whatever,
link |
but then you have to believe that they're capable of that.
link |
The Holocaust is a weird, weird sidebar to the whole thing.
link |
And here's what I've always found interesting.
link |
It's a sidebar that weakened Germany
link |
because look at the First World War.
link |
The Jews fought for Germany, right?
link |
Who was the most important?
link |
And this is a very arguable point,
link |
but it's just the first one that pops into my head.
link |
Who was the most important Jewish figure
link |
that would have maybe been on the German side
link |
had the Germans had a non antisemitic?
link |
Well, listen, that whole part.
link |
Yes, it was Einstein, but the whole,
link |
I should point out that to say Germany or Europe
link |
or Russia or any of those things were not antisemitic
link |
is to do injustice to history, right?
link |
Pogroms, I mean, it's standard operating procedure.
link |
What you see in the Hitlerian era
link |
is an absolute huge spike, right?
link |
Cause the government has a conspiracy theory
link |
that the Jews have.
link |
It's funny because Hitler both thought of them as weak
link |
and super powerful at the same time, right?
link |
And as an outsider people that weakened Germany,
link |
the whole idea of the blood
link |
and how that connects to Darwinism
link |
and all that sort of stuff is just weird, right?
link |
A real outlier, but Einstein,
link |
let's just play with Einstein.
link |
If there's no antisemitism in Germany
link |
or none above the normal level, right?
link |
The baseline level, does Einstein leave
link |
along with all the other Jewish scientists?
link |
And what does Germany have as increased technological
link |
and intellectual capacity if they stay, right?
link |
It's something that actually weakened that state.
link |
It's a tragic flaw in the Hitlerian worldview,
link |
but it was so, and let me, you had mentioned earlier,
link |
like maybe it was not integral to his character.
link |
Maybe it was a wonderful tool for power.
link |
Somewhere along the line, and really not at the beginning,
link |
this guy became absolutely obsessed with this.
link |
With the conspiracy theory.
link |
And Jews, and he surrounded himself
link |
with people and theorists.
link |
I'm gonna use that word really, really sort of loosely,
link |
who believed this too.
link |
And so you have a cabal of people
link |
who are reinforcing this idea
link |
that the Jews control the world.
link |
He called it international jewelry
link |
was a huge part of the problem.
link |
And because of that, they deserved to be punished.
link |
They were an enemy within all these kinds of things.
link |
It's a nutty conspiracy theory
link |
that the government of one of the most,
link |
I mean, the big thing with Germany was culture, right?
link |
They were a leading figure in culture and philosophy
link |
and all these kinds of things.
link |
And that they could be overtaken
link |
with this wildly wickedly weird conspiracy theory
link |
and that it would actually determine things.
link |
I mean, Hitler was taking vast amounts of German resources
link |
and using it to wipe out this race
link |
when he needed them for all kinds of other things
link |
to fight a war of annihilation.
link |
So that is the weirdest part of the whole Nazi phenomenon.
link |
It's the darkest possible silver lining to think about
link |
is that the Holocaust may have been
link |
and the hatred of the Jewish people
link |
may have been the thing that avoided Germany
link |
getting the nuclear weapons first.
link |
Isn't that a wonderful historical ironic twist
link |
that if it weren't so overlaid with tragedy,
link |
a thousand years from now will be seen
link |
as something really kind of funny.
link |
Well, that's true.
link |
It's fascinating to think as you've talked.
link |
So the seeds of his own destruction, right?
link |
And my hope is, this is a discussion I have
link |
with my dad as a physicist,
link |
is that evil inherently contains with it
link |
that kind of incompetence.
link |
So my dad's discussion, so he's a physicist
link |
and an engineer, his belief is that at this time
link |
in our history, the reason we haven't had nuclear
link |
like terrorist blow up a nuclear weapon somewhere
link |
in the world is that the kind of people
link |
that would be terrorists are simply not competent enough
link |
at their job of being a destructive.
link |
So like, there's a kind of, if you plot it,
link |
the more evil you are, the less able you are.
link |
And by evil, I mean, purely just like we said,
link |
if we were to consider the hatred of Jewish people as evil,
link |
because it's sort of detached from reality,
link |
it's like just this pure hatred of something
link |
that's grounded on things, conspiracy theories.
link |
If that's evil, then the more you sell yourself,
link |
the more you give into these conspiracy theories,
link |
the less capable you are at actually engineering,
link |
which is very difficult, engineering nuclear weapons
link |
and effectively deploying them.
link |
So that's a hopeful message that the destructive people
link |
in this world are by their worldview incompetent
link |
in creating the ultimate destruction.
link |
I don't agree with that.
link |
I straight up don't agree with that.
link |
So why are we still here?
link |
Why haven't we destroyed ourselves?
link |
Why haven't the terrorists blown, it's been many decades.
link |
Why haven't we destroyed ourself to this point?
link |
Well, when you say it's been many decades, many decades,
link |
that's like saying in the life of 150 year old person,
link |
we've been doing well for a year.
link |
The problem with all these kinds of equations,
link |
and it was Bertrand Russell, right?
link |
The philosopher who said so.
link |
He said, it's unreasonable to expect a man to walk
link |
on a tight rope for 50 years.
link |
I mean, the problem is that this is a long game.
link |
And let's remember that up until relatively recently,
link |
what would you say, 30 years ago,
link |
the nuclear weapons in the world
link |
were really tightly controlled.
link |
That was one of the real dangers
link |
in the fall of the Soviet Union.
link |
Remember the worry that all of a sudden
link |
you were gonna have bankrupt former Soviet Republic
link |
selling nuclear weapons to terrorists and whatnot.
link |
I would suggest, and here's another problem is that
link |
when we call these terrorists evil,
link |
it's easy for an American, for example,
link |
to say that Osama bin Laden is evil.
link |
Easy for me to say that.
link |
But one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter
link |
as the saying goes, and to other people, he's not.
link |
What Osama bin Laden did,
link |
and the people that worked with him,
link |
we would call evil genius.
link |
The idea of hijacking planes
link |
and flying them into the buildings like that,
link |
and that he could pull that off,
link |
and that still boggles my mind.
link |
I'm still, it's funny, I'm still stunned by that.
link |
And yet, the idea, here's the funny part,
link |
and I hesitate to talk about this
link |
because I don't wanna give anyone ideas,
link |
but you don't need nuclear weapons
link |
to do incredibly grave amounts of danger.
link |
I mean, what one can of gasoline and a BIC lighter can do
link |
in the right place and the right time,
link |
and over and over and over again
link |
can bring down societies.
link |
This is the argument behind the importance of the stability
link |
that a nation state provides.
link |
So when we went in and took out Saddam Hussein,
link |
one of the great counter arguments
link |
from some of the people who said,
link |
this is a really stupid thing to do,
link |
is that Saddam Hussein was the greatest anti terror weapon
link |
in that region that you could have
link |
because they were a threat to him.
link |
So he took that, and he did it in a way
link |
that was much more repressive than we would ever be, right?
link |
And this is the old line
link |
about why we supported right wing death squad countries,
link |
because they were taking out people
link |
that would inevitably be a problem for us if they didn't,
link |
and they were able to do it
link |
in a way we would never be able to do, supposedly.
link |
We're pretty good at that stuff,
link |
just like the Soviet Union was behind the scenes
link |
and underneath the radar.
link |
But the idea that the stability created
link |
by powerful and strong centralized leadership
link |
allowed them, it's almost like outsourcing
link |
anti terror activities, allowed them to,
link |
for their own reasons.
link |
I mean, you see the same thing
link |
in the Syria situation with the Assads.
link |
I mean, you can't have an ISIS in that area
link |
because that's a threat to the Assad government
link |
who will take care of that for you,
link |
and then that helps us by not having an ISIS.
link |
So I would suggest one, that the game is still on
link |
on whether or not these people get nuclear weapons
link |
I would suggest they don't need them
link |
to achieve their goals, really.
link |
The crazy thing is if you start thinking
link |
like the Joker in Batman, the terrorist ideas,
link |
it's funny, I guess I would be a great terrorist
link |
because I'm just full of those ideas.
link |
Oh, you could do this, you could,
link |
it's scary to think of how vulnerable we are.
link |
But the whole point is that you as the Joker
link |
wouldn't do the terrorist actions.
link |
That's the theory that's so hopeful to me with my dad,
link |
is that all the ideas, your ability to generate good ideas,
link |
forget nuclear weapons, how you can disrupt the power grid,
link |
how you can disrupt the, attack our psychology,
link |
attack like with a can of gasoline, like you said,
link |
somehow disrupt the American system of ideas.
link |
That coming up with good ideas there.
link |
Are we saying evil people can't come up
link |
with evil genius ideas?
link |
That's what I'm saying.
link |
We have this Hollywood story.
link |
I don't think history backs that up.
link |
I mean, I think you can say with the nuclear weapons,
link |
it does, but only because they're so recent.
link |
But I mean, evil genius, I mean, that's almost proverbial.
link |
But that's, okay, so to push back for the fun of it, or.
link |
And I don't mean to, I don't want you to leave this
link |
in a terrible mood because I push back
link |
on every hopeful idea you had,
link |
but I tend to be a little cynical about that stuff.
link |
But that goes to the definition of evil, I think,
link |
because I'm not so sure human history
link |
has a lot of evil people being competent.
link |
I do believe that they mostly,
link |
like in order to be good at doing
link |
what may be perceived as evil,
link |
you have to be able to construct an ideology
link |
around which you truly believe
link |
when you look in the mirror by yourself,
link |
that you're doing good for the world.
link |
And it's difficult to construct an ideology
link |
where destroying the lives of millions
link |
or disrupting the American system,
link |
I'm already contradicting myself as I'm saying.
link |
I was just gonna say, people have done this already, yes.
link |
So, but then it's the question of like,
link |
about aliens with the idea that
link |
if the aliens are all out there,
link |
why haven't they visited us?
link |
The same question, if it's so easy to be evil,
link |
not easy, if it's possible to be evil,
link |
why haven't we destroyed ourselves?
link |
And your statement is from the context of history,
link |
the game is still on.
link |
And it's just been a few years
link |
since we've found the tools to destroy ourselves.
link |
And one of the challenges of our modern time
link |
that we don't often think about this pandemic
link |
kind of revealed is how soft we've gotten
link |
in terms of our deep dependence on the system.
link |
So somebody mentioned to me,
link |
what happens if power goes out for a day?
link |
What happens if power goes out for a month?
link |
Oh, for example, the person that mentioned this
link |
was a Berkeley faculty that I was talking with.
link |
He's an astronomer who's observing solar flares.
link |
And it's very possible that a solar flare,
link |
they happen all the time to different degrees.
link |
To knock out your cell phones.
link |
Yeah, to knock out the power grid for months.
link |
So like, just as a thought experiment,
link |
what happens if just power goes out
link |
for a week in this country?
link |
Like the electromagnetic pulses and the nuclear weapons
link |
and all those kinds of things, yeah.
link |
But maybe that's an act of nature.
link |
And even just the act of nature will reveal
link |
like a little. The fragility of it all.
link |
And then the evil can emerge.
link |
I mean, the kind of things that might happen
link |
when power goes out, especially during a divisive time.
link |
Well, you won't have food.
link |
At baseline level, that would mean
link |
that the entire supplies chain begins to break down.
link |
And then you have desperation.
link |
And desperation opens the door to everything.
link |
Can I ask a dark question?
link |
As opposed to the other things we've been talking about?
link |
There's always a thread, a hopeful message.
link |
I think there'll be a hopeful message on this one too.
link |
You may have the wrong guess.
link |
If you were to bet money on the way
link |
that human civilization destroys itself,
link |
or it collapses in some way that is,
link |
where the result would be unrecognizable to us
link |
as anything akin to progress, what would you say?
link |
Is it nuclear weapons?
link |
Is it some societal breakdown
link |
through just more traditional kinds of war?
link |
Is it engineered pandemics, nanotechnology?
link |
Is it artificial intelligence?
link |
Is it something we can't even expect yet?
link |
Do you have a sense of how we humans will destroy ourselves?
link |
Or might we live forever?
link |
I think what governs my view of this thing
link |
is the ability for us to focus ourselves collectively.
link |
And that gives me the choice of looking at this
link |
and saying, what are the odds we will do X versus Y, right?
link |
So go look at the 62 Cuban Missile Crisis,
link |
where we looked at the potential of nuclear war
link |
and we stared right in the face of that.
link |
To me, I consider that to be,
link |
you wanna talk about a hopeful moment?
link |
That's one of the rare times in our history
link |
where I think the odds were overwhelmingly
link |
that there would be a nuclear war.
link |
And I'm not the super Kennedy worshiper that,
link |
I grew up in an era where he was,
link |
especially amongst people in the Democratic Party,
link |
he was almost worshiped.
link |
And I was never that guy, but I will say something.
link |
John F. Kennedy by himself probably made decisions
link |
that saved a hundred million or more lives
link |
because everyone around him thought he should be
link |
taking the road that would have led to those deaths.
link |
And to push back against that is,
link |
when you look at it now, I mean, again,
link |
if you were a betting person,
link |
you would have bet against that.
link |
And that's rare, right?
link |
So when we talk about how the world will end,
link |
the fact that one person actually had that in their hands
link |
meant that it wasn't a collective decision.
link |
It gave, remember I said,
link |
I trust people on an individual level,
link |
but when we get together, we're more like a herd
link |
and we devolved down to the lowest common denominator.
link |
That was something where the higher ethical ideas
link |
of a single human being could come into play
link |
and make the decisions that influence the events.
link |
But when we have to act collectively,
link |
I get a lot more pessimistic.
link |
So take what we're doing to the planet.
link |
And we talk about it always now in terms of climate change,
link |
which I think is far too narrow.
link |
Look at, and I always get very frustrated
link |
when we talk about these arguments about,
link |
Just look at the trash, forget climate for a second.
link |
We are destroying the planet because we're not taking care
link |
of it and because what it would do to take care of it
link |
would require collective sacrifices
link |
that would require enough of us to say, okay.
link |
And we can't get enough of us to say, okay,
link |
because too many people have to be on board.
link |
It's not John F. Kennedy making one decision from one man.
link |
We have to have 85% of us or something around the world.
link |
Not just, you can't say we're gonna stop doing damage
link |
to the world here in the United States if China does it.
link |
So the amount of people that have to get on board
link |
that train is hard.
link |
You get pessimistic hoping for those kinds of shifts
link |
unless it's right, you know, Krypton's about to explode.
link |
We have, and so I think if you're talking
link |
about a gambling man's view of this,
link |
that that's gotta be the odds on favorite
link |
because it requires such a UNAM.
link |
I mean, and the systems maybe aren't even in place, right?
link |
The fact that we would need intergovernmental bodies
link |
that are completely discredited now on board
link |
and you would have to subvert the national interests
link |
of nation states, I mean, the amount of things
link |
that have to go right in a short period of time
link |
where we don't have 600 years to figure this out, right?
link |
So to me, that looks like the most likely
link |
just because the things we would have to do
link |
to avoid it seem the most unlikely.
link |
Does that make sense?
link |
I believe, call me naive,
link |
in just like you said with the individual,
link |
I believe that charismatic leaders,
link |
individual leaders will save us.
link |
What if you don't get them all at the same time?
link |
What if you get a charismatic leader in one country
link |
but under, or what if you get a charismatic leader
link |
in a country that doesn't really matter that much?
link |
Well, it's a ripple effect.
link |
So it starts with one leader
link |
and their charisma inspires other leaders.
link |
So it's like one ant queen steps up
link |
and then the rest of the ant starts behaving.
link |
And then there's like little other spikes
link |
of leaders that emerge.
link |
And then that's where collaboration emerges.
link |
I tend to believe that like when you heat up the system
link |
and shit starts getting really chaotic,
link |
then the leader, whatever this collective intelligence
link |
that we've developed, the leader will emerge.
link |
Don't you think there's just as much of a chance though
link |
that the leader would emerge and say,
link |
the Jews are the people who did all this.
link |
You know what I'm saying?
link |
Is that the idea that they would come up,
link |
you have a charismatic leader
link |
and he's going to come up with the rights
link |
or she is going to come up with the right solution
link |
as opposed to totally coming up with the wrong solution.
link |
I mean, I guess what I'm saying is you could be right,
link |
but a lot of things have to go the right way.
link |
But my intuition about the evolutionary process
link |
that led to the creation of human intelligence
link |
and consciousness on earth results
link |
in the power of like, if we think of it,
link |
just the love in the system versus the hate in the system,
link |
that the love is greater.
link |
The human kindness potential in the system
link |
is greater than the human hatred potential.
link |
And so the leader that is in the time when it's needed,
link |
the leader that inspires love and kindness
link |
is more likely to emerge and will have more power.
link |
So you have the Hitlers of the world that emerge,
link |
but they're actually in a grand scheme of history
link |
are not that impactful.
link |
So it's weird to say,
link |
but not that many people died in World War II.
link |
If you look at the full range of human history,
link |
it's up to a hundred million, whatever that is,
link |
with natural pandemics too,
link |
you can have those kinds of numbers,
link |
but it's still a percentage.
link |
I forget what the percentage is,
link |
maybe three, 5% of the human population on earth.
link |
Maybe it's a little bit focused on a different region,
link |
but it's not destructive
link |
to the entirety of human civilization.
link |
So I believe that the charismatic leaders,
link |
when time is needed, that do good for the world
link |
in the broader sense of good
link |
are more likely to emerge
link |
than the ones that say, kill all the Jews.
link |
It's possible though, and this is just,
link |
I've thought about this all of 30 seconds,
link |
but I mean, it seems.
link |
We're betting money here on the 21st century,
link |
I think maybe you've divided this
link |
into too much of a black and white dichotomy,
link |
this love and good on one side and this evil on another.
link |
Let me throw something that might be more
link |
in the center of that linear balancing act,
link |
self interest, which may or may not be good.
link |
The good version of it we call enlightened self interest.
link |
The bad version of it we call selfishness.
link |
But self interest to me seems like something more likely
link |
to impact the outcome than either love on one side
link |
or evil on the other.
link |
Simply a question of what's good for me
link |
or what's good for my country
link |
or what's good from my point of view
link |
or what's good for my business.
link |
I mean, if you tell me, and maybe I'm a coal miner
link |
or maybe I own a coal mine.
link |
If you say to me, we have to stop using coal
link |
because it's hurting the earth,
link |
I have a hard time disentangling that greater good question
link |
from my right now good feeding my family question, right?
link |
So I think maybe it's gonna be a much more banal thing
link |
than good and evil, much more a question
link |
of we're not all going to decide at the same time
link |
that the interests that we have are aligned.
link |
Does that make sense?
link |
Totally, but I mean, I've looked at Ayn Rand
link |
and objectivism and kind of really thought like,
link |
how bad or good can things go
link |
when everybody's acting selfishly?
link |
But I think we're just talking two aunts here
link |
with microphones talking about.
link |
But like the question is when this spreads,
link |
so what do I mean by love and kindness?
link |
I think it's human flourishing on earth
link |
and throughout the cosmos.
link |
It feels like whatever the engine that drives human beings
link |
is more likely to result in human flourishing.
link |
And people like Hitler are not good for human flourishing.
link |
So that's what I mean by good is there's a,
link |
I mean, maybe it's an intuition that kindness
link |
is an evolutionary advantage.
link |
I hate those terms.
link |
I hate to reduce stuff to evolutionary biology always,
link |
but it just seems like for us to multiply
link |
throughout the universe, it's good to be kind to each other.
link |
And those leaders will always emerge to save us
link |
from the Hitlers of the world that wanna kind of
link |
burn the thing down with a flamethrower.
link |
That's the intuition.
link |
But let's talk about, you brought up evolution several times.
link |
Let me play with that for a minute.
link |
I think going back to animal times,
link |
we are conditioned to deal with overwhelming threats
link |
right in front of us.
link |
So I have quite a bit of faith in humanity
link |
when it comes to impending doom right outside our door.
link |
If Krypton's about to explode,
link |
I think humanity can rouse themselves to great,
link |
and would give power to the people who needed it
link |
and be willing to make the sacrifices.
link |
But that's what makes, I think,
link |
the pollution slash climate change
link |
slash screwing up your environment threat
link |
so particularly insidious is it happens slowly, right?
link |
It defies fight and flight mechanisms.
link |
It defies the natural ability we have to deal
link |
with the threat that's right on top of us.
link |
And it requires an amount of foresight
link |
that while some people would be fine with that,
link |
most people are too worried and understandably,
link |
I think too worried about today's threat
link |
rather than next generation's threat or whatever it might be.
link |
So I mean, when we talk about when you had said,
link |
what do you think the greatest threat is?
link |
I think with nuclear weapons,
link |
I think could we have a nuclear war?
link |
We darn right could,
link |
but I think that there's enough of an inertia
link |
where against that because people understand instinctively,
link |
if I decide to launch this attack against China
link |
we're gonna have 50 million dead people tomorrow.
link |
Whereas if you say,
link |
we're gonna have a whole planet of dead people
link |
in three generations if we don't start now,
link |
I think the evolutionary way that we have evolved
link |
mitigates maybe against that.
link |
In other words, I think I would be pleasantly surprised
link |
if we could pull that off.
link |
Does that make sense?
link |
I don't mean to be like, I'm the sight predicting doom.
link |
It's fun that way.
link |
I think we're both,
link |
maybe I'm over the top on the love thing.
link |
Maybe I'm over the top on the doom.
link |
So it makes for a fun chat, I think.
link |
So one guy that I've talked to several times
link |
is slowly becoming a friend is a guy named Elon Musk.
link |
He's a big fan of hardcore history,
link |
especially Genghis Khan series of episodes,
link |
but really all of it,
link |
him and his girlfriend Grimes listen to it, which is.
link |
Yeah, you know Elon?
link |
So that's like relationship goals,
link |
like listen to hardcore history on the weekend
link |
with your loved one.
link |
So let me, if I were to look at the guy
link |
from a perspective of human history,
link |
it feels like he will be a little speck that's remembered.
link |
You think about like the people,
link |
what will we remember from our time?
link |
Who are the people we'll remember,
link |
whether it's the Hitlers or the Einsteins,
link |
who's going to be?
link |
It's hard to predict when you're in it,
link |
but it seems like Elon
link |
will be one of those people remembered.
link |
And if I were to guess what he's remembered for,
link |
it's the work he's doing with SpaceX
link |
and potentially being the person.
link |
Now we don't know,
link |
but the being the person
link |
who launched a new era of space exploration.
link |
If we look centuries from now,
link |
if we are successful as human beings surviving long enough
link |
to venture out into the, you know, toward the stars.
link |
It's weird to ask you this.
link |
I don't know what your opinions are,
link |
but do you think humans will be a multi planetary species
link |
in the long arc of history?
link |
Do you think Elon will be successful in his dream?
link |
And he doesn't shy away from saying it this way, right?
link |
He really wants us to colonize Mars first
link |
and then colonize other Earth like planets
link |
in other solar systems throughout the galaxy.
link |
Do you have a hope that we humans will venture out
link |
towards the stars?
link |
So here's the thing.
link |
And this actually, again, dovetails
link |
to what we were talking about earlier.
link |
I actually, first of all, I toured SpaceX
link |
and it's hard to get your mind around
link |
because he's doing what it took governments to do before.
link |
So it's incredible that we're watching individual companies
link |
and stuff doing this.
link |
Doing it faster and cheaper.
link |
Yeah. Well, and pushing the envelope, right?
link |
Faster than the governments at the time we're moving.
link |
I mean, there's a lot of people who I think,
link |
who think Elon is overrated and you have no idea, right?
link |
When you go see it, you have no idea.
link |
But that's actually not what I'm most impressed with.
link |
It's Tesla I'm most impressed with.
link |
And the reason why is because in my mind,
link |
we just talked about what I think is the greatest threat,
link |
the environmental stuff.
link |
And I talked about our inability maybe all at the same time
link |
to be willing to sacrifice our self interests
link |
in order for the goal.
link |
And I don't wanna put words in Elon's mouth,
link |
so you can talk to him if you want to.
link |
But in my mind, what he's done is recognize that problem.
link |
And instead of building a car that's a piece of crap,
link |
but it's good for the environment so you should drive it,
link |
he's trying to create a car that if you're only motivated
link |
by your self interest, you'll buy it anyway.
link |
And it will help the environment and help us transition away
link |
from one of the main causes of damage.
link |
I mean, one of the things this pandemic
link |
and the shutdown around the world has done
link |
is show us how amazingly quickly
link |
the earth can actually rejuvenate.
link |
We're seeing clear skies in places species come
link |
and you would have thought it would have taken decades
link |
for some of this stuff.
link |
So what if to name just one major pollution source,
link |
we didn't have the pollution caused by automobiles, right?
link |
And if you had said to me, Dan,
link |
what do you think the odds of us transitioning away
link |
from that were 10 years ago,
link |
I would have said, well, people aren't gonna do it
link |
because it's inefficient, it's this, it's that,
link |
nobody wants to, but what if you created a vehicle
link |
that was superior in every way
link |
so that if you were just a self oriented consumer,
link |
you'd buy it because you wanted that car.
link |
That's the best way to get around that problem
link |
of people not wanting to, I think he's identified that.
link |
And as he's told me before,
link |
when the last time a car company was created
link |
that actually, blah, blah, blah, he's right.
link |
And so I happen to feel that even though he's pushing
link |
the envelope on the space thing,
link |
I think somebody else would have done that someday.
link |
I'm not sure because of the various things he's mentioned,
link |
how difficult it is to start there,
link |
I'm not sure that the industries that create vehicles
link |
for us would have gone where he's going to lead them
link |
if he didn't force them there through consumer demand
link |
by making a better car that people wanted anyway.
link |
They'll follow, they'll copy, they'll do all those things.
link |
And yet who was gonna do that?
link |
So I hope he doesn't hate me for saying this,
link |
but I happen to think the Tesla idea
link |
may alleviate some of the need to get off this planet
link |
because the planet's being destroyed, right?
link |
And we're gonna colonize Mars probably anyway
link |
if we live long enough.
link |
And I think the Tesla idea, not just Elon's version,
link |
but ones that follow from other people
link |
is the best chance of making sure we're around long enough
link |
to see Mars colonized.
link |
Does that make sense?
link |
And one other thing from my perspective,
link |
because I'm now starting a company,
link |
I think the interesting thing about Elon
link |
is he serves as a beacon of hope, like pragmatically speaking
link |
for people that, sort of to push back
link |
on our Doom conversation from earlier,
link |
that a single individual could build something
link |
that allows us as self interested individuals
link |
to gather together in a collective way
link |
to actually alleviate some of the dangers
link |
that face our world.
link |
So it gives me hope as an individual
link |
that I can build something that can actually have impact
link |
that counteracts the Stalins and the Hitlers
link |
and all the threats that face that human civilization faces,
link |
that an individual has that power.
link |
I didn't believe that the individual has that power
link |
in the halls of government.
link |
Like, I don't feel like any one presidential candidate
link |
can rise up and help the world, unite the world.
link |
It feels like from everything I've seen
link |
and you're right with Tesla,
link |
it can bring the world together to do good.
link |
That's a really powerful mechanism
link |
of whatever you say about capitalism,
link |
that you can build companies that start,
link |
it starts with a single individual.
link |
Of course, there's a collective that grows around that,
link |
but the leadership of a single individual,
link |
their ideas, their dreams, their vision
link |
can catalyze something that takes over the world
link |
and does good for the entire world.
link |
But if I think, but again, I think the genius of the idea
link |
is that it doesn't require us
link |
to go head to head with human nature, right?
link |
He's actually built human nature into the idea
link |
by basically saying, I'm not asking you
link |
to be an environmental activist.
link |
I'm not asking you to sacrifice to make it.
link |
I'm gonna sell you a car you're going to like better.
link |
And by buying it, you'll help the environment.
link |
That takes into account our foibles as a species
link |
and actually leverages that to work for the greater good.
link |
And that's the sort of thing that does turn off
link |
my little doom caster cynicism thing a little bit
link |
because you're actually hitting us where we live, right?
link |
You're not, you can take somebody
link |
who doesn't even believe the environment's a problem,
link |
but they want a Tesla.
link |
So they're inadvertently helping anyway.
link |
I think that's the genius of the idea.
link |
Yeah, and I'm telling you, that's one way to make love
link |
a much more efficient mechanism of change than hate.
link |
Making it in your self interest to love somebody.
link |
Making it in your self interest, creating a product
link |
that leads to more love than hate.
link |
You're gonna wanna love your neighbor
link |
because you're gonna make a fortune.
link |
Right, okay, I get it.
link |
That's why he said.
link |
All right, I'm on board.
link |
That's why Elon said love is the answer.
link |
That's, I think, exactly what he meant.
link |
Okay, let's try something difficult.
link |
You've recorded an episode of Steering Into the Iceberg
link |
on your Common Sense program.
link |
That has started a lot of conversations.
link |
It's quite moving, it was quite haunting.
link |
Got me a lot of angry emails.
link |
I did something I haven't done in 30 years.
link |
I endorsed a political candidate
link |
from one of the two main parties
link |
and there were a lot of disillusioned people
link |
I guess I didn't hear it as an endorsement.
link |
I just heard it as the similar flavor of conversation
link |
as you have in hardcore history.
link |
It's almost the speaking about modern times
link |
in the same voice as you speak about
link |
when you talk about history.
link |
So it was just a little bit of a haunting view
link |
of the world today.
link |
I know we were just wearing our doom caster.
link |
Let me put that right back on, are you?
link |
I like the term doom caster.
link |
How do we get love to win?
link |
What's the way out of this?
link |
Is there some hopeful line that we can walk
link |
to avoid something, and I hate to use the terminology,
link |
but something that looks like a civil war,
link |
not necessarily a war of force,
link |
but a division to a level where it doesn't any longer feel
link |
like a United States of America with an emphasis on United.
link |
Is there a way out?
link |
I read a book a while back.
link |
I want to say George Friedman, the Stratfor guy wrote it.
link |
It was something called The Next Hundred Years,
link |
I think it was called.
link |
And I remember thinking, I didn't agree with any of it.
link |
And one of the things I think he said in the book
link |
was that the United States was going to break up.
link |
I'm going from memory here.
link |
He might not have said that at all,
link |
but something was stuck in my memory about that.
link |
And I remember thinking,
link |
but I think some of the arguments were connected
link |
to the differences that we had
link |
and the fact that those differences are being exploited.
link |
So we talked about media earlier
link |
and the lack of truth and everything.
link |
We have a media climate that is incentivized
link |
to take the wedges in our society and make them wider.
link |
And there's no countervailing force to do the opposite
link |
So there was a famous memo
link |
from a group called Project for a New American Century.
link |
And they took it down,
link |
but the Wayback Machine online still has it.
link |
And it happened before 9 11,
link |
spawned all kinds of conspiracy theories
link |
because it was saying something to the effect of,
link |
and I'm really paraphrasing here,
link |
but you know that the United States
link |
needs another Pearl Harbor type event
link |
because those galvanize a country
link |
that without those kinds of events periodically
link |
is naturally geared towards pulling itself apart.
link |
And it's those periodic events
link |
that act as the countervailing force
link |
that otherwise is not there.
link |
then we are naturally inclined towards pulling ourselves apart.
link |
So to have a media environment
link |
that makes money off widening those divisions,
link |
I mean, I was in talk radio
link |
and it has those people,
link |
the people that used to scream at me
link |
cause I wouldn't do it.
link |
But I mean, we would have these terrible conversations
link |
after every broadcast
link |
where I'd be in there with the program director
link |
and they're yelling at me about heat.
link |
Heat was the word they create more heat.
link |
Well, what is heat, right?
link |
Heat is division, right?
link |
And they want the heat,
link |
not because they're political,
link |
they're not Republicans or Democrats either.
link |
and we want engagement and involvement.
link |
And because of the constructs of the format,
link |
you don't have a lot of time to get it.
link |
So you can't have me giving you like on a podcast
link |
an hour and a half or two hours
link |
where we build a logical argument
link |
and you're with me the whole way,
link |
your audience is changing every 15 minutes.
link |
So whatever points you make to create interest
link |
and intrigue and engagement have to be knee jerk right now.
link |
Things, they told me once
link |
that the audience has to know
link |
where you stand on every single issue
link |
within five minutes of turning on your show.
link |
In other words, you have to be part
link |
of a linear set of political beliefs
link |
so that if you feel A about subject A,
link |
then you must feel D about subject D.
link |
And I don't even need to hear your opinion on it
link |
cause if you feel that way about A,
link |
you're gonna feel that way about D.
link |
This is a system that is designed
link |
to pull us apart for profit,
link |
but not because they wanna pull us apart, right?
link |
It's a byproduct of the profit.
link |
That's one little example of 50 examples in our society
link |
that work in that same fashion.
link |
So what that project
link |
for a new American century document was saying
link |
is that we're naturally inclined towards disunity
link |
and without things to occasionally ratchet
link |
the unity back up again,
link |
so that we can start from the baseline again
link |
and then pull ourselves apart till the next Pearl Harbor,
link |
that you'll pull yourself apart,
link |
which I think was,
link |
think that's what the George Friedman book was saying
link |
that I disagreed with so much at the time.
link |
So in answer to your question about civil wars,
link |
we can't have the same kind of civil war
link |
because we don't have a geographical division
link |
that's as clear cut as the one we had before, right?
link |
You had a basically north south line and some border states.
link |
It was set up for that kind of a split.
link |
Now we're divided within communities, within families,
link |
within gerrymandered voting districts and precincts, right?
link |
So you can't disengage.
link |
We're stuck with each other.
link |
So if there's a civil war now,
link |
for lack of a better word,
link |
what it might seem like is the late 1960s, early 1970s,
link |
where you had the bombings
link |
and let's call it domestic terrorism and things like that,
link |
because that would seem to be something
link |
that once again, you don't even need a large chunk
link |
of the country pulling apart.
link |
10% of people who think it's the end times
link |
can do the damage.
link |
Just like we talked about terrorism before
link |
and a can of gas and a big lighter,
link |
I've lived in a bunch of places
link |
and I won't give anybody ideas
link |
where a can of gas and a big lighter
link |
would take a thousand houses down before you could blink.
link |
That terrorist doesn't have to be from the Middle East,
link |
doesn't have to have some sort of a fundamentalist
link |
or religious agenda.
link |
It could just be somebody really pissed off
link |
about the election results.
link |
So once again, if we're playing an odds game here,
link |
everybody has to behave for this to work right.
link |
Only a few people have to misbehave
link |
for this thing to go sideways.
link |
And remember, for every action,
link |
there is an equal and opposite reaction.
link |
So you don't even have to have those people
link |
doing all these things.
link |
All they have to do is start a tit for tat retribution cycle.
link |
And there's an escalation.
link |
And it creates a momentum of its own,
link |
which leads fundamentally,
link |
if you follow the chain of events down there
link |
to some form of dictatorial government
link |
as the only way to create stability, right?
link |
You want to destroy the Republic and have a dictator,
link |
that's how you do.
link |
And there are parallels to Nazi Germany,
link |
the burning of the Reichstag, blah, blah, blah.
link |
I'm the doom caster again, aren't I?
link |
And some of it could be manufactured
link |
by those seeking authoritarian power.
link |
Absolutely, like the Reichstag fire was
link |
or the Polish soldiers that fired over the border
link |
before the invasion in 1939.
link |
To fight the devil's advocate with an angel's advocate,
link |
I would say just as our conversation about Elon,
link |
it feels like individuals have power to unite us,
link |
to be that force of unity.
link |
So you mentioned the media.
link |
I think you're one of the great podcasters in history.
link |
Joe Rogan is like a long form, whatever.
link |
It's not podcasting, it's actually whatever the, yeah.
link |
Very infrequent is what it is, no matter what it is.
link |
But the basic process of it is you go deep
link |
and you stay deep and the listener stays
link |
with you for a long time.
link |
So I'm just looking at the numbers,
link |
like we're almost three hours in.
link |
And from previous episodes, I can tell you
link |
that about 300,000 people are still listening
link |
to the sound of our voice three hours in.
link |
So usually it's 300 to 500,000 people listen
link |
and they tune out.
link |
Congratulations, by the way, that's wonderful.
link |
Joe Rogan is like 10 times that.
link |
And so he has power to unite.
link |
You have power to unite.
link |
There's a few people with voices
link |
that it feels like they have power to unite.
link |
Even if you quote unquote endorse a candidate and so on,
link |
there's still, it feels to me that speaking of,
link |
I don't wanna keep saying love,
link |
but it's love and maybe unity more practically speaking
link |
that like sanity, that like respect
link |
for those you don't agree with or don't understand.
link |
So empathy, just a few voices of those can help us avoid
link |
the really importantly, not avoid the singular events,
link |
like you said, of somebody starting a fire and so on,
link |
but avoid the escalation of it.
link |
The preparedness of the populace to escalate those events,
link |
to turn a singular event and a single riot or a shooting
link |
or like even something much more dramatic than that,
link |
to turn that into something that creates
link |
like ripples that grow as opposed to ripples that fade away.
link |
And so like, I would like to put responsibility
link |
on somebody like you and on me in some small way.
link |
And Joe, being cognizant of the fact
link |
that a lot of very destructive things
link |
might happen in November.
link |
And a few voices can save us is the feeling I have.
link |
Not by saying who you should vote for
link |
or any of that kind of stuff,
link |
but really by being the voice of calm
link |
that like calms the seas from
link |
or whatever the analogy is from boiling up.
link |
Because I truly am worried about,
link |
this is the first time this year when I,
link |
I sometimes, I somehow have felt
link |
that the American project will go on forever.
link |
When I came to this country, I just believed,
link |
and I still think I'm young, but like,
link |
I have a dream of creating a company
link |
that will do a lot of good for the world.
link |
And I thought that America is the beacon of hope
link |
for the world and the ideas of freedom,
link |
but also the idea of empowering companies
link |
that can do some good for the world.
link |
And I'm just worried about this America that filled me,
link |
a kid that came from, our family came from nothing
link |
and from Russia as it was, Soviet Union as it was,
link |
to be able to do anything in this new country.
link |
I'm just worried about it.
link |
And it feels like a few people
link |
can still keep this project going.
link |
Like people like Elon, people like Joe.
link |
Is there, do you have a bit of that hope?
link |
I'm watching this experiment with social media right now.
link |
And I don't even mean social media,
link |
really expand that out to,
link |
I mean, I feel like we're all guinea pigs right now,
link |
watching, you know, I have two kids and just watching,
link |
and there's a three year space between the two of them,
link |
one's 18, the other's 15.
link |
And just, you know, when I was a kid,
link |
a person who was 18 and 15 would not be that different,
link |
just three years difference, more maturity.
link |
But their life experiences,
link |
you would easily classify those two people
link |
as being in the same generation.
link |
Now, because of the speed of technological change,
link |
there is a vast difference between my 18 year old
link |
and my 15 year old, and not in a maturity question,
link |
just in what apps they use, how they relate to each other,
link |
how they deal with their peers, their social skills,
link |
all those kinds of things where you turn around and go,
link |
this is uncharted territory, we've never been here,
link |
so it's gonna be interesting to see
link |
what effect that has on society.
link |
Now, as that relates to your question,
link |
the most upsetting part about all that
link |
is reading how people treat each other online.
link |
And you know, there's lots of theories about this,
link |
the fact that some of it is just for trolling laughs,
link |
that some of it is just people are not interacting
link |
face to face, so they feel free
link |
to treat each other that way.
link |
And I, of course, I'm trying to figure out how,
link |
if this is how we have always been as people, right?
link |
We've always been this way, but we've never had the means
link |
to post our feelings publicly about it,
link |
or if the environment and the social media
link |
and everything else has provided a change
link |
and changed us into something else.
link |
Either way, when one reads how we treat one another
link |
and the horrible things we say about one another online,
link |
which seems like it shouldn't be that big of deal,
link |
they're just words, but they have a cumulative effect.
link |
I mean, when you, I was reading Meghan Markle,
link |
who I don't know a lot about,
link |
because it's too much of the pop side of culture
link |
for me to pay lip, but I read a story the other day
link |
where she was talking about the abuse she took online
link |
and how incredibly overwhelming it was
link |
and how many people were doing it.
link |
And you think to yourself, okay, this is something
link |
that people who are in positions
link |
of what you were discussing earlier
link |
never had to deal with.
link |
Let me ask you something, and boy, this is the ultimate
link |
doomcaster thing of all time to say.
link |
When you think of historical figures
link |
that push things like love and peace
link |
and creating bridges between enemies,
link |
when you think of what happened to those people,
link |
first of all, they're very dangerous.
link |
Every society in the world has a better time,
link |
easier time dealing with violence and things like that
link |
than they do nonviolence.
link |
Nonviolence is really difficult for governments
link |
to deal with, for example.
link |
What happens to Gandhi and Jesus and Martin Luther King?
link |
And you think about all those people, right?
link |
When they're that, it's ironic, isn't it,
link |
that these people who push for peaceful solutions
link |
are so often killed, but it's because they're effective.
link |
And when they're killed, the effectiveness is diminished.
link |
Why are they killed?
link |
Because they're effective, and the only way to stop them
link |
is to eliminate them, because they're charismatic leaders
link |
who don't come around every day,
link |
and if you eliminate them from the scene,
link |
the odds are you're not gonna get another one for a while.
link |
I guess what I'm saying is the very things
link |
you're talking about, which would have the effect
link |
you think it would, right?
link |
They would destabilize systems in a way
link |
that most of us would consider positive,
link |
but those systems have a way of protecting themselves,
link |
And so I feel like history shows,
link |
see, history's pretty pessimistic, I think, by and large.
link |
If only because we can find so many examples
link |
that just sound pessimistic.
link |
But I feel like people who are dangerous
link |
to the way things are tend to be removed.
link |
Yes, but there's two things to say.
link |
I feel like you're right, that history,
link |
I feel like the ripples that love leaves in history
link |
are less obvious to detect,
link |
but are actually more transformational.
link |
Like in this. Well, one could make a case about,
link |
I mean, if you wanna talk about the long term value
link |
of a Jesus, a Gandhi, but yeah, yes,
link |
those people's ripples are still affecting people today.
link |
And that's, you feel those ripples
link |
through the general improvement of the quality of life
link |
that we see throughout the generations.
link |
Like you feel the ripples through the growth.
link |
Yeah, okay, I'll go along with you on that, okay.
link |
But I would, even if that's not true,
link |
I tend to believe that, and by the way,
link |
the company that I'm working on as a competitor
link |
is exactly attacking this, which is a competitor to Twitter.
link |
I think I can build a better Twitter as a first step.
link |
There's a long story in there.
link |
I think a three year old child could build a better,
link |
and this is not to denigrate you,
link |
I'm sure yours would be better than a three year old,
link |
but Twitter is so, and listen, Facebook too,
link |
they're really awful platforms for intellectual discussion
link |
and meaningful discussion, and I'm on it.
link |
So let me just say, I'm part of the problem.
link |
We're new to this, so it wasn't obvious at the time
link |
how to do it, it's now, and now a three year old can do it.
link |
I tend to believe that we live in a time where the tools
link |
that people that are interested in providing love,
link |
like the weapons of love are much more powerful.
link |
So like the one nice thing about technology
link |
is it allows anyone to build a company
link |
that's more powerful than any government.
link |
So that could be very destructive,
link |
but it could be also very positive.
link |
And that's, I tend to believe that somebody like Elon
link |
that wants to do good for the world,
link |
somebody like me and many like me
link |
could have more power than any one government.
link |
And by power, I mean the power to effect change,
link |
which is different from Gandhi.
link |
What do you do with government,
link |
and I don't mean to interrupt you,
link |
but I'll forget my train of thought, I'm getting old.
link |
But I mean, how do you deal with the fact
link |
that already governments who are afraid of this
link |
are walling off their own internet systems
link |
as a way to create firewalls simply to prevent you
link |
from doing what you're talking about?
link |
In other words, there's an old line
link |
that if voting really changed anything,
link |
they'd never allow it.
link |
If love through a modern day successor to Twitter
link |
would really do what you want it to do,
link |
and this would destabilize governments,
link |
do you think that governments would take countermeasures
link |
to squash that love before it got too dangerous?
link |
There's several answers.
link |
One, first of all, I don't actually,
link |
to push back on something you said earlier,
link |
I don't think love is as much of an enemy of the state
link |
as one would think.
link |
Different states have different views.
link |
I think the states want power,
link |
and I don't always think that love is in tension with power.
link |
I think it's not just about love,
link |
it's about rationality, it's reason, it's empathy,
link |
all of those things.
link |
I don't necessarily think there always have to be
link |
by definition in conflict with each other.
link |
So that's one sense is I feel like basically
link |
you can Trojan horse love into behind,
link |
but you have to be good at it.
link |
This is the thing,
link |
is you have to be conscious of the way these states think.
link |
So the fact that China bans certain services and so on,
link |
that means the companies weren't eloquent,
link |
whoever the companies are,
link |
weren't actually good at infiltrating.
link |
I think, isn't that a song, like love is a battlefield?
link |
I think it's all a cap editor.
link |
It's all a game, and you have to be good at the game.
link |
And just like Elon, we said with Tesla
link |
and saving the environment.
link |
I mean, that's not just by getting on a stage
link |
and saying it's important to save the environment,
link |
is by building a product that people can't help but love
link |
and then convincing Hollywood stars to love it.
link |
Like there's a game to be played.
link |
Okay, so let me build on that
link |
because I think there's a way to see this.
link |
I think you're right.
link |
And so it has to do with a story about the 1960s.
link |
In the vast scheme of things, the 1960s looks like
link |
a revival of neo romantic ideas, right?
link |
I had a buddy of mine several years,
link |
well, two decades older than I was who was in the 60s,
link |
went to the protest, did all those kinds of things.
link |
And we were talking about it and I was romanticizing it.
link |
He said, don't romanticize it.
link |
He goes, let me tell you, most of the people
link |
that went to those protests and did all those things,
link |
all they were there was to meet girls and have a good time.
link |
but it became in vogue to have all,
link |
in other words, let's talk about your empathy and love.
link |
You're never gonna, in my opinion,
link |
grab that great mass of people that are only in it
link |
for their interest in whatever.
link |
But if meeting girls for a young teenage guy
link |
requires you to feign empathy,
link |
requires you to read deeper subjects
link |
because that's what people are into,
link |
you can almost, as a silly way to be trendy,
link |
you could make maybe empathy trendy, love trendy,
link |
solutions that are the opposite of that,
link |
the kind of things that people inherently
link |
will not put up with.
link |
In other words, the possibility exists
link |
to change the zeitgeist and reorient it in a way
link |
that even if most of the people aren't serious about it,
link |
the results are the same.
link |
Does that make sense?
link |
Okay, so we've found a meeting of the moments.
link |
Creating incentives that encourage the best
link |
and the most beautiful aspects of human nature.
link |
Even against our will.
link |
It all boils down to meeting girls and boys.
link |
Once again, you're getting to the bottom
link |
of the evolutionary motivations
link |
and you're always on safe ground when you do that.
link |
That's a little difficult for me.
link |
And I'm sure it's actually difficult for you
link |
to listen to me say complimenting you,
link |
but it's difficult for both of us, okay?
link |
So, but you and I, as I mentioned to you,
link |
I think off mic, been friends for a long time.
link |
It's just been one way.
link |
So that's the beauty of podcasting.
link |
Now, just been fortunate enough
link |
with this particular podcast
link |
that I see it in people's eyes when they meet me,
link |
that they've been friends with me for a few years now.
link |
And we become fast friends actually after we start talking.
link |
But it's one way in the vet in that first moment.
link |
You know, like there's something about
link |
the especially hardcore history that,
link |
you know, I do some crazy challenges and running and stuff.
link |
I remember in particular, probably don't have time.
link |
One of my favorite episodes, the painful tainment one.
link |
Some people hate that episode.
link |
Because it's too real.
link |
Yeah, they can't listen to it.
link |
It's my darkest one.
link |
We wanted to set a baseline.
link |
That's the baseline.
link |
But I remember listening to that
link |
when I ran 22 miles for me, that was a long distance.
link |
Holy cow, that's painful tainment right there.
link |
Yeah, and it just pulls you in.
link |
There's something so powerful
link |
about this particular creation
link |
that's bigger than you actually, that you've created.
link |
It's kind of interesting.
link |
I think anything that is successful like that,
link |
like Elon's stuff too, it becomes bigger than you.
link |
And that's what you're hoping for, right?
link |
Didn't mean to interrupt you, I apologize.
link |
I guess a question I have, if you look in the mirror,
link |
but you also look at me,
link |
what advice would you give to yourself and to me
link |
and to other podcasters, maybe to Joe Rogan,
link |
about this journey that we're on?
link |
I feel like it's something special.
link |
I'm not sure exactly what's happening.
link |
But it feels like podcasting is special.
link |
What advice, and I'm relatively new to it,
link |
what advice do you have for people
link |
that are carrying this flame and traveling this journey?
link |
Well, I'm often asked for advice by new podcasters,
link |
people just starting out.
link |
And so I have sort of a tried and true list
link |
of do's and don'ts.
link |
But I don't have advice or suggestions for you or for Joe.
link |
Joe doesn't need anything from me.
link |
Joe's figured it out, right?
link |
I mean, he hasn't yet.
link |
He's still a confused kid, curious about the world.
link |
But that's the genius of it.
link |
That's what makes it work, right?
link |
That's what Joe's brand is, right?
link |
I guess what I'm saying is,
link |
by the time you reach the stage that you're at,
link |
or Joe's at, they don't need it.
link |
They have figured this out.
link |
The people that sometimes need help are brand new people
link |
trying to figure out what do I do with my first show
link |
and how do I talk into them?
link |
And I have standard answers for that.
link |
But you found your niche.
link |
I mean, you don't need me to tell you what to do.
link |
As a matter of fact, I might ask you questions
link |
about how you do what you do, right?
link |
Well, I guess there's specific things
link |
like we were talking offline about monetization.
link |
That's a fascinating one.
link |
Very difficult as an independent, yeah.
link |
And one of the things that Joe is facing
link |
with, I don't know if you're paying attention,
link |
but he joined Spotify with a $100 million deal
link |
for going exclusive on their platform.
link |
The idea of exclusivity that,
link |
one, I don't give a damn about money personally,
link |
but I'm single, and I like living in a shitty place.
link |
So I enjoy, so I guess it makes it easy.
link |
You get the freedom, right, to not care, yeah.
link |
Not saving for anybody's college.
link |
Okay, so on that point, but I also,
link |
okay, maybe it's romanticization,
link |
but I feel like podcasting is pirate radio.
link |
And when I first heard about Spotify partnering up with Joe,
link |
I was like, you know, fuck the man.
link |
I said, I even, I drafted a few tweets and so on,
link |
just like attacking Spotify, then I calmed myself down
link |
that you can't lock up this special thing we have.
link |
But then I realized that maybe
link |
that these are vehicles for just reaching more people
link |
and actually respecting podcasters more and so on.
link |
So that's what I mean by it's unclear what the journey is
link |
because you also serve as beacon for,
link |
now there's like millions, one million plus podcasters.
link |
I wonder what the journey is.
link |
Do you have a sense,
link |
are you romantic in the same kind of way
link |
in feeling that, because you have a roots in radio too.
link |
Do you feel that podcasting is pirate radio
link |
or is the Spotify thing one possible avenue?
link |
Are you nervous about Joe as a fan, as a friend of Joe
link |
or is this a good thing for us?
link |
So my history of how I got involved
link |
in podcasting is interesting.
link |
I was in radio and then I started a company
link |
back in the era where the dot com boom was happening
link |
and everybody was being bought up
link |
and it just seemed like a great idea, right?
link |
I did it with six other people
link |
and the whole goal of the company was,
link |
we had to invent the term.
link |
I'm sure everybody, there's other places
link |
that invented it at the same time.
link |
But what we were pitching to investors
link |
was something called amateur content.
link |
So this is before YouTube, before podcasting,
link |
before all this stuff.
link |
And my job was to be the evangelist.
link |
And I would go to these people and talk
link |
and sing the praises of all the ways
link |
that amateur content was gonna be great.
link |
And I never got a bite.
link |
And they all told me the same thing.
link |
This isn't gonna take off
link |
cause anybody who's good is already gonna be making money
link |
And I kept saying, forget that.
link |
We're talking about scale here.
link |
If you have millions of pieces of content
link |
being made every week, a small percentage
link |
is gonna be good no matter what, right?
link |
16 year olds will know what other 16 year olds like.
link |
I kept pushing this nobody bit.
link |
But the podcast grew out of that
link |
because if you're talking about amateur content in 1999,
link |
well then you're already, you're ahead of the game
link |
in terms of not seeing where it's gonna go financially
link |
but seeing where it's going to go technologically.
link |
And so when we started the podcast in 2005
link |
and it was the political one, not hardcore history,
link |
which was an outgrowth of the old radio show,
link |
we didn't have any financial ideas.
link |
We were simply trying to get our handle on the technology
link |
and how you distribute it to people and all that.
link |
And it was years later that we tried to figure out,
link |
okay, how can we get enough money
link |
to just support us while we're doing this?
link |
And the cheap and the easy way
link |
was just to ask listeners to donate like a PBS kind of model.
link |
And that was the original model.
link |
So then once we started down that,
link |
we figured out other models and there's the advertising thing
link |
and that we sell the old shows.
link |
And so all these became ways for us to support ourselves.
link |
But as podcasting matured
link |
and as more operating systems developed
link |
and phones were developed and all these kinds of things,
link |
every one of those developments,
link |
which actually made it easier for people to get the podcast
link |
actually made it more complex to make money off of them.
link |
So while our audience was building,
link |
the amount of time and effort we had to put
link |
into the monetization side began to skyrocket.
link |
So to get back to your Spotify question,
link |
to use just one example,
link |
there's a lot of people who are doing similar things.
link |
In this day and age, we used to just sell MP3 files.
link |
And all you had to have was an MP3 player,
link |
it's cheap and dirty.
link |
Now, every time there's an OS upgrade,
link |
something breaks for us.
link |
So we're having, I mean, my choices are at this point
link |
to start hiring staff, more staff,
link |
and then be a human resources manager.
link |
I mean, the pirate radio side of this
link |
was the pirate radio side of this
link |
because you didn't need anybody,
link |
but you know, you or you and another,
link |
I mean, you could just do this lean and mean,
link |
and it's becoming hard to do it lean and mean now.
link |
So if somebody like a Spotify comes in and says,
link |
hey, we'll handle that stuff for you.
link |
In the past, I would just say,
link |
F off, we don't need you, I don't mind.
link |
And I definitely am not making what we could make on this,
link |
but what we would have to do to make that is onerous to me.
link |
But it's becoming onerous to me day to day anyway.
link |
And so if somebody were to come in and say,
link |
hey, we'll pick that up for you,
link |
we will not interfere with your content at all,
link |
we won't, and in my case, you can't say,
link |
we need to show a month because that ain't happening, right?
link |
So I mean, everybody's design is different, right?
link |
So it doesn't, you know, there's not one size fits all,
link |
but I guess as a long time pirate podcaster,
link |
we've been looking to partner with people,
link |
but nobody's right for us to partner with.
link |
I mean, so I'm always looking for ways
link |
to take that side of it off my plate
link |
because I'm not interested in that side.
link |
All I wanna do is the shows,
link |
and it's really at this point,
link |
you shouldn't call yourself an artist
link |
because that's something to be decided by others.
link |
But I mean, we're trying to do art
link |
and there's something very satisfying in that.
link |
But the part that I can't stand
link |
is the increasing amount of time
link |
the monetization question takes upon us.
link |
So there's a case to be made, I guess is what I'm saying,
link |
that if a partnership with some outside firm
link |
enhances your ability to do the art
link |
without disenhancing your ability to do the art,
link |
it's, the word I'm looking for here is it's enticing.
link |
I don't like big companies.
link |
So I'm afraid of whatever strings might come with that.
link |
And if I'm Joe Rogan and I'm talking about subjects
link |
that can make public companies a little nervous,
link |
I would certainly be careful.
link |
But at the same time, people who are not in this game
link |
don't understand the problems that literally,
link |
I mean, just all the operating systems, all the podcatchers,
link |
every time some new podcatcher comes up,
link |
makes it easier to get the podcast,
link |
that's something we have to account for on the back end.
link |
And I'm not exactly the technological wizard of all time.
link |
So I think it is maybe, maybe the short answer is,
link |
is that as the medium develops,
link |
it's becoming something that you have to consider,
link |
not because you wanna sell out,
link |
but because you wanna keep going.
link |
And it's becoming harder and harder to be pirate like
link |
in this environment.
link |
The thing that convinced me, especially inside Spotify,
link |
is that they understand,
link |
so if you walk into this whole thing with some skepticism,
link |
as you're saying, of big companies,
link |
then it works because Spotify understands the magic
link |
that makes podcasting, or they appear to in part,
link |
at least they understand enough to respect Joe Rogan.
link |
And despite what, I don't know if you,
link |
so there's the internet and there's people
link |
with opinions on the internet.
link |
I've not heard about that.
link |
And they have opinions about Joe and Spotify.
link |
But the reality is, there's two things
link |
in private conversation with Joe,
link |
and in general, there's two important things.
link |
One, Spotify literally doesn't tell Joe anything.
link |
Like all the people that think that Spotify
link |
is somehow pushing Joe in this direction.
link |
It's a contractual, didn't he insist upon that?
link |
It's in the contract.
link |
But also, companies have a way of,
link |
even with the contract. They sure do.
link |
To be marketing people, hey, I know we're not forcing you.
link |
Yeah, I'm with you.
link |
You and Joe are the same,
link |
and Spotify is smart enough
link |
not to send a single email of that kind.
link |
That's really smart.
link |
And they leave them be.
link |
There is meetings inside Spotify that people complain,
link |
but those meetings never reach Joe.
link |
That's like company stuff.
link |
And the idea that Spotify is different than pirate radio,
link |
the difficult thing about podcasting
link |
is nobody gives a damn about your podcast.
link |
You're alone in this.
link |
I mean, there's fans and stuff, but nobody.
link |
Nobody's looking out for you.
link |
And the nice thing about Spotify
link |
is they want Joe's podcast to succeed even more.
link |
That's what Joe talked about
link |
is that's the difference between YouTube and Spotify.
link |
Spotify wants to be the Netflix of podcasting.
link |
And they, like what Netflix does
link |
is they don't want to control you in any way,
link |
but they want to create a platform where you can flourish.
link |
Because your interests are aligned.
link |
Interests are aligned.
link |
So let me bring up something that,
link |
let's make a distinction
link |
because not all companies who do this are the same.
link |
And you brought up YouTube and Spotify,
link |
but to me, YouTube is at least more like Spotify
link |
than some of these smaller.
link |
The term is walled garden, right?
link |
You've heard the term walled garden?
link |
So I've been around podcasting so long now
link |
that I've seen rounds of consolidation over the years
link |
and they come in waves and all of a sudden,
link |
so you'll get, and I'm not going to mention any names,
link |
but up until recently,
link |
the consolidation was happening with relatively small firms
link |
compared to people like Spotify.
link |
And the problem was,
link |
is that by deciding to consolidate your materials
link |
in a walled garden,
link |
you are walling yourself off from audience, right?
link |
So your choice is I'm going to accept this amount of money
link |
from this company,
link |
but the loss is going to be a large chunk of my audience.
link |
And that's a catch 22
link |
because you're negotiating power with that company
link |
is based on your audience size.
link |
So signing up with them diminishes your audience size,
link |
you lose negotiating power.
link |
But when you get to the level of the Spotify
link |
to just pick them out, there's other players,
link |
but you brought up Spotify specifically,
link |
these are people who can potentially,
link |
potentially enhance your audience over time.
link |
And so the risk to you is lower
link |
because if you decide in a year or two,
link |
whatever the licensing agreements term is,
link |
that you're done with them and you want to leave,
link |
instead of how you would have been
link |
with some of these smaller walled gardens,
link |
where you're walking away with a fraction of the audience
link |
you walked in with,
link |
you have the potential to walk out
link |
with whatever you got in the original deal,
link |
plus a larger audience,
link |
because their algorithms and everything
link |
are designed to push people to your content
link |
if they think you'd like.
link |
So it takes away some of the downside risk,
link |
and if you can write an agreement like Joe Rogan,
link |
I mean, where you've protected your freedom
link |
to put the content out the way you want.
link |
So, and if some of the downside risk is mitigated,
link |
and if you eliminate the problem of trying to monetize
link |
and stay up with the latest tech,
link |
then it might be worth it.
link |
You know, I'm scared of things like that,
link |
but at the same time,
link |
I'm trying to not be an idiot about it,
link |
and I can be an idiot about it.
link |
And when you've been doing it as independently
link |
for as long as I have,
link |
the inertia of that has a force all its own,
link |
but I'm inhibited enough in what I'm trying to do
link |
on this other end,
link |
that it's opened me at least to listening to people.
link |
But listen, at the same time, I love my audience,
link |
and it sounds like a cliche,
link |
but they're literally the reason I'm here.
link |
So I wanna make sure that whatever I do,
link |
if I can, is in keeping with a relationship
link |
that I've developed with these people over 15 years.
link |
But like you said, no matter what you do,
link |
you are, because see, here's the thing.
link |
If you don't sign up with one of those companies
link |
to make it easier for them to get your stuff on this hand,
link |
they might yell at you for how difficult it is,
link |
because the new operating system just updated,
link |
and you said, I can't get your stuff.
link |
So either way, you're opening yourself up to ridicule
link |
All of that makes it easier to go,
link |
well, if the right deal came along,
link |
and they weren't screwing me,
link |
and they weren't screwing my audience, and blah, blah, blah.
link |
I mean, again, in this business,
link |
when you're talking about cutting edge technology
link |
that is ever changing,
link |
and as you said, a million podcasts and growing,
link |
I think you have to try to maintain flexibility,
link |
and especially if they can mitigate the downside risk,
link |
I think you'd be an idiot to not at least try to stay up
link |
on the current trends.
link |
And look, I'm watching Joe.
link |
I'm going, okay, let's see how it goes for Joe.
link |
I mean, if he's like, ah, this is terrible,
link |
I'm getting out of this,
link |
you go, okay, those people are off the list.
link |
So Joe's put himself out as a guinea pig,
link |
and the rest of us guinea pigs appreciate it.
link |
As a huge, as a fan of your show,
link |
and as a fan of Netflix, the people there,
link |
I think I can speak for like millions of people
link |
in hope that hardcore history comes to Netflix,
link |
or if Spotify becomes the Netflix of podcasting,
link |
There's something at its best
link |
that they bring out the, you said artists,
link |
is they bring out the best out of the artists.
link |
They remove some of the headache,
link |
and somehow like they put at their best,
link |
Netflix, for example, is able to enforce
link |
and find the beauty and the power
link |
in the creations that you make even better than you.
link |
Like they don't interfere with the creations,
link |
but they somehow, it's a branding thing probably too.
link |
Yeah, but interfering would be,
link |
that would be a no go for me.
link |
That's right, absolutely.
link |
That can't happen.
link |
But that's why Netflix is masterful.
link |
They seem to not interfere with the talent,
link |
as opposed to, I could throw other people under the bus,
link |
There's a lot of places under the bus
link |
that could be thrown, absolutely.
link |
So I would love, I know there's probably
link |
people screaming yes right now.
link |
In terms of hardcore history on Netflix,
link |
it would be awesome.
link |
And I don't love asking this question,
link |
but it's asked probably the most popular question
link |
that's unanswerable.
link |
So let me try to ask it in a way
link |
that you would actually answer it,
link |
which is, of course, you said
link |
you don't release shows very often.
link |
And the question is, or the requests and the questions is,
link |
well, can you tell Dan to do one on the Civil War?
link |
Can you tell Dan to do one on the Napoleon Bonaparte?
link |
Can you tell him to do one?
link |
Every topic, and you've spoken to this.
link |
Actually, your answer about the Civil War
link |
is quite interesting.
link |
I didn't know you knew what my answer
link |
about the Civil War was.
link |
As a military historian, you enjoy, in particular,
link |
when there is differences in the armies,
link |
as opposed to contrasts.
link |
With the Civil War, which blew my mind
link |
when I heard you say there's not an interesting,
link |
a deep, intricate contrast between the two opposing sides.
link |
It's like the Roman Civil Wars,
link |
where it's legionary against legionary.
link |
And you've also said that the shows you work on
link |
are ones where you have some roots
link |
of fundamental understanding about that period.
link |
And so, when you work on a show,
link |
it's basically pulling at those strings further
link |
and refreshing your mind and learning.
link |
You have definitely done the research.
link |
Wow, these are words out of my mouth.
link |
Yeah, you're right.
link |
But is there something like shower thoughts on Reddit?
link |
Is there some ideas that are lingering in your head
link |
about possible future episodes?
link |
Is there things that, whether you're not committing
link |
to anything, but whether you're gonna do it or not,
link |
is there something that makes you think,
link |
hmm, that'll be interesting to pull at that thread
link |
Oh yeah, we have things we keep in our back pocket
link |
So, Blueprint for Armageddon, the first World War series
link |
we did, that was in my back pocket the whole time.
link |
And when the centennial of the war happened,
link |
it just seemed to be the likely time to bring out what was.
link |
That was a hell of a series.
link |
That's probably one of my favorite series.
link |
Take my rear end, man.
link |
I have to tell you.
link |
Psychologically, you mean?
link |
Well, just, you know, when you get to these,
link |
I think, I'm guessing here, I think it's 26 hours,
link |
all pieces together.
link |
Think about, and we don't do scripts.
link |
So, think about what, I had somebody write on Twitter
link |
just yesterday saying, he said something like,
link |
I'm not seeing the dedication here.
link |
You're only getting 2.5 shows out a year.
link |
And I wanted to say, man, you have no idea what,
link |
the only people who understand really
link |
are other history podcasters.
link |
And even they don't generally do 26 hours.
link |
You know, that was a two year endeavor.
link |
As I said, the first show we ever did was like 15 minutes.
link |
I could crank out one of those a month.
link |
But when you're doing, I mean, the last show we did
link |
on the fall of the Roman Republic was five and a half hours.
link |
That's a book, right?
link |
And it was part six or something.
link |
So, I mean, you just do the math.
link |
And it felt like you were, sorry to interrupt,
link |
on World War I, it felt like you were emotionally
link |
Like, it felt taxing.
link |
I was gonna say, that's a good thing though,
link |
because that, you know, and I think we said during the show,
link |
that was the feeling that the people at the time have.
link |
And I think at one point we said,
link |
if this is starting to seem gruesomely repetitive,
link |
now you know how the people at the time felt.
link |
So in other words, that had sort of inadvertently,
link |
because when you improvise a show,
link |
some of these things are inadvertent,
link |
but it had inadvertently created the right climate
link |
for having a sense of empathy with the storyline.
link |
And to me, those are the serendipitous moments
link |
that make this art and not some sort of paint by the numbers
link |
kind of endeavor, you know?
link |
And that's, to me, that wouldn't have happened
link |
had we scripted it out.
link |
So it's mostly, you just bring the tools of knowledge
link |
to the table and then in large part improvise,
link |
like the actual wording?
link |
I always say we make it like they made things
link |
like spinal tap and some of those other things
link |
where the material, so I do have notes about things
link |
like on page 427 of this book, you have this quote,
link |
so that I know, aha, I'm at the point
link |
where I can drop that in.
link |
And sometimes I'll write notes saying,
link |
here's where you left off yesterday, so I remember.
link |
But in the improvisation, you end up throwing a lot out.
link |
And so like, but it allows us to go off on tangents,
link |
like we'll try things.
link |
Like I'll sit there and go,
link |
I wonder what this would sound like.
link |
And I'll spend two days going down that road
link |
and then I'll listen to it and go, it doesn't work.
link |
But that's, you know, like writers do this all the time.
link |
It's called killing your babies, right?
link |
You got, can't, you know, but people go,
link |
so this guy goes, I'm not seeing the dedication.
link |
He has no idea how many things we're throwing out.
link |
I did an hour and a half,
link |
I had an hour and a half into The Current Show
link |
about two months ago.
link |
And I listened to it and I just went, you know what?
link |
Boom, out the window.
link |
There goes six weeks of work, right?
link |
But here's the problem.
link |
Do you trust your, sorry to interrupt,
link |
do you trust your judgment on that?
link |
But here's the thing.
link |
Our show is a little different than other people's.
link |
Joe Rogan called it evergreen content.
link |
In other words, my political show is like a car you buy.
link |
And the minute you drive it off the lot,
link |
it loses half its value, right?
link |
Cause it's not current anymore.
link |
These shows are just as good or just as bad
link |
five years from now as they are when we,
link |
although the standards on the internet changed.
link |
So when I listen to my old shows,
link |
I cringe sometimes cause the standards
link |
are so much higher now.
link |
But when you're creating evergreen content,
link |
you have two audiences to worry about.
link |
You have the audience that's waiting for the next show
link |
and they've already heard the other ones
link |
and they're impatient and they're telling you on Twitter,
link |
But you have show,
link |
the show is also for people five years from now
link |
who haven't discovered it yet
link |
and who don't care a wit for how long it took
link |
cause they're gonna be able to download the whole,
link |
and all they care about is quality.
link |
And so what I always tell new podcasters is,
link |
they always say, I read all these things,
link |
it's very important you have a release schedule.
link |
Well, it's not more important
link |
than putting out a good piece of work.
link |
And the audience will forgive me if it takes too long,
link |
but it's really good when you get it.
link |
They will not forgive me if I rush it
link |
to get it out on time and it's a piece of crap.
link |
So for us, and this is why when you brought up
link |
a Spotify deal or anything else,
link |
they can't interfere with this at all
link |
because my job here, as far as I'm concerned is quality
link |
and everything else goes by the wayside
link |
because the only thing people care about longterm,
link |
the only thing that gives you longevity is how good is it?
link |
How good is that book?
link |
If you read J.R.R. Tolkien's work tomorrow,
link |
you don't care how long it took him to write it,
link |
all you care is how good is it today?
link |
And that's what we try to think too.
link |
And I feel like if it's good, if it's really good,
link |
everything else falls into place and takes care of itself.
link |
And so sometimes to push back, sorry to interrupt.
link |
I've done it to you a thousand times,
link |
so you can get me back, please.
link |
Sometimes the deadline, some of the greatest movies
link |
and books have been, you think about like Dostoevsky,
link |
I forget which one, notes from underground or something.
link |
He needed the money, so he had to write it real quick.
link |
Sometimes the deadline creates is powerful
link |
at taking a creative mind of an artist
link |
and just like slapping it around
link |
to force some of the good stuff out.
link |
Now, the problem with history, of course,
link |
is there's different definitions of good
link |
that like it's not just about which you talk about,
link |
which is the storytelling,
link |
the richness of the storytelling.
link |
And I'm sure you're, again, not to compliment you too much,
link |
but you're one of the great storytellers of our time
link |
that I'm sure if you put in a jail cell
link |
and forced like somebody pointed a gun at you,
link |
you could tell one hell of a good story,
link |
but you still need the facts of history
link |
or not necessarily the facts,
link |
but like making sure you're painting the right full picture,
link |
not perfectly right.
link |
That's what I meant about the audience
link |
doesn't understand what a history podcast,
link |
you can't just riff and be wrong.
link |
So let me both oppose what you just said
link |
and back up what you just said.
link |
So I have a book that I wrote, right?
link |
And in a book you have a hard deadline, right?
link |
So Harper Collins had a hard deadline on that book.
link |
So when I released it, I was mad
link |
because I would have worked on it a lot longer,
link |
which is my style, right?
link |
But we had a chapter in that book
link |
entitled pandemic prologue question mark.
link |
And it was the book about the part about the black death
link |
and the 1918 flu and all that kind of stuff.
link |
And I was just doing an interview
link |
with a Spanish journalist this morning who said,
link |
did you ever think how lucky you got on that?
link |
And first of all, lucky on a pandemic, it strikes you.
link |
But had I had my druthers,
link |
I would have kept that book working
link |
in my study for months more
link |
and the pandemic would have happened.
link |
And that would have looked like a chapter
link |
I wrote after the fact.
link |
I would have had to rewrite the whole thing.
link |
So that argues for what you said.
link |
At the same time, I would have spent months more
link |
working on it because to me,
link |
it didn't look the way I wanted it to look yet.
link |
Can you drop a hint of the things
link |
that you're keeping on the shelves?
link |
Oh, the Alexander the Great podcast.
link |
I've talked around, I talked to somebody the other day,
link |
he said, do you know that the very first word
link |
in your very first podcast, in the title,
link |
the very first thing that anybody ever saw
link |
with hardcore history is the word Alexander.
link |
Because the show's entitled Alexander versus Hitler.
link |
I have talked around the career.
link |
I've done show after,
link |
I talked about his mother in one episode.
link |
I talked about the funeral games after his death.
link |
I've talked around this,
link |
I've specifically left this giant Alexandrian size hole
link |
because we're gonna do that show one day
link |
and I'm going to lovingly enjoy talking about
link |
this crazily interesting figure of Alexander the Great.
link |
So that's one of the ones that's on the back pocket list.
link |
And what we try to do is whenever this,
link |
we're doing Second World War in Asia and the Pacific now,
link |
I'm on part five, whenever the heck we finish this,
link |
the tendency is to then pick a very different period
link |
because we've had it and the audience has had it.
link |
So I will eventually get to the Alexander saga.
link |
What about just one last kind of little part of this is,
link |
what about the other half of that first 10 minute,
link |
15 minute episode?
link |
Which is, so you've done quite a bit about the World War.
link |
You've done quite a bit about Germany.
link |
Will you ever think about doing Hitler and the Man?
link |
It's funny because I talked earlier
link |
about how I don't like to go back to the old shows
link |
cause our standards have changed so much.
link |
Well, a long time ago,
link |
one of my standards for not getting five hour podcasts done
link |
or not getting too deeply into them
link |
was to flip around the interesting points.
link |
We didn't realize we were gonna get an audience
link |
that wanted the actual history.
link |
We thought we could just go with,
link |
assume the audience knew the details
link |
and just talk about the weird stuff
link |
that only makes up one part of the show now.
link |
So we did a show called Nazi tidbits.
link |
And it was just little things about,
link |
you know, it's totally out of date now.
link |
Like, you know, you can still buy them,
link |
but they're out of date.
link |
Where we dealt a little with it.
link |
You know, it would be interesting,
link |
but I'll give you another example.
link |
I mean, history is not stagnant, as you know.
link |
And we had talked about Stalin earlier
link |
and Ghost of the Ostfront was done years ago.
link |
And people will write me from Russia now and say,
link |
well, your portrayal of Stalin is totally out of,
link |
out of, it's outdated because there's all this new stuff
link |
from the former Soviet Union.
link |
And you do, you turn around and you go, okay, they're right.
link |
And so when you talk about Hitler,
link |
it's very interesting to think about
link |
how I would do a Hitler show today
link |
versus how I did one 10 years ago.
link |
And you would think, well, what's new?
link |
I mean, it happens a lot, but there's lots of new stuff
link |
and there's lots of new scholarship.
link |
And so, yeah, I would think that would be
link |
an interesting one to do someday.
link |
I haven't thought about that.
link |
That's not in the back pocket,
link |
but yeah, that'd be interesting.
link |
I have a disproportionate amount of power
link |
because I trapped you somehow in a room and,
link |
During a pandemic.
link |
During a pandemic.
link |
So like my hope will be stuck in your head,
link |
but after Alexander the Great,
link |
which would be an amazing podcast,
link |
I hope you do give a return to Hitler,
link |
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which to me,
link |
It's a contemporary book, basically.
link |
It's by a person who was there.
link |
I really loved that study of the man of Hitler.
link |
And I would love to hear your study
link |
of certain aspects of it.
link |
Perhaps even an episode that's like more focused
link |
on a very particular period.
link |
I just feel like you can tell a story that it's funny.
link |
Hitler is one of the most studied people.
link |
And I still feel like all the stories
link |
or most of the stories haven't been told.
link |
Oh, and there's, listen, I've got three books at home.
link |
I'm on all the publishers lists now.
link |
And they just, there's young Hitler,
link |
there's this Hitler, there's that.
link |
I mean, I've been reading these books
link |
and I've read about Hitler.
link |
I read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
link |
My mother thought I needed to go to a psychologist
link |
because I read it when I was six.
link |
And she said, there's something wrong with the boy.
link |
And, but, but she was right.
link |
She was absolutely right.
link |
But, but you would think that,
link |
that something like that is pretty established fact.
link |
And yet there's new stuff coming out all the time.
link |
And needless to say,
link |
Germany's been investigating this guy forever.
link |
And sometimes it takes years to get the translations.
link |
I took five years of German in school.
link |
I can't read any of it.
link |
So, I mean, and he is,
link |
when you talk about fascinating figures,
link |
he's so, the whole thing is so twistedly weird.
link |
There was a, it came out a couple of years ago.
link |
Somebody found a tape of him talking to,
link |
I want to say it was General,
link |
the Finnish General Mannerheim, right?
link |
And he's just in a very normal conversation
link |
of the sort we're having now.
link |
And, you know, the Hitler tapes,
link |
when you hear him normally he's ranting and raving.
link |
But this was a very sedate.
link |
And I wish I'd understood the German well enough
link |
to really get a feel,
link |
because I was reading what Germans said.
link |
And they say, wow, you can really hear the Southern accent.
link |
You know, little things
link |
that only a native speaker would hear.
link |
And I remember thinking,
link |
this is such a different side of this twisted character.
link |
And you would think you would always,
link |
you would think that this was information
link |
that was out in the rise and fall of the Third Reich,
link |
And so this goes along with that stuff
link |
about new stuff coming out all the time.
link |
Alexander, new stuff coming out all the time.
link |
Well, at least interpretations rather than factual data.
link |
And those color your,
link |
those give depth to your understanding.
link |
Yes, and you want that because of the historiography.
link |
And that was a byproduct of my lack of credentials,
link |
where we thought we're gonna bring in the historians,
link |
and we call them audio footnotes,
link |
right away for me to say, listen, I'm not a historian,
link |
but I'll quote this guy who is so you can trust him.
link |
But then we would quote other people
link |
who had different views.
link |
And people didn't realize that, you know,
link |
if they're not history majors,
link |
that historians don't always agree on this stuff
link |
and that they have disagreements and they love that.
link |
So I love the fact that there's more stuff out there
link |
because it allows us to then bring in other points of view
link |
and sort of maybe three dimensionalize
link |
or flesh out the story a little bit more.
link |
Two last questions.
link |
One really simple, one absurdly ridiculous,
link |
and perhaps also simple.
link |
First, who has been and is he real?
link |
I don't even know what you're talking about.
link |
How's that for an answer?
link |
It's like asking me, is Harvey the White Rabbit real?
link |
There's carrots all around the production room,
link |
but I don't know what that means.
link |
Well, a lot of people demanded that I prove,
link |
I somehow figure out a way to prove the existence.
link |
If I said he was real, people would say, no, he's not.
link |
And if I said he was, if he wasn't real,
link |
they would say, yes, he is.
link |
So it's a Santa Claus Easter bunny kind of vibe there.
link |
I mean, what is real anyway?
link |
That's exactly what I told him if he exists.
link |
The most absurd question, I'm very sorry.
link |
Very sorry, but then again, I'm not.
link |
What's the meaning of it all?
link |
You study history, human history.
link |
Have you been able to make sense of why the hell
link |
we're here on this spinning rock?
link |
Does any of it even make sense?
link |
What's the meaning of life?
link |
What I look at sometimes that I find interesting
link |
is certain consistencies that we have over time.
link |
History doesn't repeat, but it has a constant,
link |
and the constant is us.
link |
I mentioned earlier the wickedly weird time we live in
link |
with what social media is doing to us as guinea pigs,
link |
and that's a new element, but we're still people
link |
who are motivated by love, hate, greed, envy, sex.
link |
I mean, all these things that would have connected us
link |
with the ancients, right?
link |
That's the part that always makes history sound
link |
like it rhymes, you know?
link |
And when you put the constant, the human element,
link |
and you mix it with systems that are similar,
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so one of the reasons that the ancient Roman Republic
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is something that people point to all the time
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as something that seems like we're repeating history
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is because you have humans, just like you had then,
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and you have a system that resembles the one we have here.
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So you throw the constant in with a system
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that is somewhat similar, and you begin to see things
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that look like they rhyme a little.
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So for me, I'm always trying to figure out more about us,
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and when you show us in 500 years ago in Asia,
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and 800 years ago in Africa,
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and you look at all these different places
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that you put the guinea pig in,
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and you watch how the guinea pig responds
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to the different stimuli and challenges,
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I feel like it helps me flesh out a little bit more
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who we are in the long timeline.
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Not who we are today, specifically,
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but who we've always been.
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It's a personal quest.
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It's not meant to educate anybody else.
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It's something that fascinates me.
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Do you think there's, in that common humanity
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throughout history of the guinea pig,
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is there a why underneath it all?
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Or is it somehow, like, it feels like
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it's an experiment of some sort?
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Oh, now you're into it.
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Elon Musk and I talked about this,
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the simulation thing, right?
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Nick Bostrom's, yeah, the idea that there's some kid,
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and we're the equivalent of an alien's ant farm, you know?
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And we hope he doesn't throw a tarantula in
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just to see what happens.
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I think the whys elude us.
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And I think that what makes philosophy and religion
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and those sorts of things so interesting
link |
is that they grapple with the whys.
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But I'm not wise enough to propose a theory
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in myself, but I'm interested enough
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to read all the other ones out there.
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So let's put it this way.
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I don't think there's any definitive why
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that's been agreed upon,
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but the various theories are fascinating.
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Yeah, whatever it is, whoever the kid is
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that created this thing, the ant farm,
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it's kind of interesting.
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Well, so far, a little bit twisted
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and perverted and sadistic, maybe.
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That's what makes it fun, I think.
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But then again, that's the Russian perspective.
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I was just gonna say.
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It is the Russian perspective.
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That's what makes the Russian.
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So Russian history, one day I'll do some Russian history.
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I took it in college.
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That's the ant farm, baby.
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That's an ant farm with a very, very frustrated
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young teenage alien kid.
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I've already complimented you way too much.
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This has been an incredible conversation.
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It's a huge gift, your gift of humanity.
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Oh, let me cut you off and just say
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you've done a wonderful job.
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This has been fun for me.
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The questions, and more importantly,
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the questions can come from anybody.
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The counter statements, your responses have been wonderful.
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You made this a very fun intellectual discussion for me.
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Well, let me have the last word and say,
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I agree with Elon and despite the doom caster say
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that I think we've concluded definitively
link |
and you don't get a chance to respond
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that love is in fact the answer and the way forward.
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So thanks so much, Dan.
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Thank you for having me.
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Thanks for listening to this conversation with Dan Carlin
link |
and thank you to our sponsors.
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Athletic Greens, the all in one drink
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that I start every day with
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to cover all my nutritional bases.
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to monitor and protect my apartment.
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Magic Spoon, low carb keto friendly cereal
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that I think is delicious.
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And finally, Cash App, the app I use
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to set my need of friends for food and drinks.
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Please check out these sponsors in the description
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If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,
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or connect with me on Twitter, Alex Friedman.
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And now, let me leave you with some words from Dan Carlin.
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Wisdom requires a flexible mind.
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Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.