back to indexSaagar Enjeti: Politics, History, and Power | Lex Fridman Podcast #167
link |
The following is a conversation with Sagar Anjati.
link |
He is a DC based political correspondent,
link |
host of The Rising with Crystal Ball
link |
and host of the realignment podcast with Marshall Kozloff.
link |
He has interviewed Donald Trump four times
link |
and has interviewed a lot of major political figures
link |
and human beings who wield power.
link |
He loves policy and loves history,
link |
which makes him a great person to sail
link |
through the sometimes stormy waters of political discourse.
link |
He showed up to this conversation with a gift
link |
of the second volume of Ian Kershaw's biography on Hitler,
link |
a two volume set that is widely acknowledged
link |
as one of the greatest, if not the greatest,
link |
most definitive studies of Hitler.
link |
Nothing wins my heart faster on a first meeting
link |
or first date than a great book about the darkest aspects
link |
of human nature and human history.
link |
I think I started saying that as a joke,
link |
but actually there's probably a lot of truth to it.
link |
I love it when we skip the small talk
link |
and go straight to the in depth conversation
link |
about the best and worst of human nature.
link |
Quick mention of our sponsors, Jordan Harbinger Show,
link |
Grammarly Grammar Assistant, Eight Sleep Self Cooling Bed
link |
and Magic Spoon Low Carb Cereal.
link |
Click the sponsor links to get a discount
link |
and to support this podcast.
link |
As a side note, let me say that for better or for worse,
link |
I would like to avoid the trap
link |
of surface political bickering of the day.
link |
I do find politics fascinating,
link |
but not the talking points produced
link |
by the industrial engagement complex
link |
of red versus blue division.
link |
Instead, I'm fascinated by human beings who seek power
link |
and how power changes them.
link |
I don't have a political affiliation
link |
and my ideas, at least I hope so,
link |
are defined more by curiosity and learning
link |
in the face of uncertainty
link |
and less by the echo chambers who tell me
link |
what I'm supposed to think.
link |
I'm constantly evolving, learning,
link |
and doing my best to do so without ego and with empathy.
link |
Please be patient with me.
link |
As far as I'm aware,
link |
I do not have any derangement syndromes,
link |
nor do I get a medical prescription
link |
of blue, red, white, or black pills.
link |
If I say something, I say it because I'm genuinely thinking
link |
and struggling with the ideas.
link |
I have no agenda, just a bit of a hope
link |
to add more love to the world.
link |
If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,
link |
review it on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify,
link |
support it on Patreon, or connect with me
link |
on Twitter at Lex Friedman.
link |
And now, here's my conversation with Sagar Anjati.
link |
There's no better gifts in this world
link |
than a book about Hitler, so thank you so much.
link |
I've gotten a gift when we were just talking about flying,
link |
the watch from Joe Rogan,
link |
and this almost beats it.
link |
So tell me what this particular book on Hitler is.
link |
So this is volume two.
link |
Yes, so this is Ian Kershaw.
link |
He wrote the famous two volume on Hitler.
link |
I'm a big book nerd,
link |
and I spend a lot of time reading biographies in particular.
link |
So this one, if you need a one volume,
link |
"'Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,' right?
link |
I think you talked about that, William Shire,
link |
because that's like Hitler's rise,
link |
Nazi Germany, the war, et cetera.
link |
But I like bios because a good biography
link |
is story of the times, right?
link |
And so this one, the first volume, it does exactly that,
link |
which is that it doesn't just tell the story of Hitler.
link |
It's the context of this kid in Austria,
link |
and he's got all these dreams,
link |
but then actually pretty courageous
link |
in terms of World War I, right?
link |
Gets pinned to metal on by the Kaiser.
link |
And then what it's like to lose World War I,
link |
and actually lose this stain,
link |
and then the rise within, everybody knows that story,
link |
the Beer Hall Putsch and all that.
link |
This one I like, and the reason I like Kershaw
link |
is obviously number one, it's English,
link |
which is actually hard, right?
link |
Like in order to write that story,
link |
who can do both the primary source material
link |
and then translate it for people like us,
link |
but he tells the dynamic story of Hitler so well
link |
in the second volume, just like the level of detail.
link |
You've talked about this, Lex,
link |
like what was it like inside that room,
link |
inside with Chamberlain?
link |
Like what was it like in terms of who was this
link |
like magnetic madman who did convince
link |
the smartest people in the world at the time?
link |
And up until like 1940, the Soviet gamble,
link |
like it took tremendous risks, but like highly calculated,
link |
thinking, no, no, no, I'm not gonna pay for this one.
link |
I'm not gonna pay for this one.
link |
And it put himself, he had a remarkable ability,
link |
not just to put himself in the minds of the German people,
link |
but in terms of his adversaries,
link |
like with when he was across from Mussolini.
link |
Calculate, he's like, how exactly did Mussolini,
link |
the guy who created fascism,
link |
becomes like second fiddle to Hitler?
link |
Think it's an amazing bio.
link |
And yeah, like Ian Kershaw, along with Richard Evans,
link |
two of my favorite authors on the Third Reich, no question.
link |
Do you think he was born this way,
link |
that charisma, whatever that is?
link |
Or was it something he developed strategically?
link |
That's like the question you apply
link |
to some of the great leaders.
link |
Was he just a madman who had the instinct
link |
to be able to control people
link |
in the room together with them?
link |
Or is this like, he worked at it?
link |
I think he worked at it.
link |
But also, there is an innate quality.
link |
I'm forgetting his name, his lifelong,
link |
Rudolf, the one who flew to Berlin in like 1940.
link |
I forget his name, anyway.
link |
So he helped Hitler write Mein Kampf.
link |
And he was like slavishly devoted to him in prison.
link |
This is 1925 or something like that.
link |
And so you read that and you're like,
link |
well, how does he get this like crank wacko
link |
to basically believe he's like the second coming,
link |
help him write this book?
link |
I mean, literally, they live together in the prison cell
link |
and they wake up every day.
link |
And as he was composing Mein Kampf
link |
and because of the Beer Hall Putsch and all that,
link |
had this like absolute ability to gather people around him.
link |
I think his greatest skill was,
link |
is he was just a very good politician, truly.
link |
I mean, if you look at his ability
link |
in order to read coalitional politics
link |
and then convince exactly the right people
link |
in order to follow him.
link |
I think I heard you ask this once
link |
and I've thought about it a lot,
link |
which is like, who could have stopped Hitler in Germany?
link |
It's always like the ever present question.
link |
Of course, like the whole baby Hitler thing.
link |
Really the answer is Hindenburg.
link |
Like Hindenburg was the person who could have stopped
link |
and had the immense standing within the German public.
link |
The only real like war hero
link |
definitely was personally skeptical of fascism and Nazism.
link |
And didn't like Hitler.
link |
And didn't like him and he knew he was full of shit.
link |
He was like, yeah, I think this guy is dangerous.
link |
I think this guy could do a lot of damage to the Republic.
link |
But he acceded basically to Hitler at the time.
link |
And I think that he was one of the main people
link |
who could have done something about it.
link |
And also he was able to convince the generals, the military.
link |
I mean, that was very interesting.
link |
And to convince Chamberlain and the other political leaders.
link |
That's something I often think about
link |
because we're just reading books about these people.
link |
I think about what like Jeffrey Epstein, for example.
link |
Like evil people, not evil,
link |
but people have done evil things.
link |
Let's not go to the Dan Carlin thing of what is evil.
link |
People that do evil things,
link |
I wonder what they are like in a room
link |
because I know quite a lot of intelligent people
link |
that did not see the evil in Jeffrey Epstein
link |
and spend time with them.
link |
And were not bothered by it.
link |
In the same sense, Hitler,
link |
it seems like he was able to get,
link |
just even before he had power,
link |
because people get intoxicated by power and so on.
link |
They want to be close to power.
link |
But even before he had power,
link |
he was able to convince people.
link |
like is there something that's more than words?
link |
It's like the way you,
link |
I mean, people talk, tell stories about like this piercing
link |
look and whatever, all that kind of stuff.
link |
I wonder if that's somehow a part of it.
link |
Like that has to be the base floor
link |
of any of these charismatic leaders.
link |
You have to be able to, in a room alone,
link |
be able to convince anybody of anything.
link |
So I can tell you from my personal experience,
link |
one of the best educated lessons I got
link |
was when I got to meet Trump.
link |
So I interviewed Trump four different times as a journalist,
link |
spent like two and a half hours with him in the Oval Office,
link |
not alone, but like me and one person
link |
and like the press secretary, and that was it.
link |
So I actually got to observe him.
link |
And as a guy who reads these types of books,
link |
and you think of Trump, obviously most people,
link |
what they see on television, in articles and more,
link |
but being able to observe it like one on one,
link |
I was closer to him than I am right now from you.
link |
That was one of the most educational experiences I got
link |
because it's like you just said,
link |
the look, the leaning forward,
link |
the way he talks, the way he is a master
link |
at taking the question
link |
and answering exactly which party wants.
link |
And then if you try and follow up,
link |
he's like, excuse me, you know, like he knows.
link |
And then whenever you're talking,
link |
it's not that he's annoyed about getting interrupted.
link |
If he realizes he's been mirandering
link |
and then you interrupt him, all good.
link |
But if he's driving home a point,
link |
which he has to make sure appears in your transcript
link |
or whatever, it really was fascinating for me to look at.
link |
And what was also crazy with Trump
link |
is I realized how much he was living in the moment.
link |
So when I went to the Oval,
link |
I've read all these biographies and I walk in,
link |
I'm like, holy shit, you're like, I'm in the Oval Office.
link |
Were you interviewing him in the Oval Office?
link |
In the Oval, every time, I was in the Oval Office.
link |
You scared shitless?
link |
Well, I wasn't scared.
link |
I was just, look, it's the Oval Office, right?
link |
I mean, I'm this nerd.
link |
He was like this kid, I'm so, I will admit this here.
link |
I printed out on my dad's label maker when I was like seven
link |
and I wrote the Oval Office on my bedroom.
link |
So I was a huge nerd, obviously egomaniacal, even from seven.
link |
But so for this, I mean, it was huge, right?
link |
I'm like this 25 year old kid.
link |
And I walk in there and I see the couch, right?
link |
And I'm like, oh man, that's Kissinger.
link |
That's where Kissinger and Nixon got on their knees.
link |
And then you see over by the door and you're like,
link |
are the scuff marks still there
link |
from when Eisenhower used to play golf?
link |
You know, this is all running through my mind.
link |
With Trump, none of it was there, none of it, right?
link |
So like, even the desk, I put my phone on the desk
link |
to record and I'm like, this is the fucking Resolute desk.
link |
Like, I shouldn't put my phone on this thing, right?
link |
And I'm like HMS Resolute, you know, all the international.
link |
And even for him, he doesn't think about any of it.
link |
It was like amazing to me.
link |
Like he had this portrait of Andrew Jackson
link |
right next to his, to the, I think from on the fireplace,
link |
like right here on the right.
link |
And the most revealing question was when I was like,
link |
Mr. President, what are people gonna remember you for
link |
in a hundred years?
link |
And he was like, I don't know, like veteran's choice.
link |
He like has a list in front of him of like
link |
his accomplishments, which is staff.
link |
Yeah, well, I mean, that's what I wanted to know.
link |
And he's like, veteran's choice.
link |
And I remember looking at him being like,
link |
it's not gonna be veteran's choice.
link |
I'd be like, I'm like, I'm looking at you, Donald Trump,
link |
the harbinger of something new.
link |
We still don't know what the hell it is.
link |
And so I realized with these guys and their charisma
link |
and more is that they don't think about themselves
link |
the way that we think about them.
link |
And that was actually important to understand
link |
because a lot of people are like,
link |
Trump is playing all this chess.
link |
I'm like, I assure you he's not.
link |
Like he's truly, one time I was interviewing him
link |
and he had like a certificate that he had to sign
link |
or something on his desk.
link |
He's like, it was like child almost.
link |
Like he got distracted by, he's like, oh, what's this?
link |
You know, he's just like picking up and I was like,
link |
wow, like this, this is the guy.
link |
Like this is what he is.
link |
Well, I wonder if there was a different person
link |
because you were recording then offline at a party.
link |
Well, here's the thing though,
link |
because that's another part of it.
link |
Because that two hours,
link |
I would say like half of that was not on the record.
link |
So like, whenever he's off the record,
link |
he changes completely, right?
link |
I don't wanna like go into too much of it or whatever,
link |
but like he, I mean, he is so mindful
link |
of when that camera is on and when the mic is hot
link |
in terms of the language that he uses,
link |
what he's willing to admit,
link |
what he's willing to talk about,
link |
how he's willing to even appear in front of his staff.
link |
I think the most revealing thing Trump ever did
link |
was there was this press conference,
link |
like right after he lost the,
link |
right after the midterm elections in 2018.
link |
And one of the journalists was like,
link |
Mr. President, thank you for doing this press conference.
link |
And he looks at him and he goes,
link |
it's called earned media, it's worth billions.
link |
And he just like had so much disdain for him
link |
because he's like, I'm not doing this for you.
link |
He's like, I'm doing this for me.
link |
So he's really aware of the narrative of the story.
link |
I mean, that the people have talked about
link |
that all comes from the tabloid media of the,
link |
from New York and so on.
link |
He's a master of that.
link |
But I've also heard stories of just in private,
link |
he's a really, I don't wanna overuse the word charismatic,
link |
but just like, he is a really interesting,
link |
almost like friendly, like a good person.
link |
Like, that's what I heard.
link |
I've heard actually surprising the same thing
link |
about Hillary Clinton.
link |
That I can't tell you anything about.
link |
But like the way they present themselves
link |
is perhaps very different than they are
link |
as human beings and one on one.
link |
That's something, maybe that's just like a skill thing.
link |
Maybe the way they present themselves in public
link |
is actually their, I mean, almost their real self.
link |
And they're just really good in private,
link |
one on one to go into this mode
link |
of just being really intimate in some kind of human way.
link |
I think that's part of it.
link |
Because I noticed that with Trump, you know,
link |
he's like, it's almost like a tour guide.
link |
It was very like, it's very crazy, right?
link |
Cause you're like, you're in the Oval.
link |
I mean, it's his office.
link |
And he's like, do you guys want anything?
link |
And he's like, you want a Diet Coke?
link |
Cause he drinks like all this Diet Coke.
link |
And he's just like, you guys want a Diet Coke, right?
link |
And you're sitting there and you're like,
link |
the way he's able to like,
link |
like the last time I interviewed him,
link |
he wanted to do it outside.
link |
Because he like, he's studied himself from all angles.
link |
And he knows exactly how he looks on a camera
link |
and with which lighting.
link |
And so we were supposed to interview him on camera
link |
in the Oval Office, which is actually rare.
link |
Like you don't usually get that.
link |
And they ended up moving it outside at the last minute.
link |
And he came out and he's like,
link |
I picked this spot for you.
link |
He's like, great lighting.
link |
I was like, you are your own like lighting director.
link |
The president, right?
link |
But it's like you said, he's very charismatic
link |
I mean, you wouldn't know.
link |
I mean, look, this is what I mean
link |
in terms of the dynamism of these people that gets lost.
link |
And I think even he knows that.
link |
Like, I don't think he would want that side of him.
link |
That I see, you know, that you see in those
link |
off the record moments and more in order to come out
link |
because he's very keen about
link |
how exactly he presents to the public.
link |
It's like, you know, even his presidential portrait,
link |
everybody usually smiles and he refused to smile.
link |
He was like, I want to look like Winston Churchill.
link |
You know, like even he knew that.
link |
Do you think he believes that he,
link |
what he kind of implies that he is one of,
link |
if not the greatest president in American history?
link |
Like people kind of laugh at this,
link |
but there's quite, I mean, there's quite a lot of people,
link |
first of all, that make the argument
link |
that he's the greatest president in history.
link |
Like I've heard this argument being made.
link |
And I mean, I don't know what the,
link |
first of all, I don't care.
link |
Like, you can't make an argument
link |
that anyone is the greatest.
link |
That's just, that just, I come from a school
link |
of like being humble and modest and so on.
link |
It's like, even Michael, you can't have that conversation.
link |
Okay, so I like that he's humble enough to say
link |
like Abraham Lincoln or whatever.
link |
Like, I don't know.
link |
He says maybe Lincoln.
link |
Maybe. Remember that.
link |
Maybe. He says maybe Lincoln.
link |
Do you think he actually believes that?
link |
Or is that something he understands will create news
link |
and also perhaps more importantly,
link |
piss off a large number of people?
link |
Is he almost like a musician masterfully playing
link |
the emotions of the public?
link |
Or does he, or, and does he believe
link |
when he looks in the mirror,
link |
I'm one of the greatest men in history?
link |
Combination of all three.
link |
I do think he believes it.
link |
And for the reason why is I don't think he knows
link |
that much about US history.
link |
I really mean that.
link |
Like, and that's what I meant whenever I was in there
link |
and I realized he was just living in the moment.
link |
I don't think he knew all that much about why.
link |
I mean, this is why he was elected in many ways, right?
link |
So I'm not saying this is an orbit,
link |
like I'm not making a judgment on this.
link |
I'm just saying, I do think in his mind,
link |
he does think he was one of the best presidents
link |
in American history largely because,
link |
and I encountered this with a lot of people who work for him,
link |
which is that they didn't really know all that much
link |
kind of about what came before and all that.
link |
And it's not necessarily to hold it against them
link |
because for in many ways,
link |
that's what they were elected to do
link |
or elected to be in many ways.
link |
It's an interesting question whether knowing history,
link |
being a student of history is productive
link |
or counterproductive.
link |
I tend to assume I really respect people
link |
who are deeply like well read in history,
link |
like presidents that are almost like history nerds.
link |
But maybe that gets in the way of governance.
link |
It's not, I'm just sort of playing devil's advocate
link |
to my own beliefs,
link |
but it's possible that focusing on the moment
link |
and the issues and letting history,
link |
it's like first principles thinking,
link |
forget the lessons of the past
link |
and just focus on common sense reasoning
link |
through the problems of today.
link |
Yeah, it's really hard question.
link |
In terms of the modern era,
link |
I mean, Obama was a student of history.
link |
Like he used to have presidential biographers
link |
and people over and I mean, famously,
link |
like Robert de Caro,
link |
one of my favorite presidential biographers,
link |
he was invited to have dinner with Obama
link |
and Obama would like pepper some of his,
link |
it was interesting because he'd try and justify
link |
some of the things he didn't do by being like,
link |
well, if you look at what they had to do
link |
and what I have to deal with,
link |
mine's much harder.
link |
So in that way, I was a little pissed off
link |
because I'd be like, no, that actually like,
link |
you're comparing apples to oranges and all that.
link |
But if you look at Roosevelt,
link |
Teddy Roosevelt in particular,
link |
this was, I mean, a voracious reader,
link |
not of just American history, all history.
link |
That guy's just such a badass.
link |
The only president who willed himself to greatness.
link |
That's like the amazing thing about him.
link |
He wasn't tested by a crisis, right?
link |
Like it wasn't, no, he didn't have a civil war.
link |
He didn't have World War II.
link |
He didn't have to found the country, literally,
link |
or like, didn't have to stave off that,
link |
or he didn't buy Louisiana Purchase, like all that.
link |
He literally came into a pretty static country
link |
and he could have just governed with,
link |
I mean, he was, the person who came before him
link |
was assassinated, like he easily could have coasted,
link |
but he literally willed the country into something more.
link |
And that's always why I've focused a lot on him too,
link |
because I'm like, that, in many ways,
link |
I wouldn't say it's easy to be great during crisis.
link |
I mean, like look at Trump, right?
link |
But it can bring out the best within you,
link |
but it's a whole other level
link |
to bring out the best within yourself
link |
just for the sake of doing it.
link |
That's, I think is really interesting.
link |
The speeches were amazing.
link |
I'm also a sucker for great speeches
link |
because I tend to see the role of the president
link |
as in part like inspirer in chief,
link |
sort of to be able to, I mean,
link |
that's what great leaders do,
link |
like CEOs of companies and so on,
link |
establish a vision, a clear vision,
link |
and like hit that hard.
link |
But the way you establish the vision isn't just like,
link |
not to dig at Joe Biden,
link |
but like sleepy, boring statements.
link |
You have to sell those statements
link |
and you have to do it in a way
link |
where everybody's paying attention.
link |
Everybody's excited.
link |
And that, Teddy Roosevelt was definitely one of them.
link |
Obama was, I think, at least early on,
link |
I don't know, was incredible at that.
link |
It does feel that the modern political landscape
link |
makes it more difficult to be inspirational in a sense
link |
because everything becomes bickering and division.
link |
I do want to ask you about Trump.
link |
So you're now a successful podcaster.
link |
I've talked to Joe about Trump, Joe Rogan,
link |
and Joe's not interested in talking to Trump.
link |
It's just fascinating.
link |
I try to dig into like why.
link |
What would you interview Trump on like realignment,
link |
for example, and do you think it's possible
link |
to do a two, three hour conversation with him
link |
where you will get at something like human
link |
or you get at something, like when we're talking
link |
about the facade he puts forward,
link |
do you think you could get past that?
link |
I look, I was a White House correspondent.
link |
I observed this man very closely.
link |
I interviewed him.
link |
I think if that mic is hot, he knows what he's doing.
link |
He just, he's done this too long, Lex.
link |
But do you think he's a different human now
link |
after the election?
link |
Do you think that?
link |
I think he's been the same person since 1976.
link |
Like basically, 1976, I studied Trump a lot
link |
and I think he's basically been the core
link |
of who he is and elements of that.
link |
Ever since he built that, you know,
link |
the ice rink in Central Park and got that media attention,
link |
Yeah, he's a fascinating study.
link |
Still, I feel there's a hope in me
link |
that there would be a podcast like a Joe Rogan,
link |
like a long form podcast where it's something could be,
link |
you know, and you're actually a really good person
link |
to do that, where you can have a real conversation
link |
that looks back at the election and reveal something on us.
link |
But perhaps he's thinking about running again
link |
and so maybe he'll never let down that guard.
link |
But like, you know, I just love it when
link |
there's this switch in people where you start looking back
link |
at your life and wanting to tell stories.
link |
Like, you know, trying to extract wisdom
link |
and like realizing you're in this new phase of life
link |
where like the battles have all been fought,
link |
now you're this old, like former warrior
link |
and now you can tell the stories of that time.
link |
And it seems like Trump is still at it,
link |
like the young warrior he is,
link |
he's not in the mode of telling stories.
link |
You know what I got from Rogan?
link |
He's the only president who didn't age well in office.
link |
Like, and this is what I mean,
link |
because he lives in the moment, like the job actually
link |
aged Obama, I mean, Bush, same thing, even Clinton.
link |
Clinton was like fat, it looked miserable by like 2000.
link |
HW, like, I mean, Reagan, famous, actually, yeah,
link |
pretty much everybody I think about,
link |
including John F. Kennedy,
link |
who got much sicker while in office.
link |
The job like weighs on you and makes you physically ill.
link |
Trump was, he's the only person who just didn't happen to.
link |
He almost gotten stronger and he was one of the most,
link |
like the climate, there's so many people attacking him,
link |
so much hatred, so much love and hatred.
link |
And it was just, I mean, it was whatever it was,
link |
it was quite masterful and a fascinating study.
link |
If we stick on Hitler for just a minute,
link |
what lessons do you take from that time?
link |
Do you think it's a unique moment in human history,
link |
that World War II, I mean, both Stalin and Hitler,
link |
you know, is it something that's just an outlier
link |
in all of human history in terms of the atrocities,
link |
or is there lessons to be learned?
link |
You mentioned offline that you're not just a student
link |
of the entirety of the history, but you also are fascinated
link |
by just different like policies and stuff.
link |
Like, what's the immigration policy?
link |
What's the policy on science?
link |
Third Reich in power, let me plug it,
link |
by Richard Evans, I think is what it was.
link |
Cause that actually will tell you,
link |
like what was it like to live under the Nazi regime
link |
Yeah, it's a hard question in terms of the lessons
link |
that we can learn.
link |
Cause there's a lot, and it's actually been over,
link |
it's been over indexed almost.
link |
Everything comes back to Hitler in a conversation.
link |
So I kind of think of it within Mao, Stalin, and Hitler
link |
as, I don't wanna say payments for,
link |
but like the end point payment for the sins
link |
and the problems of the monarchical system
link |
that evolve within Europe.
link |
Basically like 1400 and more.
link |
I basically think that 1400,
link |
the wars between France, England, the balance of power,
link |
eventually World War I, and then serfdom within Russia,
link |
the Russian revolution that birthed Stalin.
link |
Same thing, the Kaiser and Imperial Germany
link |
and this like incredibly crazy system of balance of power
link |
And then same thing within China
link |
in terms of the warring states and then the disintegration,
link |
the European, you know, this is how they think of it.
link |
Which is like the century of humiliation
link |
and they had to have something like this.
link |
I think of it, I try to think of it
link |
within the context of that.
link |
I don't wanna sound like an inevitablist,
link |
but I think of it as, I like to think about systems,
link |
especially here in DC, that's where I got into politics,
link |
which is that you have to understand systems of power
link |
and the incentives within systems and the disincentives,
link |
the downside risk of what you're creating
link |
because that is what leads and creates the behavior
link |
within that system.
link |
I was just talking to my girlfriend about this yesterday.
link |
It's kind of funny, like I read these,
link |
I'm obsessed with these books by Robert Caro,
link |
the biographies of Lyndon Johnson.
link |
He's written like 5,000 pages so far
link |
and it's still not done.
link |
Okay, so like these are like books I base my life on.
link |
And look, these are Washington
link |
and the story of the post New Deal era and forward.
link |
Not much has changed.
link |
Like the Senate is still the Senate.
link |
So many of the same problems with the Senate
link |
are still there in some cases.
link |
But for a while, some of the people who were there
link |
with Johnson are actually still,
link |
one of them is the president of the United States,
link |
And you think about also,
link |
same with the media relationship, right?
link |
Like there's this media really,
link |
they may have come and gone.
link |
Like the people who were in the media
link |
and who were cozy with the administration officials,
link |
I mean, they just recreated themselves.
link |
It's like an ecosystem which doesn't change.
link |
And that's why I'm like,
link |
oh, it's not that was a specific time.
link |
Like that is DC because of the way
link |
the system is architected.
link |
It's pretty much been that way since like 1908,
link |
whenever like Teddy Roosevelt was dining
link |
with these journalists and he would yell at them.
link |
And then he would go over to the society house.
link |
And like in many ways,
link |
that's now instead of going to Henry Adams's house,
link |
like the people are congregating in Calorama,
link |
which is the richest neighborhood here
link |
at somebody else's house.
link |
Like it's the same thing.
link |
So you have to think about the system
link |
and then the incentives within that system
link |
about what the outcomes that they're producing.
link |
If you actually wanna think about
link |
how can I change this from the outside?
link |
That's also why it's very difficult to change
link |
because the system is designed
link |
in order to produce actually pretty specific outcomes
link |
that can only be changed in extraordinary times.
link |
Yeah, and sometimes it's hard to predict
link |
what kind of outcomes will result from the incentive,
link |
the system that you create, right?
link |
In the case, because especially
link |
when it's novel kind of situations.
link |
With Trump, he actually created a pretty novel situation.
link |
And a lot of the things that we've seen
link |
in the 20th century were very novel systems
link |
where people were very optimistic about the outcomes, right?
link |
And then it turned out to not have the results
link |
that they predicted.
link |
In terms of things being unchanged
link |
for the past 100 years and so on,
link |
can you like Wikipedia style
link |
or maybe like in a musical form,
link |
like I'm only a bill, describe to me.
link |
I still sing that to my head sometimes.
link |
I don't know what the rest of the song is,
link |
but let's leave that to people's imagination.
link |
How does this whole thing work?
link |
How does the US political system work?
link |
The three branches is how do you think
link |
about the system we have now?
link |
If you were to try to describe,
link |
if aliens showed up and asked you like,
link |
they didn't have time, so this is an elevator thing.
link |
Should we destroy you as you plead to avoid destruction?
link |
Well, how would you describe how this thing works?
link |
I would say we come together and we pick the people
link |
who make our laws.
link |
Then we pick the guy who executes those laws
link |
and they together pick the people who determine
link |
whether they or the president is breaking the law
link |
at the most basic level.
link |
That's how I would describe it.
link |
So the people who make the laws are Congress.
link |
The executive is charged with executing the laws
link |
as passed by Congress, the system,
link |
the branches of government,
link |
and the Supreme Court is picked by the president,
link |
confirmed by the Senate,
link |
which then decides whether you or other people
link |
are breaking the law in terms of interpretation of that law.
link |
That's basically it.
link |
Oh, and they decide whether those laws are in,
link |
they fall within the restrictions
link |
and the want of the founders as expressed
link |
by the Constitution of the United States,
link |
which is a set of principles that we came together in 1787.
link |
I want to make sure I get this right, 1787,
link |
and decided that we were going to live the rest of our lives
link |
barring a revolution and more.
link |
And we've made it 200 and something years
link |
in order on under that system.
link |
So there's a balance of power
link |
that's because it's multiple branches.
link |
There's a tension and a balance to it
link |
as designed by those original documents.
link |
What, which is the most dysfunctional,
link |
the branches, which is your favorite?
link |
Like in terms of talking about systems
link |
and like what's the greatest of concern
link |
and what is the greatest source of benefit in your view?
link |
The presidency, obviously,
link |
well, the presidency is my favorite to study, obviously,
link |
because it is the one
link |
where there's the most subjective variable change
link |
in terms of the personality involved
link |
because of so much power imbued within the executive.
link |
The Senate is actually pretty much the same.
link |
That's one of the things I love
link |
about reading about the Senate and histories of the Senate
link |
is you're like, oh yeah,
link |
there were always like assholes in the Senate
link |
who were doing their thing
link |
and filibustering constantly based upon this or that.
link |
And then the personalities involved with the Senate
link |
haven't mattered as much since like pre civil war, right?
link |
Like pre civil war, you had like Henry Clay
link |
and then Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun,
link |
who even in their own way,
link |
they represented like larger constituencies
link |
and they crafted these like compromises
link |
up until the outbreak of the civil war, et cetera.
link |
But like post since then,
link |
you don't think about like the Titans within the Senate.
link |
Most of that is because a lot of the stuff
link |
that they had power over
link |
has transferred over to the executive.
link |
So I'm most interested in really in like power,
link |
like where it lies.
link |
It's actually pretty, you know,
link |
throughout American history,
link |
much more used to lie with Congress.
link |
Now it's obviously just so imbued within the executive
link |
that understanding executive power
link |
is I think the thing I'm probably most interested in here.
link |
Do you think at this point,
link |
the amount of power that the president has is corrupting
link |
to their ability to lead well?
link |
Is this, you know, power corrupts,
link |
absolute power corrupts, absolutely.
link |
Are we, is there too much power in the presidency?
link |
There definitely is.
link |
And part of the problem,
link |
one of the things I try to make come across to people is
link |
if you're the president,
link |
unless you have a hyper intentional view
link |
of how something must be different in government,
link |
your view doesn't matter.
link |
So for example, like if you were Trump,
link |
let's take Trump even,
link |
and even in with a pretty intentional view,
link |
he was like, I'm gonna end the war in Afghanistan
link |
And he came in and he gets these generals in.
link |
He's like, I wanna end the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
link |
Oh, and I wanna withdraw these troops from Syria.
link |
And they're like, okay, we'll give you,
link |
give us like six months.
link |
And this is the thing about Trump.
link |
He doesn't realize that it's bullshit.
link |
So they're like, he's like,
link |
oh, six months seems fun, right?
link |
So then six months comes and he's like,
link |
he's like, so, and then he'll announce it.
link |
He'll be like, and we're getting out of Syria.
link |
And then the generals freak out.
link |
They're like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
link |
We don't have a plan for that.
link |
He's like, but you guys told me six months.
link |
He's like, I don't know, now we need another six months
link |
in order to figure this thing out.
link |
And by that time, now you're midterms.
link |
Now you gotta run for reelection.
link |
So more what I mean by that is,
link |
if you don't have a hyperintentional view
link |
about how to change foreign policy,
link |
if you don't have a hyperintentional view
link |
about how the Department of Commerce should do its job,
link |
they are just gonna go on autopilot.
link |
So this is part of the problem.
link |
When you asked me about the presidency,
link |
it's not the presidency itself,
link |
like the president himself, which has become too powerful.
link |
It's that we have less democratic checks
link |
on the people and the systems that are on autopilot.
link |
And I would say that basically since 2008,
link |
we have voted every single time to disrupt that system,
link |
except in the case of 2020 with Joe Biden,
link |
and there are a lot of different reasons
link |
around why that happened.
link |
And in every single one of those cases,
link |
Obama and Trump, they all failed
link |
in order to radically disrupt that.
link |
And that just shows you how titanic the task is.
link |
And I'm using my language precisely
link |
because I don't wanna be like deep state,
link |
but obviously there's deep state.
link |
Deep state, I guess, has conspiratorial intentions to it.
link |
But so what you're saying is the true power
link |
currently lies with the autopilot, AKA deep state.
link |
Well, but see, this is the thing too I wanna make clear,
link |
because I think people think conspiratorially
link |
that they're all coming together
link |
to intentionally do something.
link |
They are doing what they know, believe they are right,
link |
and don't have real democratic checks within that.
link |
And so now they have entire generations of cultures
link |
within each of these bureaucracies where they say,
link |
this is the way that we do things around here.
link |
And that's the problem, which is that we have a culture
link |
of within many of these agencies and more.
link |
I think the best example for this
link |
would be during the Ukraine gate with Trump and all that,
link |
with the impeachment.
link |
I'm not talking about the politics here,
link |
but the most revealing thing that happened
link |
was when the whistleblower guy, Alexander Vindman,
link |
was like, here you have the president
link |
departing from the policy of the United States.
link |
And I was like, well, let me educate you, Lieutenant Colonel.
link |
The president of the United States
link |
makes American foreign policy.
link |
But it was a very revealing comment
link |
because he and all the people
link |
within national security bureaucracy do think that.
link |
They're like, this is the policy of the United States.
link |
We have to do this.
link |
That's where things get screwy.
link |
Well, listen, for me personally,
link |
but also from an engineering perspective,
link |
I just talked to Jim Keller.
link |
It's just, this is the kind of bullshit that we all hate
link |
when you're trying to innovate and design new products.
link |
So that's what first principles thinking requires.
link |
It's like, we don't give a shit what was done before.
link |
The point is, what is the best way to do it?
link |
And it seems like the current government,
link |
government in general, probably,
link |
bureaucracies in general,
link |
are just really good at being lazy
link |
without never having those conversations.
link |
And just, it becomes this momentum thing
link |
that nobody has the difficult conversations.
link |
It's become a game within a certain set of constraints
link |
and they never kind of do revolutionary tasks.
link |
But you did say that the presidency is power,
link |
but you're saying that more power than the others,
link |
but that power has to be coupled
link |
with focused intentionality.
link |
You have to keep hammering the thing.
link |
If you want it done, it has to be done.
link |
I mean, and you gotta, this is the other part too,
link |
which is that it's not just that you have to get it done.
link |
You have to pick the 100 people who you can trust
link |
to pick 10 people each to actually do what you want.
link |
One of the most revealing quotes
link |
is from a guy named Tommy Corcoran.
link |
He was the top aide to FDR.
link |
This I'm getting from the Kara books too.
link |
And he said, what is a government?
link |
It's not just one guy or even 10 guys.
link |
Hell, it's a thousand guys.
link |
And what FDR did is he masterfully picked the right people
link |
to execute his will through the federal agencies.
link |
Johnson was the same way.
link |
He played these people like a fiddle.
link |
He knew exactly who to pick.
link |
He knew the system and more.
link |
Part of the reason that outsiders
link |
who don't have a lot of experience in Washington
link |
almost always fail is they don't know who to pick
link |
or they pick people who say one thing to their face.
link |
And then when it comes time
link |
to carry out the president's policy
link |
in terms of the government, they just don't do it.
link |
And the president's too, think about this.
link |
I think some Rahm Emanuel said this.
link |
He was like, by the time it gets to the president's desk,
link |
nobody else can solve it.
link |
It's not like a yes or no question.
link |
It's every single thing that hits the president's desk
link |
is incredibly hard to do.
link |
And Obama actually even said,
link |
and this was a very revealing quote
link |
about how he thinks about the presidency,
link |
which is he's like, look, the presidency
link |
is like one of those super tankers.
link |
He's like, I can come in and I can take it two degrees left
link |
and two degrees right.
link |
In a hundred years, two degrees left,
link |
that's a whole different trajectory.
link |
Same thing on the right.
link |
And he's like, that ultimately is really all you can do.
link |
I quibble and disagree with that
link |
in terms of how he could have changed things in 2008,
link |
but there's a lot of truth to that statement.
link |
Okay, that's really fascinating.
link |
You make me realize that actually both Obama and Trump
link |
are probably playing victim here to the system.
link |
You're making me think that maybe you can correct me
link |
that, cause I'm thinking of like Elon Musk,
link |
whose major success despite everything
link |
is hiring the right people.
link |
And like creating those thousands,
link |
that structure of a thousand people.
link |
So maybe a president has power in that
link |
if they were exceptionally good
link |
at hiring the right people.
link |
Personnel is policy, man.
link |
That's what it comes down to.
link |
But wouldn't you be able to steer the ship
link |
way more than two degrees if you hire the right people?
link |
So like, it's almost like Obama was not good
link |
at hiring the right people.
link |
Well, he hired all the Clinton people.
link |
That's what happened.
link |
What happened with Trump?
link |
He hired all the Bush people.
link |
And then you just sit back and say,
link |
oh, president can't,
link |
but that means you're just suck at hiring.
link |
Yeah, I mean, look, I know it's funny.
link |
I'm giving you simultaneously
link |
the nationalist case against Trump
link |
and the progressive case against Obama.
link |
The progressive people are like,
link |
why the fuck are you hiring all these Clinton people
link |
in order to run the government and just recreate,
link |
like why are you hiring Larry Summers,
link |
who was one of the people who worked at all these banks
link |
and didn't believe that bailouts were gonna be big enough,
link |
and then to come in in the worst economic crisis
link |
in modern American history.
link |
And Summers actively lobbied against larger bailouts,
link |
which had huge implications for working class people
link |
and pretty much hollowed out America since.
link |
Okay, from Trump, same thing.
link |
You're like, I'm gonna drain the swamp.
link |
And by doing that,
link |
I'm gonna hire Goldman Sachs's Gary Cohn
link |
and Steve Mnuchin and all these other absolute bush clowns
link |
in order to run my White House.
link |
Well, yeah, no shit.
link |
The only thing that you accomplished
link |
in your four years in office
link |
is passing a massive tax cut for the rich
link |
and for corporations.
link |
I wonder how that happened.
link |
What role does money play in all of this?
link |
Is money a huge influence in politics,
link |
super PACs, all that kind of stuff?
link |
Or is this more just kind of a narrative that we play with
link |
because from the outsider's perspective,
link |
that seems to be one of the fundamental problems
link |
with modern politics.
link |
So I was just having this conversation,
link |
Marshall Kosloff, my cohost on The Realignment.
link |
And it's funny because if you do enough research,
link |
we actually live in the least corrupt age
link |
in American campaign finance,
link |
as in it's never been more transparent.
link |
It's never been more up to the FEC and all of that.
link |
If you go back and read not even 50 years ago,
link |
we're talking about Lyndon B. Johnson,
link |
handing people like literally as he came up in his youth,
link |
paying people for votes,
link |
like the boss of the person who like had
link |
all the Mexican votes,
link |
like the person who had,
link |
and he was like giving out briefcases.
link |
This is like within people's lifetimes
link |
who are alive in America.
link |
So that doesn't happen anymore.
link |
But I don't like to blame everything on money.
link |
Although I do think money is obviously
link |
a huge part of the problem.
link |
I actually look at it in terms of distribution,
link |
which is that how is money distributed within our society?
link |
Because I firmly believe that politics,
link |
this is gonna get complicated,
link |
but I think politics is mostly downstream from culture.
link |
And culture, obviously I'm using economics
link |
because there's obviously a huge interplay there,
link |
but like in terms of the equitable
link |
or lack of equitable distribution of money
link |
within our politics,
link |
what we're really pissed off about is we're like,
link |
our politics only seems to work
link |
for the people who have money.
link |
I think that's largely true.
link |
I think that the reason why things worked differently
link |
in the past is because our economy was structured
link |
in different ways.
link |
And there's a reason that our politics today
link |
are very analogous to the last Gilded Age
link |
because we had very similar levels
link |
of economic distribution and cultural problems too
link |
I don't wanna erase that.
link |
Cause I actually think that's what's driving
link |
all of our politics right now.
link |
So that's interesting.
link |
the representative government is doing a pretty good job
link |
of representing the state of culture
link |
and the people and so on.
link |
Can I ask you in terms of the deep state
link |
and conspiracy theories,
link |
there's a lot of talk about,
link |
again, from an outsider's perspective,
link |
if I were just looking at Twitter,
link |
it seems that at least 90% of people
link |
in government are pedophiles.
link |
90 to 95%, I'm not sure what that number is.
link |
If I were to just look at Twitter, honestly, or YouTube,
link |
I would think most of the world is a pedophile.
link |
I would almost feel like.
link |
And if you don't fully believe that, you're a pedophile.
link |
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
link |
I would start to wonder like, wait,
link |
like what, am I a pedophile too?
link |
I'm either a communist or a pedophile or both, I guess.
link |
Yeah, that's gonna be clipped out.
link |
Thank you, internet.
link |
I look forward to your emails.
link |
But is there any kind of shadow conspiracy theories
link |
that give you pause or,
link |
the response to a lot of conspiracy theories is like,
link |
no, the reason this happened
link |
is because it's a combination of just incompetence.
link |
So where do you land on some of these conspiracy theories?
link |
I think most conspiracy theories are wrong.
link |
Some are true and those are spectacularly true.
link |
And if that makes sense.
link |
And we don't know which ones.
link |
I don't know which ones.
link |
That's the problem.
link |
I think, well, I mean, look, man, I listened to your podcast.
link |
I think I was a huge nonbeliever in UFOs
link |
and now I've probably never believed more in UFOs.
link |
Like I believe in UFOs.
link |
Like I'm very comfortable being like,
link |
not only do I believe in UFOs,
link |
like I think we're probably being visited
link |
by an alien civilization.
link |
And if you asked me that three years ago,
link |
I would have been like, you're out of your fucking mind.
link |
Like, what are you talking about?
link |
Well, listen to David Fravor.
link |
That's all I have to say.
link |
I have the sense that the government has information
link |
that hasn't revealed,
link |
but it's not like they're,
link |
I don't think they're holding,
link |
there's like a green guy sitting there in a room.
link |
They have seen things they don't know what to do with.
link |
So it's like, they're confused.
link |
They're afraid of revealing that they don't know.
link |
That's what I think it is, right?
link |
It's revealing, yeah, exactly, that they don't know.
link |
And then in the process,
link |
there's a lot of fears tied up in that.
link |
First, looking incompetent in the public eye.
link |
Nobody wants to be looked that way.
link |
And the other is like, in revealing it,
link |
even though they don't know,
link |
maybe China will figure it out.
link |
So like, we don't want China to figure it out first.
link |
And so all those kinds of things
link |
result in basically secrecy.
link |
Then that damages the trust in institutions
link |
on one of the most fascinating aspects,
link |
like one of the most fascinating mysteries of humankind
link |
of is there life, intelligent life,
link |
out there in the universe?
link |
So that's one of them.
link |
But there's other ones, like for me,
link |
when I first came across actually Alex Jones was 9 11.
link |
I remember like, cause I was in Chicago.
link |
I was thinking like, oh shit,
link |
are they gonna hit Chicago too?
link |
That's what everybody was thinking.
link |
Everybody was thinking like, what does this mean?
link |
What, I mean, trying to interpret it.
link |
And I remember like looking for information desperately,
link |
like what happened?
link |
And I remember not being satisfied
link |
with the quality of reporting
link |
and figuring out like rigorous,
link |
like here's exactly what happened.
link |
And so people like Alex Jones stepped up
link |
and others that said like,
link |
there's some shady shit going on.
link |
And it sure as hell looked like
link |
there's shady shit going on.
link |
So like, and I still stand behind the fact
link |
that it seems like there's not,
link |
there's not enough, like it wasn't a good job
link |
of being honest and transparent
link |
and all those kinds of things.
link |
Cause it would implicate the Saudis.
link |
And see, that's my conspiracy theories.
link |
I'm like, yeah, I think they covered up a lot of stuff
link |
because they wanted to cover up
link |
for the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
link |
Like, I mean, that was a conspiracy theory
link |
not that long ago.
link |
I think it's true.
link |
I mean, I think it's a hundred percent true.
link |
Yeah, so those kinds of conspiracy theories are interesting.
link |
I mean, there's other ones for me personally
link |
that touched the institution that means a lot to me
link |
is the MIT and, you know, Jeffrey Epstein.
link |
Yeah, I wanna hear a lot more.
link |
I wanna hear about, I talk about Epstein a lot.
link |
So I'm like. Oh, you do?
link |
Yeah, and he, I was gonna say,
link |
in terms of conspiracy theory,
link |
that one changed my outlook.
link |
Cause I was like, I was like, whoa,
link |
like you have this dude who convinced
link |
some of the most successful people on earth
link |
that he was like some money manager.
link |
And it looks like it was totally fake.
link |
I mean, this is one of the richest men on wall street,
link |
$9 billion net worth.
link |
Why is he giving him over a hundred million dollars
link |
between 2015 and 2019?
link |
What's going on here?
link |
Lex Wexner, same thing.
link |
So yeah, I wanna hear,
link |
because you know people who met him.
link |
And the only person I know who met him was Eric Weinstein.
link |
I've heard his, right.
link |
So I, listen, I'm still in and Eric is fascinating
link |
and like Eric is full on saying that.
link |
He was a Mossad or whatever.
link |
Yeah, there's a front for something,
link |
something much, much bigger.
link |
And there's a, whatever his name, Robert Maxwell,
link |
all the, all those stories,
link |
like you could dig deeper and deeper
link |
that Jeffrey's just like the tip of the iceberg.
link |
I just think he's an exceptionally charismatic,
link |
listen, this isn't speaking from confidence
link |
or like deep understanding of the situation,
link |
but from my speaking with people,
link |
he just seems like, at least from the side of his influence
link |
and interaction with researchers,
link |
he just seems like somebody
link |
that was exceptionally charismatic
link |
and actually took interest.
link |
He was unable to speak about interesting scientific things,
link |
but he took interest in them.
link |
So he knew how to stroke the egos
link |
of a lot of powerful people, like well,
link |
like in different kinds of ways,
link |
I suppose I don't know about this
link |
because I don't have, like if a really,
link |
okay, this is weird to say,
link |
but I have an ability,
link |
okay, I think women are beautiful, I like women,
link |
but like if like a supermodel came to me or something,
link |
like I'm able to reason.
link |
It seems like some people are not able to think clearly
link |
when there's like an attractive woman in the room.
link |
And I think that was one of the tools he used
link |
to manipulate people.
link |
I don't know, listen, it's like the pedophile thing.
link |
I don't know how many people are complete sex addicts,
link |
but like, it seems like looking out into the world,
link |
like the Me Too movement have revealed
link |
that there's a lot of like weird,
link |
like creepy people out there.
link |
I don't know, but I think it was just one of the many tools
link |
that he used to convince people and manipulate people,
link |
but not in some like evil way,
link |
but more just really good at the art of conversation
link |
and just winning people over on the side.
link |
And then by building through that process,
link |
building a network of other really powerful people
link |
and not explicitly, but implicitly having done shady shit
link |
with powerful people, like building up
link |
a kind of implied power of like,
link |
like we did some shady shit together.
link |
So we're not like, you're gonna help me out
link |
on this extra thing I need to do now.
link |
And that builds and builds and builds
link |
to where you're able to actually control,
link |
like have quite a lot of power without explicitly having
link |
like a strategy meeting.
link |
And I think a single person or yeah,
link |
I think a single person can do that,
link |
can start that ball rolling.
link |
And over time it becomes a group thing,
link |
like I don't know if Jillian Maxwell was involved
link |
or others and yeah, over time that becomes almost
link |
like a really powerful organization
link |
that wasn't, that's not a front for something much deeper
link |
and bigger, but it's almost like maybe it's
link |
cause I love cellular automata, man.
link |
A system that starts out as a simple thing
link |
with simple rules can create incredible complexity.
link |
And so I just think that we're now looking in retrospect,
link |
it looks like an incredibly complex system
link |
that's operating, but like, that's just because it's,
link |
there could be a lot of other Jeffrey Epstein's
link |
in my perspective that the simple thing just was successful
link |
early on and builds and builds and builds and builds
link |
and then there's a creepy shit that like a lot of aspects
link |
of the system helped it get bigger and bigger
link |
and more powerful and so on.
link |
So the final result is, I mean, listen,
link |
I have a pretty optimistic, I tend to see the good
link |
in people and so it's been heartbreaking to me in general
link |
just to see people I look up to not have the level
link |
of integrity I thought they would
link |
or like the strength of character, all those kinds of things.
link |
And it seems like you should be able to see the bullshit
link |
that is Jeffrey Epstein, like when you meet him.
link |
We're not talking about like Eric Weinstein,
link |
like one or two or three or five interactions,
link |
but like there's people that had like years
link |
of relationship with him.
link |
And I don't know, I'm not sure.
link |
Even after he was convicted.
link |
After he was convicted.
link |
That guy always gets me.
link |
Yeah, there's stories, I mean, I don't need to sort of,
link |
I honestly believe, okay, here's the open question I have.
link |
I don't know how many creepy sexual people
link |
that are out there.
link |
Like, I don't know if there is like,
link |
like the people I know, the faculty and so on,
link |
I don't know if they have like a kink
link |
that I'm just not aware of that was being leveraged
link |
because to me, it seems like if not everybody's a pedophile,
link |
then it's just the art of conversation.
link |
That is just like the art of just like manipulating people
link |
by making them feel good
link |
about like the exciting stuff they're doing.
link |
Listen, man, academics, people talk about money.
link |
I don't think academics care about money
link |
as much as people think.
link |
What they care about is like somebody,
link |
they want to be, it's the same thing
link |
that Instagram models posting their butt pictures,
link |
is they want to be loved.
link |
They want attention.
link |
My parents are professors.
link |
They, and Jeff Epstein,
link |
like the money is another way to show attention.
link |
Right, it's a proxy.
link |
And he did that for some of the weirdest,
link |
most brilliant people.
link |
I don't want to sort of drop names, but everybody knows them.
link |
It's like people that are the most interesting academics
link |
is the one he cared about.
link |
Like people are thinking about the most difficult questions
link |
in all of science and all of engineering.
link |
So those people are, were kind of outcasts in academia
link |
a little bit because they're doing the weird shit.
link |
They're the weirdos.
link |
And he cared about the weirdos and he gave them money.
link |
And that, you know, that's,
link |
I don't know if there's something more nefarious than that.
link |
I hope not, but maybe I'm surprised.
link |
And in fact, half the population of the world is pedophiles.
link |
No, I think it's what you were talking about,
link |
which is that it's the,
link |
it's the implication after the initial, right?
link |
Like you do some shady things together
link |
or you do something that you want out of the public eye
link |
and you're a public person.
link |
And look, we probably even experienced this
link |
to a limited extent, right?
link |
You're like, ah, you know, like, I don't want to,
link |
I don't know, I almost lost my temper, you know,
link |
one time whenever a car hit me and I'm like,
link |
I can't freak out in public anymore.
link |
Like, you know, like what if somebody takes a photo
link |
And so I think that there's an extent to that
link |
times a billion, literally,
link |
when you have a billion dollars or more.
link |
And you take that all together
link |
and you stack it up on itself.
link |
I saw a story about like Bill Clinton.
link |
Like Bill Clinton was with Epstein or with Ghislaine Maxwell
link |
in a private air terminal or something.
link |
And she had one of their like sex, you know,
link |
one of those girls who was underage,
link |
had her dressed up in a literal like pilot uniform.
link |
And she was underage in order to, you know,
link |
and she was being disguised for being older.
link |
And she was a masseuse, right?
link |
Because that was one of the guises which they got
link |
in order to sexually traffic these women.
link |
And she was like, Bill was like complaining about his neck.
link |
And she's like, give Bill Clinton a massage, right?
link |
So now there's a photo of an underage girl
link |
giving a massage to the former president
link |
of the United States.
link |
I don't think he knew, right?
link |
But like, that looks bad.
link |
And so this is kind of what we're getting at,
link |
which is that you're setting it all up
link |
and creating those preconditions or like Prince Andrew.
link |
Do I think Prince Andrew knew
link |
that Virginia Gouffre was underage?
link |
Probably knew she was pretty young,
link |
which I think is, you know, skeevy enough
link |
where you're a fucking Prince, you probably know better.
link |
But I don't think he knew she was underage
link |
And if he did, then he's even more of a piece of shit
link |
But when we look at these things,
link |
the stuff I'm more interested in is like
link |
what you were talking about.
link |
I'm like, Bill Gates, how do you get the richest man
link |
in the world in your house?
link |
Like under what, and Gates is like,
link |
he was talking about financing and all this.
link |
I'm like, you don't have access to money or bankers?
link |
Like you're the richest man in the world.
link |
You can call Goldman Sachs anytime you want on a hotline.
link |
Like, why do you need, that's where I start again
link |
to get more conspiratorial because I'm like,
link |
Bill, dude, you have the gold credit, right?
link |
Like you don't need Epstein to create
link |
some complicated financing structure.
link |
Or Leon Black, like what is 2015, 2009?
link |
I mean, this is very recent stuff.
link |
Or, and this is the part that really got me
link |
as I read the department,
link |
I think it's called the Department of Financial Service
link |
report around Deutsche Bank with Epstein.
link |
They knew he was a criminal.
link |
They solicited his business,
link |
explicitly knew that his business meant access
link |
to other high net worth individuals,
link |
consistently doled money out from his account
link |
for hush payments to women in Europe and prostitution rings.
link |
They knew all of this within the bank.
link |
It was elevated multiple times.
link |
Here was the other one.
link |
One of Epstein's associates was like,
link |
hey, how much money can we take out
link |
before we hit the automatic sensor
link |
before you have to tell the IRS?
link |
And that question by their own standards
link |
is supposed to result in a notification to the feds
link |
and they never did it.
link |
And he was withdrawing like $2 million of cash
link |
in five years for tips to, I'm like, okay,
link |
like something's going on here.
link |
Like, you see what I'm saying?
link |
There's a lot of signs that make you think
link |
that there's a bigger thing at play than just the man,
link |
that there's some, it does look like a larger organization
link |
is using this front, right?
link |
Again, I don't know.
link |
I truly don't know.
link |
And I'm not willing to use the certainty,
link |
which I think a lot of people online are,
link |
to say like, it wants 100%.
link |
The certainty is always the problem
link |
because that's probably why I hesitate
link |
to touch conspiracy theories
link |
is because I'm allergic to certainty in all forms.
link |
In politics, any kind of discourse.
link |
And people are so sure, in both directions, actually,
link |
it's kind of hilarious.
link |
Either they're sure that the conspiracy theory,
link |
particularly whatever the conspiracy theory is, is false.
link |
Like they almost dismiss it like,
link |
like they don't even want to talk about it.
link |
It's like the people,
link |
like the way they dismiss that the earth is flat.
link |
Most scientists are like,
link |
they don't even want to like hear
link |
what the flat earthers are saying.
link |
They don't have like zero patience for it,
link |
which is like, maybe in that case is deserved.
link |
But everything else, you really like have empathy.
link |
Like consider the fact, you have,
link |
okay, this is weird to say,
link |
but I feel like you have to consider
link |
that the earth may be flat for like one minute.
link |
Like you have to be empathetic.
link |
You have to be open minded.
link |
I don't see a lot of that
link |
through our cultural taste makers and more.
link |
And that really is what concerns me the most.
link |
Cause it's just another manifestation
link |
of all of our problems.
link |
Is that we have this completely bifurcating economy,
link |
bifurcating culture, literally,
link |
in terms of we have the middle of the country
link |
and then we have the coast.
link |
And in terms of the population, it's almost 50, 50.
link |
And with increasing mega cities and urban culture,
link |
like urban monoculture of LA, New York and Chicago
link |
and DC and Boston and Austin,
link |
relative to how an entire other group
link |
of Americans live their lives,
link |
or even the people within them
link |
who aren't rich and upwardly mobile,
link |
how they live their lives is just completely separating.
link |
And all of our language and communication
link |
in mass media and more is to the top.
link |
And then everybody else is forgotten.
link |
Do you think when you dig to the core,
link |
there is a big gap between left and right?
link |
Is that division that's perceived currently real
link |
or are most people center left and center right?
link |
It's so interesting
link |
because that's such a loaded term, center left.
link |
What does that mean?
link |
Like to you, I think the way you're thinking of it is,
link |
I'm not like a, well, even this,
link |
like I'm not a radical socialist,
link |
but I'm marginally left on cultural issues
link |
and economic issues.
link |
This is how we've traditionally understood things.
link |
And then in popular discourse, like center right,
link |
like what does it mean to be center right?
link |
Like I am marginally right on social issues
link |
and marginally right on economic issues.
link |
But that's just not, like if you look at survey data,
link |
for example, like stimulus checks,
link |
people who are against stimulus checks are conservative.
link |
Well, 80% of the population is for a stimulus check.
link |
So that means a sizable number of Republicans
link |
are for stimulus checks.
link |
Same thing happens on like a wealth tax.
link |
The same thing happens on, okay, Florida voted for Trump,
link |
3.1%, more than Barack Obama, 2008,
link |
on the same day passes a $15 minimum wage at 67%.
link |
So what's going on?
link |
Oh, that's my entire career.
link |
But it seems like, so that's fascinating.
link |
Conversation is different than the policies.
link |
Well, it's different than reality.
link |
That's what I would say,
link |
which is that the way we have to understand
link |
American politics today, it didn't always
link |
used to be this way, is it's almost entirely long.
link |
Basic, I would say the main divider is,
link |
because even when you talk about class,
link |
this misses it in terms of socioeconomics,
link |
it's around culture, which is that it's basically,
link |
if you went to a four year degree granting institution,
link |
you are part of one culture.
link |
If you didn't, you're part of another.
link |
I don't wanna erase the 20% or whatever of people
link |
who did go to a college degree who are Republicans
link |
or vice versa, et cetera, but I'm saying on average,
link |
in terms of the median way that you feel,
link |
we're basically bifurcating along those lines.
link |
And because people get upset, be like,
link |
oh, well, there are rich people who vote for Trump.
link |
And I'm like, yeah, but you know who they are?
link |
They're like plumbers or something.
link |
They're people who make $100,000 a year,
link |
but they didn't go to a four year college degree
link |
and they might live who are in a place
link |
which is not an urban metro area.
link |
And then at the same time, you have like a Vox writer
link |
who makes like 30 grand,
link |
but they have a lot more cultural power
link |
than like the plumber.
link |
So you have to think about where exactly that line is.
link |
And I think in general, that's the way that we're trending.
link |
So that's why when I say like, what's going on,
link |
Yeah, like, but it's not left and right.
link |
I mean, like, and that's why I hate these labels.
link |
So it's more just red and blue like teams.
link |
They're arbitrary teams.
link |
So how arbitrary are these teams,
link |
I guess is another.
link |
Completely arbitrary.
link |
So, well, you kind of imply that there's,
link |
I don't know if you're sort of in post analyzing the patterns
link |
because it seems like there's a network effects
link |
of like, you just pick the team red or blue
link |
and it might have to do with college.
link |
You might have to do all of those things,
link |
but like, it seems like it's more about
link |
just the people around you.
link |
So less than whether you went to college or not.
link |
I mean, it's almost like, seems like,
link |
it's almost like a weird, like network effects that are hard.
link |
There's certain strong patterns you're identifying,
link |
It's sad to think that it might be just teams
link |
that have nothing to do with what you actually believe.
link |
Look, I mean, I don't want to believe that,
link |
but the data points me to this, which especially 2020,
link |
I'm one of the people chief among them.
link |
I will own up to it here.
link |
I was totally wrong about why Trump was elected in 2016.
link |
I believed and based a lot of my public commentary beliefs
link |
on this, Trump was elected because of a rejection
link |
of Hillary Clinton neoliberalism on the back
link |
of a pro worker message, which was anti immigration.
link |
It was its pillar, but alongside of it was a rejection
link |
of free trade with China and generally
link |
of the political correctness and globalism,
link |
which has been come in through the uniparty
link |
and same thing here with the military industrial complex
link |
and endless war, he rejected all of that.
link |
Wait, what's wrong with that prediction?
link |
And the reason I know this is that it sounds right.
link |
I wish it, I honestly wish it was true,
link |
but here's the truth.
link |
Trump actually governed largely as a neoliberal Republican
link |
who was meaner online and who departed from orthodoxy
link |
in some very important ways.
link |
Don't get me wrong.
link |
I will always support the trade war with China.
link |
I will always support not expanding the wars
link |
in Afghanistan and in Iraq.
link |
I will support him moving the Overton window
link |
on a million different things and revealing once
link |
and for all that GOP voters don't care
link |
about economic orthodoxy necessarily.
link |
But here's what they do care about.
link |
Trump got more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016,
link |
despite not delivering largely for all the Trump people
link |
out there on that agenda.
link |
He wasn't more pro union, but he won more union votes.
link |
He wasn't necessarily more pro worker,
link |
but he actually won more votes in Ohio than he did in 2016.
link |
And he won more Hispanic votes than despite being
link |
all the immigration rhetoric, et cetera.
link |
Here's why, it's about the culture,
link |
which is that the culture war is so hot
link |
that negative partisanship is at such high levels.
link |
All of the vote is geared upon what the other guy
link |
might do in office.
link |
And there's a poll actually just came out
link |
by Echelon Insights.
link |
Crystal and I were talking about it on Rising,
link |
that number one concern amongst Democratic voters
link |
is Trump voters, number one concern.
link |
Not issues like Trump voters.
link |
And number two is white supremacy.
link |
And so like, which is basically code for Trump voters.
link |
And is the same true for the other side?
link |
Also on the right, the number one concern
link |
is illegal immigration.
link |
And number, I think, three or four or whatever is Antifa,
link |
which is code for Democrats.
link |
At least on the right is a policy kind of thing.
link |
Well, yeah, it's funny.
link |
I saw Ben Shapiro was talking about this.
link |
But the reason why I would functionally say it's the same
link |
is because, I mean, you can believe whether it's true or not.
link |
I think it actually largely is true.
link |
But a lot of GOP voters feel like a lot of illegal
link |
immigration is code for people who are coming in,
link |
who are gonna be legalized and are gonna go vote Democrat.
link |
Like, I can just explain it from their point of view.
link |
So like, what does that actually mean?
link |
Each other, like each other,
link |
which is that the number one concern is the other person.
link |
So negative partisanship has never been higher.
link |
And I think people who had my thesis
link |
in terms of why Trump was elected in 2016,
link |
you have to grapple with this.
link |
Like, how did he win 10 million more votes?
link |
He came 44,000 votes away from winning the presidency
link |
across three states.
link |
Like, I don't, none of our popular discourse reflects
link |
that very stark reality.
link |
And I think so much of it is people really hate liberals.
link |
Like, they just really hate them.
link |
And I was driving through rural Nevada before the election.
link |
And I was like, literally in the middle of nowhere.
link |
And there was this massive sign
link |
this guy had out in front of his house.
link |
And it just said, Trump, colon, fuck your feelings.
link |
And I was like, that's it.
link |
That is why people voted for Trump.
link |
And I don't want to denigrate it because they truly feel
link |
they have no cultural power in America,
link |
except to raise the middle finger to the elite class
link |
by pressing the button for Trump.
link |
That's actually a totally rational way to vote.
link |
It's not the way I wish we did vote,
link |
but like, you know, that's not my place to say.
link |
So this is interesting.
link |
If you could just psychoanalyze,
link |
I'm again, probably naive about this,
link |
but I'm really bothered by the hatred of liberals.
link |
It's this amorphous monster that's mocked.
link |
It's like the Shapiro liberal tears.
link |
And I'm also really bothered by
link |
probably more of my colleagues and friends,
link |
the hatred of Trump.
link |
Yeah, the Trump and white supremacists.
link |
So apparently there's 70 million white supremacists,
link |
75 million, sorry.
link |
There's millions of white supremacists.
link |
And apparently whatever liberal is,
link |
I mean, literally liberal has become
link |
equivalent to white supremacists
link |
in the power of negativity it arouses.
link |
I don't even know what those,
link |
I mean, honestly, they've become swears essentially.
link |
Is that, I mean, how do we get out of this?
link |
Because that's why I just don't even say anything
link |
about politics online.
link |
Cause it's like, really?
link |
Like you can't, here's what happens.
link |
Anything you say that's like thoughtful,
link |
like, hmm, I wonder, immigration, something.
link |
I wonder like why we have these many,
link |
we allow these many immigrants in
link |
or some version of the like thinking through
link |
these difficult policies and so on.
link |
They immediately tried to find like a single word
link |
in something you say that can put you in a bin
link |
of liberal or white supremacists
link |
and then hammer you to death
link |
by saying you're one of the two.
link |
And then everybody just piles on happily
link |
that we finally nailed this white supremacist or liberal.
link |
And that, is this some kind of weird
link |
like feature of online communication
link |
that we've just stumbled upon?
link |
Is there a way or is it possible to argue
link |
that this is like a feature, not a bug?
link |
Like, this is a good thing?
link |
Yeah, well, look, I just think it's a reflection
link |
People like to blame social media.
link |
I think we're just incredibly divided right now.
link |
I think we've been divided like this for the last 20 years.
link |
And I think that, the reason I focus almost 99%
link |
of my public commentary on economics
link |
is because you asked an important question at the top.
link |
How do we fix this?
link |
What did I say about the stimulus checks?
link |
Stimulus checks have 80% approval rating.
link |
So that's the type of thing.
link |
If I was Joe Biden and I wanted to actually
link |
heal this country, that's the very first thing
link |
I would have done when I came into office.
link |
Same thing on when you look at anything
link |
that's gonna increase wages.
link |
I said on the show, I was like, look,
link |
I think Joe Biden will have an 80% approval rating
link |
if he does two things.
link |
If he gives every American a $2,000 stimulus check
link |
and gives everybody who wants a vaccine a vaccine.
link |
It's pretty simple.
link |
Cause here's the thing.
link |
I don't really like Greg Abbott that much.
link |
We have like very different politics.
link |
I'm from Texas, but my parents got vaccinated
link |
That means something to me.
link |
I'm like, listen, I don't really care
link |
about a lot of the other stuff.
link |
He got my family vaccinated.
link |
Like that, well, I will forever remember that.
link |
And that's how we will remember the checks.
link |
This is a part of a reason why Trump
link |
almost won the election and why,
link |
if the Republicans had been smart enough
link |
to give him another round of checks,
link |
100% would have won.
link |
Which is that people were like, look,
link |
I don't really like Trump, but I got a check
link |
with his name on it.
link |
And that meant something to me and my family.
link |
I'm not saying for all the libertarians out there
link |
that they should go and like endlessly spend money
link |
What I am saying is lean into the majoritarian positions
link |
without adding your culture war bullshit on top of it.
link |
So for example, what's the number one concern
link |
that AOC says after the first round of checks got out?
link |
Oh, the checks didn't go to illegal immigrants.
link |
I'm like, are you out of your fucking mind?
link |
Like this is the most popular policy America
link |
has probably done in 50 years,
link |
since like Medicare and you're ruining it.
link |
And then on the right is the same thing,
link |
which is that they'll be like,
link |
these checks are going to like, you know,
link |
low level blah, blah, you know,
link |
people who are lazy and don't work.
link |
I'm like, oh, there you go, you know,
link |
like you're just playing a caricature of what you are.
link |
Like if you lean into those issues
link |
and you got to do it clean,
link |
this is what everybody hates about DC,
link |
which is that Biden right now is doing the $1,400 checks,
link |
but he's looping it in with his COVID relief bill
link |
That's his prerogative, that's the Democrats prerogative.
link |
They won the election, that's fine.
link |
But I'll tell you what I would have done if I was him,
link |
I would have come in and I would have said,
link |
there's five United States senators
link |
who are on the record, Republicans,
link |
who said they'll vote for a $2,000 check.
link |
And I would put that on the floor of the United States Senate
link |
on my, you know, first or the first day possible.
link |
And I would have passed it
link |
and I would have forced those Republican senators
link |
to live up to that, vote for this bill,
link |
come to the Oval Office for a signing
link |
so that the very first thing of my presidency
link |
was to say, I'm giving you all this relief check,
link |
this long national nightmare is over.
link |
Take this money, do with it what you need.
link |
We've all suffered together.
link |
The thing about Biden is he has a portrait of FDR
link |
and is in the Oval, which kind of bothers me
link |
because he thinks of himself as an FDR like figure.
link |
But this is, you have to understand the majesty of FDR.
link |
We're talking about a person
link |
who passed a piece of legislation
link |
five days after he became president.
link |
And he passed 15 transformative pieces of legislation
link |
in the first 100 days.
link |
We're on day like 34, 35, and nothing has passed.
link |
The reconciliation bill will eventually become law,
link |
but it will become law with no Republican votes.
link |
And again, that's fine.
link |
But it's not fulfilling that legacy
link |
and the urgency of the action.
link |
And the mandate, which I believe that history has handed,
link |
it handed it to Trump and he fucked it up, right?
link |
He totally screwed it up.
link |
He could have remade America
link |
and made us into the greatest country ever
link |
coming out on the other side of this.
link |
He decided not to do that.
link |
I think Biden was again handed that like a scepter almost.
link |
It's like all you have to do,
link |
all America wants is for you to raise it up high,
link |
but he's keeping it within the realm of traditional politics.
link |
I think it's a huge mistake.
link |
Why, so this is, everything he's saying
link |
is makes perfect sense, like take, okay.
link |
It's like, it's like, again, if the aliens showed up,
link |
it's like the obvious thing to do is like,
link |
what's the popular thing?
link |
Like 80% of Americans support this.
link |
Like do that clean.
link |
Also do it like with like grace,
link |
where you're able to bring people together,
link |
not like in a political way,
link |
but like obvious common sense way.
link |
Like just people, the Republicans and Democrats
link |
just bring them together on a policy and like bold,
link |
just hammer it without the dirt, without the mess,
link |
whatever, try to compromise.
link |
Just the yellow have a good Twitter account,
link |
like loud, very clear.
link |
We're gonna give a $2,000 or a stimulus check.
link |
Anyone who wants a vaccine gets a vaccine at scale.
link |
What make America, let's make America great again
link |
Like we are manufacturing most of the world's vaccine
link |
because we're bad motherfuckers.
link |
And without maybe with more eloquence than that
link |
Why haven't we seen that for many, for several presidencies?
link |
Because of coalitional politics
link |
and they owe something to somebody else.
link |
For example, Biden has got a lot
link |
of the Democratic constituency has to satisfy
link |
So there's gonna be a lot of shit that goes in there,
link |
state and local aid, all this stuff.
link |
Again, I'm not even saying this is bad,
link |
but he's like, his theory is, and this isn't wrong,
link |
is like we're gonna take the really popular stuff
link |
and use it as cover for the more downwardly less popular.
link |
And so the Dems could face the accusation,
link |
the people who are on this side,
link |
this is their pushback to me.
link |
They're like, why would we give away the most popular thing
link |
in the bill and then we would never be able
link |
to pass state and local aid, right?
link |
Why would we do, and the Republicans do the same thing,
link |
right, like Mitch McConnell, because he's a fucking idiot,
link |
decided to say, we're gonna pair these $2,000 stimulus checks
link |
with like section 230 repeal.
link |
And it was like, oh, it's obviously dead, right?
link |
Like it's not gonna happen together.
link |
That's largely why I believe Trump lost the election
link |
and why those races down in Georgia
link |
went the way that they did.
link |
Obviously Trump had something to do with it,
link |
but the reason why is they have longstanding things
link |
that they've wanted to get done.
link |
And in the words of Rahm Emanuel, never let a good crisis
link |
go to waste and try and get as much as you possibly can done
link |
within a single bill.
link |
My counter would be this,
link |
things have worked this way for too long,
link |
which is that the reconciliation bill
link |
is almost certainly going to be the only large
link |
signature legislative accomplishment
link |
of the Biden presidency.
link |
That's just how American politics works.
link |
Maybe he gets one more, maybe one.
link |
He has a second reconciliation bill,
link |
then you're running for midterms, it's over.
link |
I believe that by trying to change the paradigm
link |
of our politics, leaning into exactly what I'm talking here,
link |
you could possibly transcend that to a new one.
link |
And I'm not naive.
link |
I think people respond to political pressures.
link |
And the way that we found this out was David Perdue,
link |
who was just a total corporate dollar general CEO guy.
link |
He was against the original $1,200 stimulus checks.
link |
But then Trump came out, who's the single most popular
link |
figure in the Republican party.
link |
He's like, I want $2,000 stimulus checks.
link |
And all of a sudden, Perdue running in Georgia is like,
link |
yeah, I'm with President Trump,
link |
I want a $2,000 stimulus check.
link |
That was, if you're an astute observer of politics,
link |
to say, you can see there that you can force people
link |
to do the right thing because it's the popular thing.
link |
And that if it's clean, if you don't give them
link |
any other excuse, they have to do it.
link |
So this is what we've been gaslit into our culture war
link |
framework of politics.
link |
And the reason it feels so broken and awful
link |
is because it is, but there is a way out.
link |
It's just that nobody wants to be, it's a game of chicken,
link |
because maybe it is true.
link |
Maybe we would never be able to get
link |
your other democratic priorities,
link |
your Republican priorities.
link |
But I think that the country understands
link |
that this is fucking terrible and would be willing
link |
to support somebody who does it differently.
link |
There's just a lot of disincentives to not stay without,
link |
there's a lot of incentives to not stray
link |
from the traditional path.
link |
Yeah, is it also possible that the A students
link |
are not participating?
link |
Like we drove all of the superstars away from politics.
link |
So like you just had this argument before.
link |
I mean, everything you're saying sort of rings true.
link |
Like this is the obvious thing to do.
link |
As a student of history, you can almost like tell,
link |
like, if you look at great people in history,
link |
this is what great leaders in history,
link |
this is what they did.
link |
It's like clean, bold action, sometimes facing crisis,
link |
but we're facing a crisis right now.
link |
No, we're in a crisis.
link |
We've been, exactly.
link |
So why don't we see those leaders step up?
link |
I mean, you say that's kind of like, it makes sense.
link |
There's a lot of different interests at play.
link |
You don't wanna risk too many things, so on and so forth.
link |
But that sounds like the C students.
link |
I don't think it's that.
link |
I think it's that the pipeline of politician creation
link |
is just totally broken from beginning to end.
link |
So it's not that A students don't wanna be politicians.
link |
It's basically the way that our current primary system
link |
is constructed, is what is the greatest threat to you
link |
as a member of Congress?
link |
It's not losing your reelection.
link |
It's losing your primary, right?
link |
So that means, especially in a safe district,
link |
you're most concerned about being hit
link |
if you're a Republican from the right,
link |
and if you're a Democrat from the left
link |
for not being a good enough one.
link |
That's actually what stops people,
link |
heterodox people in particular, from winning primaries
link |
because the people who vote in our primaries
link |
are the party faithful.
link |
That's how you get the production.
link |
It's important to understand the production pipeline,
link |
which is that, all right, I'm from Texas,
link |
so that's what I know best.
link |
So it's like, if you think in Texas,
link |
if you're a more heterodox like state legislature
link |
or something who works with the left on this and does that,
link |
you're gonna get your ass beat in a Republican primary
link |
because they're gonna be like,
link |
he worked with the left to do this, blah, blah,
link |
take it out of context, and you're screwed.
link |
And then that means you never ascend up
link |
the next level of the ladder,
link |
and then so on and so forth all the way.
link |
But I do think Trump changed everything.
link |
This is why I have some hope,
link |
which is that he showed me that all the people I listened to
link |
were totally wrong about politics,
link |
and that's the most valuable lesson you could ever teach me,
link |
which was, I was like, wait,
link |
I don't really have to listen to these people.
link |
I'm like, they don't know anything, actually.
link |
That's powerful, man.
link |
I'm like, he did it.
link |
Even if he didn't do anything with it.
link |
It doesn't matter.
link |
He showed that it's possible.
link |
And that means a lot.
link |
You're absolutely right.
link |
There's young people right now
link |
that kind of look, turn around and like, huh.
link |
You're like, wait, I don't have to comb my hair
link |
a certain way and go to law school and be an asshole
link |
who everybody knows is an asshole.
link |
And then get elected to state legislature.
link |
I mean, look, who's the number one person
link |
in the New York City primary right now?
link |
He's polling higher than everybody else in the race.
link |
Look, maybe the polls are totally fucked
link |
and maybe he'll lose because of ranked choice voting
link |
But I consider Andrew, I mean, I know him a little bit
link |
and I've followed his candidacy from the very beginning.
link |
I consider him an inspiration.
link |
He's the new generation of politics.
link |
Like if I see who's gonna be president 20 years from now,
link |
it's gonna be, I'm not saying it's gonna be Andrew Yang.
link |
I think it's gonna be somebody like Andrew Yang
link |
outside the political system
link |
who talks in a totally different way, right?
link |
Just a completely, one of my favorite things
link |
that he said on the debate stage,
link |
he's like, look at us, we're all wearing makeup.
link |
It's crazy, you know?
link |
And he like, he like brought that, that he brought that.
link |
And he's writing like, yeah, why are they all wearing makeup?
link |
He probably arguably hasn't gone far enough almost.
link |
But he showed that it's possible.
link |
And then you see other, like AOC is a good example
link |
of somebody, at least in my opinion,
link |
is doing the same kind of thing, but going too far in like,
link |
well, I don't know, she's doing the Trump thing,
link |
but on the other side.
link |
So I don't know, what's too far?
link |
Don't take a normative judgment of it.
link |
I will tell you the future of politics
link |
looks like AOC. Appreciate the art of it.
link |
Look, I don't, I'm not a big AOC fan,
link |
but she's a genius, media genius,
link |
once in a generation talent.
link |
The way that she uses social media, Instagram,
link |
and everybody on the right is like trying to copy her.
link |
Like Matt Gaetz is like, I want to be the conservative AOC.
link |
I'm like, it's just not going to happen, dude.
link |
Like you just don't have it.
link |
Like what she has, it's like, it's electric.
link |
And Trump had that.
link |
Like I've been to a Trump rally,
link |
like to cover as a journalist,
link |
and there's nothing like it in America.
link |
And Yang is similar.
link |
It's the same way where you're like,
link |
there is something going on here,
link |
which is just like, I've been doing Obama rally.
link |
I've been to a Clinton rally.
link |
I've been to several normal politics.
link |
It's fine, you know, with Trump and with Yang,
link |
it was, it's another world.
link |
It's another world.
link |
There's probably thousands of people listening right now,
link |
who are just like doing a slow clap.
link |
Yang gang forever.
link |
Okay, but yeah, I mean, my worst fear,
link |
I prefer Andrew Yang kind of free improvisational idea,
link |
exchange, all that versus AOC,
link |
who I think no matter what she stands for
link |
is a drama machine, creates dramas just like Trump does.
link |
I would say my worst fear would be in 2024,
link |
is AOC old enough?
link |
It'd be AOC versus Trump.
link |
I don't think she's old enough.
link |
I think you'd have to be, I don't know.
link |
So she needs five more years.
link |
Okay, but that kind of, that's, or Trump Jr.
link |
Well, AOC probably wouldn't win a Democratic primary.
link |
So, I mean, look, Joe Biden is, you know,
link |
he's pretty much showed that.
link |
That's exactly what you're saying.
link |
This process grooms you over time.
link |
You see the same thing in academia actually,
link |
which is very interesting,
link |
is the process of getting tenure.
link |
There's this, it's like you're being taught
link |
without explicitly being taught
link |
to behave in the way that everybody's behaved before.
link |
I've heard this, it was funny.
link |
I've had a few conversations
link |
that were deeply disappointing,
link |
which involved statements like,
link |
this is what's good for your career.
link |
This kind of conversation,
link |
almost like mentor to mentee conversation,
link |
or it's like, there's a grooming process in the same way.
link |
I guess you're saying the primary process
link |
does the same kind of thing.
link |
So, I mean, that's what people have talked about
link |
He was being suppressed by a bunch of different forces,
link |
the mainstream media and all.
link |
Just the Democratic, just that whole process
link |
didn't like the honesty that he was showing, right?
link |
For now, but here's my question to you.
link |
People gotta see, look, Jordan Peterson
link |
is one of the most famous people in America, right?
link |
Like you have a massive podcast.
link |
You're more famous than half, 99% of the people at MIT.
link |
So like, from that perspective, everything has changed.
link |
And somewhere out there,
link |
there's a student who's taking notice.
link |
And I've noticed that with my own career,
link |
everybody thought I was crazy
link |
for doing this show with Crystal, The Hill.
link |
They thought I was nuts.
link |
They're like, what are you doing?
link |
You're a White House correspondent.
link |
You've got a job forever.
link |
The other job offer I had
link |
was being a White House correspondent.
link |
And people thought I was nuts
link |
for not just sticking there and aging out within Washington,
link |
pining for appearances on Fox News and CNN and MSNBC.
link |
I just hated doing it.
link |
I did not wanna be a company man, like a Washington man,
link |
who's one of those guys who like brags to his friends
link |
about how many times he's been on Fox or whatever,
link |
mostly because I just have a rebellious streak
link |
and I hate being at the subject of other people.
link |
I created something new,
link |
which a lot of people watch to get their news.
link |
And I noticed that younger people
link |
who are almost all my audience,
link |
they don't really look up to any of the people
link |
in traditional, right?
link |
They don't go and they're not coming up and being like,
link |
how do I be like Jim Acosta?
link |
You know, they're like, hey, how did you do what you do?
link |
And the way you did it is by bucking the system.
link |
So I think that we are at a total split point.
link |
And look, there will always be a path for people.
link |
Cause like, I don't want people to over learn this lesson.
link |
I have people who are like, I'm not gonna go to college.
link |
And I'm like, well, just wait.
link |
Yeah, like, I'm like, just like stop,
link |
just like, just hold on a second.
link |
But there will always be a path for the institutional
link |
that will always be there for you.
link |
But now there's something else.
link |
Now there's another game in town.
link |
And that's more appealing to millions and millions
link |
and millions and millions of people
link |
who feel unserved by the corporate media,
link |
CNN and these people,
link |
possibly who feel unserved in the, you know, the faculty.
link |
Like if you are an up and comer
link |
who wants to teach as many young people as possible,
link |
I think you should be on YouTube, right?
link |
Like look at the Khan Academy guy,
link |
that guy created a huge business.
link |
So I just think we can be cynical
link |
and like upset about what that system is,
link |
but we should also have hope.
link |
Like I have a lot of hope for what can be in the future.
link |
Yeah, there's a guy people should check out.
link |
So my story is a little bit different
link |
because I basically stepped aside
link |
with the dream of being an entrepreneur
link |
earlier in the pipeline
link |
than like a legitimate, like senior faculty would.
link |
There's an example of somebody people should check out,
link |
Andrew Huberman from Stanford, who's a neuroscientist,
link |
who's as world class as it gets
link |
in terms of like 10 year faculty,
link |
just a really world class researcher.
link |
And now he's doing YouTube.
link |
Yeah, I see him on Instagram.
link |
So he not just does Instagram, he now has a podcast
link |
and he's changing the nature of like,
link |
I believe that Andrew might be the future of Stanford.
link |
And for a lot, it's funny, like he's basically,
link |
Joe Rogan is an inspiration to Andrew and to me as well.
link |
And those ripple effects and Andrew is an inspiration
link |
probably just like you're saying to these young,
link |
like 25 year olds who are soon to become faculty,
link |
if we're just talking about academia.
link |
And the same is probably happening with government is,
link |
funny enough, Trump probably is inspiring
link |
a huge number of people who are saying, wait a minute,
link |
I don't have to play by the rules.
link |
And I can think outside the box here and you're right.
link |
And the institutions we're seeing
link |
are just probably lagging behind.
link |
So the optimistic view is the future
link |
is going to be full of exciting new ideas.
link |
So Andrew Young is just kind of the beginning
link |
of this whole thing.
link |
He's the tip of the iceberg.
link |
And I hope that iceberg doesn't, it's not this influencer.
link |
One of the things that really bothers me,
link |
I've gotten the chance, I should be careful here.
link |
I don't wanna, I love everybody,
link |
but these people who talk about like,
link |
how to make your first million or how to succeed.
link |
And they're so, I mean, yeah,
link |
that makes me a little bit cynical
link |
about, I'm worried that the people
link |
that win the game of politics will be ones
link |
that want to win the game of politics.
link |
They are, they are, man.
link |
And like we mentioned, AOC,
link |
I hope they optimize for the 80% populist thing, right?
link |
Like they optimize for that bad thing,
link |
that history will remember you as the great man
link |
or woman that did this thing,
link |
versus how do I maximize engagement today
link |
and keep growing those numbers?
link |
The influencers are so, I'm so allergic to this, man.
link |
They keep saying how many followers they have
link |
on the different accounts.
link |
And it's like, I don't think they understand.
link |
Maybe I don't understand.
link |
I don't really care.
link |
I think it has destructive psychological effects.
link |
One, like thinking about the number,
link |
like getting excited, your number went from 100 to 101
link |
and being like, and today went out to 105.
link |
Whoa, that's a big jump.
link |
Then maybe like thinking this way,
link |
like I wonder what I did, I'll do that again.
link |
In this way, one, it creates anxiety
link |
and those psychological effects, whatever.
link |
The more important thing is it prevents you
link |
from truly thinking boldly in the long arc of history
link |
and creatively, thinking outside the box,
link |
doing huge actions.
link |
And I actually, my optimism is in the sense
link |
that that kind of action will beat out all the influencers.
link |
Well, I don't know, Lex, this is where my cynicism comes in.
link |
So there's a guy, Madison Cawthorn,
link |
the youngest member of Congress.
link |
And he, I don't want to say got caught,
link |
but there was like an email where he was like,
link |
my staff is only oriented around comms.
link |
Like he was basically saying,
link |
he got basically caught saying like,
link |
my staff is only centered on communications.
link |
And that's the right play.
link |
If you do want to get the benefits
link |
of our current electoral political and engagement system,
link |
which is that what's the best way to be known
link |
within the right as a right wing politician.
link |
It's to be a culture warrior, go on Ben Shapiro's podcast,
link |
be one of the people on Fox News,
link |
go on Sean Hannity's show, go on Tucker's show
link |
and all of that, because you become a mini celebrity
link |
within that world.
link |
Left unsaid is that that world is increasingly shrinking
link |
portion of the American population.
link |
And they barely, they can't even win a popular vote election,
link |
let alone barely win, eke out an electoral college victory
link |
Well, but the incentives are all aligned within that.
link |
And it's the same thing really on the left,
link |
but you're right, which is that,
link |
ultimately, and look, this is why geniuses are geniuses
link |
because they buck the short term incentives.
link |
They focus on the long term, they bet big
link |
and they usually fail.
link |
But then when they get big, they succeed spectacularly.
link |
The people I know who have done this the best
link |
are like a lot of the crypto folks that I've spoken to.
link |
Like some of the stuff they say, I'm like,
link |
I don't know if that's gonna happen,
link |
but look, they're like billionaires, right?
link |
And you're like, so they were right.
link |
The way I've heard it expressed is you can be wrong a lot,
link |
but when you're right, you get right big.
link |
And I mean, I've seen this in Elon Musk's career.
link |
I mean, he took spectacular risk, like spectacular risk
link |
and just doubled down, doubled down, doubled down,
link |
doubled down, doubled down.
link |
And you can kind of tell to him,
link |
I mean, you know him better than I do,
link |
but like from my observation,
link |
I don't think the money matters, right?
link |
I just, like when I see him, I'm like, I don't,
link |
nobody works as hard as you do
link |
and builds the way that you build
link |
if it's just about the money.
link |
It just doesn't happen.
link |
Like nobody wills SpaceX into existence just for the money.
link |
Like it's not worth it, frankly, right?
link |
Like he probably destroyed years of his life
link |
and like mental sanity.
link |
Money or attention or fame, none of that.
link |
It's not the primary priority.
link |
Well, that's what's so appealing to me,
link |
to me in particular about him, just like in how he built.
link |
Like I read a biography of him
link |
and just like the way that he constructed his life
link |
and like we're able to hyperfocus
link |
in meeting after meeting and drill down
link |
and also hire all the right people
link |
who execute each one of his tasks discreetly
link |
to his perfection is amazing.
link |
Like that's actually the mark of a good leader.
link |
But I mean, if you think about his career,
link |
the reason he's a renegade is cause probably he was told
link |
to like put it in an index fund or whatever.
link |
Like whenever he made his like 29 million
link |
and from PayPal, I don't know how much he made.
link |
And then just go along that road and he's like, no.
link |
So he succeeds spectacularly.
link |
So you have to have somebody who's willing to come in
link |
and buck that system.
link |
So for now, I think our politics are generally frozen.
link |
I think that that model is gonna be most generally appealing
link |
to the mean person, but somebody will come along
link |
and we'll change everything.
link |
Yeah, I'm just surprised there's not more of them.
link |
On that topic, it's now 20, what is it, 21?
link |
Let's make some predictions that you can be wrong about.
link |
What major political people are you thinking will run
link |
in 2024, including Trump, junior, senior, or Ivanka?
link |
And who do you think wins?
link |
I think Joe Biden will run again in 2024.
link |
And I think he will run against someone
link |
with the last name Trump.
link |
I do not know whether that is Trump or Trump junior,
link |
but I think one of those people will probably
link |
be the GOP nominee in 2024.
link |
Some prominent political figure, was it Romney?
link |
Somebody like that said that Trump will win the primary
link |
Of course, that's not even a question.
link |
Trump is the single most popular figure
link |
in the Republican party by orders of magnitude.
link |
Oh, I mean, probably more, honestly.
link |
There was a, actually, I can tell you
link |
because I saw the data, which is that pre January 6th,
link |
it was like 54% of Republicans wanted him to run again.
link |
Then it went down eight points after January 6th,
link |
And then after impeachment, it went right back up to 54%.
link |
So the exact same number is in February,
link |
post impeachment vote, as it was after November.
link |
Now look, yeah, again, surveys, bullshit, et cetera.
link |
But like, that's all the data we have.
link |
That's what I can point you to.
link |
If Trump runs, he will be the nominee
link |
and he will be the 2024 nominee.
link |
I just don't know if he wants to.
link |
It really depends.
link |
Do you think he wins?
link |
After the Trump vaccine heals all of us,
link |
do you think Trump wins?
link |
It depends on how popular culture functions
link |
over the next four years.
link |
And I can tell you that they are,
link |
because I don't think Biden has that much to do with it.
link |
Because again, Trump is not a manifestation
link |
of an affirmative policy action.
link |
It is a defensive bulwark wall against cultural liberalism.
link |
So it's like, this is why it doesn't matter what Biden does.
link |
If there are more riots,
link |
if there is a more sense of persecution
link |
amongst people who are more lean towards conservative
link |
or like, hey, I don't know about that, that's crazy,
link |
then he very well could win.
link |
Okay, let's say Joe Biden doesn't run
link |
and they put up like Kamala Harris,
link |
I think he would beat her.
link |
I don't think there's a question
link |
that Trump would beat Kamala Harris in 2024.
link |
And you don't think anybody else,
link |
I don't know how the process works,
link |
you don't think anybody else on the Democratic side
link |
Well, how could you run against the sitting vice president?
link |
It's like, Joe Biden has a 98% approval rating
link |
in the Democratic Party.
link |
If he says, she is my heir,
link |
I think enough people will listen to him
link |
in a competitive primary or a noncompetitive primary.
link |
And then there's all these things
link |
about how primary systems themselves are rigged,
link |
the DNC could make it known
link |
that they'll blacklist anybody
link |
who does try and primary Kamala Harris.
link |
progressives aren't necessarily all that popular
link |
amongst actual Democrats,
link |
like we found that out during the election.
link |
There's an entire constituency which loves Joe Biden
link |
and Joe Biden level politics.
link |
And so if he tells them to vote for Kamala,
link |
I think she would probably get it.
link |
But again, there's a lot of game theory obviously happening.
link |
Well, see, I think you're talking about
link |
everything you're saying is correct
link |
about mediocre candidates.
link |
It feels like if there's somebody like a really strong,
link |
I don't wanna use this term incorrectly,
link |
but populist, somebody that speaks to the 80%
link |
that is able to provide bold,
link |
eloquently described solutions that are popular.
link |
I think that breaks through all of this nonsense.
link |
How do they break through the primary system?
link |
Cause the problem is the primary system is not populism.
link |
But you don't think they can tweet their way to.
link |
Well, you have to be willing to win a GOP primary.
link |
You basically have to be at,
link |
whoever wins the GOP primary, in my opinion,
link |
will be the person most hated by the left.
link |
One of the people, things that people forget is,
link |
you know who came in second to Trump?
link |
And the reason why is because Ted Cruz
link |
was the second most hated guy by liberals in America.
link |
A second to Trump.
link |
They have nothing in policy in common.
link |
But don't you think this kind of brilliantly described
link |
system of hate being the main mechanism
link |
of our electoral choices,
link |
don't you think that just has to do with mediocre candidates?
link |
Basically the field of candidates, including Trump,
link |
including everybody was just like,
link |
didn't make anyone feel great.
link |
It's like, really?
link |
This is what we have to choose from?
link |
Maybe a Mark Cuban,
link |
or like a Mark Cuban is a Democrat,
link |
or it would have to be somebody like that.
link |
Somebody who, because here's the thing about Trump.
link |
It's not just that it was Trump.
link |
He was so fucking famous.
link |
Like people don't realize he was so famous.
link |
Like I, even when I first met Trump,
link |
I met a couple of other presidents,
link |
but when I met Trump, even I felt like kind of starstruck.
link |
Cause I was like, yo, this is the guy from The Apprentice.
link |
I'm like, this is the dude.
link |
From The Apprentice?
link |
Cause I'm like, my dad and I used to sit
link |
and watch The Apprentice when I was in high school.
link |
And then one of the guys was from College Station
link |
where I grew up and we're like,
link |
oh my God, like that guy's on The Apprentice.
link |
Like it was a phenomenon.
link |
There's like that level.
link |
It's kind of like when I met Joe Rogan,
link |
I'm like, holy shit, that's Joe Rogan.
link |
I don't feel that way when I meet Mitt Romney,
link |
or Tom Cotton, or Josh Hawley, I met all of them.
link |
But there's a lot of celebrities, right?
link |
Do you think there's some celebrities
link |
you were not even thinking about that could step in?
link |
So I was about to say, I think The Rock could do it,
link |
but does he wanna do it?
link |
I mean, it's terrible.
link |
Like it's terrible gig.
link |
It's very hard to do.
link |
I don't know if The Rock necessarily has
link |
like the formed policy agenda.
link |
Cause then here's the other problem.
link |
What if we set ourselves up for a system
link |
where like these people keep winning,
link |
but like with Trump, they have no idea
link |
how to run a government.
link |
It's actually really hard, right?
link |
And you have to have the knowhow and the trust
link |
to find the right people.
link |
This is where the genius element comes in is,
link |
you have to understand that front
link |
and you have to understand how to execute discrete tasks.
link |
Like this is the FDR.
link |
This is why it's so hard, like FDR, Lincoln, TR.
link |
They were who they were and they live in history
link |
and their name rings like for a reason.
link |
And yeah, I mean, one of the most depressing lessons
link |
I got from 2020 is at almost, it seems like in my opinion,
link |
that we over learn the lesson of our success
link |
and not of our failures.
link |
For example, like we have this narrative in our head
link |
that we always have the right person
link |
at the right time during crisis.
link |
And in some cases it was true.
link |
We didn't deserve Lincoln.
link |
We didn't deserve FDR.
link |
We didn't deserve a lot of presidents at times of crisis.
link |
But then you're like, okay, George W. Bush, 9 11,
link |
that was terrible.
link |
Reconstruction, Andrew Johnson, awful, right?
link |
Like we had several periods in our history
link |
where the crisis was there, they were called
link |
and they did not show up.
link |
And I really, it hadn't happened in my lifetime
link |
And even then you could kind of see that as an opportunity
link |
for somebody like Obama to come in and fix it.
link |
But then he didn't do it.
link |
And then Trump didn't do it.
link |
And you realize, I feel like our politics are most analogous
link |
to like the 1910s, like all in terms of the Gilded Age,
link |
in terms of that, remember there's that long period
link |
of presidents between like Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.
link |
We were like, wait, like who was president?
link |
Like, or even TR was like an exception
link |
where you'll have like Calvin Coolidge who like,
link |
silent cow, Grover Cleveland.
link |
That's kind of how, if I think of us within history,
link |
I feel like we're in one of those times.
link |
We're just waiting.
link |
It feels really important to us right now.
link |
Like this is the most important moment in history,
link |
It could just be a blip, right?
link |
Like when you think about who was president
link |
between 1890 and 19 before, I mean, yeah,
link |
between like 1888 and 1910.
link |
Like nobody really thinks about that period of America,
link |
but like that was an entire lifetime for people, right?
link |
Like what did they, how did they feel
link |
about the country that they were in?
link |
That's how I kind of think about where we are right now.
link |
It's funny to think.
link |
I mean, I don't want to minimize it,
link |
but like we haven't really gone
link |
through a World War II style crisis.
link |
So like, say that there is a crisis
link |
in like several decades of that level, right?
link |
Existential risks to a large portion of the world.
link |
Then what will be remembered is World War II,
link |
maybe a little bit about Vietnam
link |
and then whatever that crisis is.
link |
And this whole period that we see as dramatic,
link |
Even 9 11, it's like, cause you can look
link |
at how many people died and all those kinds of things,
link |
all the drama around the war on terror
link |
and all those kinds of things.
link |
Maybe Obama will be remembered
link |
for being the first African American president,
link |
but then like that's, yeah, that's fascinating
link |
to think about, oh man, even Trump will be like,
link |
Yeah, like maybe he'd be remembered
link |
as the first celebrity.
link |
I mean, Reagan was already a governor, right?
link |
Yeah, so like the first apolitical celebrity that was,
link |
so maybe if there's more celebrities in the future,
link |
they'll say that Trump was the first person
link |
to pave the way for celebrities to win.
link |
And yeah, I still hold that this era
link |
will probably be remembered.
link |
You know, people say I talk about Elon way too much,
link |
but the reality is like, there's not many people
link |
that are doing the kind of things he's doing
link |
is why I talk about it.
link |
I think this era, it's not necessarily Elon and SpaceX,
link |
but this era will be remembered by the new,
link |
the like of the space exploration,
link |
of the commercial of companies getting
link |
into space exploration of space travel.
link |
And perhaps like artificial intelligence
link |
around social media, all those kinds of things,
link |
this might be remembered for that.
link |
But every, all the political bickering,
link |
all that nonsense, that might be very well forgotten.
link |
One way to think about it is that the internet is so young.
link |
I think about it, so Jeff Jarvis,
link |
he's a media scholar I respect.
link |
He's not the only person to say this,
link |
but many others have, which is that, look,
link |
this is kind of like the printing press.
link |
There was a whole 30 years war
link |
because of the printing press.
link |
It took a long time for shit to sort out.
link |
I think that's where we're at with the internet.
link |
Like at a certain level, it disrupts everything.
link |
And that's a good thing.
link |
It can be very tumultuous.
link |
I never felt like I was living through history
link |
until coronavirus.
link |
Like, you know, like until we were all locked down,
link |
I was like, I'm living through history.
link |
Like this, there's this very overused cliche in DC
link |
where every comm staffer wants you to think
link |
that what their boss just did is history.
link |
And I've always been like, this isn't history.
link |
This is some like stupid fucking bill, you know, whatever.
link |
But like, that was the first time I was like,
link |
this is history, like this right here.
link |
Well, I was hoping, tragedy aside,
link |
that this, I wish the primaries happened during coronavirus
link |
so that we, because like, then we can see the,
link |
so, okay, here's a bunch of people facing crisis.
link |
It's an opportunity for a leader to step up.
link |
Like, I still believe the optimistic view
link |
is the game theory of like influencers
link |
will always be defeated by actual great leaders.
link |
So like, maybe the great leaders are rare,
link |
but I think they're sufficiently out there
link |
that they will step up, especially in moments of crisis.
link |
And coronavirus is obviously a crisis
link |
where like, you know, mass manufacture of tests,
link |
all kinds of infrastructure building
link |
that you could have done in 2020,
link |
there's so many possibilities for just like bold action.
link |
And none of that, even just,
link |
forget actually doing the action, advocating for it.
link |
Just saying like this, we need to do this.
link |
And none of that, like the speeches that Biden made,
link |
I don't even remember a single speech that Biden made
link |
because there's zero bold, I mean, their strategy
link |
was to be quiet and let Donald Trump.
link |
Polarize the electorate.
link |
Polarize the electorate and hope that results
link |
in them winning because of the high unemployment numbers
link |
and all those kinds of things,
link |
as opposed to like, let's go big,
link |
let's go with a big speech.
link |
Like, you know, that, yeah,
link |
it's a lost opportunity in some sense.
link |
So we talked a bunch about politics,
link |
but one of the other interesting things
link |
is that you're involved with is,
link |
or involved with defining the future of as journalism.
link |
I suppose you can think of podcasts
link |
as a kind of journalism,
link |
but also just writing in general,
link |
just whatever the hell the future of this thing looks like
link |
is up to be defined by people like you.
link |
So what do you think is broken about journalism
link |
and what do you think is the future of journalism?
link |
I think the future of journalism looks much more like
link |
what we, you and I are doing here right now.
link |
And journalism is gonna be downstream from a culture
link |
that can be a good and a bad thing
link |
depending on how you look at it.
link |
We are gonna look at our media,
link |
our media is gonna look much more like it did
link |
And the way that I mean that is that back in the 18,
link |
in the 1800s in particular,
link |
especially after the invention of the telegraph
link |
when information itself was known.
link |
So for example, like you and I don't need to,
link |
let's say you and I are competing journalists.
link |
You and I are no longer competing quote unquote
link |
to tell the public X event happened.
link |
All journalism today is largely explaining
link |
And part of the problem with that is that
link |
that means that it's all up for partisan interpretation.
link |
Now you can say that that's a bad thing.
link |
I think it's a great thing
link |
because the highest level of literacy
link |
and news viewership in America
link |
was during the time of yellow journalism,
link |
was during the time of partisan journalism.
link |
People like to read the news from people
link |
that they agree with.
link |
You could say that's bad, echo chambers, et cetera.
link |
That's the downside of it.
link |
The upside is more people are more educated.
link |
More people are interested in the news.
link |
So I think the proliferation of mass media,
link |
I mean, sorry, of this format
link |
of niching, of not just long form.
link |
Dude, I do updates on Instagram, which are five minutes.
link |
Are you considered like Instagram, almost even Twitter?
link |
Oh, of course, Twitter.
link |
Twitter is where I get my news from.
link |
I don't read the paper.
link |
I have literally, Twitter is my news aggregator.
link |
It's called my wire where I find out about hard events.
link |
Like the president has departed the White House.
link |
But not only that, I don't know about you,
link |
but I also looked at Twitter
link |
to the exact thing you're saying,
link |
which is the response to the news,
link |
like the thoughtful sounds ridiculous,
link |
but you can be pretty thoughtful in a single tweet.
link |
If you follow the right people, you can get that.
link |
And so that is the future of media,
link |
which is that the future of media
link |
is it will be much larger amounts of people,
link |
which are famous to smaller groups.
link |
So Walter Cronkite's never gonna happen again,
link |
at least probably within our lifetimes,
link |
where everybody in America knows who this guy is.
link |
I think that's a good thing
link |
because now people are gonna get the news
link |
from the people that they trust.
link |
Yes, some of it will be opinionated.
link |
I'm in my program.
link |
Crystal and I are like, she's coming from this view.
link |
I'm coming from this view.
link |
That's our bias when we talk about information
link |
and we're gonna talk about the information
link |
that we think is important.
link |
And it has garnered a large audience.
link |
I think that's very much where the future is gonna be.
link |
And the reason why I think that's a good thing
link |
is because people will be engaged more within it
link |
rather than the current system
link |
where news is highly concentrated, highly consolidated,
link |
has the same elite production pipeline problem
link |
of everybody knows journalists all come
link |
from the same socioeconomic background
link |
and they all party together here in DC or in New York
link |
or in LA or wherever,
link |
and they're part of the same monoculture
link |
and that affects what they report.
link |
This will cause a total dispersion of all of that.
link |
The battle of our age is gonna be the guild
link |
versus the non guild.
link |
So like what we see right now
link |
with the New York Times and Clubhouse,
link |
this is a very, very, very, very, very intentional thing
link |
that is happening,
link |
which is that the Times talking
link |
about unfettered conversations,
link |
that's happening on Clubhouse for people who aren't aware.
link |
This is important because they need
link |
to be the fetters of conversation.
link |
They need to be the inter agent.
link |
That's where they get their power.
link |
They get their power from convincing Facebook
link |
that they are the ones who can fact check stuff.
link |
They are the ones who can tell you
link |
whether something is right or wrong.
link |
That battle over unimpeded conversation
link |
and the explosion of a format
link |
that you and I are doing really well in,
link |
and then this more consolidated one,
link |
which holds cultural power and elite power
link |
and more importantly, money, right?
link |
Over you and I, that's the battle
link |
that we're all gonna play out.
link |
Do you think unfettered conversations
link |
have a chance to win this battle?
link |
Yes, I do in the long run.
link |
In the long run, the internet is simply too powerful.
link |
But here's the mistake everybody makes.
link |
The New York Times will never lose.
link |
It will just become one of us.
link |
They are the largest.
link |
The daily, look at the daily.
link |
Think about it not in podcasting.
link |
The Times is not a mass media product.
link |
It is a subscription product
link |
for upper middle class largely white liberals
link |
who live the same circumstances
link |
across the United States and in Europe.
link |
There's nothing wrong with that.
link |
But here's the thing.
link |
You can't be the paper of record
link |
when you're actually the paper
link |
of upper middle class white America.
link |
Your job is to report on the news from that angle
link |
and deliver them the product that they want.
link |
There's nothing wrong with that.
link |
Their stock price is higher than ever.
link |
They're making 10 times more money than they did
link |
10 years ago, but it comes at the cost
link |
of not having a mass application audience.
link |
So like when people, I think people in our space
link |
are always like, the New York Times is gonna be destroyed.
link |
No, it's actually even better.
link |
They will just become one of us.
link |
They're a subscription platform.
link |
Well, yes, in terms of the actual mechanism.
link |
But you know, New York Times is still,
link |
and I don't think I'm speaking about a particular sector.
link |
I think it, as a brand, it does have the level
link |
of credibility assigned to it still.
link |
There's politicization of it.
link |
But there's a credibility.
link |
Like it has much more credibility than,
link |
forgive me, than I think you and I have.
link |
In terms of your podcast, like people are not going
link |
to be like, they're gonna say at the New York Times
link |
versus what you said on the podcast for an opinion.
link |
I wonder in the sense of battles,
link |
whether on Federated Conversations, whether Joe Rogan,
link |
whether your podcast can become the,
link |
have the same level of legitimacy or the flip side,
link |
New York Times loses legitimacy to be at the same level
link |
of in terms of how we talk about it.
link |
It's a long battle, right?
link |
It's gonna take a long time.
link |
And I'm saying, this is where I think the end state is going
link |
and look at what the Times is doing.
link |
They're leaning into podcasting for a reason,
link |
but not just podcasting as in NPR level,
link |
like here's what's happening.
link |
Michael Barbaro is a fucking celebrity, right?
link |
The guy who does the daily.
link |
That guy's famous amongst these people
link |
because they're like, oh my God, I love Michael.
link |
Like, I love the way he does this stuff.
link |
Again, that's fine.
link |
More people are listening to the news.
link |
I think that's a good thing.
link |
And then who else do they hire?
link |
Ezra Klein from Vox, Kara Swisher, also from Vox,
link |
who does Pivot, which is an amazing podcast.
link |
Or Jane Coaston, same thing.
link |
It's personalities who are becoming bundled together
link |
within this brand, right?
link |
Here's, okay, maybe I'm just a hater.
link |
Cause I love podcasting from the beginning.
link |
I love Green Day before the recall, man.
link |
But I am bothered by it.
link |
Like why doesn't Kara Swisher, she's done successfully.
link |
I think in her own, no, she was always a part
link |
of some kind of institution.
link |
But she started her own thing, I think.
link |
Recode, right, yeah.
link |
Recode, I don't know if that's her own thing.
link |
So she was very successful there.
link |
Why the hell did she join the New York Times
link |
with the new podcast?
link |
Why is Michael Barbaro not do his own thing?
link |
Cause he gets paid and because he has,
link |
he wants the elite cache that you just referenced
link |
within his social circle in New York,
link |
which is that I think the biggest mistake
link |
that some of the venture people make is
link |
if we give everybody the tools
link |
that those people are all gonna leave
link |
to like go substack and go independent,
link |
within their social circle,
link |
sacrificing some money from being independent is worth it
link |
to be a part of the New York Times.
link |
That's sad to me because it propagates old thinking,
link |
like it propagates old institutions.
link |
And you could say that New York Times
link |
is going to evolve quickly and so on,
link |
but I would love it if there was a mechanism
link |
for reestablishing, like for building new New York Times
link |
in terms of public legitimacy.
link |
And I suppose that's a wishful thinking
link |
cause it takes time to build trust in institutions
link |
and it takes time to build new institutions.
link |
My main thing I would say is public legitimacy
link |
as a concept is not gonna be there in mass media anymore
link |
because of the balkanization of audiences.
link |
I mean, think about it, right?
link |
Like this is like Lesion, the classic stuff
link |
around a thousand true fans,
link |
or no, sorry, like a hundred true fans even now.
link |
Like you can make a living on the internet
link |
just talking to a hundred people.
link |
If as long as they're all high frequency traders,
link |
some of the highest paid people on substack,
link |
they don't have that many subs.
link |
It's just that they're Wall Street guys, right?
link |
So people pay a lot of money.
link |
Again, that's great.
link |
So what you will have is an increasing balkanization
link |
of the internet, of audiences and of niches.
link |
People will become increasingly famous within us.
link |
You will become astoundingly famous.
link |
I'm sure you've noticed this with your fan base.
link |
I certainly have with mine.
link |
Like 99% of people have no idea who I am,
link |
but when somebody meets, they're like,
link |
oh my God, I watch your show every day, right?
link |
Like it's the only thing I watch for news, right?
link |
Like instead of casually famous, if that makes sense,
link |
but like, oh yeah, it's like Alec Baldwin, you know?
link |
Whoa, shit, that's Alec Baldwin.
link |
But you're not like, oh shit, I love you Alec Baldwin.
link |
This is a Ben Smith of the New York Times,
link |
actually he wrote this column.
link |
He's like, the future is everybody will be famous,
link |
but only to a small group of people.
link |
And I think that is true.
link |
But again, I don't decry it.
link |
I think it's great because I think that the more
link |
that that happens, the more engaged people will be
link |
and it empowers different voices to be able to come in
link |
and then possibly, I wouldn't say destroy,
link |
but compete against.
link |
I mean, look at Joe.
link |
Joe is more powerful than CNN and MSNBC and Fox
link |
That gives me like immense inspiration.
link |
Like he created the space for me to succeed.
link |
And I told him that when I met him, I was like,
link |
dude, like I listened to his podcast when I was like young.
link |
And like, and I remember like when I got to meet him
link |
and all that, and I told him this on this pod,
link |
I was like, I didn't know people were millions
link |
were willing to listen to a guy talk about chimps
link |
for three straight hours, including me.
link |
I didn't know that I could be one of those people.
link |
I learned something about myself from his show, yeah.
link |
And so by creating that space, I'd be like, wait,
link |
there's a hunger here.
link |
Like he showed us all the way
link |
and none of us will ever again be as famous as Rogan
link |
because he was the first and that's fine
link |
because he created the umbrella ecosystem
link |
for us all to thrive.
link |
That is where I see like a great amount of hope
link |
within that story.
link |
Yeah, and the cool thing, he also supports that ecosystem.
link |
He's such a. He's so generous.
link |
One of the things he paved the way out for me
link |
is to show that you can just be honest, publicly honest,
link |
and not jealous of other people's success,
link |
but instead be supportive and all those kinds of things,
link |
just like loving towards others.
link |
He's been an inspiration.
link |
I mean, to the comics community,
link |
I think there are a bunch of, before that,
link |
I think there were all a bunch of competitive haters
link |
towards each other.
link |
Yeah, and now he's like just injected love.
link |
They're like, they're still like many are still resistant,
link |
but they're like, they can't help it
link |
because he's such a huge voice.
link |
He like forces them to be like loving towards each other.
link |
And the same, I tried to,
link |
one of the reasons I wanted to start this podcast
link |
was to try to, I wanted to be like do what Joe Rogan did,
link |
but for the scientific community,
link |
like my little circle of scientific community of like,
link |
like let's support each other.
link |
Yeah, well, like Avi Loeb,
link |
I would have no idea who he was if it wasn't for you.
link |
I mean, I assume you put him in touch with Joe.
link |
He went on Joe's show.
link |
I had him on my show.
link |
Like millions of people would have no idea who he was
link |
if it wasn't for you.
link |
Just by the way, in terms of deep state
link |
and shadow government, Avi Loeb has to do with aliens.
link |
You better believe Joe.
link |
Dude, the last thing I sent to him
link |
was the American Airlines audio.
link |
The pilots who were, oh my God, dude, this is amazing.
link |
So like, this American Airlines flight crew
link |
was over New Mexico, this happened five or six days ago.
link |
And the guy comes and he goes,
link |
hey, do you have any targets up here?
link |
A large cylindrical object just flew over me.
link |
Okay, so this happens, so this happens.
link |
Then a guy or like a radio catcher
link |
records this and posts it online.
link |
American Airlines confirms that this is authentic audio.
link |
And they go, all further questions
link |
should be referred to the FBI.
link |
So then, okay, American Airlines just confirmed
link |
it's a legitimate transmission.
link |
FBI, then the FAA comes out and says,
link |
we were tracking no objects in the vicinity of this plane
link |
at the time of the transmission.
link |
So the only plausible explanation that online sleuths
link |
have been able to say is maybe he saw a Learjet,
link |
which was, you know, using like open source data.
link |
FAA rules that out.
link |
He saw a large cylindrical object.
link |
While he was mid flight, American Airlines,
link |
but you can go online, listen to the audio yourself.
link |
This is a 100% no shit transmission
link |
confirmed by American Airlines of a commercial pilot
link |
over New Mexico, seeing a quote unquote,
link |
large cylindrical object in the air.
link |
Like I said, when we first started talking,
link |
I've never believed more in UFOs and aliens.
link |
Yeah, this is awesome.
link |
I just wish both American Airlines, FBI,
link |
and government would be more transparent.
link |
Like there would be voices, and I know it sounds ridiculous,
link |
but the kind of transparency that you see,
link |
maybe not Joe Rogan, he's like overly transparent.
link |
He's just a comic really, but just the, I don't know,
link |
like a podcast from the FBI, just like being honest,
link |
like excited, confused.
link |
I'm sure that they're being overly cautious
link |
about their release information.
link |
I'm sure there's a lot of information
link |
that would inspire the public,
link |
that would inspire trust in institutions
link |
that will not damage national security.
link |
Like it seems to me obvious,
link |
and the reason they're not sharing it
link |
is because of this momentum of bureaucracy,
link |
of caution and so on.
link |
But there's probably so much cool information
link |
that the government has.
link |
The way I almost, I wouldn't say it confirmed it's real,
link |
but Trump didn't declassify it.
link |
Like you know that if there was ever a president
link |
that actually wanted to get to the bottom of it, it was him.
link |
I mean, he didn't declassify it, man.
link |
And people begged him to.
link |
I know for a fact,
link |
because I pushed to try and make this happen,
link |
that some people did speak to him about it.
link |
And he was like, no, I'm not gonna do it.
link |
He might be afraid.
link |
That's what I mean, though.
link |
They were probably all telling him,
link |
they're like, sir, you can't do this, you know, all this,
link |
like, wow, and I get that.
link |
And there's this legislation written at COVID
link |
that like they have six months to release it, man.
link |
Is that a bunch of bullshit?
link |
I think it's bullshit.
link |
There's so many different levels of classification
link |
that people need to understand.
link |
I mean, look, I read John Podesta.
link |
He was the chief of staff to Bill Clinton.
link |
He's a big UFO guy.
link |
Like him and Clinton tried to get some of this information
link |
and they could not get any of it.
link |
And we're talking about the president
link |
and the White House chief of staff.
link |
Well, there's a whole bureaucracy,
link |
but just like you were saying, with intent.
link |
You have to be like, that has to be your focus
link |
because there's a whole bureaucracy built around secrecy
link |
for probably for a good reason.
link |
So to get through to the information,
link |
there's a whole like paperwork process,
link |
all that kind of stuff.
link |
You can't just walk in and get the,
link |
unless again, with intention, that becomes your thing.
link |
Like let's revolutionize this thing.
link |
And then you get only so many things.
link |
It's sad that the bureaucracy has gotten so bulky,
link |
but I think the hopeful messages
link |
from earlier in our conversation,
link |
it seems like a single person can't fix it,
link |
but if you hire the right team, it feels like you can.
link |
Can't fix everything.
link |
I don't wanna give people unrealistic expectations.
link |
You can fix a lot, especially in crisis,
link |
you can remake America.
link |
And the reason I know that
link |
is because it's already happened twice.
link |
FDR, or in modern history, FDR and JFK.
link |
Sorry, FDR and JFK's assassination, LBJ.
link |
Two hyper competent men who understood government,
link |
who understood personnel,
link |
and coincidentally were friends.
link |
I don't think actually people understand this.
link |
FDR met Johnson three days after he won his election
link |
to Congress, special election.
link |
He was only 29 years old.
link |
And he left that meeting and called somebody and said,
link |
this young man is gonna be president
link |
of the United States someday.
link |
Like even then, like what was within him
link |
to understand and to recognize that.
link |
And sometimes Johnson, as a young member of Congress,
link |
would come and have breakfast with FDR,
link |
like just to the great political minds of the 20th century,
link |
just sitting there talking.
link |
Like I would give anything to know what was happening.
link |
Yeah, I hope they were real with each other.
link |
And there was like a genuine human connection, right?
link |
That seems to be the...
link |
Well, Johnson wasn't a genuine guy,
link |
so probably certainly not.
link |
Well, I need to read those thousands of pages.
link |
I've been way too focused on Hitler.
link |
I was gonna say, one of my goals in coming to this
link |
is I was like, I gotta get Lex into two things,
link |
because I know he'll love it.
link |
I know he'll love LBJ,
link |
if he takes the time to read the books.
link |
Of all the presidents...
link |
I didn't say you'll love him,
link |
but you'll love the books about him.
link |
Because the books are a story of America,
link |
the story of politics, the story of power.
link |
This is the guy who wrote the Power Broker.
link |
These books are up there with
link |
Decline and Follow the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon,
link |
in terms of how power works.
link |
No, that's why Carroll wrote the books.
link |
And that's why the books are not really about LBJ,
link |
they're about power in Washington,
link |
and about the consolidation of power post New Deal,
link |
the consolidation then,
link |
where they're using the levers of power like Johnson knew
link |
in order to change the House of Representatives,
link |
the Senate of the United States,
link |
and ultimately the presidency of the United States,
link |
which ended in failure and disaster with Vietnam.
link |
Don't get me wrong.
link |
But he's overlooked for so many of the incredible things
link |
that he did with civil rights.
link |
Nobody else could have done it.
link |
No one else could have gotten it done.
link |
And the second thing is,
link |
we gotta get you into World War I.
link |
We gotta get you more into World War I,
link |
because I think that's a rabbit hole,
link |
which I know you're a Dan Carlin fan.
link |
So blueprint for Armageddon.
link |
But there's fewer evil people there.
link |
But that's what actually...
link |
There's a banality of that evil,
link |
of the Kaiser and of the Austro Hungarians.
link |
See, I like World War I more because it was unresolved.
link |
It's one of those periods I was talking to you about,
link |
about sometimes you're called and you fail.
link |
That's what happened.
link |
I mean, 50 million people were killed
link |
in the most horrific way.
link |
People literally drowned in the mud,
link |
like an entire generation.
link |
One stat I love is that,
link |
Britain didn't need a draft till 1916.
link |
Like they went two years of throwing people
link |
into barbed wire voluntarily.
link |
And because people love their country
link |
and they love the king,
link |
and they thought they were going against the Kaiser.
link |
It's just like that conflict to me,
link |
I just can't read enough about it.
link |
Also just like births Russian Revolution, you know.
link |
You can't talk about World War II without World War I.
link |
And I'm obsessed with the conflict.
link |
I've read way too many books about it.
link |
For this reason is, it's unresolved.
link |
And like the roots of so much of even our current problems
link |
are happened in Versailles, right?
link |
Like Vietnam is because of the Treaty of Versailles.
link |
Many ways the Middle Eastern problems
link |
and the division of the states there.
link |
The Treaty of Versailles
link |
in terms of the penalties against Germany.
link |
But also they fall out from those wars
link |
on the French and the German population,
link |
or the French and the British populations
link |
and their reluctance for war in 1939 or 1938.
link |
When Neville Chamberlain goes, right?
link |
Like that's one of the things people don't understand
link |
is the actual appetite of the British public at that time.
link |
They didn't want to go to war.
link |
Only Churchill, he was the only one
link |
in the gathering storm, right?
link |
Like being like, hey, this is really bad and all of that.
link |
And then even in the United States,
link |
our streak of isolationism, which sweat.
link |
I mean, things were because of that conflict.
link |
We were convinced as a country
link |
that we wanted nothing to do with Europe and its problems.
link |
And in many ways that contributed
link |
to the proliferation of Hitler and more.
link |
So like I'm obsessed with World War I for this reason,
link |
which is that it's just like the root.
link |
It's like the culmination of the monarchies,
link |
then the fall, and then just all the shit spills out
link |
from there for like a hundred years.
link |
So World War I is like the most important shift
link |
in human history versus World War II
link |
is like a consequence of that.
link |
Yeah, so I have a degree in security studies
link |
And one of the thing is that we would focus a lot on that
link |
is like war and, but also like the complexity around war.
link |
We never spent that much time on World War II
link |
because it was actually quite of a clean war.
link |
It's a very atypical war as in the war object,
link |
which we learned from World War I
link |
is we must inflict suffering on the German people
link |
and invade the borders of Germany and destroy Hitler.
link |
Like the center of gravity is the Nazi regime and Hitler.
link |
So it had a very basic begin and end.
link |
Begin, liberate France, invade Germany,
link |
destroy Hitler, reoccupy, rebuild.
link |
World War I, what are you fighting for?
link |
Like, are you, I mean, and nobody even knew.
link |
You can go to the German general staff.
link |
They were like, even in 1917, they're like,
link |
the war was worth it because now we have Luxembourg.
link |
Like you killed 2 million of your citizens
link |
for fucking Luxembourg and like half of Belgium,
link |
which is now like a pond.
link |
And same thing, the French are like,
link |
well, the French more so they're defending their borders,
link |
but like, what are the British fighting for?
link |
Why did hundreds of thousands of British people die?
link |
In order to preserve the balance of power in Europe
link |
and prevent the Kaiser from having a port
link |
on the English Channel?
link |
Like really, that's why?
link |
That's more what wars are is they become these like
link |
atypical, they become these protracted conflicts
link |
with a necessary diplomatic resolution.
link |
It's not clean, it's very dirty.
link |
It usually leads in the outbreak of another war
link |
and another war and another war
link |
and a slow burn of ethnic conflict, which bubbles up.
link |
So that's why I look at that one even,
link |
because it's more typical of warfare and how it works.
link |
Exactly, it's kind of interesting.
link |
You're making me realize that World War II
link |
is one of the rare wars where you can make a strong case
link |
for it's a fight of good versus evil.
link |
Yeah, just war theory, obviously.
link |
Like, yeah, they're literally slaughtering Jews.
link |
Like, we have to kill them.
link |
And there's one person doing it.
link |
I mean, there's one person at the core.
link |
Yeah, that's fascinating.
link |
And it's short and there's a clear aggression.
link |
It's interesting that Dan Carlin
link |
has been avoiding Hitler as well.
link |
Yeah, probably for this reason.
link |
Probably for this reason.
link |
I mean, but it's complicated too,
link |
because there's a pressure.
link |
That guy has his demons.
link |
I love Dan so much.
link |
So this is the, I don't know if you feel this pressure,
link |
but as a creative, he feels the pressure
link |
of being maybe not necessarily correct,
link |
but maybe correct in the sense that his understanding,
link |
he gets to the bottom of why something happened,
link |
of why something happened, of what really happened.
link |
Get to the bottom of it
link |
before he can say something publicly about it.
link |
And he is tortured by that burden.
link |
I know, you know, he takes so much shit
link |
from the historical community for no reason.
link |
I think he's the greatest popularizer, quote unquote,
link |
And I wish more people in history understood it that way.
link |
He was an inspiration to me.
link |
I mean, I do some videos sometimes on my Instagram now
link |
where I'll do like a book tour.
link |
I'll be like, here's my bookshelf of these presidents.
link |
And like, here's what I learned from this book
link |
and this book and this.
link |
And that was very much like a skill I learned from him
link |
of being like, you know, as a historian writes.
link |
You know, I just love the way he talks.
link |
He's like, in the mud.
link |
I mean, you know, he'll be like, quote, quote.
link |
I just, I love, he inspires me, man.
link |
He really does to like learn more.
link |
And I've read, I bought a lot of books because of Dan Carlin.
link |
He'll be, you know, because of this guy,
link |
because of that guy, in terms of, you know,
link |
another thing he does, which nobody else,
link |
and I'm probably guilty of this,
link |
he focuses on the actual people involved.
link |
Like he would tell the story of actual British soldiers
link |
And I probably, and maybe you're guilty of this too,
link |
we over focus on what was happening
link |
in the German general staff,
link |
what was happening in the British general staff.
link |
And he doesn't make that mistake.
link |
That's why he tells real history.
link |
Yeah, and it gives it a feeling.
link |
The result is that there's a feeling,
link |
you get the feeling of what it was like to be there.
link |
You know, you're becoming,
link |
quickly becoming more and more popular.
link |
Speaking about political issues in part,
link |
do you feel a burden, like almost like
link |
the prison of your prior convictions
link |
of having to, being popular with a certain kind of audience
link |
and thereby unable to really think outside the box?
link |
I had, I've really struggled with this.
link |
I came up in right wing media.
link |
I came up a much more doctrinaire conservative
link |
in my professional life.
link |
I wasn't always conservative.
link |
We can get to that later if you want.
link |
And I did feel an immense pressure after the election
link |
by people to say, wanted me to say the election was stolen.
link |
And I knew that I had a sizable part of my audience.
link |
Oh, well, here's the benefit.
link |
Most people know me from Rising,
link |
which is with Crystal and me.
link |
That is inherently a left right program.
link |
So it's a large audience.
link |
So I felt comfortable and I knew that I could still be fine
link |
in terms of my numbers, whatever,
link |
because a lot, many people knew me who were on the left.
link |
And if really, you know,
link |
my right listeners abandoned me, so be it.
link |
I was, had the luxury of able to take that choice,
link |
but I still felt an immense amount of pressure
link |
to say the election was stolen,
link |
to give credence to a lot of the stuff that Trump was doing,
link |
to downplay January 6th,
link |
to downplay many of the Republican senators
link |
or justify many of the Republican senators,
link |
some of whom I know who objected
link |
to the electoral college certification
link |
and who stoked some of the flames
link |
that have eaten the Republican base.
link |
And I just wouldn't do it.
link |
And that was hard, man.
link |
Like I feel more politically homeless right now
link |
but I have realized in the last couple of months
link |
that's the best thing that ever happened to me.
link |
It's true freedom.
link |
I now, I say exactly what I think.
link |
And it's not that I wasn't doing that before.
link |
It's maybe I would avoid certain topics
link |
or like I would think about things
link |
more from a team perspective of like,
link |
am I making sure that, it's,
link |
I'm not saying I didn't fight it.
link |
And I still, I criticize the right plenty
link |
and Trump plenty before the election and more.
link |
It's more just like,
link |
I no longer feel as if I even have the illusion
link |
of a stake within the game.
link |
I'm like, I only look at myself as an outside observer
link |
and I will only call it as I see it truly.
link |
And I was aspiring to that before,
link |
but I had to have, in a way,
link |
Trump stop the steal thing.
link |
It like took my shackles off 100%.
link |
Cause I was like, no, this is bullshit.
link |
And I'm going to say it's bullshit.
link |
And I think it's bad.
link |
And I think it's bad for the Republican party.
link |
And if people in the Republican party
link |
don't agree with me on that, that's fine.
link |
I'm just not going to be necessarily like
link |
associated with you anymore.
link |
This is probably one of the first political
link |
liberal politics related conversations we've had.
link |
I mean, unless you count Michael Malice, who.
link |
He's the funny guy.
link |
He's not so much political as he is like burning down, man.
link |
He leans too far in anarchy for me.
link |
There's a place for that.
link |
It's almost, well, first of all,
link |
he's working on a new book, which I really appreciate.
link |
Outside of the, he's working on like a big book
link |
for a while, which is White Pill.
link |
He's also working on this like short little thing,
link |
which is like anarchist handbook or something like that.
link |
It's like Anarchy for Idiots or something like that,
link |
which I think is really.
link |
Well, me being an idiot and being curious
link |
about anarchy seems useful.
link |
So I like those kinds of books.
link |
That's Russian heritage, man.
link |
I find those kinds of things a useful thought experiment
link |
because that's why it's frustrating to me
link |
when people talk about communism, socialism,
link |
or even capitalism,
link |
where they can't enjoy the thought experiment
link |
of like why did communism fail
link |
and maybe ask the question of like,
link |
is it possible to make communism succeed
link |
or are there good ideas in communism?
link |
Like I enjoy the thought experiment,
link |
like the discourse of it,
link |
like the reasoning and like devil's advocate and all that.
link |
People have like, seem to not have patience for that.
link |
They're like, communism bad, red.
link |
I was obsessed with the question and still am.
link |
I will never quench my thirst for Russian history.
link |
I love that period of 1890 to 1925.
link |
It's just like, it's so fucking crazy.
link |
Like the autocracy embodied in Czar Alexander.
link |
And then you get this like weird fail son, Nicholas,
link |
who is kind of a good guy, but also terrible.
link |
And also Russian autocracy itself is terrible.
link |
And then I just became obsessed with the question of like,
link |
why did the Bolshevik revolution succeed?
link |
Because like people in Russia
link |
didn't necessarily want Bolshevism.
link |
People suffered a lot under Bolshevism
link |
and it led to Stalinism.
link |
How did Vladimir Lenin do it, right?
link |
Like, and I became obsessed with that question.
link |
And it's still, I find it so interesting,
link |
which is that series of accidents of history,
link |
incredible boldness by Lenin,
link |
incredible real politic, smart,
link |
unpopular decisions made by Trotsky and Stalin,
link |
and just like the arrogance of the Czars
link |
and of the Russian like autocracy.
link |
But at the same time,
link |
there's all these like cultural implications of this, right?
link |
In terms of like how it became hollowed out
link |
post Catherine the Great and all that.
link |
I was obsessed with autocracy
link |
because Russia wasn't actual autocracy.
link |
And like actually, and I'm like, it was there.
link |
Like they didn't even remove serfdom
link |
to like the civil war in America.
link |
Like that's crazy.
link |
Like, you know, and nobody really talks about it.
link |
And I just became, yeah, I was like,
link |
was Bolshevism a natural reaction
link |
to the excesses of Czarism?
link |
There is a convenient explanation where that is true.
link |
But there were also a series of decisions
link |
made by Lenin and Stalin
link |
to kill many of the people in the center left
link |
and marginalized them
link |
and also not to associate with the more
link |
quote unquote, like amenable communists
link |
in order to make sure that their pure strain of Bolshevism
link |
was the only thing.
link |
And the reason I like that is because it comes back
link |
to a point I made earlier.
link |
It's all about intentionality,
link |
which is that you actually can will something into existence
link |
even if people don't want it.
link |
That was the craziest thing.
link |
Like nobody wanted this,
link |
but it's still ruled for half a century, more actually.
link |
I mean, almost 75 years.
link |
To think that there could have been a history
link |
of the Soviet Union that was dramatically different
link |
than Leninism, Stalinism, that was completely different.
link |
Like almost would be the American story.
link |
I mean, there's a world where,
link |
and I don't have all the characters,
link |
there's like Kerensky and then there was like
link |
whoever Lenin's number two, Stalin's chief rival.
link |
And even, I mean, look, even a Soviet Union led by Trotsky,
link |
that's a whole other world, right?
link |
Like literally a whole other world.
link |
And yeah, it's just, I don't know.
link |
I find it so interesting.
link |
I will never not be fascinated by Russia.
link |
It's funny that I get to talk to you.
link |
Cause it's like, I read this book.
link |
I forget what it's called.
link |
It won, I think it won a Pulitzer prize.
link |
And it was like the story of,
link |
I tried to understand Russia post Crimea.
link |
Cause I came up amongst people
link |
who are much more like neoconservative
link |
and they're like, fuck Russia, Russia bad.
link |
And I was like, okay, like what do these people think?
link |
And we have this narrative
link |
of like the fall of the Soviet Union.
link |
And then I read this book from the perspective of Russians
link |
who lived through the fall.
link |
And they were like, this is, I was like, this is terrible.
link |
Like actually the introduction of capitalism was awful.
link |
And like the rise of all these crazy oligarchs.
link |
That's why Putin was, came to power to like restore,
link |
restore order to the oligarchy.
link |
And he still talks to this day.
link |
Do you guys, I mean, that's always the threat of like,
link |
do you want to return to the nineties?
link |
Do you want to return to Yeltsin?
link |
But the thing is in the West,
link |
we have this like our own propaganda of like,
link |
no, Yeltsin was great.
link |
That was the golden age.
link |
What could have been with Russia?
link |
And I was like, well, what do actual Russians think?
link |
And so that, yeah, I'll always be fascinated by it.
link |
And then just like to understand the idea
link |
of feeling encircled by NATO and all of that,
link |
you have to understand like Russian defense theory
link |
all the way of going back to the czars
link |
has always been defense in depth
link |
in terms of having Estonia, Lithuania,
link |
and more as like protection of the heartland.
link |
I'm not justifying in this.
link |
So NATO shills like, please don't come after me.
link |
But look, Estonians like NATO.
link |
They want to be in NATO.
link |
So I don't want to minimize that.
link |
I'm more just saying like,
link |
I understand him and Russia much better having done that.
link |
And we are very incapable in America.
link |
I think this is probably because my parents are immigrants
link |
and I've traveled a lot.
link |
Of like putting yourself in the mind of people
link |
who aren't Western and haven't lived a history,
link |
especially our lives of America's fucking awesome.
link |
We're the number one country in the world.
link |
Like we're literally better than you, like in many ways.
link |
And they can't empathize with people
link |
who have suffered so much.
link |
And I just, yeah, it's just so interesting to me.
link |
What about if we could talk for just a brief moment
link |
about the human of Putin and power, you are clearly
link |
fascinated by power.
link |
Do you think power changed Putin?
link |
Do you think power changes leaders?
link |
If you look at the great leaders in history,
link |
whether it's LBJ, FDR, do you think power really
link |
Like, is there a truth to that kind of old proverb?
link |
It reveals, I think that's what it is.
link |
So Putin was a much more deft politician,
link |
much more amenable to the West.
link |
If you think back, you know, to 2001 and more,
link |
right when he came, cause he was still,
link |
cause at that time his biggest problem
link |
was intra Russian politics, right?
link |
Like it was all consolidating power within the oligarchy.
link |
Once he did that by around like 2007,
link |
there's that famous time when he spoke out against the West
link |
at the Munich security conference.
link |
I forget when it was.
link |
And that's when everybody in the audience was like, whoa.
link |
And he was talking about like NATO encirclement
link |
and like, we will not be beaten back by the West.
link |
Very shortly afterwards, like the Georgia invasion happens.
link |
And that was like a big wake up call of like,
link |
we will not be pushed around anymore.
link |
I mean, he said before publicly, like the worst thing
link |
that ever happened was the fall.
link |
Or what did he say?
link |
He was like, the fall of the Soviet Union was a tragedy,
link |
Of course, people in the West were like, what?
link |
I'm like, I get it, right?
link |
Like they were a superpower.
link |
And now their population is declining.
link |
Like it's like a Petro state.
link |
Like, I understand.
link |
I understand like how somebody could feel about that.
link |
I think it revealed his character,
link |
which is that I think he thinks of himself probably
link |
as he always has since 2001 as like this benevolent,
link |
almost as a benevolent dictator.
link |
He's like, without me, the whole system would collapse.
link |
I'm the only guy keeping all these people in check.
link |
Most Russians probably do support Putin
link |
because they feel like they support some form
link |
of functional government.
link |
And they view it as like a check against that,
link |
which is a long, has a long history within Russia too.
link |
So I don't know if it changed him.
link |
I think it just revealed him because it's not like he,
link |
I mean, he has a bill.
link |
You know, Navalny has put that like billion dollar palace
link |
Sometimes I feel like Putin does that for show.
link |
He doesn't seem like somebody who indulges
link |
in all that stuff.
link |
Or maybe we just don't see it.
link |
Like, I don't know.
link |
Well, I don't, it's very difficult for me to understand.
link |
I've been hanging out, thanks to Clubhouse.
link |
A lot of, I've gotten to learn a lot about the Navalny folks
link |
and it's been very educational.
link |
Made me ask a lot of important questions about what,
link |
you know, question a lot of my assumptions
link |
about what I do and don't know.
link |
But I'll just say that I do believe, you know,
link |
there's a lot of the Navalny folks say
link |
that Putin is incompetent and is a bad executive,
link |
like is bad at basically running government.
link |
Well, why do Russians not think that?
link |
Well, they probably say propaganda.
link |
They would say it's the press.
link |
Yeah, they would say the control.
link |
There is a strong either control or pressure on the press,
link |
but I think there is a legitimate support and love
link |
of Putin in Russia that is not grounded
link |
in just misinformation and propaganda.
link |
There's legitimacy there.
link |
Mostly I tried to remain apolitical
link |
and actually genuinely remain apolitical.
link |
I am legitimately not interested
link |
in the politics of Russia of today.
link |
I feel I have some responsibility
link |
and I'll take that responsibility on as I need to.
link |
But my fascination as it is perhaps with you
link |
in part is in the historical figure of Putin.
link |
I know he's currently president,
link |
but I'm almost looking like as if I was a kid
link |
in 30 years from now reading about him,
link |
studying the human being,
link |
the games of power that are played
link |
that got him to gain power, to maintain power,
link |
what that says about his human nature,
link |
the nature of the bureaucracy that's around him,
link |
the nature of Russia, the people, all those kinds of things,
link |
as opposed to the politics and the manipulation
link |
and the corruption and the control of the media
link |
that results in misinformation.
link |
Those are the bickering of the day,
link |
just like we were saying,
link |
what will actually be remembered
link |
about this moment in history?
link |
Totally, he's a transformational figure in Russian history.
link |
Really, like the bridge between the fall of the Soviet Union
link |
and the chaos of Yeltsin,
link |
that will be how he's remembered.
link |
The only question is what comes next
link |
and what he wants to come next.
link |
I'm always, I'm like, he's getting up.
link |
How old are you, 60 something?
link |
So he would be, I think he would be 80.
link |
So with the change of the constitution,
link |
he cannot be president until 2034, I think it is.
link |
So he would be like 80 something
link |
and he would be in power for over 30 years,
link |
which is longer than Stalin.
link |
But he still seems to be.
link |
I think he's gonna be around for a long time.
link |
But this is a fascinating question that you ask,
link |
which is like, what does he want?
link |
Yeah, that's the question.
link |
I don't, and this is where I think,
link |
given all of his behavior and more,
link |
I don't know if it's about money.
link |
I don't know if it's about enriching himself.
link |
Obviously he did, to the tune of billions and billions
link |
and billions of dollars.
link |
But I think he probably,
link |
he's as close to like an actual Russian nationalist,
link |
like at the top, who really does believe in Russia
link |
as its rightful superpower.
link |
Everything he does seems to stem from that opposition
link |
to NATO, intro to Syria,
link |
like wanting to play a large role in affairs,
link |
deeply distrustful and yet coveting of the European powers.
link |
Like, I could describe every czar in those same language.
link |
Like every czar falls into the exact same category.
link |
Yeah, and I mean, it makes me wonder,
link |
looking at some of the biggest leaders in human history,
link |
to ask the question of what was the motivation?
link |
What was the motivation for even just the revolutionaries
link |
like Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin?
link |
What was the motivation?
link |
Because it sure as hell seems like the motivation
link |
was at least in part driven by the idea,
link |
by ideas, not self interest of like power.
link |
For Lenin, it was, I think he was a true believer
link |
and an actual narcissist
link |
who thought he was the only one who could do it.
link |
Stalin, I do think just wanted power.
link |
And realized, well, I don't know.
link |
Look, he wrote very passionately when he was young.
link |
And he was, he really believed in communism.
link |
In the beginning he did.
link |
I'm always fascinated as I'm like,
link |
around 1920, what happened, right?
link |
Post revolution, you crushed the whites.
link |
Now it's all about consolidation.
link |
That's where the games really began.
link |
And I'm like, I don't think that was about communism.
link |
Yeah, maybe it became a useful propaganda tool,
link |
but it still seemed like he believed in it.
link |
Whether it was, of course, this is the question.
link |
I mean, this is the problem with conspiracy theories for me.
link |
And this is legitimate criticism towards me
link |
about conspiracy theories,
link |
which is just because you're not like this
link |
doesn't mean others aren't like this.
link |
So like, I can't believe that somebody be
link |
like deeply two faced.
link |
Oh, I've met them, you're welcome to Washington.
link |
But like, I think that I would be able to detect like, no.
link |
Well, this, my question is, well, so there's differences.
link |
There's two face, like there's different levels of two face.
link |
Like what I mean is to be killing people
link |
and it's like house of cards style, right?
link |
And still present a front like you're not killing people.
link |
I don't know if, I guess it's possible,
link |
but I just don't see that at scale.
link |
Like there's a lot of people like that.
link |
And I don't, I have trouble imagining
link |
some, that's such a compelling narrative
link |
that people like to say.
link |
Like people, that's the conspiratorial mindset.
link |
I think that skepticism was really powerful
link |
and important to have because it's true.
link |
A lot of powerful people abuse their power,
link |
but saying that about, I feel like people over assume that.
link |
It's like, I see that with use of steroids often in sports.
link |
People seem to make that claim about like everybody
link |
who's successful and I want to be very, I don't know.
link |
Something about me wants to be cautious
link |
because I want to give people a chance.
link |
Being purely cynical isn't helpful.
link |
People say this about me.
link |
He's only saying this to do this.
link |
But at the same time, being naively optimistic
link |
about everything is also a kind of pedophilic scheme.
link |
People are going to fuck you over.
link |
And more importantly, that doesn't bother me.
link |
More importantly, you're not going to be able to reason
link |
about how to create systems that are going to be robust
link |
to corruption, to malevolent parties.
link |
So in order to create, you have to have a healthy balance
link |
of both, I suppose, especially if you want to actually
link |
engineer things that work in this world that has evil in it.
link |
I can't believe there's a book of Hitler on the desk.
link |
We've mentioned a lot of books throughout this conversation.
link |
I wonder, and this makes me really curious to explore
link |
in a lot of depth the kind of books
link |
that you're interested in.
link |
I think you mentioned in your show
link |
that you provide recommendations.
link |
In the form of spoken word,
link |
can you beyond what we've already recommended
link |
mention books, whether it is historical, nonfiction,
link |
or whether it's more like philosophical or even fiction
link |
that had a big impact on your life?
link |
Is there a few that you can mention?
link |
I already talked about the Johnson books,
link |
so I'll leave that alone.
link |
Robert A. Caro, he's still alive, thank God.
link |
He's finishing the last book.
link |
I hope he makes it.
link |
So those Johnson books.
link |
Second, can I ask you a question about those books?
link |
What the hell do you fit into so many pages?
link |
Let me tell you this.
link |
So I'll just give you an anecdote.
link |
This is why I love these books.
link |
The beginning, the first book is about Lyndon Johnson.
link |
His life, when he gets elected to Congress,
link |
the book begins with a history of Texas
link |
and its weather patterns,
link |
and then of his great, great grandfather moving to Texas.
link |
Then the story of that, about a hundred or so pages in,
link |
you get to Lyndon Johnson.
link |
That's how you do it.
link |
It's like a Tolstoy style retelling.
link |
This is the thing, it's not a biography,
link |
it's a story of the times.
link |
That's a great biography.
link |
So another one, this isn't part of my list,
link |
is Grant, Ron Chernow.
link |
Ron Chernow's Grant, it's a thousand pages.
link |
And the reason I tell everybody to read it
link |
is it's not just the story of Grant,
link |
it is the story of pre civil war America,
link |
the Mexican American war, the civil war and reconstruction,
link |
all told in the life of one person
link |
who was involved in all three.
link |
Most people don't know anything
link |
about the Mexican American war.
link |
Most people don't know anything about reconstruction.
link |
Now more so because people are talking,
link |
it's a hot topic now.
link |
I've been reading about it for years.
link |
That is another thing people need to learn a lot more about.
link |
In terms of non history books,
link |
the book that probably had the most impact on me,
link |
which is also a historical nonfiction
link |
is I am obsessed with Antarctic exploration.
link |
And it all began with a book
link |
called Shackleton's Incredible Journey,
link |
which is the collection of diaries
link |
of everybody who was on Shackleton's journey.
link |
For those who don't know,
link |
Shackleton was the last explorer
link |
of the heroic age of Antarctic exploration.
link |
He led a ship called the Endurance,
link |
which froze in the ice off the coast of Antarctica in 1914.
link |
And they didn't have radios over the last exploration,
link |
the last one without the age of radio.
link |
And he happens to freeze in the ice.
link |
And then the ship collapses after a year frozen in the ice.
link |
And this man leads his entire crew from that ship
link |
onto the ice with a team of dogs,
link |
survives out on the ice for another year
link |
with three little lifeboats
link |
and is able to get all of his men,
link |
every single one of them alive to an island
link |
hundreds of miles away called Elephant Island.
link |
And when they got there,
link |
he had to leave everybody behind except for six people.
link |
And him and two other guys, I'm forgetting their names,
link |
navigated by the stars 800 miles through the Drake Passage
link |
with seas of hundreds of feet to Prince,
link |
I think it's called Prince George's Island.
link |
And then when they got to Prince George's Island,
link |
they landed on the wrong side
link |
and they had to hike from one side to the other
link |
to go and meet the whalers.
link |
And every single one of those things
link |
was supposed to be impossible.
link |
Nobody was ever supposed to hike that island.
link |
It wasn't done again until like the 1980s
link |
with professional equipment.
link |
He did it after two years of starvation.
link |
Nobody was ever supposed to make it
link |
from Elephant Island to Prince George.
link |
The guy, they had to hold him steady, his legs,
link |
so that he could chart the stars.
link |
And if they miss this island, they're into open sea.
link |
And then before that,
link |
how do you survive for a year on the ice?
link |
And before that, he kept his crew from depression
link |
frozen one year in the ice.
link |
It's just an amazing story.
link |
And it made me obsessed with Antarctic exploration.
link |
So I've read like 15 books on it.
link |
What the hell is it about the human spirit?
link |
That's the thing about Antarctica
link |
is it brings it out of you.
link |
So for example, I read another one recently
link |
called Mawson's Will.
link |
Douglas Mawson, he was an Australian.
link |
He was on one of the first Robert Frost expeditions.
link |
He leads an expedition down to the South.
link |
Him and a partner, they're leading explorations,
link |
1908, something like that.
link |
They're going around Antarctica with dog teams.
link |
And what happens is they keep going over these snow bridges
link |
where there's a crevice, but it's covered in snow.
link |
And so one of the lead driver,
link |
the dogs go over and they plummet.
link |
And that sled takes with it.
link |
So the guy survives, but that sled takes all their food,
link |
half the dogs, their stove, the camping tent,
link |
the tent specifically designed for the snow, everything.
link |
And they're hundreds of miles away from base camp.
link |
He and this guy have to make it back there
link |
in time before the ship comes to come get them
link |
on an agreed upon date.
link |
But the guy he was with, he dies.
link |
And it's a crazy story.
link |
First of all, they have to eat the dogs.
link |
A really creepy part of Antarctic exploration
link |
is everyone ends up eating dogs at different points.
link |
And part of the theory, which is so crazy,
link |
is that the guy he was with was dying
link |
because they were eating dog liver.
link |
And dog liver has a lot of vitamin E,
link |
which if you eat too much of it,
link |
can give you like a poisoning.
link |
And so Mawson, by trying to help his friend,
link |
was giving him more liver.
link |
Of all the things that kills you.
link |
I know, it's dog liver.
link |
And so his friend ends up dying,
link |
have a horrific heart attack, all of that.
link |
Mawson crawls back hundreds of miles away,
link |
makes it back to base camp hours after the ship leaves.
link |
And two guys or a couple of guys stayed behind for him.
link |
And he basically has to recuperate for like six months
link |
before he can even walk again.
link |
But it's like you were saying about the human spirit.
link |
It's like Antarctica brings that out of people.
link |
Or Amundsen, the guy who made it to the South Pole,
link |
Robert Amundsen, oh my God.
link |
Like this guy trained his whole life in the ice
link |
from Norway to make it to the South Pole.
link |
And he beat Robert Frost, the British guy
link |
with all this money and all these,
link |
I could go on this forever.
link |
I'm obsessed with it.
link |
Well, first of all, I'm gonna take this part of the podcast.
link |
I'm gonna set it to music.
link |
I'm gonna listen to it.
link |
Cause I've been whining and bitching
link |
about running 48 miles of Goggins this next weekend.
link |
And this is gonna be so easy.
link |
I'm just gonna listen to this over and over in my head.
link |
Elon's obsessed with Shackleton.
link |
He talks about him all the time.
link |
He uses, I was gonna ask you about that.
link |
He uses an example of that as an example
link |
of what Mars colonization would be like.
link |
No, Antarctica is as close to you can simulate that.
link |
Antarctica is as close to what you could simulate
link |
what it would get.
link |
That Nat Geo series on Mars, I'm not sure
link |
if you watched it, it's incredible.
link |
Elon's actually in it.
link |
And it's like, they get there, everything goes wrong.
link |
Somebody dies, like it's horrible.
link |
They can't find any water.
link |
Is it like simulating the experience
link |
of what it'd be like to colonize?
link |
So it's like a docu series where the fictionalized part
link |
is the like astronauts on Mars,
link |
but then they're interviewing people like Elon Musk
link |
and others who were the ones who like paved the way
link |
So it's a really interesting concept.
link |
I think it's on Netflix.
link |
And yeah, I agree with him 100%,
link |
which is that the first guys to make,
link |
like for example, Robert Frost, who went to Australia,
link |
sorry, to Antarctica, the British explorer
link |
who was beaten to the South Pole three weeks
link |
by Robert Amundsen, he died on the way back.
link |
And the reason why is because he wasn't well prepared.
link |
He didn't have the proper amounts of supplies.
link |
His team had terrible morale.
link |
Antarctica is a brutal place.
link |
If you fuck up one time, you die.
link |
And it's like, and this is what you read a lot about,
link |
which is the reason why such heroic characters
link |
like Shackleton Shine is a lot of people died.
link |
Like there were some people who got frozen in the eye.
link |
I mean, man, this again also came to the North exploration.
link |
So I read a lot about like the exploration
link |
of the North Pole and same thing.
link |
These unextraordinary men take people out into the ice
link |
and get frozen out there for years and shit goes so bad.
link |
They end up eating each other.
link |
There's a famous, one I'm forgetting his name,
link |
the British Franklin expedition,
link |
where they went searching for them for like 20 years.
link |
And they eventually came across a group of Inuit
link |
who were like, oh yeah, we saw some weird white men here
link |
like 15 years ago.
link |
And they find their bones and there's like saw marks,
link |
which showed that they were eating each other.
link |
So history remembers the ones who didn't eat each other.
link |
Yeah, well, yeah, we remember the ones who made it,
link |
And that would be the story of Mars as well.
link |
That will be the story of Mars.
link |
But, and nevertheless, that's the interesting thing
link |
Nevertheless, something about human nature
link |
drives us to explore it.
link |
And that seems to be like, you know,
link |
a lot of people have this kind of,
link |
to me, frustrating conversations like,
link |
well, Earth is great, man.
link |
Why do we need to colonize Mars?
link |
You just don't get it.
link |
I mean, I don't know.
link |
It's the same people that say like, why are you running?
link |
Like, why are you running a marathon?
link |
What are you running from, man?
link |
It's pushing the limits of the human mind
link |
of what's possible.
link |
It's George Mallory because it's there.
link |
Yeah. It's simple.
link |
And that's somehow actually the result of that,
link |
if you want to be pragmatic about it,
link |
there's something about pushing that limit
link |
that has side effects that you don't expect
link |
that will create a better world back home
link |
for the people, not necessarily on Earth,
link |
but like just in general,
link |
it raises the quality of life for everybody,
link |
even though the initial endeavor doesn't make any sense.
link |
The very fact of pushing the limits of what's possible
link |
then has side effects of benefiting everybody.
link |
And it's difficult to predict ahead of time
link |
what those benefits will be.
link |
Say with colonizing Mars,
link |
it's unclear what the benefits will be for Earth
link |
or in general with struggling.
link |
What did we get from the moon?
link |
What did we get from Apollo, right?
link |
Technically, and there were a lot of socialists
link |
at the time making this argument.
link |
They're like, all this money going, you know what?
link |
We went to the fucking moon in 1969.
link |
The greatest feat in human history, period.
link |
What did we learn from it?
link |
We learned about interstellar or interplanetary travel.
link |
We learned that we could do something
link |
off of a device less powerful than the computer in my pocket.
link |
Like the amount of potential locked within my pocket
link |
and your pocket, I mean, this is,
link |
if you were to define my policies in one way,
link |
it's greatness, like national,
link |
a quest for national greatness.
link |
There is no greatness without fulfilling
link |
the ultimate calling of the human spirit,
link |
which is more, it's not enough.
link |
And why should it be?
link |
Our ancestors could have been content to sit,
link |
well, actually many of them were,
link |
were content to sit and say,
link |
these berries will be here for a long time.
link |
And they got eaten and they died.
link |
And it's the ones who got out and went to the next place
link |
and the next place and went across the Siberian land bridge
link |
and went across more.
link |
And it just did extraordinary things.
link |
The craziest ones, we are their offspring
link |
and we fail them if we don't go into space.
link |
That's how I would put it.
link |
You should run for president.
link |
I'm just pro space, man.
link |
No, you're pro doing difficult things
link |
and pushing, exploring the world in all of its forms.
link |
I hope that kind of spirit permeates politics too.
link |
That same kind of a...
link |
I, well, it can, and I hope so.
link |
I don't know if you want to stay on it,
link |
but I think that was book number one or two.
link |
All right, all right.
link |
Is there something else?
link |
Well, this one is second,
link |
this actually is a corollary to that, which is sapiens.
link |
And I know that's a very normal, normie answer.
link |
One of the best selling book.
link |
I think there's a reason for that.
link |
Yuval Noah Harari.
link |
Okay, look, yes, he didn't do any new research.
link |
All he did was aggregate.
link |
I'm sure he's very controversial in the scientific community,
link |
He wrote a great book.
link |
It's a very easy to read general explanation
link |
of the rise of human history.
link |
And it helps challenge a lot of preconceptions.
link |
Are we an accident?
link |
Are we more like a parasite?
link |
What, is there a destiny to all of us?
link |
You know, if anything, it's like what I just described,
link |
The evolution of money.
link |
Like, I know he gets a lot of hate,
link |
but I think that he writes it so clearly and well
link |
that for your average person to be able to read that,
link |
you will come away with a more clear understanding
link |
of the human race than before.
link |
And I think that that's why it's worth it.
link |
I agree with you 100%.
link |
I'm ashamed to, I usually don't bring up sapiens
link |
because it's like.
link |
Yeah, it's like, everybody's uncle has read it,
link |
but that's a good thing.
link |
It is one of the, I think it'll be remembered
link |
as one of the great books of this particular era.
link |
Yeah, because it's so clearly,
link |
it's like the selfish gene with Dawkins.
link |
I mean, it just aggregates so many ideas together
link |
and puts language to it
link |
that makes it very useful to talk about.
link |
So it is one of the great books.
link |
Another one is definitely Born to Run for the same reason
link |
by Christopher McDougall, which is that.
link |
I'm just gonna listen to this whole podcast next week.
link |
Well, you should because it,
link |
you are inheriting our most basic skill, which is running.
link |
And reimagining human history
link |
or reimagining like what we were
link |
as opposed to what we are is very useful
link |
because it helps you understand
link |
how to tap into primal aspects of your brain,
link |
which just drive you.
link |
And the reason I love McDougall's writing is because
link |
I love anybody who writes like this.
link |
Malcolm Gladwell, who else?
link |
Michael Lewis, people who find characters
link |
to tell a bigger story.
link |
Michael Lewis finds characters to tell us the story
link |
of the financial crisis.
link |
Malcolm Gladwell writes, finds characters to tell us
link |
the story of learning new skills and outliers
link |
and whatever his latest book is,
link |
I forget what it's called.
link |
But McDougall tells the vignettes
link |
and a tiny story of a single person
link |
in the history of running
link |
and like how it's baked into your DNA.
link |
And I think there was just something very useful
link |
to that for me for being like,
link |
I don't need to go to the gym
link |
or like, I'm not saying, you should still go to the gym.
link |
I'm saying like, in order to fulfill like who you are,
link |
you can actually tap into something that's the most basic.
link |
I don't know if, I'm sure if you listened
link |
to the David Cho episode with Joe Rogan.
link |
You know what I mean?
link |
Oh, where he's the animal.
link |
When he goes hunting.
link |
And there's something to that, man.
link |
There's something to that.
link |
Where it's just like, they are living the way
link |
that we were supposed to.
link |
We're not supposed, well,
link |
I don't wanna put a normative judgment on it.
link |
They're living the way that we used to.
link |
There's something very fun.
link |
It feels more honest somehow to our true nature.
link |
There's a guy I follow on Instagram.
link |
I've come from, Paul Saladino, Carnivore MD.
link |
He just went over there to the Hadza to live with them.
link |
And I was watching his stuff just like,
link |
I was like, man, there's something in you that wants to go.
link |
I'm like, I wanna do that.
link |
I wouldn't be very good at it, but like I want to.
link |
I'm so glad that somebody who thinks deeply about politics
link |
is so fascinated with exploration
link |
and with the very basic nature,
link |
like human nature, nature of our existence.
link |
There's something in you.
link |
And still you're stuck in DC.
link |
Speaking of which, you're from Texas.
link |
What do you make of the future of Texas politically,
link |
culturally, economically?
link |
I am in part moving, well, I'm moving to Austin.
link |
But I'm also doing the Eric Weinstein advice,
link |
which is like, dude, you're not married.
link |
You don't have kids.
link |
There's no such thing as moving.
link |
What are you moving?
link |
You're like your three suits and some shirts and underwear.
link |
What exactly is the move entail?
link |
So I have nothing.
link |
So I'm basically, it's very just remain mobile,
link |
but there's a promise, there's a hope to Austin.
link |
Outside of just like friendships,
link |
I have no, it's a very different culture
link |
that Joe Rogan is creating.
link |
I'm mostly interested in what the next Silicon Valley
link |
will be, what the next hub of technological innovation.
link |
And there's a promise, maybe a dream
link |
for Austin being that next place.
link |
It's very possible.
link |
Doesn't have the baggage of some of the political things,
link |
maybe some of the sort of things that hold back
link |
the beauty of, that makes capitalism,
link |
that makes innovation so powerful,
link |
which is like meritocracy, which is excellence.
link |
Diversity is exceptionally important,
link |
but it should not be the only priority.
link |
It has to be something that coexists
link |
with a like insatiable drive towards excellence.
link |
And it seems like Texas is a nice place,
link |
like having a Austin, which is like a kind of this weird,
link |
I hope it stays weird, man.
link |
I love weird people.
link |
I don't know about that, but we can get into it.
link |
But there's this hope is it remains this weird place
link |
of brilliant innovation amidst a state
link |
that's like more conservative.
link |
So like there's a nice balance of everything.
link |
What are your thoughts about the future of Texas?
link |
I think it's so fascinating to me
link |
because I never thought I would want to move back,
link |
but now I'm beginning to be convinced.
link |
So I'm going to stick to this clip.
link |
I am, I'm being honest
link |
and many Texas will hate me for this.
link |
But Texas was not a place that was kind to me, quote unquote.
link |
And this is because of my own parent.
link |
Look, I was raised in College Station, Texas,
link |
which is a town of 50,000.
link |
It's a university town.
link |
It exists only for the university.
link |
I did not get the full Texas experience
link |
purely speaking from a College Station experience.
link |
But growing up first generation, or I forget what it is,
link |
I'm the first American.
link |
I was born and raised in College Station.
link |
My parents are from India.
link |
Being raised in a town where the dominant culture
link |
was predominantly like white evangelical Christian was hard.
link |
Like it was just difficult.
link |
And I think of it,
link |
in the beginning, I would say like ages,
link |
like zero to like eight,
link |
it was like cultural ignorance,
link |
as in like they just don't know how to interact with you.
link |
And there was a level of,
link |
always there was like the evangelical kind of antipathy
link |
towards like you being not Christian.
link |
You know, my parents are Hindu.
link |
Like that's how I was raised.
link |
And so like, there was that.
link |
But 9 11 was very difficult.
link |
Like 9 11 happened when I was in third or fourth grade.
link |
And that changed everything, man.
link |
Like, I mean, our temple had to like print out T shirts.
link |
And I'm not saying this is a sob story, to be clear.
link |
I've still actually largely for my adult life
link |
identified on the political right.
link |
So don't take this as some like, you know, race manifesto.
link |
I'm just telling it like, this is what happened,
link |
which is that like we had,
link |
it was just hard to be proud, frankly,
link |
and to have some of the fallout from 9 11 and during Iraq.
link |
And the reason I am political is because I realize in myself,
link |
I have a strong rebellious nature
link |
against systems and structures of power.
link |
And the first people I ever rebelled against
link |
were all the people telling me to shut up
link |
and not question the Iraq war.
link |
So the reason I am in politics
link |
is because I hated George W. Bush with a passion
link |
and I hated the war.
link |
And I was so, again, my entire background
link |
is largely in national security for this reason,
link |
which is I was obsessed with the idea of like,
link |
how do we get people who are not gonna get us
link |
into these quagmire situations in positions of power?
link |
That's how I became fascinated by power in the first place
link |
was all a question of how do this happen?
link |
Like, how did this catastrophe happen?
link |
I realized it's not as bad as like, you know,
link |
previous conflicts, but this one was mine.
link |
And to see how it changed our domestic politics forever.
link |
And so that was my rebellion.
link |
because I identified on the left when I was growing up,
link |
up until I was 18, I had also a funny two year stint.
link |
This is where everything kind of changed for me
link |
when I was 16, actually.
link |
I moved to Qatar, to Doha, Qatar,
link |
because my dad was a dean or associate dean
link |
of Texas A&M University at Doha.
link |
So my last two years of high school were at this.
link |
I went from this small town in Texas,
link |
and I love my parents because they could recognize
link |
that I had within me that I was not a small town kid.
link |
So they took me out of this country every chance they got.
link |
I traveled everywhere and constantly let me go.
link |
And so I went from school in College Station
link |
to like this ritzy private school, American school.
link |
Best thing that ever happened to me,
link |
because first of all, it got me out of College Station.
link |
Second, at that time, I had this annoying streak of,
link |
I wouldn't call it being anti America,
link |
but you don't appreciate America.
link |
Let me tell everybody out there listening,
link |
leave for a while, you will miss it so much.
link |
You do not know what it is like
link |
to not have freedom of speech until you don't have it.
link |
And I was going to high school
link |
with these guys in the Qatari royal family.
link |
And all I wanted to do was speak out
link |
of how they were pieces of shit
link |
for the way that they treated Indian citizens
link |
in that country who are basically used as slave labor.
link |
And I could not say one word
link |
because I knew I would be deported
link |
and I knew my dad would lose his job
link |
and my mom would lose her job
link |
and we would be forced out of the country.
link |
You don't know what it's like to live like that.
link |
Or to be in a society where like,
link |
you have like a high school girlfriend or something
link |
and you can't even touch in public
link |
or you're lectured for public decency.
link |
Like, listen, I've lived under a Gulf monarchy now.
link |
And that turned me into the most pro America guy ever.
link |
Like I came back so like Merica,
link |
like I still am because of that experience.
link |
Living abroad, like that will do it to you.
link |
Live in a non democracy.
link |
You have, even in Europe, I would say,
link |
you guys aren't living as free as we are here.
link |
It's awesome and I love it.
link |
You're ultimately another human being
link |
than the one who left Texas.
link |
So, I mean, have you actually considered moving to Texas
link |
and broadly just outside of your own story,
link |
what do you think is the future of Texas?
link |
What is the future of Austin?
link |
There's so much transformation seemingly happening now
link |
related to Silicon Valley, to California.
link |
That's what's been so hard to me,
link |
which is that since I left, it's changed dramatically,
link |
which is that it used to be like this conservative state
link |
where the main money to be made was oil.
link |
And everybody knew that.
link |
Petro, it was a Petro state, Houston, all of that.
link |
Austin was always weird, but it was more of a music town
link |
and a university town.
link |
It was not a tech town.
link |
But in the 10 years or so since I left,
link |
I have begun to realize, I'm like,
link |
well, the Texas I grew up in is over.
link |
It is not a deep red state in any sense of the term.
link |
The number one Uhaul route in the country pre pandemic
link |
already was San Francisco to Austin, okay?
link |
So like you have this massive influx of people
link |
from California and New York.
link |
And the state, the composition of it
link |
is changed dramatically.
link |
The intra composition and the ultra, yeah.
link |
So the intra composition, it's become way more urban.
link |
It's from when I grew up, Texas was a much more rural state.
link |
Its politics were much more static.
link |
It looked much more like Rick Perry,
link |
like he was a very accurate representation of who we were.
link |
Now, I don't think that that's the case.
link |
Texas is now a dynamic economy,
link |
not just 100% reliant on oil because of its kind of like,
link |
I would call it like regulatory arbitrage
link |
relative to California and New York
link |
offers a large incentive to people who are more,
link |
I wouldn't say culturally liberal,
link |
but they're not necessarily like culturally conservative,
link |
like the people who I grew up with.
link |
That's changed the whole state's politics.
link |
Beto came two points away from beating Ted Cruz.
link |
I'm not saying the state's gonna go blue.
link |
I think the Republican party will just change
link |
and we'll have to readjust.
link |
But the re urbanization of Texas has made it,
link |
I'll put it in this way,
link |
much more attractive to me than the place that I grew up.
link |
And then from my perspective,
link |
well, first of all,
link |
I love some of the cowboy things that Texas stands for,
link |
but for more practically, from my perspective,
link |
the injection of the tech innovation
link |
that's moving to Texas has made it very exciting to me.
link |
It seems like outside of all that,
link |
maybe you can speak to the weird in Austin.
link |
It seems like I know that Joe Rogan is a rich,
link |
sort of almost like mainstream at this point,
link |
but he's also attracting a lot of weirdos.
link |
And so is Elon and a lot of those weirdos are my friends
link |
and they're like Michael Malice, like those weirdos.
link |
And it's like, I have a hope for Austin
link |
that all kinds of different flavors of weirdos
link |
will get injected.
link |
I actually think the most significant thing that happened
link |
were Tesla moving there.
link |
The reason why is I love Joe, obviously,
link |
but he can only attract X amount of people.
link |
Elon actually employs thousands of people.
link |
And then you will also Oracle.
link |
Oracle's decision to move to Austin is just as important
link |
because those two men, Larry, was it Ellison, right?
link |
they actually employ tens of thousands of people
link |
collectively, that can change the nature of the city.
link |
So you combine that with Joe bringing
link |
this entire new entertainment complex
link |
with the bodies of people who will appreciate
link |
said entertainment complex.
link |
Spend money on the entertainment.
link |
Exactly, you just remade the entire city.
link |
And that's why I'm fascinated.
link |
And obviously there's network effects,
link |
which is now that all those people are down there,
link |
I mean, if I were Elon Musk,
link |
I would donate a shit ton of money
link |
to the University of Texas
link |
and I would turn it into my Stanford for Silicon Valley.
link |
Let's introduce some competition
link |
and let UT Austin hire the best software developers,
link |
engineers, professors, and more,
link |
and turn Texas into a true like Austin revolving door hub
link |
where people come to UT Austin to get an internship at Tesla
link |
and then become an executive there
link |
and then create their own company
link |
in their own garage in Austin,
link |
which is the next Facebook, Twitter.
link |
That's how it happens.
link |
This is why I'm much more skeptical of Miami.
link |
There's a whole like tech Miami crew.
link |
I'm like, yeah, like there's no university.
link |
It's very inorganic.
link |
Look, I think Miami is awesome.
link |
I just like, I don't know if the same building blocks
link |
are there and also no multi billion dollar companies
link |
which employ thousands of people are coming there.
link |
That's the ingredient.
link |
It's not just Joe Rogan.
link |
It's not just even Elon Musk
link |
if he's still operated in California.
link |
It's all the people he employs.
link |
I think that is where, I think Texas is going
link |
to dramatically change within the next 10 years.
link |
Alternative to, it's already become a more urbanized state
link |
that's moved away from oil and gas
link |
in terms of like its emphasis,
link |
not necessarily in terms of his real economics.
link |
And 10 years from now,
link |
I don't think it will be necessarily the name prop
link |
The only question to me is how that manifests politically
link |
because it's very possible though,
link |
because a lot of these workers themselves
link |
are California culturally liberal.
link |
You could see a Gavin Newsom type person
link |
getting elected governor of Texas
link |
or like the mayor of Austin.
link |
I mean, look, mayor of Austin is already a Democrat, right?
link |
Like, I mean, Joe has his own problems with Austin.
link |
It's funny, I remember him leaving LA
link |
and I'm like, I don't know, have you been to Austin?
link |
Like, it's not everything it's cracked up to be,
link |
But no matter what, a new place allows the possibility
link |
for new ideas, even if they're somehow left leaning
link |
and all those kinds of things.
link |
I do think the only two things missing
link |
from Austin and Texas are two dudes in a suit
link |
that sometimes have a podcast
link |
talking a bunch of nonsense on a mic.
link |
So let's bring the best suit game to Texas.
link |
I hope you do make it to Texas at some point.
link |
Thanks so much for talking to me.
link |
Thanks for listening to this conversation
link |
with Sagar and Jetty.
link |
And thank you to our sponsors,
link |
Jordan Harmer's show, Grammarly grammar assistant,
link |
eight sleep self cooling bed
link |
and magic spoon low carb cereal.
link |
Click the sponsor links to get a discount
link |
and to support this podcast.
link |
And now let me leave you with some words
link |
from Martin Luther King Jr.
link |
About the idea that what is just and what is legal
link |
are not always the same thing.
link |
He said, never forget that what Hitler did in Germany
link |
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.