The following is a conversation with Michael Malis, his fifth time on this, the Lex Friedman

podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, here's

my New Year's Eve 2021 conversation with the one and only, Mr. Michael Malis.

Dostoevsky wrote in The Idiot, my favorite of his books,

through the main character, Prince Mishkin, that beauty will save the world.

These words seemingly naive and ultimately, at least to me, profound. What do they mean to you?

Beauty will save the world.

Naive? Really? I don't think they seem naive at all.

Well, Solzhenitsyn, actually, for his 1970 Nobel Prize speech, talked about this line a lot.

And he thought for most of his life, that was a silly line. There was just words thrown out there,

because with all the suffering that's in the world, what has beauty actually ever done?

Oh, my God, I hate this so much.

You're talking trash about Solzhenitsyn?

Yeah, I am. And this perfectly sets up this theme. I said, let's do this episode,

start the new year on a positive note, give people hope, give people joy.

You and I both have friends who are models, right? And it's a silly profession to some extent, of

course. But you are actually a model. You are my friend.

I am. That's right. That's true. I am under a model. I was trying to be subtle.

But for those people who actually deserve to be models, when you look at someone who is a model

and in some of their photos, and these people look perfect. Now, in real life, they're not perfect.

They have flaws. They'll be the first to admit it, so on and so forth. But when you look at beauty,

it is almost impossible to maintain a sense of cynicism and hopelessness. Because if there's

even one moment when some element of perfection has been actualized, if there's one moment where

a beauty has been realized and captured, you can't say, well, it's never going to happen again.

So I think beauty, it means hope. I think I hate that cynical idea of like,

I get, I appreciate Solzhenitsyn's broader point that a lot of times people, there's something

called the deepity, where people throw words together to sound profound. And if you take it

apart, like this is just complete gibberish, I don't think this is an example of that. I think

beauty inspires, and more importantly, it proves to you this is something that can actually happen

on this earth. Plato, right? The Platonic theory of forms, like this world is imperfect, but these

perfect forms exist in another dimension, and that's where our concepts come from. He was an

early person trying to figure out where our concepts come from, and epistemology and so on and so

forth. But that is something that is real in here. So I completely disagree with his analysis of that,

and I don't know if it'll save the world, but it's certainly a prerequisite. And what's the point

of fighting for your values, if you don't want to make the world a more beautiful place?

Well, it's also how you define beauty, because beauty could be just aesthetic beauty, could be

art. Of course, art could be, could encompass a lot, a lot more than just literature and paintings,

it can encompass the full life, the full dance of life. But then beauty could be something

just deeper, like whatever that awe you feel, when you pause and hear the music,

just hear and look up at the stars. For some reason, when I see rockets go up,

for me, it's like science. What is that? The awe that we're able to accomplish

that as humans. You know, that's funny, because there's lots of different schools of thought,

like these people versus these people, and maybe vegans versus steakhouse people.

I think in terms of the sciences, and I guess you and I would be on opposite sides here,

you have the astronomy people versus the zoology people. The big question is, would you rather

spend 10 minutes on the moon, or would you rather spend 10 minutes in the deep sea? And for me,

it's clearly the deep sea. The zoology that's down there, there's something I would encourage

people to look up called deep staria, which is a jellyfish. The scientists, what's amazing when

you watch these deep sea dives on YouTube is that the scientists, their nature dorks like

everybody else, they went into this field, and there's none of this, maybe, soul genitian style

cynicism of when they see an amazing animal in its natural environment, you know, exhibiting these

crazy behaviors, they lose it. They're on the mic like, oh my god, and like, it's so exciting to

watch. So I'm not a rocket person, but I'm definitely a zoology person. So animals and plants in the

sea. And also, it's so mathematical. There's so much, so many forms. There's this, there's this,

there's this plant called areospermum titanupsoides. I don't know how to pronounce it, because they're

always in Latin, you never hear them pronounced. You said sperm. Areospermum, yeah, because it's

woolly seed is the, is the genus. The leaf, it's just always puts out one leaf, but the leaf is

covered in little magnifying glasses, lenses to make it maximize the sunlight. So it looks like

this little crystal seashell, it's tiny, it's like two centimeters, but it's just this amazing thing

that has, that grows out of the sands in South Africa. Just a defense old Jensen for a second.

So if I may read a couple of his lines from the speech, so he said, one day, this is how he introduces

it, one day, Dostoevsky throughout the enigmatic remark, beauty will save the world. What sort

of a statement is that? For a long time, I considered it near words. How could that be possible

when in bloodthirsty history, did beauty ever save anyone from anything? And then later, he

goes on to argue with himself in the speech as a older wiser man now. But perhaps that ancient

trinity of truth, goodness, and beauty is not simply an empty fated formula, as we thought in

the days of our self confident materialistic youth. If the tops of these three trees converge,

as the scholars maintained, but the two blatant to direct stems of truth and goodness are crushed,

cut down, not allowed through, then perhaps the fantastic, unpredictable, unexpected stems of

beauty will push through and soar to that very same place. And so doing will fulfill the work

of all three. In that case, Dostoevsky's remark, beauty will save the world, was not a careless

phrase, but a prophecy. Which of your, which of these three things are your favorites? Truth,

goodness, or beauty? What did he call truth and goodness? The blatant to direct stems of truth

and goodness versus the fantastic, unpredictable, unexpected stems of beauty, which is how I see

your Twitter account. I don't think that I think there's certain birth of beauty to be had in my

Twitter account, that's for sure. It's certainly no goodness. Or truth. Yeah, yeah. It's Twitter,

there's no truth to be found. I would, I will answer the question. I will, of course, point out

that having this kind of, you know, distinction between the three things is, I think, kind of

synthetic. I think they very heavily overlap. If not, if I could probably make the argument,

they're synonymous. In fact, I do believe that they're largely synonymous.

Goodness. That's such an interesting word, goodness. Which of those three is my favorite?

I think truth is overrated in the sense that if something is a good story,

the story doesn't have to be true or real in order to motivate you and move you.

A lot of times we can delude ourselves about somebody and that might actually serve a purpose to

some extent. You know, if you have someone who's maybe a family member and you kind of ignore

bad things that they do, there might be a reason for that. Of the three, which is most important,

I think, I would say probably goodness. I would say of the three, the most important is goodness,

because if you don't appreciate goodness, then beauty is just empty. It's just a picture or

it's nice. Bad people appreciate beauty. Bad people are often seductive or have a beauty about them.

In terms of action, I think it takes a lot of skill and work to create beauty or to create

truth or to express truth or to express beauty. But I think goodness is the easiest default

state of being, just being good to others. Yeah. There'll be things where these videos where

one dog is drowning and another dog jumps in and saves it from the pool. That to me is

just really amazing stuff and is very moving. To me, goodness means integrity and it means kindness.

And yeah, I think of the three, that would be the one I pick. I think people also have this

idea, which is inculcated to them, especially by corporate America, that as you get older,

it's okay to do the wrong things sometimes, blah, blah, blah. I don't buy that. And so,

I think goodness gets rarer and rarer. And I think people know better and they tell themselves lies.

Yeah. But once you get, allow yourself the chance to just be good, I think it makes for a better

life. Yeah. It's not that much work. It's not like going to the gym or working out. That's a lot

of work and it's great afterwards. But goodness is easy once you get into the habit of it. I

suppose working out the same way. There's a lot of stuff. If you make it to a habit,

you're going to get the rewards of it and it's going to be easy. The rewards of goodness,

I think, are more immediate than the rewards of working out. As opposed to the hard drugs.

Yeah. If you mentioned this quote on one of your live streams, I think, if you save one life,

you save the world. Yeah. That's such a cool line. I remember reading about Paul Farmer,

I think his name is, he's a doctor that really, I mean, doctors in general, they kind of don't care

about like what they're doing as a broad policy across hundreds of thousands of millions of

people. They just care about the human in front of them. Which is so interesting. They don't care

it's going to cost, like in his case, to save one child, it will cost him hundreds of thousands of

dollars. They don't care about that. They can't, they know very well that what their actions cannot

be scaled, but they can't help but help the child in front of them. And it's so interesting.

There's such an interesting way to live. And that's the way I kind of think when I try to do

something positive is will this help one person? And I just kind of imagine a specific person

depending on the thing that that would help with, like what I'm trying to create something,

whether it's a piece of hardware or a video or anything like that, or educational material,

lecture, that kind of stuff. I don't know. What do you think about this quote? Like what,

is it profound or just just poetic? I think it's more profound than it sounds at first.

The example I think of is Michelle Bachman. She was a former congresswoman from Minnesota.

She clearly had crazy eyes. Something weird was going on with the husband. But she adopted like

20 kids. Terry Shappert's another friend of mine. He's like either Navy SEAL or Marines,

whatever it is. Terry, I apologize. I'm not trying to be funny. And he adopts like elder dogs. So

going back to Bachman, it's like, yeah, you can say she's crazy. You can make fun of her politics,

all you want, and all that stuff's legitimate. But if you save a kid, give them a home, and you

save them from the foster system, and you put a roof over their heads and make them feel loved

and appreciated, it's really hard for me to sit here and call you like a totally bad person.

I think that kind of thing is Nick Cersei's another one. He adopted a kid. And I said,

I think you're a hero. One of the things that's very hard for me, as you know,

I talk about this endlessly, this book, The White Pill. But writing about when people do

hurtful things to children, it really is hard to watch. And it's hard to, because when you're an

author, you have to kind of empathize with the character. You have to, where's this character

coming from? Explain their point of view. And that's the one that's the hardest for me to wrap

my head around. Cruelty to children. Yeah. And yeah, sadism to children. This is something

even animals know not to do, do you know what I mean? Dogs, when you see them around kids,

they're very protective. If the kid pokes their eyes out, the dog doesn't do anything.

If you can't even get to that level, what kind of person are you? So I think that quote

is a profound one. And it's an important one. It also means we're not all called upon to be

Superman, right? You only have very finite ability to move the needle. But at the same time,

if you have actually, you know, saved the life, you can go to meet your maker. You did your part.

You know, you left the world a little bit better than you found it. And that's all you could ask

anybody. Also, I think from a policy perspective, it seems we just do better when we focus on doing

a small thing, helping a helping one person, because it feels like when you start talking

about communism and all those kinds of things, when you start to believe you could do good by a

lot of people, that's where your mind somehow stops being able to do good by a lot of people.

That's when you start to think about utopias and somehow utopias goes to

the feeds, power into the brain to where it deludes you completely. And then you start,

it's okay to crack a few eggs to make an omelet kind of reasoning and you run into trouble.

It seems like it's much better even when you have the power and the money and so on

to achieve scale to focus on one and then or locally locally. Yeah. Yeah. Because then

also you have the feedback, right? So if you have some kind of program, you know, in Austin or

Brooklyn or something like that and you can, you can watch, oh, this is working, this isn't working,

then you can port it out to other places. But top down helping is, you know, at the very least,

it's going to be inefficient. And also, I think it's a lot more useful when you're helping people,

when it's a one on one relationship, because then it's less, I don't know, embarrassing,

but certainly less something to receive help. And you also feel if it's one thing, if you get a

check from the government, you know, food stamps, it's not thing if someone's like, hey, I'm going

to buy your groceries until you get back on your feet. You have this kind of motivation. I think

for most people to be like, you know what, this person believed in me, I'm going to make it worth

their while that they believed in me. Because I didn't believe in me. Yeah. When I was giving

lectures at MIT, there was one that was scare shitless. And I mean, everybody, you know,

how students are and all that kind of stuff, they're kind of bored. Yeah. And they don't,

they don't understand that you're human too. Yeah. Or this could be just me.

Oh, they don't understand you're trying to pass this human.

I know. But there's one, one gentleman in the audience, and he went to all the lectures,

all the gentlemen, he was a faculty at MIT. And he just, without very kind of nonchalant,

just said, after the lectures, he kind of nodded me and say, you did great.

And before, like one time he said, in a noncreepy way, I know this is going to come off as creepy.

He said, you look great today. Like he said that in a, I don't know, in the way, so he's

like 60, 70, whatever, like he, in this, I don't know, it's a wise sage way. Because I was wearing

a suit and tie. Like I look like, you know, when you dress up like a young kid, you dress

like a mother. So he was just like, all right, yeah, you're, you're all dressed up. You look

great. You got this. I don't know. That has an elastic impact that kind of

pad on the back. But I agree with you. Cruelty towards other adults is somehow understandable.

Because it's a world full of conflict, but cruelty towards children doesn't,

it doesn't quite, I can't, I can't understand it. I can't understand how you could act in a way

that directly causes suffering to a child in front of you. Yeah, that is like the, I don't think

I've ever talked to you. This might be a good time to ask you about this. What do you make,

what lessons do you draw about human civilization from Jeffrey Epstein, from just laying out.

Well, everybody thinks about different things. When you talk to Eric Weinstein, he thinks about

intelligence and like who, like Jeffrey Epstein is the front for something else. That's what he

thinks about. I think about the weakness of grown men in the face of charismatic evil,

which is like for me directly is MIT. I didn't know, I actually was, I guess I was at MIT when

Jeffrey Epstein was just at the very end. He must have been there. I didn't know any of this,

but it really bothers me that nobody was able to see through this man. Because he's obviously,

what is also obvious to me is that he was very charismatic. Like, I mean, I try to think about

human nature from this perspective is directly, like we said, help one life.

Would I know a Jeffrey Epstein if he was in my life? Would I know evil when I saw evil?

Even if it's sitting across from you. Even, I mean, you, so exactly the evil laugh. Thank you.

It's a necronomicon.

Well, the thing I, I'm sure we'll talk about it. Maybe not. It doesn't really matter. We see things

you and I, Michael, very differently about a lot of things politically and so on. The reason I like

you a lot, the reason I like the people I do in my life is there's a warmth, there's a kindness,

there's a humanity underneath it all. I don't really care what you believe. I don't care.

Like, I don't care what your Twitter says. You know, it's easy to mistake your Twitter to indicate

that there's not a deeply human love for humanity in there. And that's why I'm detecting that. I

think I would be able to detect that, Jeffrey Epstein, I'm just imagining the T1000.

Detected. Yes. I imagine, I hope I would be able to not detect that Epstein lacks that completely.

Even if he's charismatic in the humor he has, even if he is charismatic in the expression of

curiosity for science, which he did, he was curious about like, not just like boring minutiae of

science, he was interested about the big questions in science, which I could see that become exciting

to scientists like, oh, wow, here's a person who's thinking big. That's always exciting.

When somebody goes into a room and thinks about like, how do we solve intelligence?

How do we travel faster than the speed of light? That's exciting to people, especially people

with money, because it's like, all right, so we might be able to actually do big things here.

But you could see through the bullshit, the deadness in the eyes. I don't know.

So I think about that because I feel like I have the responsibility for me as an individual

to detect evil. So I, do you know who Michael Allig is? Okay, this is going to be a whole

long, this is going to be a Lex clips, but this is a whole long story. So there was a scene in New

York in the 90s called the club kids. And they would go out to different night clubs at night.

They would all dress in really kind of crazy costumes. And the costumes are all like, like

goofy and like just like an angel. This was dressed like a nurse. There's a juvenile

aspect to it. They're all taking, you know, ketamine and ecstasy to all hours. This is kind

of rape culture was coming up in there. And the head of it, and in fact, there's a,

a clip on YouTube, I think it was the Jane Whitney show of the club kids and Gigi Allen.

Gigi Allen is a, you know, kind of punk rock performer, hard rock performer who passed away.

And Gigi Allen was very aggressive and like a crazy person. My friend once saw him in a concert

and he took a dump on stage, smeared it all over his face, grabbed the girl from the audience,

gave her a big kiss. And as she walked by him, she just went like this, like, excuse me,

like went to the bathroom. So the audience is screaming at Gigi Allen because he's very

visibly over the top. Whereas you got a bunch of these kids dressed in these silly costumes,

you guys just having fun. Well, the head of the club kids, Michael Allig ended up killing someone.

There was a kid called Angel Menendez who hung around with them. He would always have angel

wings and boots. One time they're at Michael's condo with another, with a drug dealer named

freeze. They got into a fight. So Angel got hit in the head with a hammer. They kill him.

What are we going to do with the body? They put it on ice in the bathtub. They had a party.

So everyone's going to the bathroom while Angel's body is there. Michael got,

they're like, all right, we got to take care of this. Michael got extremely high in heroin,

had like a cutlery from Macy's, sawed the body in pieces, put it in a box.

They took him into cab. The cab driver helped them throw the body into the river.

And then Michael starts walking around Manhattan wearing Angel's boots

and would tell people, oh, I killed Angel. Now, because he was a super effeminate

over the top, like he would pee in people's beer kind of guy, everyone's like, oh,

God, Michael, like you and your stupid pranks. But it was true. And he got caught.

And he got sentenced to jail. So I was in a store in Manhattan in Soho. And it was one of those

stores. We have like all sorts of things for sale. And I saw a painting and it said malice.

And I'm like, wait, what? And it was M. Alec. It was a Michael Alec painting. He had painted

while in jail. So my mom bought it for me for my birthday. I don't remember what birthday it was.

And I started writing him in prison. He was going to write a memoir called Aligula, which is clever.

And then I actually went to visit him. I'm like, I want to see what this person's like. Because

on one hand, he's king of New York nightlife, this goofy person. And it's also kind of ironic that

Gigi Allen is like, maybe he's gross. He's not killing anybody. He's probably going to count

off the stage and Michael Alec actually did kill someone and then bragged about it tongue in cheek.

So, but meeting him, he passed away last December on Christmas, actually, on Christmas 2020.

He was clearly a sociopath. And I'd never met a sociopath before. Now, a lot of times we'll read

these like, you'll take a Buzzfeed quiz, like, are you a sociopath? And it's like, oh, my feelings

weren't hurt when I was mean to someone. It's not a thin line between like, me and you and him.

It's a thick, thick line. Because when you're talking to someone like that, at least in this

specific case, he was being very friendly. He wasn't, and it's not like he was going to kill

anyone or as a threat to me. But there's that sense like something's really off here. And he

was talking to me about how after he had killed Angel, he would just talk about it because he

felt so much guilt. He just wanted to get caught. It's like, no, no, no, you what he was describing

wasn't guilt. He was describing just he didn't like the the knife over his head, like waiting to

get caught. I'm like, you don't even know what guilt is. So it was kind of like, oh, wow. So

as for Jeffrey, but the thing is, Michael Alec isn't was in a very low social position.

And the thing is, when someone is powerful, very high status, and they do something,

we are as kind of hierarchical animals, we kind of defer to their norms. So if you're at a party

with, let's suppose, either us, and it's like a Jeffrey Epstein party, and everyone at the party

is doing some sort of weird drug we've never heard of, we wouldn't really feel comfortable

judging them, because like their norms kind of become the norm for that space. The lesson for

me about Jeffrey Epstein, there's a lot of them, because I think this, to me, the biggest moment

was the Amy Rohrbach situation. Amy Rohrbach was caught on a hot mic, saying that they had all

the goods on him, they had all the names, and that Buckingham Palace call them, they killed the story

because they weren't going to get a Meghan Markle interview out of it. So that the willingness of

those in power to do the wrong thing for the flimsiest pretext, which I think was a big

important lesson, also the fact that no one at ABC had any consequences for this. In fact, the only

person who got in trouble for all this was someone who used to work at ABC, went to I believe CBS,

and they got fired from CBS because apparently they had access to footage at one point, even though

they weren't the ones who had leaked it. So whistleblowers are like the only, for example,

the case in Eric Garner, the guy who was selling Lucy cigarettes in New York City,

who was arrested, he had a heart attack or whatever it was on the way to jail, he died.

The only person, so the cops had a situation there, the only person who had gotten in trouble

because of that was the guy filming it, like he went to jail. So I think there is, there's a lesson

in terms of, we look at Julian Assange, right? There's a huge amount of power exercised by elites

to make sure that what is done in the cover of darkness remains in the cover of darkness.

And also Kevin McCarthy, who was currently the house minority leader, leader of the Republicans,

he wrote a letter to ABC News, like, you had this guy, maybe you couldn't call in the authorities,

but you could have leaked it to somebody, why hasn't anything come forward? Nothing happened

as a result of this. We also have to keep in mind that the longest serving Republican

Speaker of the House in history, Dennis Hastert, went to jail because of things related to

pedophilia and things like that. So as Russians, and this is something I think you and I've mentioned

before, Americans are very naive, often decreasingly so, about the nature of evil. They think an

evil person is someone who's like getting kickbacks or, you know, like the Cuomos are colluding,

something like that. I would hardly even call that evil. No, no, this is the sort of things

that are so depraved that you would never think about it in a million years in your own home.

You don't think in these terms. And I think they get off on doing things that if the average person

heard about it, the average person would be shocked because that gives them this sense of we're

above them, we're different from them. The rules don't apply to us. There's a lot to say here.

So what is the norm thing you said at a party? It's really interesting for an anarchist to say

that. Well, no, it's this. No, well, I know, I know. I'm not sorry. That came off as criticism.

I meant it as harsh criticism. No, I think about that a lot. Like, as, you know, I found myself

in situations where I'm invited to these kinds of parties where people have nice things,

and I find it deeply uncomfortable for that reason. I don't want to be sort of an activist

that goes in and ruins a party. That's, that's a, I think that's a, that's not the courageous act.

Neither is it courageous when everyone's doing some weird drug that you mentioned to join in,

I think. Courageous is more being your, remaining yourself, sticking to your principles calmly

in that room where everybody is doing the drug and just don't do the drug.

Yeah, sure. Don't make a scene about it, but also don't, don't do it. And I think

that little act of courage over time is the way you resist Jeff Epstein. That exactly the thing

you said is, is probably the situation where charisma works. So one charismatic person gets

a little crowd going and the crowd is everybody sort of establishes a norm at the little crowd.

And yes, there could be some dynamics that allow that norm to be established. Like you said,

like rich and powerful people might enjoy being rich and powerful and better than everybody

else kind of, kind of thing. But like I, especially for scientists, I thought they should have

integrity and courage enough to, to see through that, not again as an activist, like so you can

tweet about it, how courageous you are. But just literally, see, there's something off here.

There's something off here and I'm not going to participate.

I'm going to defend these scientists because something off, first of all.

You're always defending academia is disgusting.

It's my favorite thing. I think that first of all, this is going to sound like a joke and it's not.

I bet you 90% of those MIT scientists are on the spectrum. So everyone they're going to meet is

going to be off, right? So I'm sure part of their brain is like, okay, this person's weird.

This is just them being on the spectrum. Like the lights, but spectrum. I couldn't even finish

the joke. Okay, guys. Number two is off. We, we tend to, there's this poem. I forget who wrote it.

It was like Nick Cave or something. And it was describing like, I think it was Goebbels. Hair,

normal, height, normal, weight, normal. What do you expect? Horns, right? So when you meet someone,

you think something's off. There's going to be a bell curve of what that could be, right? It could

be that they're twitchy or maybe they're completely social. And then you have Jeffrey Epstein over

here. You're going to need a lot of evidence to be like, Oh, I feel something off there for this

guy's the head of an international, you know, sex trafficking ring. So yeah, you might be like, okay,

but at the same time, if their extended relationship is this guy is interested in my work,

he's going to fund my work, and I don't have to give him anything in return. He's clearly intelligent.

He's appreciating it. And being a scientist is a thankless job. I know what it's like as an author

when I was writing Dear Reader, the North Korea book, my friends are sick of hearing all these

North Korea anecdotes, because at a certain point it's like, okay, we get it. Just save it for the

book. And you know, you got to be in that lab, you're looking at the springtails, whatever it is

you're looking at, no one knows what a springtail is. I just disagree with you. So that'd be

interesting to draw the distinction between science and writing, because the scientific process

itself is fun as fuck. It's you're solving little puzzles. Sure. So like, in itself, it's fun. So

like, it's rewarding. Like the reason you go into science is you can continue really without a boss

to continue having fun and solving puzzles. That's, that's literally so like, unless you become cynical

and tired of the whole thing. So the, the people, the administration, or when you're running a large

lab, and you what you get sick of is the emails and the meetings and all that kind of stuff,

the actual act of being in the lab is still fun as fuck. If you allow it to be writing, I feel like

it's, there's more priority to publishing. Like, would you enjoy it, the tree falling in the forest,

would you still enjoy any of the books you've written if they never got published?

Not to the same extent that even close. Right. Right. I think that's the thing about science.

It's almost like you get a peek into the mysterious. Yeah, but this is okay. Let me,

this is where I'm coming from. Since moving to Austin, I bought 150, over 150 plants.

How are you doing the politician thing? Look, let me be clear. All right. It's not.

You are running in 2024. This is very interesting. I bought 150 succulents from my house. They're,

they're thriving here in Austin as they wouldn't have in Brooklyn.

You have a great video about it. Yeah. One of those plants I have is the photo I took on my

Instagram. There's no other photos on the whole internet. None of my friends care. Or they care

like ostensibly, but like, oh, that's cool. Like I have a better plant collection in my house than

like almost any botanical succulent collection than any botanical garden in America than probably

the Huntington and no one cares. This is what ego looks like, by the way. I can prove it to you.

No, I know, but you don't have to rub it in. Well, they have a big budget. I don't. So if I can put

it together, they should be able to. Right. So I can only imagine that a scientist who studied,

you know, the spiders that look like ants, like at a certain, like, oh, and this species does this

with the gender dimorphism, their friends are only going to care so much. So if you meet someone who

has a lot of money who now cares about ant spiders, it's going to be exciting.

It will be very exciting. But I just wanted to push back on the, I think the act itself

should be the biggest reward. I think you're always safe. We're talking about goodness being

a safe default. I think it's a good default for, for plants and for writing and for science

is to just enjoying the act, even if nobody cares. Okay, this is where this, okay, now I'm even,

now I'm wondering why I'm pushing back so hard and I realized what it was because

I've made this point several times and I'm glad I can make it again. There's this window of time

that happened in my life. And I know it happens to a lot of people when you're in your like 24 to

27, 28, right? So 21 to 24, like you still have your friends from college, so on and so forth,

right? But then it's kind of like a poker game. And, you know, every so often people cash out,

they're like, I'm out, I'm out, they get married, they get a job, they move. And if you are someone

who is a young ambitious creative, that window is a very rough one, because you're doing the right

thing, right? And you're not being, you know, drug addict, you're not being a philanderer,

not that those things are wrong, but just like you're playing by the rules, you're creating your

stuff, what you want to be known for, contribution you want to make for the world. And no one cares

and it gets very lonely. And there's this very emotional disconnect about how is it that I'm

creating and I'm working hard, and I'm making something happen, and it's just radio silence.

So that I don't think it's that easy when you're, you're the scientist, not me, when you don't have

any kind of external validation, humans only have so much fuel. Nothing worth having is easy,

Michael. By the way, yesterday, talked on the phone with a person, he said he was deeply moved

the first time you mentioned this age group of 24 to 27. And he's like, he, he's 26, he said.

And he feels the full responsibility of that and the excitement. So he left his like corporate

type of job to pursue something that he's really passionate about. And that, that was like,

you were an inspiration to him, which I was deeply saddened by that.

I also inspired Michael Alex.

The amount of mass murder, those that were inspired by you will eventually lead to is,

is truly horrifying. What were we talking about? So Jeff, one thing I wanted to ask you,

so let's put scientists aside, what about like, world leaders, Bill Clinton, your favorite person,

why would he fly with Jeffrey Epstein? Why would he interact with that guy?

I mean, don't you think that that's kind of the deal that I'm the president and I get

big and powerful people fly around their jets and that's the symbiotic relationship?

Yeah, but don't you also have a good BS detector? Like,

don't you have a good detector for people who just want to be in your presence?

Like, I already understand that there's people like this out there. Like,

there's people that kind of want to use me for stuff. And you mean Tim Dillon?

Tim Dillon. I love that guy. You guys met? We haven't met yet here. You haven't met?

Yeah. We met before in New York, but we had not since I moved here.

Yeah. So you should be able to detect that there's those people and there's the people

that have kindness in their heart, even if they can benefit from the interaction with you,

but they have like, they're good human beings. I feel like you want to,

you run into a lot of trouble if you surround yourself or have any people

that are manipulative. But I think you make a bad example because like,

let's look at Clinton and let's look at Obama, right? So Obama,

even though their politics are very close, I'd say in many ways,

Obama is apparent. We don't know. I don't know either of them. But to me,

it seems very apparent that he's very similar behind closed doors as you in front of the camp.

Yeah. Yeah. He's, he's baroque to me. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. He's good. Yeah. Clinton seems very clearly to be much more of a performer.

He's in front of the cameras. He puts on a roll, but behind the cameras,

he very much has a temper. He's known for that. He's much more of a lech.

What's that? Perfect. Oh, lech with an E.

L.E.T.C.H. Yeah. Oh, cool. Lech. Is that like a, that's a cool term. So I can use that on the

internet. Like you're a lech. Yeah, you can use that on the internet. You're a dirty lech.

Well, it's dirty. It's implied. Oh, so it's okay. Yeah. So being redundant. Yeah. It just feels

like he needs an adjective to give it more power. I'm sorry. So Clinton is a lech. Right. So you

can see how there's people who want to meet, you know, the surface, Bill Clinton, and I'm sure

that gets old for him because he has to be on. But then there's the good old boys where he could

be a pervert and this guy's like, yeah, I know what it's like. And then he feels like he's himself.

But I'm all speculating. I mean, I don't know what Bill Clinton is like, what was in it for him.

He certainly could afford private jets if he wanted to. There's no shortage of people who

want to fly around the world to give speeches, you know, at, you know. Can he satisfy the lech

within, without hanging out with the Jeffrey Epstein's of the world? Like, can he get, I mean,

this is the Monica Lewinsky question to me. I'm confused by all of this. Can he get

women in a legitimate way of like, not using his power, not hanging out with these shady,

rich people, but just like having a normal mistress like JFK. Well, JFK a lot. I know,

I understand that. But in a normal way, or I don't, I don't know enough. I don't understand

the Clinton psychology. First of all, the fact that you're hooking up with someone who's close

to your daughter's age to me, I think was is inherently disturbing. But she's an adult. So,

okay, that's not that, that, you know, beyond the pale. But also the idea that, oh, if I don't

physically fornicate with you, it's not cheating. Like that, whatever you tell yourself, or like,

if I don't ejaculate, it's not cheating. Like these rules that maybe it leads to some kind of

slippery slope, like you start not having the rules of who you fool. I mean, if you told your

wife, like, listen, it wasn't cheating, she only, you know, performed on me, you're going to say

this with a straight face. Like, do you at a certain point when something is so brazen, you

wonder if the person even has to believe it because who you fooling. But like, we started this,

this conversation with them, even there is a line between young women older than 18 and

young teens, like 12, 13 kids. Have you ever, when's the last, oh, because it's

different for you because you're at MIT. I was hanging out with Blair White, and she had a

couple of fans with her of hers, and they were like 22, 23. And they were like children to me.

Like, I'm like, to me, as someone who is in his late 60s, to look at these people as adults,

like, they look completely like kids. So that, of course, there's exceptions. Like,

I've interacted with a young 20, 20 year olds that are like, you're way more mature than I'll

ever be. Like the wisdom that comes out of them is quite fascinating. Visually, the energy and

the way they look, they look so young to me and the way they carry themselves. It was the idea

that my instinct was, let's tuck you in and read you a bedtime story, not let me like touch you

or something. It was just like, it was just wouldn't enter my head. So there's, but the thing is,

is it possible that in order to want to be the president, you have to be a crazy person?

That you have some kind of weird view on power. It could be a power thing, too.

Yeah.

Like, like you can get away with stuff.

Like, if I was Clinton's age, nothing about Monica Lewinsky to me would be attractive.

And also, I would just feel bad for her because I know she's going to catch feelings.

And it's kind of like...

Catch feelings. Yeah, sure.

This is virtual.

It's just like, why would I do this to this kid? For what? Just because I want to get some,

like, momentary pleasure. Come on.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I'm sure she looked gorgeous to him in the moment.

Well, let me ask, we started talking about beauty. Who are you wearing?

So as a model, you usually don't have a shirt on when you're modeling.

So it's nice to see you dressed up today.

Nice and warm.

This is because so for those who don't know, Russians don't celebrate Christmas,

obviously the Soviet Union Christmas was illegal.

No Thanksgiving, basically no major holidays where everyone gets together.

This is the one holiday.

Yeah, New Year's.

It's the one holiday.

Instead of, I remember as a kid, instead of Santa Claus, we have Diedmeros,

who's the same thing basically.

It's like Android and iPhone. It's like a cheap version of Christmas.

He's got this girl with him. She's like Snow White or whatever.

And Russian kids, they go to sleep on December 31st and they wake up

January and they have a present under their pillow.

And I remember as a kid, this happened once and it just blew my mind, you know what I mean?

It's just like, I went to bed, my dad's like, oh, you know, you're going to have

Diedmeros is going to bring your present if you've been a good kid.

I'm like, I think I was a good kid.

But you don't even remember a year of your life when you're four.

You remember like two weeks.

You remember those moments.

Yeah. And then I woke up and there was a present and I fell out and I was,

it just blew my mind.

And that building is still there.

1461 Sherpa Parkway in Brooklyn. And it's just also funny.

What I really like about kids, you know, being an uncle now is kid logic

because they have very little bit of data, but they're using logic to make sense of it.

And sometimes it gives them the completely wrong conclusions for the completely right reasons.

I remember, you know, my bedroom as a kid was right off the kitchen

and I'd be scared the dark a little bit so they'd leave the light on the kitchen while I went to

sleep. And at the same time, my parents had told me, you don't leave the lights on the house.

It costs money waste electricity, right?

So I would be worried because I'm like, oh my God, my parents leave the lights on the kitchen

all night. And now it's costing them so much money, not realizing that, you know,

five minutes after I'm out, obviously they're turning the lights off.

But like in my kid logic, this was a concern of mine.

Yeah. And memories work that same way. I have a collection of memories that are stitched together

logically somehow, but they also don't really make sense. There's a few defining things.

So I grew up in Russia and experienced a lot of new years in Russia. There's a lot of incredible

things about that tradition that just warms my heart. So one, as a kid, you mentioned these

kind of stories. That's the one night of the year that kids are allowed to be adults

in the following way, like in kid logic. You're allowed to stay up all night.

Oh yeah, okay. Those, as late as you want, which actually ends up being, you're not used to.

Eleven. Right, you're out.

You crash. But no, you get to, you know, two, three, four at night, you stay up and when you get to

witness, it's almost like Alice in Wonderland goes into this world. You get to witness what

does the adult world really like? Now, obviously it's not an actual adult world.

Marryment, like laughing, fighting, arguing, but also like in our case, like singing and

like, yeah, arguing like philosophical stuff, but also like, if I may, how would I describe it?

This is also probably a little bit Russian culture, but like flirtation in all of its forms,

meaning like men and women just being like, because they dress up. Yeah, yeah.

It's like, it's, it's joy. It's like, you get to show off like dresses, whatever you got,

you show it off, this is fun. And then men too, just like friends, laughing, like arguing, just

showing off the best they got with delicious food. Obviously that there's a Thanksgiving

element there where there's just so many, just you bring out all the traditional stuff,

the, the, yes, salad, just everything, just the full thing with the desserts and obviously the

vodka, a lot of vodka. And at the time, so this is the Soviet Union, like the biggest stuff,

and this is so sad that these are the things that I remember is like Coca Cola. Oh yeah.

Like American, like that, I'll probably kill somebody for Dr. Pepper. It's so fascinating that

you take it for granted, sort of the results of capitalist society, the material things that

are created, but that was the ultimate happiness is to experience this new thing, sugar, I don't know,

you know, there's a scarcity. There's like communist colon check Republic.

So basically they try to rip off Coke. Yeah. And it's just like,

like they just threw whatever they could together. And it was a very poor knockoff,

as you can imagine, I forget what it's called. And all the Czech people right now are getting

very angry at me because I can't think of it, but they have it now. And the slogan is good or weird.

So it's like this. So they kind of reclaimed this kind of hipster soda. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome.

It's almost like a parody. Right. Yeah. But I think the thing I really remember is the camaraderie,

like the love for each other and neighbors too. Like you and I are neighbors now. We don't see

each other that often. I hope that changes, but a lot of it is also me. I'm just a deep introvert.

You're also the hardest working person I know. Yeah. So it's time, but you know,

like, it's not like I'll go in the middle of the night at like 4am and go to 711 and just sit there

sipping a slurpee for an hour thinking about life. It's not like I'm always working. Yeah,

I don't know. What I mean is like you get to meet your neighbors and you get to experience their

highs and their lows and you get to bitch about life, about government, about corruption, about

the unfairness of life together. Well, it's also, I think, what people don't appreciate as Americans

is it's very rare in Russia to have a safe space. Yeah. So you know that January 1st,

no one's going to snitch on you. You know, they're not going to be informants probably,

so you can vent and, you know, that's the thing with people in totalitarian countries.

You have to have the public facing persona and then behind closed doors is very different.

It all comes out. I also remember the arguments and I've been going on Clubhouse recently into

Russian rooms. Oh, Jesus. Well, just to practice Russian. And they, it's so beautiful to watch.

I mean, Clubhouse is a very specific collection of Russian people. Maybe it's a little bit

political, but, and they're a little bit older. And it's interesting to watch how much they love

to argue. Russian love to argue. And so like it will be literally, you could think of it as a

nonlinear dynamical system, okay, from an engineering perspective. Whenever any positive

topic comes up, you could feel the skepticism and then wait a minute, this is not good.

And they'll start like, perturbing it until you're like, they'll find some way to say,

like, come on now, that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. And then it goes back into argument.

It's so fun to watch because in one sense, you could see it as negative. In another,

you could see it as free to express yourself because it feels like you can solve a lot of

problems by allowing yourself to just be emotional, both emotional and say hard truth and all those

kinds of things without like, without prodding yourself on the back about it. But also,

it just sort of those Russian rooms make me realize how constrained American speeches,

how careful people are in the way they express it, even the Michael Mouses in the world.

You're constantly being like nuanced. There they just say crazy shit. Oh yeah. And then

they correct themselves and make fun of themselves and they completely shift opinions a minute

later. And it's chaos. Yeah. And it's, I mean, it's beautiful. So I love that that culture is

funny given the current regime in Russia, like how that's coupled with how people are talking and

yeah, I don't know. And I have those memories of childhood of friends that I had of just having

that true freedom of talking and somehow that leads to deep bonds together. When the life,

when you're poor, when life is, has a lot of elements that are unfair, when the government

is corrupt, there's sort of, it's just, especially in the Soviet Union, there's uncertainty about

the future, all of it, you just get closer together, like penguins huddling together in the cold,

like that March of the Penguins movie, that I don't know. The friends I've gotten there,

like, I get emotional every time I kind of think about those friends because it was so close.

That friendship was so fucking close. But I just really hate the Russian cynicism.

Well, I know you do. And I actually disagree with you about it. You see it as cynicism. I see it as

waves on top of the water, like surface cynicism and the depths as I see the beauty of the Russian

soul. So we, yes, that cynicism can negatively affect a lot of people. I think you've talked

about as a parent being cynical about the world and then you have dire negative consequences

on your children. They become cynical. They don't ever take big risks or take on bold things.

And I have those arguments because the cynicism is exhausting, it's destructive, it's anti creative.

But so in their perspective is this is what the Russian folks would say. Well, yes, that's our

role, like being cynical is being reasonable about the world. But it's not. It's completely

unreasonable. It's a complete lie. No, I know. But their argument is, yes, but we're giving you

this force and it's your job to resist against it. So it's a test. I love the idea that if you're

going to be creative and innovative, you don't have enough up against you. Yeah, exactly. This

is exactly it. It's not hard enough already that I want to be an author. Now you got to be like,

well, let me just put some fire ants on top of it. So I just want to separate. I agree with you

that the cynicism is bad and destructive. But the idea that life is suffering and

thinking from that as a first principle, I think there's a lot of beauty to be discovered through

that. So there's a cynicism and then there's horrible message. Life is suffering. No, not.

Well, yeah, I mean, Camus. Camus doesn't think that.

Now we're going into definitions of suffering then, because absurd. Life is absurd and life

is suffering are not even close to the same concept. Well, then you're just defining the

terms differently. Well, that's because they're different terms. Well, it's always love and beauty.

But so let's define. Okay, you're selling if your baby's in the crib, like with a fever,

you're like, oh, that's absurd. No, it's the kid's suffering. It's not the same.

So yes, starvation. You've been for white pill research and a lot of actual specifically defined

suffering. Sure. But also a lot of wonderful things. Right. Yeah, yeah. But the word suffering

can encompass more than just specifically starving. And it could, it can encompass,

like a lot of the philosophers talk about it, it encompass like philosophical suffering,

the fact that there isn't, if you're not careful, life can appear meaningless,

you can fall into a nihilistic view. It's difficult to have the responsibility of freedom

to act in this world, because you can fuck up in so many different ways. And then life is seemingly

unfair in the sense that good things happen for no apparent reason and terrible things

happen for no apparent reason. Like what, you know, it's the old religious question of why does evil

happen in the world? Why do terrible things happen in the world? There's a book called Six

Word Memoirs, right, where all these different personalities are awesome. Were you in it? No.

I'm in it with, so you had to basically write your autobiography in six words and mine was

good things happen to bad people. You see, there you go. There's humor. Yes. That's your

way of dealing with the suffering. But I don't think life is, if life was suffering, we wouldn't

be able to have happiness. No, out of suffering, happiness is born. So like it's, it's the ups

and downs of life. And what it means like, I don't, this, I just, I don't agree at all

that you need to suffer in order to be happy. I agree you have to work hard, but that's not

the same thing. Yeah. All right. So the way I'm using suffering, I think a lot of them use

suffering is the way you use like gravity. So in order for the roller coaster to work, you need

gravity. There needs to be a force that bring you down. Sure. And that same way, there's

like, you have to resist the natural pull of nature that wants to destroy you.

No, nature wants you to, nature's indifferent, but we have the capacity because we're blessed

with minds and we're blessed with friends. Yeah. To transcend nature. Yeah. No, I know,

but I think it's a word that captures something about life that there's no reason to it,

that is absurd. I think to me, oftentimes the way I think about the word suffering is

synonymous with absurdity. This is not suffering, but this is absurd. I just noticed there's a box

with a big bow on it next to you. What's in the box, Michael? It's your present. So it's your

present for New Year's. Can we open it? Yeah, sure. What's in the box? It's going to take,

and you brought up suffering. This is going to be very unpleasant. I packed it myself.

Yeah, there's a whole process in there. So there's three presents in there.

Lex, I'll read the card first. Okay.

Something about opening presents, like tearing stuff, makes me feel like, because like I just

tore this sheet of paper, so it'll never be the same again. It's entropy. It's entropy times,

times. You've got a powerful voice. You've got a powerful voice.

To Lex, thank you. Maybe I should read the other card first. You've got a powerful voice.

Listening to what you have to say always puts me in a hopeful place. I feel like this is building

up to something. You show me how change can happen when you face the world with pride,

confidence, and a voice that can't be silenced. Keep speaking up. The world is listening. Yeah.

There's no cynicism in this card. No, this is about, this is New Year's. This is all about

hope and joy. To Lex, I'm seeing the binary. To Lex, thank you for setting the path for me to

move to Austin. Zero, one, zero, zero, one, zero, zero, one, zero, one, zero, zero, zero, zero, one, one, one, zero, one, zero, one. Michael Mals. Yeah.

Putting tears to my eyes. Thank you, brother. My pleasure. Let's get to the present.

Okay. It's a, it's a PC box. This is very promising. It better not be sex toys. There's

nothing, this is all, there's nothing inappropriate at all. Why would it? Why would sex toys be

inappropriate? Because you're, because you're a version.

You got to bring a knife to a party.

How clever is it to put it in a PC box? Well, I had it. I just got a new PC.

Okay. There's also a can. Yep. Open the can first. Open the can.

Do you wrap this yourself? That scared the shit out of me.

Go get back in the can. That actually stayed in there. That's magic.

You just got to cut the string. No.

You're the most beautiful troll of all. I love you so much.

This is awesome.

Did I, did it not work? Pick it up. Oh, it didn't work.

There's a terrifying springy feeling to this thing. I don't want to open this.

I need to move some side. I hate you so much. What?

Oh, is it the other way? No, just pick it up.

I can't believe I fell for that. I hate you so much.

Wrenches are my favorite. I can't believe I fell for that. Okay.

And there's box number three. It's like a matryoshka. I can't believe that worked. Yeah.

I wanted a box to open all these gears to fall out, but you can't get it. You can't get them.

Yeah. Does that really grind your, your grind your gears?

Why am I scared? Okay.

There's another box.

This leads to my death. No, no, this isn't, this is, there's a story behind it.

Can't believe that worked. Oh God, that's so good. All right.

All right. No springs, no weapons, no wrenches.

Okay. So let me tell you the story behind that toy.

Tonka robots that turn into vehicles. So when you, there were, when I was a kid,

you had transformers, but for us poor people, you had GoBots, right? So the GoBots,

there were four main characters for the good guys. It was leader one, small foot turbo and scooter.

And what was annoying is when you had the action figures,

you couldn't find the ones that were on the TV show. And I was a big GoBots fan as a kid.

And I went once to the Toys R Us in Caesars Bay in Brooklyn with my grandfather. My grandfather

was always very lucky. Like just good things happen to him every so often. And I went there,

remember very vividly, they must have just unpacked, just loaded the shelves and how they had the

shelving, it would be like, like a grid, you know, you'd have like, it was like one, two, three,

or five, five rows and like five by five. And I remember it was like two up and then you have

to do, you have to sit by the side and kind of sort through them. And with the GoBots,

each package had a picture of the different figures. So the packaging wasn't uniform.

And they just had scooter there. She was just sitting there. And I was like, holy crap. So

that feeling when you're a kid and you find that just sitting on the shelf is right there.

It's just, it was such this. Wait, is this that scooter? No, I have it though. But that one is

for you. I thought if you want to put it next to your other robots, open it up. I can open it up.

Yeah, yeah, it's for you. And that way it's that symbol of joy when you have when you're a kid,

when you find something you really want. I think it just is really like when people look at it,

they'll be like, don't be hopeless. I'll open this carefully later. No, do it.

There's no way to open it carefully. Kids don't open stuff carefully. You rip that crap open.

But then you break it and you cry. That's what happens when you're a kid. I never did that.

Okay. Me neither. I never cried, but never got presents either.

That is so cool. All right, scooter.

You symbolize childlike discovery. Right?

The poor, the poor man's robot. The poor man's transformers.

I think there's instructions on the back how to transform her.

To her? I only found out as an adult that it was supposed to be a girl. Yeah.

Wow. This changes everything. No, give me here. Let me show you. It looks better when she's

transformed. What? No, there's levels to that statement. Oh, how does it do like this? Let

me see if I remember how to do it. Because I have this as a kid. Arms out. The thing is,

these are easy to break, I remember. Is it like this? No. Oh, the front comes out.

Oh, let me see this. Oh, this comes up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's that the arms go.

I'm having visions of like baby Michael. I can't do it. Okay. I can't do it. I can't figure it out.

Wow, you're right. She looks so much better transformed. All right. I'm going to follow

the instructions in a bit and I'll leave this failed project of yours. Oh, there's a wheel out.

Look, I don't like this in between form. Well, this is how it's going to be. Okay.

Okay. Because we're going to be accepting of the transformation that takes time. Okay. I got,

I saw this little thing when I was walking on Congress and it says resist. It's a bracelet.

I mean, think of you. The reason I got it is because there's two bracelets. So one said lucky

fuck and the other one said resist. Now I first saw resist and I'm like, and then I saw the lucky

fuck and I realized I'm a lucky fuck to find a relevant. It makes me think of you. This is very

nice. Resist the powerful. That's true. I saw this somewhere. The oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. This has to do with, in terms of resist, you often bring up the book Machiavellians by

James Burnham. And so I was looking through, I was reading different parts of it. It's a tricky

read. It's a little bit, but there is a ebook Kindle version now that I've been working through.

There's, I think there's an actual audio book too. Anyway. Yeah. I just bought some, the Machiavellians

is James Burnham's analysis of four thinkers that he regards as the Machiavellians. It was

Gaitana Moscow, Vilfredo Pareto, George Sorrell, and I'm blanking on the Moscow Pareto Sorrell

and George Michel. And I just got Pareto's autograph in the mail this week.

So he talks about freedom and liberty. This interesting line that I'd like to get your

opinion on in terms of resist and in terms of liberty. There's no one force, it goes, quote,

there's no one force, no group and no class that is the preserver of liberty. Liberty is preserved

by those who are against the existing chief power. Oppositions which do not express genuine

social forces are as trivial in relation to entrenched power as the old court jesters.

So, I mean, the question here is, can liberty, are you comfortable with that definition

or that view of liberty, of freedom, that at its highest ideal is expressed through the

resistance to the powerful as opposed to existing in its own? I think his point, broadly speaking,

which I agree with, is the only thing that can work to mitigate power is other power, that its

talk is cheap and persuasion has very limited efficacy. It's like if there's a burglar, right,

and one person will give you a speech about property rights and you shouldn't be in this

person's house and the other person has a gun, you know, it's clear which is going to be more

persuasive. Yeah, but can't you just be free without the struggle, without this conflict?

What I'm uncomfortable with this view is how closely it links freedom and conflict. Like,

why does this world have to have conflict for you to be free? I mean, it's, in part of it,

it's just emphasis. Well, you weren't just saying suffering is what leads to joy?

See, and now you're in agreement. Thank you. I just did that just so you can come around

and agree. I win. Next topic. Wow, I'm playing 3D chess here. Okay. This is New Year's.

This is now December 31st. I think that's how it works, but in 1973. Okay. We recorded this

before you were born. Oh, no, years after you were born in the 60s. You look great for 60s,

early 60s or short. Okay. What five things, let's say, are moments in 2021? Are you grateful for

or people? Just, I don't know, things, moments, beautiful experiences,

profound essences of the year. Like, looking back, what are the cool things that it just…

Personally or socially?

Do you exist like in a platonic way socially? I mean, oh, in your personal life?

Yeah. Anything. You're both, you're now Michael Malis. You exist as a social entity

and a personal human being and all of it, the whole thing. Like, what stands out to you about

2021? The fact that for the first time in my life other than college, I moved to a new city.

That was a very big one. And there's no part of me that regrets it or misses New York.

So that was a very big deal for me. What do you, about this move, about Austin itself,

but maybe the move itself, maybe just the act of moving, what's great about it to you?

The fact that I had forgotten what it's like to have a huge social network, which I had in New

York before people started falling away and then it really escalated as a result of

de Blasio and the COVID restrictions. So to have a big crew here is something that was very

validating. The thing that's also exciting about Austin is that Austin is not a particularly big

town. It's not a particularly great town. But everyone here, at least in the circles I travel

in, is kind of a refugee from their towns. So there is this sense of camaraderie. There is

this sense of we're building something together. Back in New York, when you meet someone, it would

be like, who is this person? Why am I talking to them? Like, are they a normie? Are they going to

be weird? And here there's very little of that. I think there's much more sense of trust with one

another when you meet new people. So that's something that's really exciting about. Like,

I've been introducing all my friends to each other and everyone's been hitting it off like

gangbusters. It's really great. So I really enjoy that about Austin. I'm enjoying the weather, the

space. You're at Kerouac and you have his stuff. I have. On the road, I read. I read a biography of

him. I don't know if it was on, I think it was on the road where he, he talked about that feeling

when you go into some place, you're leaving a place and you go somewhere else. And the place

you're leaving disappears behind you and all the people and all. Like, you just think about that

life and it's forever gone. And there's some inkling of that where you get to realize your

almost mortality because, okay, that's a chapter and there's not many more. And it was a beautiful

chapter, but now onto the next chapter. Is there a melancholy feeling there? No, it's the opposite.

I feel like I've been giving a new lease on life because I didn't realize to what extent there was

this subtext of hopelessness in New York. And also people who, in New York, you don't appreciate,

or you appreciate it consciously, but you can't escape it emotionally. How much the winters

get to you psychologically. It's tough. It gets dark so early, it gets cold, you can't walk around.

Like, that's the thing that's fun about, or what's fun about New York is that, you know,

when the weather's warm, you can walk for an hour and just enjoy the sunshine and there's

a lot to see and do. But in the winter, you don't have any of that. It's brutal. And here, it's just,

so that is something. There's no melancholy at all. Well, that's because there's,

can we say something beautiful about New York? Not the way it is now, but the way it...

I could go on for days about how great New York was.

What did you learn about human civilization and just life that was beautiful from New York?

I learned that there's a lot of really unique special people out there who are doing their

little part to move the envelope and make the world a better place. And that when you have a

city where they're all there together at the same time, that really moves the world. And I'm

thinking of Paris in the 20s and Harlem in the 20s and New York in the 70s and LA in the late

60s and San Francisco especially in late 60s, things like this. They really punch above Detroit

certainly at its heyday. They punch above their weight and just really kind of Philadelphia in

1700s. Things really start happening and that ripples throughout the world.

You think Austin has a chance to be a Paris in some way?

Yes, because again, it wasn't all of Paris. It was the left bank of Paris and Gertrude Stein

and Hemingway and all of them in a little area. So when you read these history books, these scenes,

it's like 50 people in a 10 block radius. These aren't these huge Davos conventions.

Okay, so the move, the big move, what else? What else stands out to you? Again, both personally and

socially, like zooming in and zooming out. I did a book with the UFC fighter and I was making the

point that he was a nine time world champion that I would never be as good at my job as he was at

his. And then when I dropped Anarchist Handbook in May and it was the top nonfiction book on

Amazon for like most of the day, I was like, oh, I'm the top nonfiction writer in America

just for today. I was like, oh crap, okay. So I guess I was wrong. That was a major deal. I was

still shocked and delighted. By the way, congratulations. I'm truly happy for you, man.

I'm so proud. But it's also, I'm proud because these are people who had points of view and they

didn't have it easy and they fought for what they believed in. And insofar as I get to

rescue them to some extent from the dustbin of history and say these people really mattered

and they really are worth hearing, that I love. I love stuff like that. I was talking to a friend

of mine, Topher, like a year ago, because we're in a weird position with what kind of jobs we have.

So I'd be talking on my live streams about people like Candy Darling or Wallace Thurman.

Like these are not household names at all. And then I'd be like proud of myself that I'm the

one who brings them to some sort of more prominence. And then you want to tell yourself, well, get

over yourself who you think you are. But no one else is talking about these people or very few.

So to be able to kind of give them some kind of stature and platform that they deserve,

I think is, I love being able to do that. So you have a strong voice yourself and to

sort of join them in. It's like John Lennon, joining in with the Beatles is like a chorus,

of very different views on anarchism. It's celebrating the individuals, it's celebrating

the idea. And you are, I think will be remembered as a powerful philosophy yourself, but like you're

almost taking just the humility of being in a room with powerful minds together in one book.

It's cool. Yeah. And that these people mattered and they had a unique perspective. And as I said

in the introduction to the book, I remember I was in college and we were studying bioethics and there

was like a graph in the book. And one part says, antinomianism, which was the view that

at one side said legalism, right, the two extremes. Legalism is what is legal is defined by the

government or what is moral is defined by the government. And one said, antinomianism, which

is nothing stands above moral law. And then there was like, well, since no one believes in this,

the answer is something to the other side. It's like, well, why is it on the charge no one believes,

if it has a name, someone believes in it, you know, so, you know, anarchism is a word that's

bandied about and in a dismissive way. And it's like, you don't have to like me or agree with

what I'm saying, but you can't pretend that they weren't Tolstoy, you're going to tell me Tolstoy,

doesn't nobody's talking about completely. He's in there. He was an anarchist. So

it was, it was a big accomplishment. It was really cool to get a chance to

do the audio book. You did an incredible thing, which has got a bunch of really cool people

to read a lot of interesting varied people. Yeah. So what I did for the audio book, which I

don't like the idea that hard work is inherently good, because sometimes being lazy is actually

the right choice. So I'm like, wait a minute, why am I reading all 23 chapters when it's 23

different authors? Does it make sense? So I hit my roll at X and I had different people read

different chapters to make it sound literally like you have the different voices in the book.

Thank you very much. You did my, because I was going to read my chapter. Wait a minute,

like all the other authors being read by somebody else. Let's have Lex read mine.

The one chapter I am most moved by is Lauren Chen. She's a podcast as well. She's expecting

now. So we wish nothing but the best for Lauren and Liam and the babby. There's a chapter there

by this guy named Charles Robert Plunkett called Dynamite. And he's advocating for

making bombs and killing people, killing, you know, the forces of capitalism.

And Emma Goldman, it was published in her essay while she was in lecture tour, and she was just

like, why is this in here? This is, this is just really going to make us look bad, so on and so

forth. And when you're dealing with any kind of, you know, HL Makin has that quote about

every rational man must at times be tempted to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag,

and begin slitting throats. So I wanted to talk, sound like the seductive

aspect of violence. Like that's the problem. Like when you're dealing with terrorism, when

you're dealing with political violence, to be able to understand how people can fall for this,

how people can be persuaded to think, this is a good idea that I'm going to make some dynamite

and throw it into this crowd and kill, you know, police officers and innocent people

possibly in the service of, you have to, it's easy to say all they're all crazy, but they're not,

you know, even not most people who are crazy don't do these things, you know. So to have a woman

read that chapter, and I told her kind of read it like a phone sex operator, because I wanted to

have that siren song of like, so you can understand why this calls out to people who are in the rope,

the people who are like marginalized. And she did such a superb job with that chapter.

That's such a beautiful vision. Yeah, because violence, that's violence is part of human history

to a degree that it must be seductive. It must be, there must be a strong pull. Like it's not

insane people. There's something probably deep within our nature that craves violence.

And then when there is charismatic leaders that inspire that, and revolution plus violence,

that, I could see that being extremely seductive to us. Like when you're truly suffering in your

current situation, whatever it is, you're being oppressed by governments or being oppressed by

the powerful, violent revolution is probably there's something deep within us that longs for that.

And also this kind of the Jelaine Maxwell to Jeffrey Epstein, right? You need that woman to

be like, no, no, this is okay, honey, come along. It's not a big deal. Don't listen to what your

parents told you. They're just prudes. It's a siren song. What do you think about Jelaine Maxwell,

the trial and so on? Again, maybe the interesting story there is about the coverage of the trial.

So like the story is more complex and interesting than the actual horrific acts themselves.

So to me, I don't, maybe I'm not knowledgeable enough, but to me, she's also truly evil. I don't

know where to, maybe you can help me to figure out who is more evil. The, just like you said now,

the person says it's okay. It's okay. That helps the evil doer or is it the evil doer themselves?

I don't know, but I think she's a, she scares me more than Jeffrey Epstein somehow.

There's people like that in the world too. I had like a Twitter poll. Do you think it's more

evil or less evil to kill someone because you've been paid to do it? And people, the winning answer

was more evil. And I said it was less because I think in that case, you can kind of check out,

you could be like, this isn't my, I'm just doing a job. I don't, you know, you kind of can, I think

in a sense, if you have a certain mindset, like intellect to remove yourself from the situation,

I'm just a conduit. When you were talking, I haven't been following her case that, that much.

That's cause you mostly watch CNN and CNN is not covering it. Well, I think my broader point would

be people who are untouchable and who know they're untouchable do much worse things than those of us

who aren't that way can appreciate. Like I'm, I was just talking about on Twitter about Rosemary

Kennedy. She was one of JFK's sisters. It's not clear whether she was developmentally disabled or

had like depressive mental illness. There was something clearly off with her to some capacity.

And at age 23, they gave her a lobotomy. And the thing with a lobotomy is you have to be

conscious. You don't, they don't put you under her. So you have to be counting backwards while

their scalp was in your brain and they stopped, but they stopped, they did too far. She became

mentally like a two year old, you know, never had bladder control for the rest of her life,

couldn't really talk or walk. And when that happened, they just put her away to some home

and they never mentioned her again, or they didn't tell the brothers or sisters where she went.

The lobotomy was only revealed in 1987. And they pretended, Oh, she's a, you know,

in this home for kids with special needs. And it's just like, like that to me is very,

very scary that someone could, you know, do this to their people. I saw people respond,

they go, that was, you know, cutting edge technology at the time, haha. But I'm like,

I don't think that that was really done that, that frequently or be hearing more about it,

all these, you know, botched lobotomies. And my understanding is lobotomies are

very hard to, like you, they would want to do something like a mass murder or like,

like if someone's really bad, like if the person's left an invalid, like who cares kind

of situation, but you're dealing with something like this, like she's not killing people. She's

not assaulting people. She's just difficult because she's making your, your vaunted family look bad.

So, um, so that's to you, that's, what is it? Like psychopathy or something like that? Like,

you don't care about, you just, you, you do horrific things and you don't really care.

I can't diagnose Joe Kennedy, but what I would say, like, of a Jolaine Maxwell, I can't empathize

because I don't understand, first of all, even in a positive sense, I don't know what it's like to be

grooming my son to be the president and lost, you know, the other son in war. I don't know what

that's like. Uh, I don't know what it's like to be so wealthy. Like I have, you have to go

get Joe Kennedy credit because a lot of what he was fighting for was to allow, you know, Irish people

and Catholic people acceptance into like high society. And he was up against a lot of pressure

with that. And he's like, I'm going to, you know, screw these people. I'm going to be recognized

and we're going to make, make people recognize. So there's something to be said for that. But

I mean, I, I can't relate to people like him. Yeah. But I mean, that like is just terrifying.

Like the, I mean, one of the big reasons I'm an anarchist is like when you have someone who has

that sense of amount of power over somebody else, a lot of times they're going to do bad things

and have no consequences. Do you think, uh, in a Jolaine Maxwell case and Epstein case,

do you think they were trying to blackmail people like trying the, what the conspiracy

theories kind of describe, that's probably not too far away from reality. Did they intentionally

try to put powerful people in compromising situations so that they can basically get more

and more power? Yeah. I think that was a Vanity Fair piece that you're referring to or fortune.

Oh, sorry. I'm just referring to a general concept. Oh, there was, so there was an article

that broke this down because this article is either fortune business week, Vanity Fair,

I don't remember, a major, major reputable outlet. And they were, they made the reporter,

made the point, they asked around and they go, this guy's a billionaire or extremely wealthy at

least. No one I know ever traded with him. Like, where's his money coming from? There's no, there's

no paper trail. So they're like, okay, if it's not trading and trades are public often, you know,

where's this money coming from? And it's also like, why are all these people allowing Epstein to be

their business manager when he has no kind of track record to show for it? So the hypothesis was

he would get people into uncompromising situations with underage girls, secretly film it, and then

he would, you know, blackmail them accordingly. Well, I guess that's the question. That would make

sense. I know it makes sense, but I also see a lot of evidence that he's just very charismatic in a

room. So, and I've also seen, you know, that's how human connections get made, like business deals

get made. Yeah, but how, where's his money coming from? Oh, like they rich people without blackmailing,

just like him close, like him as a friend. I'm not arguing that. Like, okay, I like Jeff Epstein.

Make sure you pull that quote. Yes. I'm a business person. I like Jeff Epstein. Michael Malis. I

love Jeff. Like or love? Love. I'm in love with. This escalated quickly. I'm gonna hand over him

to be my money manager to have 20% of my estate fine. Yeah. Where is he making the money for

that 20%? That's the thing that there's no paper trail, have him trading or anything. So I can

understand. Oh, I see. Yeah. Interesting. What were your 2020 favorite moments? You mean 2021?

Yeah, 2021. Yeah, yeah. Clearly, it's just laying Maxwell trial. It just really stands out to me.

It's very moving, which is why I bring it up. No. Moving here. So moving here. But for me,

I think we actually didn't cover that with you. And I'd love to get your comment.

Because you said it's the first time in your life you moved. So it's not just about the place you

go to. It's the actual act of moving is also a leap. Oh, yeah. The decision was that I'm going to

give away my salary at MIT. So stop taking salary, give away the group. So students,

normal research, the grant funding, and still keep an MIT affiliation just because our friends

and colleagues, they're still doing research, but giving away really primarily is the source

of money. So no salary. And let it go to zero. Let my bank account go to zero. And take a leap

in San Francisco or elsewhere. And as COVID broke out, and a lot of people started talking to me

about San Francisco, about the cynicism there, and I'll go there. And there was a kind of,

so it's not all the woke stuff and all that kind of things, which is also a problem. It's less

about dreaming about a big future, about building a big future, and more about some kind of identity

politic battles that they're just, you could say some some aspect in the positive light is important,

but in a place like Silicon Valley, to me, the most important thing is to do big things. And

for that to be most of the conversation. And so that cynicism was there. And then I went to

look at Austin and Austin was the opposite. Yeah, it's the optimism. And you have people like

as I talked to, as Elon was the optimistic about making this the capital of artificial

intelligence and technology and so on. And Mr. Joe Rogan, now just the optimism about

making this the cultural capital of the world of, I mean, specifically comedy, but like,

it just radiates from them, just the excitement. And I've seen not many people of that nature in

my life. And when I see that in their eyes, that engine, that fire of wanting to create something

special about the place. First of all, those people rarely fail. That's first of all. And

second of all, that's contagious. It's contagious. It's very contagious. And so all that combined,

for me, 2021 was the the actual leap of taking the leap saying, all right, well,

I'm actually going to do this. So not just giving away the salary, not giving away all

that, but the whole thing. That's it. You just move to a place. There's an empty building.

And you're moving into it. And this is a new life. And that leap, I don't know,

it's a scary leap to take. Because I've taken that leap many times in my life. And this is where

parents and all those kinds of cynicism is really destructive. Because from a cynical

perspective is, you know, I worked at Google. So why leave Google? There's a very high paying

salary that you can have Google. Then MIT, why leave MIT? Like, it's MIT. This is you've always

dreamed about, like, why do you get a PhD? Yeah, you've loved MIT. You're like, why leave MIT?

I mean, this is the same process I've gone through with a lot of things in life. Like,

you've been saying every single stage and you need that. You need friends, you need support groups

and all those kinds of things that are extremely important. But in the end, it's about taking the

leap. And for me, 2021 was this leap. And to me, that one of the most beautiful things you can do

in life is to take those leaps. And that's something that I think is no longer a thing in New York.

There's no sense of hope. You don't go to New York now. If there's been such an assault and

intentionally or otherwise, maybe it's inevitable, they didn't have a choice.

But there's been such an assault and creativity and small business in New York that no one,

very few people who are in New York right now think things are going to get great soon. Whereas

here, I feel it's every day is just something exciting is going to happen. And that's part

of the culture and how the conversation goes. It's just invoked to be cynical in New York and

San Francisco. I hope it changes because what I love about New York and what I love about Austin

also is the weirdos, the characters, just the variety of personalities that if you just walk

around, you get to meet them. And I think New York still has that, but it has the extra cynicism

on top of it. That's a negative. I mean, just becoming friends with Joe, he inspired me to be

nicer to people, to not take myself seriously, to be humble, to celebrate friends, not to be

competitive. All those things, since I started listening to his podcast from the very beginning,

it just radiated from the guy. The thing that people don't appreciate is Joe Rogan

likes it when you bust his chops. Yeah. I mean, a lot of people at that level,

like if it's, oh, Mr. Rogan, you're laughing at everything they say, they don't want that. It's

very phony and they feel uncomfortable because they know that everything they say is hilarious.

I remember I went with him, he was doing a performance here and I was, yeah, you were there

and he was doing his set. And I'd reached the point now where I don't think of him as Joe Rogan,

you know, just like my buddy's doing standup, you forget. And then I looked at the audience

and I remember him like, oh, this is like a religious experience for these people,

but you forget who he is because he doesn't carry himself like a big shot.

Yeah. And still, I mean, he gets competitive as fuck. Like I argue with him a lot. I mean,

when I talked to Francis Collins and Pfizer CEO, you better believe I heard from Joe.

And then we would just get super drunk and argue about it. So it's, I mean,

it's beautiful and he gets really passionate. So it's not like, it's not like easy to argue with

him, but that's great when you don't take it personally. It's fun.

As you and I discussed, and I'm sure he wouldn't mind us saying this, but like

that moment when you first get a text from Joe Rogan and it's a boomer meme,

like I finally felt like I've arrived as a person.

A boomer meme? What kind of boomer meme are we talking about?

Like he's just some silly meme, but it's just like, this is the kind of thing you can imagine

someone's uncle posting on Facebook. It's Joe Rogan texting it to you.

Yeah. I mean, for me also with Elon, obviously, there's a few people, I'm just saying folks that

people know. Also Jim Keller, who's worked with Elon. So I've had conversations with them

because it's just my line of work. They're realizing that everything is possible in this world.

Yeah. Yeah. Which is not the Russian mindset. Yeah.

Well, okay. All right. That's, let's style it down a notch.

Yeah. It's what, when Elon calls first principles thinking, but really it's just

not being limited by the constraints of the past. Yes.

And so saying like, okay, this is how things have been done, but can be done much, much better.

And that has to do with manufacture. Like how do we do this 10 times cheaper?

Like everyone says it's super expensive, but does it really need to be, this is more of a question

about manufacture, about how to take, build a product, how to actually have a product that's

scaled it as an impact than just having a very serious engineering, like to the level of physics,

discussion about building a thing and fucking doing it and just being around people that did it.

And, you know, basically, literally or figuratively said, fuck you to everybody in the room that said

they can't do it. And that, that energy. So that I've gotten to know Elon a lot better in 2021.

That to me, it's like everything, the whole thing, that moving here and being surrounded

by the optimistic energy and then the individual interactions with people that refuse to be like

brought down by the, yeah, the cynicism of the world, the naysayers. It's,

that to me is what I'm going to remember this year for. And I hope it like materializes into

something concrete here in Austin and I feel is, is doing that.

I really am curious to be a fly on the wall. I'm sure it'll happen at some point,

watching you and Elon talk to each other. He's even more of a robot than you. He was on the

Babylon B podcast and I was honored to be able to be in the room while this was happening.

And with the guys at the B do at the end of every podcast, they have like, like 10 questions.

I don't think this is one of those. No, no, this one. And they go to Elon. Would you,

would you rather be Batman or Iron Man? You know, because they're both like multi million

industrialists and Elon being Elon is like, well, let's think this through. There's different

kinds of bats. You've got, you know, fruit bats and you got insect bats. Why is it called Batman?

Batman should fly, right? That's gonna fly. And I'm just sitting there with a holy dude,

just answer the question. It was so literal. I was like, damn.

I guess by this point, release of the podcast with him. That's a several hours. And it's exactly

as you would imagine. It's exactly as you would imagine. There was this super technical movie

her. Yes. So there's that one scene. It's when, what is it walking feet? Who's the lead character?

Yeah. A walking fetus. Yeah. So he's the lead and he falls in love with Siri,

basically, who's played by Scarlett Johansson. And there's another artificial AI that she's talking

to. And she's like, oh, can I permission to go into nonverbal communication with this professor

and the guys like, sure. And they just start talking to each other in their robot. And I'm

just imagining the two of you having this mind meld. Well, that, so there's both the humor of that,

but also the practical nature of the kind of conversations to have. It's so great because

it's a, it's problem solving mode. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It's so fun. That is exciting.

Because like you stop completing sentences. I actually feel at home because you don't need

to say the full sentences anymore. You could just like say random words and you start to understand

what you're talking about. And then you can have multiple conversations at the same time and go

on these tangents. One of the biggest problems I have with podcasting for me talking, I have to

finish my sentences. I have to actually finish making a point, which is a big problem because

there's like a listener that needs to hear the point being finished as opposed to completing

your sentences inside your own mind. And like the thing I find is useful to Yon does the exact

same thing is when the line of thinking is no longer useful, you just ran, you just switched

to the next thing. You just leave that whole thing behind. You don't need a nice transition.

You don't need any of that. And also just, it's the first principles thing. It's like zooming in

on the elephant in the room. I love that. It's so energizing. That's what I love about engineers.

It's not the, it's not the maybe most eloquent communication style, but I love it. What about

you? So you said moving. The book. The book. What else? And you've been really excited about,

so that's Anarchist Handbook, but you've also been nonstop excited about white film. That was

most of this year. You've been actually made significant progress. Yeah. I'm on page 40 of

the second draft and it's really kind of funny because when you're doing your, I think 10th book,

I lost track already. The first draft is actually pretty good. Like I'm going back and like,

all right, this is going to be a whole slog. I'm like, oh, I just have to cut and paste this and

basically tweak a few words. So I did a good job with the first draft. It's also funny when you're

writing how, and I guess this is the mark of a good professional writer. My personal feelings

don't match how the characters in the book come off. Like I have a lot of fondness for people

like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman and they're early on in the book, but they're not good

people. And I'm writing it objectively and whatever. And I'm reading this, I'm like,

they come off much worse than my personal appraisal of them. So it's kind of interesting as a writer

when you're watching it. I guess kind of like an attorney, right? Like you can have a situation

where you, as an attorney, you have a lot of fondness for your client, but you realize that

they probably did this thing or it could be other way. Like they're innocent, but it's hard for you

to make a good case for them because the data is not there. Can you actually talk about your

writing process in several ways? Sure. One, your writing process, but two, by way of advice of

how to write, you've talked about in the past, like your first draft is these kind of disparate

or more chaotic and that you don't, in the same way that maybe I was saying in the engineering

discussion, you don't complete the sentences. It's just like thoughts. Yes. So the first

like real good writing advice I remember getting was this book by Peggy Noonan called

What I Saw at the Revolution. And she was Ron Reagan's speech writer. She still writes for

The Wall Street Journal. The book I bought was at a used bookstore in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania,

when I was in college. The spine is cocked. I still have it. It was 99 cents. And she talked,

you know, when you're writing for a president, this is no joke, especially for a president who

says no, the great communicator, Reagan, you know, so, and you have to be very inspirational,

but also not come off as corny, which is very hard to do. And she in the book talks about

how she wrote speeches for him, how she, you know, I'm paraphrasing her and I haven't read

her book in a couple of decades, but basically she would write like a brain dump and it's just

garbage. And she was like, that's okay, just get it all out there. And then, you know,

there's that expression all writing is editing. So for the white pill specifically, this is,

I don't know if it's the most ambitious book I've ever done. Your reader, I think is more

ambitious because that's all of North Korea's history. And it's written somebody else's voice,

not person's emotion. And you, like you mentioned, you had to read a giant number.

Yes, 60 bucks as research. Yeah. Well, maybe can we just pause? Can you say what white pill is about?

Sure, it's a tale. It's about hope. And it's a tale of good and evil. And I think that's,

I don't want to tip my hand too much. But people always like, how do you think, why are you so

hopeful? And I'm not hopeful on an emotional level. I'm hopeful because looking at history,

I think there's certain things that not will certainly happen again. But it's not at all

implausible to happen again. And that the good guys will win. And this is one of those cases.

So, you know, I had the book took on a life of its own. It's very different from how originally

conceived it. I originally conceived it as a kind of retelling of Camus philosophy.

Ryan Holliday, who he used to be close friends with, I've talked to him a while,

he has a whole kind of cottage industry based on the Stoics of the past. I'm like, okay,

can I ask him once? Can I do this with Camus? He said, sure. And then I reread Camus recently,

and it wasn't what I had remembered. I was like, can we pause on that? I apologize to interrupt.

So, it's interesting. So, he kind of took ideas from Stoics and started to kind of

use it as a book that gives you advice about how to live life from the Stoic perspectives.

And you were thinking, is there something in existentialism, absurdism, or something specifically

in Camus thinking, or I think you've mentioned the myth of Sisyphus specifically, like his

philosophical work. So, you were trying to see like, is there, can I resurrect this? That's actually,

I would think that's an interesting project. And it's sad to hear that

it was, it didn't materialize in exactly that form, because I thought there would be a lot

in that. So, I had Douglas Murray on my show, and he also made the point, like, when you go back

and read Camus, there's not that much there. The myth of Sisyphus is not at all how I remembered

it. The vast bulk of that book is like literary criticism. So, he's talking about Dusty F's,

you know, those different people who are in bottoms of the absurd, but I'm like, this isn't,

there's not much to take from here. The actual title essay is basically like a

sixth chapter essay at the back of the book, which, you know, it's good for what it is, but

there's not that much there to draw. I'm extremely, he's a great hero of mine. I think his life is

just enormously admirable. He fought very hard against the Nazi occupation. His book, The Plague,

which I find unreadable, is an allegory about, you know, Germany conquering France and so on and so

forth. Wait a minute. Why is The Plague unreadable? It's the kind of book where reading the book

doesn't add anything to the plot. The plot is a plague comes, sleeps over the town, destroys a lot

of life, and vanishes as quickly as it came. You don't need to read the book now. Like, you get the

point. I deeply disagree with you. Yes, of course I've read The Plague. To me, I mean, The Plague is

about the doctor, and it's about love, and it's about the different roles that humans take in time

and tragedy, like The Plague. Also, it's an allegory, so you can start to think about, like,

what, you know, you could, whether it's Nazi Germany, whatever you think that is. Yeah.

To me, though, that was about love and about, like, the role, like, the highest ideal being the doctor,

like, sacrifices themselves for others, and, like, still has love and hope. I mean, to me,

the way that story is told, I think, has a lot of meaning. It's like, to me, you're saying that's

interesting. You say it this way. To me, it's like saying Animal Farm doesn't need to be read,

because it's an obvious story. I don't think there's much plot to The Plague. I think Animal

Farm has a very long plot and a complex plot. But there's experiences within. So the situation set

up in The Plague, and there's experiences that start to reveal a philosophy. So, yeah, it's not

very plot driven. Yeah. But, so I would say you still should read it, but the plot doesn't,

like, you didn't give away anything currently. Right. That's, so some books are just, I mean,

Ayn Rand is similar to that, in a sense. Like, the plot is not as important as the behavior of

the different people in that plot. I think she's very plot heavy. No, she has plots, but I'm saying

that's not necessarily the important thing. To me, the behavior of the people is the important thing.

Sure, but you could, you could, you could, like, separate it into a bunch of blog posts,

and they stand on their own. I would have to think about that with Ayn Rand. She, she does

through the plot create a world where you start to understand the different values that people have.

But, yeah. But that's what the plot serves. Yeah, I would have to think. But in The Plague,

it's the behavior of the people that's really important. And the same, I mean, the stranger,

too. I mean, these like, I'm sure I'm trying to scramble here for books. I really appreciate

that. Don't have a plot. I mean, no, no, it's from underground. So obviously, this task

is a huge amount of plot in most of his work. Herman Hess has a huge amount of plot. Thomas

Mann doesn't have the plot. He's the one who doesn't have plots. Thomas Mann, would you say

Kafka has a plot? I think Kafka is very heavy plot driven. Yeah. But I just don't see that, I guess.

I guess Metamorphosis doesn't really have a plot. Yeah, but there's like crawling around.

But it's like a vignette. It's not really like this. Yeah. A hunger artist on my probably favorite

short stories. That kind of short story is a pretty long short story of Kafka's is really

interesting. It's about a man. I don't know if you read it. No, I think so. It's about a man that

is like a freak in the sense that his skill is that he can fast for a long time. Okay. And then

people gather on the cage and look at him as he, as he fasts. I don't actually remember if

he's in the cage or not, but the, and eventually he fasts so long that people don't even care anymore.

Like they just leave. So there's a, there's a, it has to do something. It makes me think about like

don't become the way you live. Don't become like a freak show, a circus act. Like live for

an ideal, live, live for something that brings you joy. Or don't live for the sake of attention.

For the sake of attention. That's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so I rudely interrupt you

because you were talking about the plague and connecting it to the writing process of white pill.

Yeah. Well, anyway, so, you know, how I was writing this one, I just had a first draft of

notes and they're all, it's not in chronological order. It's like, I read certain books as research

and then I had the pull quotes that was necessary there. And now I'm basically rearranging everything

and putting it. So the book started as Ryan Holliday's, right. Equal Ryan Holliday as Camus.

The working title would have been The Point of Tears because this is quick. Camus is a great

quote maker and he has this line about man must live, live to the point of tears,

which I think is just what I love about him is Camus, he comes off as like he's clenching his

teeth. He's clenching his teeth both in terms of like barely mitigated rage and injustice.

Like when he sees people suffering, it just really makes him like just upset to the core.

But also this sense of not taking life for granted and kind of just pushing yourself

and pushing the boundaries and his point being that life is inherently meaningless,

which gives a great opportunity to impute meaning to it, to create our own meaning to life.

So taking the main essay from Mythocisophus, that was the origin story for the white pill,

but then it became something completely different. And so then it became, how are you so optimistic

in the face of everything that's going on in the world? And I started writing it when COVID started

hitting. And because again, I'm not optimistic because of some temperament of mine. I'm optimistic

because people talk about how if the US didn't exist, China would just become an empire and take

over everything. Empires are expensive. And they look at the British Empire, look at the

Soviet Union. It's not automatically sustainable. It costs a lot of things to make sure when you're

geographically all over the world literally to keep everyone in line. It's not at all like a

supervillain in a movie. Once it happens, it's the happy ending for them. So yeah, that was the

start. And I'm like, all right, let me tell one thing I'm good at is telling stories. So this is

really a... So this is plot driven. Very, very plot driven and also heavily character driven,

but the characters are real. Yeah, got it. So it's interesting to kind of mention what kind of,

what does the first draft kind of look like in terms of what kind of things do you plop down?

Oh, so it'll be like, let's suppose I just read some book called The Guillotine at Work, which was

an early book attacking Lenin from the anarcho communist perspective. So it'll just be like

all the different quotes, like a paragraph here, double space, another paragraph, blah, blah,

so on and so forth. Whereas for other sections where I wasn't just using a book as research,

there would be like talking about McKinley getting shot. Like it's just me writing the narrative

and that I could just pretty much copy paste into the second draft. By way of advice, would

you give that as advice? Is that a good way to do it? Is that a very peculiar way your brain

works? No, so this is actually advice I feel comfortable giving to people who are trying to

write because it's just like with the gym, right? If you did seven sets, seven, excuse me, reps last

week and you did eight this week, it's psychologically motivating because you're going in the right

direction and do you mind extrapolates? So make sure, tell yourself, I'm going to get a page done

today or two pages done. So you're asked to run the computer and I'll have to get up to get those

two pages. It doesn't matter if they look at garbage because if you have a 300 page first draft

and it's crap, at least you have something to work with and that's a big number. So if you're

going to, the thing is, since the first draft is going to be crap, if you're editing as you write,

it's going to be extremely discouraging and it's also trying to drive and then doing reverse at the

same time. It's a completely nonsensical way to do it. Get it all out there. Don't look it over.

If you have a great line put on your phone and then add it to the draft, so it'll be a complete

slog, but editing that slog is going to be a lot easier than creating it to begin with.

And when you see those disparate lines all laid out on the page, how difficult does it to

then start stitching it together? Do you find that when you look at a list of those things,

the final product will look very different? Yes. Or will you actually use those lines?

No, I will use those lines. Then I have a file called scraps. So if the line's no longer used,

I put it in my scrap pile. I'd love to see what's in the scrap pile.

Okay, yeah, sure. One of the things I've been pulling scraps is a lot of times when I was earlier

writing, I would have contemporary references. And I realized that that's bad because I want

the reader to be in the past as the present. So if you're talking about, let's say 1901 and

then you're referring to Obama, that screws people up. So I had to pull all those.

Okay, let's talk about some New Year's resolutions. Do you ever do New Year's resolutions? Do you

ever think like that? Like take a special day in the year to think about how you're going to try

to change yourself? Or do you try to transform yourself every single day when you wake up?

Well, I usually have several projects I'm working on at once. So there's always incremental

progress in those. You know, it's nice to have a deadline. By the end of 2022,

I'll accomplish this, kind of like to hold yourself responsible. And then you could do that at the

beginning of the year to think about that. Both philosophically, like what kind of big,

not projects that you can quantify, but more like, how can I change my life? Or like I mentioned,

take the leap of different kinds. And then there's specific things like finish the book.

I, years ago, and I'm, I think on some level, you much less than me, but I think you're increasing

in this direction. I realized it's more, I have to learn how to be a surfer and not a driver.

Because when you reach the level we're at in our careers or in our place in the culture,

a lot of this is luck. And a lot of this is just like,

like I'm just going along for the ride because it's kind of counterintuitive. Like, you know,

like the success of the anarchist handbook was counterintuitive. So all I'm hoping for is,

you know, getting the book done. I am extremely proud of it. And just also, you know, building a,

you know, we had Thanksgiving together at Blair's house, just building a great

upcoming community here in Austin, which has happened very quickly. I was, there was going to

be another surprise here. There's a girl named Natalie Sidesurf, and she makes these ultra

realistic cakes. Like if you've seen those cakes online where it looks like you're cutting a puppy,

like she makes those kind of things. So she's here.

In Austin?

Yeah, you know, so.

Like moved permanently?

I think she's been here for a while. I've never, I haven't met her yet, but I just kind of

chatted with her. So there's just, it's just so many, there's so many scenes happening here

that are overlapping.

So in general, finish the book, keep building a community. I mean, you've already been doing

that here. You've been here several months.

I've been making a point to introduce people to each other and everyone's just really getting

along very well.

That's great. And the book is the focus.

The book is the focus.

What about the podcast that you're doing? You're welcome.

Yes. I mean, I enjoy it and it's been growing a lot. I finally got a new computer,

which my friend Jay installed so I can have a decent camera because of my old,

this is my mindset as a hoarder. Like I was more interested in spending money on a Pareto

autograph than actually getting a computer that's from the 20th century.

So, but I'm such an old school person in that in my head podcasts are like so ephemeral.

Like there's some episodes of my podcast I'm really proud of and there's a lot of friendships

I've made as a result of it that really mean a lot to me. No question. It's made my life

a profoundly better place, but it's not the same as that book on the shelf, especially when the

book is something that I think matters much more than I do.

Yeah. There's a permanence to it. There's a seriousness to laying down the words on paper,

like really giving them thought.

Yeah. That's true, but I'm a huge fan of podcasts. You don't listen to podcasts

much. It's just fascinating to... Yeah, like at all. I don't know how mine is so successful.

Yeah. I just love the medium. I love the authenticity, the realness of the medium.

That's really nice. I just understood for the... It's starting to click because

my pal Blair White, she was just on Rogan and the first 10 minutes, I was so angry.

I was sitting there yelling at the screen because Joe and Blair, you would think that

they're going to start talking about Trump or trans issues or move into Austin.

They start talking about shark reproduction and neither of these dumbasses knew anything

about it and I know a lot about it and they're like, oh, is it like this? I'll do the sharks,

lay eggs and I'm sitting there. I'm like, if you don't know why you're talking about this,

why? Why are you talking? I could also see why people like these shows,

because they feel like they're friends of the people, like they're sitting in the room,

because I felt like it was in that room and I wanted to shake both of them.

Yeah, in the room. To know what about transforming yourself and new resolutions like that.

Oh, I'm doing a slight bulk now. I'm almost at my heaviest weight ever, but I couldn't

go to the gym this week because I'm a little underweather. That's been a little frustrating,

but yeah. So we're going to get some more modeling pics. What are we, what's, what's,

is there goals there? So my heaviest, I'm four eight. The heaviest I've ever been was when,

and this is when I was like, he's exaggerating. He's not at that. That's the metric.

Oh, sorry. Are you talking about your height? Yeah. Yeah. Barely four, six. So the heaviest

I've ever been when I was like really high body fat, because I was just, because I learned,

because I couldn't gain weight as a kid. So when I figured out I could actually gain weight, I like,

I was 164.5. So I want to hit 165 and then see, take it from there. I have a friend who's been

helping me, my buddy Trey Goff and this kid stronger, his Jake, his username on Instagram

is stronger, both the number five instead of the letter S. But he does, I've never, it looks like

it's Photoshop, like your brain can't process it. You know the human flag? No. Oh yeah. Yeah. Sorry.

He does human flag push ups. Wow. So he is horizontal parallel to the ground, right? He's

holding himself up like a flag, but he could also do this while, so he's moving parallel to the earth

side to side while how it's just crazy. That's really difficult. So you're interested in that

kind of stuff. No, but I'm saying like he's been helping me out. So like the guy knows what he's

doing. He's just a really impressive kid. I love that kind of stuff, like body weight stuff. So

my primary mode of working out, it's very like the, you ever seen Leon, like the professional

that with Natalie Portman, that movie, I have a pull up thing as you push up some pull ups. It's

very like, I'm just missing the milk. I like working out at home just like that. And the body

weight stuff, you can go so much with it and it's super functional for everything else you live in,

for life, for living life well. I'm on the other hand, I don't care with functionality.

The thing that really bothers me, like I go, I know Joe's thinking of opening up a gym,

like a private gym. There's only like one power cage here at the golds I go to. I don't know

what source that there's only one or that sometimes people aren't using it. I'm like,

no one's doing deadlifts in here. No one, just me. It's golds. By the way, I don't want to say

where I'll tell you off Mike, but there's a few really ghetto places around Austin that are just

like these shitty gyms that nobody wants to go to, but they have a rack, they have like, if you

want to lift heavy, that kind of stuff. But are they 24 hours? That's the thing, golds. Oh, but

they're 24 hours in the following way. There's a code. Okay. And you just go in. Okay. And you

turn on the lights and then you work out. I don't want to meet people. Exactly. Well, that's just

not true. Sometimes there's people and they're great. Yeah. Like, and I've had fans give us

me a goals and they've all been cool, except, except, except, except if I have my headphones on

and I'm doing deadlifts, I don't need you to come over, tap my ear and start giving me critiques

about my form. It's actually happened. Yes. I'm still angry about it. I'm pulling my 150 in peace.

Thank you. Yeah. People are hilarious. I was recently in, actually, the wildest day ever in

my life. So many things happened in a row. So when to a wedding in LA. Andrew? Andrew Schultz.

And with Whitney Cummings and Joe Rogan and a bunch of other fascinating people. It's just

speaking of weirdos. There's the comedian, like the reason I find the comedians awesome.

One, they're authentic. They're just cool people. Yeah. Yeah. But they're also just weird. Like,

you don't become a comedian for not being like fucked up in all kinds of different ways. Anyway,

so there's the wedding. I'm, you know, me, it was only carbs at the wedding. So I didn't eat. I didn't

eat for a long time. So I was like already fasted 20 hours, 25 hours. And so that this whole story

of everything that happens is, is Lex like 40 hours fasted with Joe Rogan drinking a lot of whiskey.

And so you were drinking too heavy on 40. Oh my God, that's crazy. So it is calories.

That was my only source of calories, the whiskey. And I, so I didn't trust myself with carbs when

I'm drunk. I just don't enjoy it because I'll forget. And I just enjoy eating like a strict

healthy diet when I'm drunk because I'd rather eat more food that's healthy versus not. And so

anyway, so then we went to Vegas together and then just kept doing wild thing after another

wild thing. Rogan opened up for Wendy Cummings. He just like showed up at a random party that he

wasn't invited. And he did a thing. He almost started a fight because some guys said stop,

spread yell that him said stop spreading misinformation. And then we run into David

Goggins of all, this is my first time meeting David. I've talked to David a lot over the phone.

And we were supposed to do a thing together. And this is me trash out of my mind meeting David

for the first time with this incredible wife, Rogan's wife was there. By the way, Joe Rogan's

wife, David's wife made me realize that I really want to be married because they're not, they make

their partners better. Yeah. Like that I was,

there's a certain aspect of marriage that I'm afraid of that like your partner takes you away

from life. You don't get to experience life as much. But this was like, they were enriching them.

I don't know. It's like the world's most powerful support group. It was cool. Anyway,

so then of course drunk Lex is challenges Goggins to pushups. I saw that's on Instagram.

So we're in the middle of your suit in this suit in the middle of casino. There's a crowd

gathering. Like it's Joe Rogan, me and David Goggins, and I'm just doing pushups with them.

And Rogan is like commentating and yelling and screaming. It was surreal. And just going

on to the next thing and next thing and next thing like this. And then drove all the way from Vegas

back to LA with Joe and Whitney and his wife. And it was like, what is this? And all of it is

done in 24 hours. The one valuable lesson is don't fast and drink like excessively. So I've

learned that because what happens is liquor hits your mind. My mind. Sorry. I'll speak about my

particular mind. Like the intellectual part of my brain got hit really hard, really fast. So I was

not able to even more so than usual stitch together sentences. I understood everybody well.

So like made your name again. Yeah, I was. Yeah. So like meeting David, I want to say

so many things. He's so inspiring to me, right? But all I said was like, hello.

And I remember like opening my mouth to like try to say more. And I was like,

and then I would just close my mouth and not be able to say anymore.

This is why this is one of the reasons I don't drink ever. Yeah. It removes certain barriers.

Like it allows you to maybe have fun that you wouldn't otherwise. But yeah, definitely for

personal values and intellectual eloquence. And I also hate being hungover. The hungover part.

Yeah. That's the worst. And you also like I did this to myself. Yeah. But it also teaches me that

this too shall pass because I've been hungover and I've quit drinking so many times in my life

that it realizes, it makes you realize that all the unpleasant feelings,

all you have to do is just wait it out and be fine. It took me a long time to realize that

that expression means the other thing. What's the other thing? If things are going great,

this too shall pass. Yeah. I always thought about it. No, I always thought about it as being more

like don't worry if things are bad, it'll pass. It's like it's also like if something's going

great, it's not going to be this way forever. It's like Bukowski said love is a fog that

fades with the first daylight of reality. Do you think love can last? Oh yeah, we're going to win.

Who's we? The good guys. Didn't Hitler also think he's the good guys? He's wrong.

Because you know why? Why? He didn't win.

So you think it's permanent? So this one time the good guys winning, it'll last. It won't pass

because I think all of it passes unfortunately. I think we're going to win and win big in the

not so distant future. Do you have specific things in mind or no? Or just a sense about

human civilization, about society waking up? I don't know about waking up, but I think the

increased understanding on all sides of the political spectrum that corporate America

and corporate news outlets are self motivated actors and those motivations are often inimical

to what others would regard as desirable is something that I think is happening with

increasing frequency. So what do you think about the political landscape in general?

You had a great conversation with Glenn Beck and he said that he talked to Trump and

believes that Donald Trump is definitely running in 2024 or very likely running in 2024.

I think he said he thinks he'll have a good chance of winning or I don't remember that, but

the fact that he was running was a surprise to you. Do you think Donald Trump would be running in 2024?

Given that Glenn Beck has a much better relationship with Trump than I do to put it

mildly, if Glenn Beck is certain this is going to happen, I would defer to Glenn Beck's judgment.

Do you think he has a chance of winning? Do you think he'll win?

Anyone in a binary political system who's the nominee has a chance. Like whoever the Republican

Democrat has a chance. I think also it's a lot easier to vote for someone that you have voted

for in the past. So that's why incumbents have a big advantage. There's not that psychological

barrier to cover. I think it's also useful for Trump that he's banished for social media because

then he doesn't have to have the responsibility of governing and all the costs of that because no

matter what decisions you make while governing, some people aren't going to like that. So he gets to

kind of be above the radar or below the radar rather to some extent. I don't think it's at all a

given that he would get the nomination. When I say the good guys are going to win, I certainly

don't mean Donald Trump. I don't think victory is going to come as a consequence of Washington.

Do you want to make America great again? I think America is great.

Does my fail the tempted humor? One of many. There are also hats that Julianne and Jim

Jeffords wore that said people can look this up. They said because they were in South the border,

make Mexico great again also. That's in me. It was like just the syntax there.

Okay. So you don't even think you might get the nomination? Who else might?

If you had asked three years out who the nominee in 2020 would be, Donald Trump wasn't even or

2016 rather, wasn't even on the radar screen. So we have a long way to go.

Even two years is a long way to go? Yeah. Especially because we're coming out of COVID.

There might be some governor who becomes a rock star for some reason. Maybe someone's

going to have some congressmen might have some big moment where they're screaming at somebody and

all of a sudden they become a rock star in the Republican Party.

It could be one of the celebrities we don't think about. Donald Trump is essentially not a political

figure before he ran. So it could be any of the famous right leaning celebrities. I don't even

know which way McConaughey leans. No, I think he's the lefty or he was going to run as a Democrat,

but he's not running. But people like that just might step into the ring.

Yeah. I don't think they'd have that much of a chance because I think the Republican Party,

there's an asymmetry. They'd be much more skeptical of like an actor than Democrats would be because

they would regard that actor as coming as a kind of mentoring candidate or whatever.

Right. But there's other kinds of celebrities like Jaco could run as a Republican.

That's a good example. Yeah. Yeah.

That would be interesting. So military person. Right. Yeah.

But already like for example, Dr. Oz is thinking of running for,

is going to run for the Senate in Pennsylvania. And there's already been a lot of research

people slamming him on Twitter and social media for past positions he's taken. So

you know, the Santas is the figure of the moment, but Scott Walker was the figure of the moment in

the 2016 cycle and he didn't even make it to Iowa. Yeah. And I wonder what role does COVID play in

all of this in terms of, you know, I'm mostly optimistic and hopeful about the world. Like

when I look at the world, I'm excited by most things. I've been a little bit or a lot disappointed

by the lack of great leadership in a time of trouble. Because to me, one of the great things

about a difficult time is it brings out the great leaders. Again, it's the up and down

things. Like you don't want to ask for war. You don't want to ask for pandemics. But when they

happen, it's a great opportunity for the human spirit to flourish. And the fact that it didn't

quite in the way that I hoped it would is disappointing. I think there's still time too,

because people are trying to figure out what to do as we emerge from the fog. Yeah. So I'm excited

by 2020. For somebody said this dark cynical thing, I hope this is not true, but like that

there was some doubt about the results of the election in 2020, that in 2024, both sides,

it'll just start becoming standard to completely reject the results of an election no matter

who wins. Well, that's my perspective. I don't regard elections as legitimate. And I see what

you're saying, not in the terms of that basically the process itself was illegitimate. Yes. There's

like cheating or something. Yeah. But I think that that's pretty much a given. It has been a

given. Like it's either Republicans often say, oh, they got all these illegals to vote. Or the

Democrats will say the voting machines were hacked or the media, so on and so forth. Because despite

all the people flapping their guns about democracy, they only like democracy when it gives them the

results that they want. Can I ask you about something else that Glenn Beck said that I

thought was really interesting. I agree with him very much on this. And I was refreshing to hear,

although he kind of made a turn it into a point about why Trump is great or whatever. But the

point was the following, which is he doesn't want to talk to anybody who can't say at least one nice

thing about everyone. So like, if you don't like Donald Trump, if you don't like Joe Biden,

you should still be able to say one nice thing like legitimate nice, not just like a dismissive

nice thing, but legitimately say what is one nice thing they did or like, or who they are as a person.

And not not like saying Donald Trump. It's funny sometimes like no like legitimate where you really

mean it. And it's been really troubling to me how few people are able to do that about political

figures. I had a lot of people. I think I tweeted something like this leading up to the election,

saying like you should be able to say something nice about both Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

And I've had old friends. I don't want to say specific, I guess, to call them out, but they

several people and one in particular like wrote me this long, like several page email.

It was Sam. It was Sam Harris. Was it Sam Harris? Sam Harris. No. But

I have a lot of conversations with Sam Harris now and Joe on both sides. It's like the devil and

the angel on both sides. I don't know which one is which, but they're both devils.

And they said, how could you say, how could you even consider like that there's something positive

about Donald Trump? Yeah, he's an easy one. He has three wives with three kids with each,

but the kids get along. I think that's really commendable that Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump

and Barron can all get along with each other given the circumstances. I think that speaks to

something as someone as a father, Ivanka. So on the family level. And I see the same thing with

actually one of the reasons I always found Joe Biden fascinating is he's had a lot of really

traumatic things happen in his life. Yeah. And if I shit my pants in front of the pope, I'd be

traumatized too. I'm talking to a master troll about something sensitive and beautiful that

is a man suffering with a loss. I kind of know what he feels like right now. I'm pretending

you're the pope. This chair is ruined. Sorry, Elon. You'd have to sit in it.

Why does this chair feel like I'm sitting in a swamp?

I can't look. You have stuff to show. Can you forego chair?

I'll send you a protestant. That's a pretty good Elon impression.

But yeah, I mean, like one criticism I told Joe,

Rogan is like, he has trouble finding one positive thing to say about Joe Biden, for example.

And I just don't, I don't like that. I want, I think, I mean, I'm a big believer in the shit

sandwich sticking on topic. Here's an easy one. I think Joe Biden clearly is a very amiable person.

What's amiable? It gets along with people. It seems really clear that maybe before president,

because it's different when you're the president, but that he could call a lot of these Republican

senators, get them on the phone and have a conversation with them. Yeah. And it's not

some kind of manipulation. To some extent it is because they're all politicians, but he clearly

seemed to be able to get, wasn't like an ideologue. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but there's,

I mean, maybe I'm a sucker for that kind of thing, but the blue collar thing, like riding the train,

you know, there's ways to connect with people and not, it's seeing them as equals,

no matter where their walks of life are. And I love it when presidents do that.

To some degree, because of the wealth under which Donald Trump existed for a lot of his

recent life, he's less able to do that quite naturally. Maybe sometimes Obama wasn't quite

able to do that. Who's more blue collar Trump or Biden? And you can easily make the case for both,

I think. You could. No, not the blue collar, but like, like literally be able to fit in at a bar,

at a local bar and just like, I can see both of them. Yeah, you're right. I could see both of

them. Yeah. In fact, Obama doesn't quite. No, because he's got that Ivy League. Yeah, the Ivy

League thing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're right. Somehow Donald Trump can too. No, he's not. Yeah,

you can see him having a beer with the guys and yelling at the screen. This is bullshit. Change

the channel. Yeah. I mean, I hope people do that. I think that's one of the most unpleasant things to

me is they're not able to empathize with the fact that half the country voted for another person.

Well, it's also then it's just a bad strategy. If you can't figure out why half the country is

voting for someone you guard as like a demon, well, then how are you going to supposed to fight

this demon? Like, you know, when I did your reader, the North Korea book, it's like, don't you want

to understand how these people get to where they got? It's unknown saying that he's a good person,

but like there's a logic to their, there's a method to their madness. You've talked about

national divorce a few times. I've seen a couple of videos recently where you're responding to

articles. It's kind of cool. Can you talk about this idea of national divorce and as it stands

today, arguing for it maybe. And if you could, just out of curious in the context of those videos,

if you can steal man and argument against. So I was the first one to kind of bring this

issue back into the national conversation. I wrote a piece for Observer in 2016,

then Jesse Kelly had a piece a few months after that. David Boy just recently did a piece on his

stop stack earlier this year. And it's become enough of a mainstreamed idea that paleontology

outlets like the national review have felt the need to respond to them. So the point being that America

has had at least two cultures since the beginning, and that there's absolutely no reason, and these

cultures in recent years, and this was in 2016, not mentioned 2021, have been increasingly antagonistic

toward one another and have even lost the ability to communicate. They're using language in different

ways. And that there's no reason for this to continue any further. And you live your life,

we'll live ours, and good bye and good luck. There's no ill will. Now, there's lots of

arguments against them. Some of those are completely, I think, stupid. The stupidest one

is, well, that's what China wants. Okay, well, I mean, I'm not going to live my life saying,

I'm just going to do the opposite of whatever China wants. That's not logic. That's not a good

pathway. Now, I'm not saying they're right or wrong, but that's not a reason why we're another.

Yeah, you're bringing up China or Russia. That's exactly what China or Russia want.

But the strong way to phrase that is it weakens America, not just the one America, but

both sides in the divorce will be much weaker than they individually were together. So in

that sense, not that you have to care about what China thinks, but it's a big step backwards.

Yes, I think in the short term, it is absolutely a big step backwards in terms of power. There's no

question that when you're trying to reestablish a society, there's going to be a transition period,

that transition period is going to be costly. Each side starts wondering, wait a minute,

why are we still doing this? We don't have to anywhere. We're not living with them, so on and

so forth. So that's going to be a concern. I don't think that the whole point of America,

or even a large primary point of America, is to be a bulwark against Chinese power.

And there's going to be very few people on earth, given my work, who have as much informed hatred

and contempt for the Chinese government as I do. Certainly, next to the North Korean people,

maybe the people from Eritrea, there's few populations who I'm as worried about as the people

under the rule of the Red Chinese. My steelman argument is there's no way this is going to be

peaceful, because the lines don't separate out well. So all you're doing is basically just

replicating the problem, because the disparity isn't between during the Civil War North and South.

It's like it's between New York City and upstate New York, between Chicago, downstate Chicago.

Once you get outside of LA and Sacramento, California in many ways is like Kentucky.

So it doesn't make sense. So that's a strong argument. I mean, you've talked about that

this process will be painful. It can't be. And we're not just talking about violence. It could be just

even the Civil War, you could divide it somewhat cleanly. Obviously, the kind of national

divorce you might be suggesting is that people are living amongst each other. So you have to

literally move. It's complicated. Right. So that is a very strong argument. It's

I think a cogent argument against it. Two is it's not just China. It's that there's a lot of

bad actors in the world who maybe aren't like China certainly wants to carry itself and have an

appearance at least on the world stage as civilized and a leader. There's lots of smaller

countries who without us are going to feel comfortable doing some very nefarious things.

And they're not going to be scared of us anymore. And so that would be a bigger concern

in many regards than China. So I think that's a reasonable one. It could be that both sides,

if this happens, are going to instead of work toward better things that make you side bad would

get worse. And that's having those push towards the malevolent extremes is I think a very legitimate

criticism and a concern. I mean, as you suggested, there's no guarantee that won't happen.

Correct at all. Also, there's a I think a reasonable argument to make is like, are you

America just as a symbol and the myth of America? And I don't mean myth in a negative sense. Do

you really want to throw that in the garbage? Like this meant a lot for a lot of people and a lot

for history. You're just going to be like, okay, good, good work. We were done here. Let's shut

the lights. So that's I think a reasonable argument. So those are the biggest ones, I would say.

And still, what is the case for national divorce and along which lines? So like

in making the case for national divorce, if it is desired, based on which kind of ideas do you

think it should be carried through? Honestly, I don't know that it has to be idea based. Like,

for example, when Czechoslovakia broke up, when Norway and Sweden broke up, it wasn't really

ideological. It was more cultural. So I always say divorced into two, but it would probably

make more sense if it was like five. Because the Northeast, certainly New England has their own

culture. The West Coast has their own kind of culture. I don't know. The thing is,

into any kind of persuasion technique, right? Like once people are start, there's a difference

between convincing someone they want to buy a car and what features you want. So if you're at the

point where we're arguing about the features, then my work here is done. You know what I mean?

Like I don't have a dog in the fight in terms of what it's going to look like. I just want to get

to the point where you're at least considering seriously the idea of breaking up America.

And I would encourage people to go look at my article to see which I'm sure the arguments

still hold five years later. Do you have a kind of vision of which of the two or which of the five?

Like do you actually have specific cultures or ideas?

I'll tell you exactly. If I told you and everyone listening in 2014, we weren't that long ago,

it was not long ago, which of these two things is more likely to happen? 2014, Texas secedes

or declares a session for America or Donald Trump gets elected president. Everyone's voting for

Texas in terms of prediction, which is more likely. So we had this one. So it's not at all

unlikely we're going to have this one. I don't know if that logic carries through. You can't just

say here's an unlikely thing that happened. Therefore, anything can happen. You just earlier

said anything that happened this episode, didn't you? Life is suffering. I wasn't listening to

half the things you're saying. You said it. I said it. Yes, you said anything can happen.

I'm definitely not here. I'm like you with podcasts. I do a podcast, but I don't listen to it.

It's kind of fun talking. Okay. So yeah, yeah, yeah, it can happen. But in which,

I guess I'm asking, would you stay in Texas? 100%. So Texas and I'd run for office probably. It'd

be fun. I'm going to be the first president of Texas. I attended a debate between Yoram Books and

Yoram Hazoni. I don't know if you know who that is. The nationalist guy. Yeah. He wrote a book

called The Virtue of Nationalism. Yeah, I read that book. And they actually did a podcast with them.

They did a debate. Oh, they both run here? Okay. It was quite interesting. And I tried to wear my

Michael Malis hat. So the... You're wearing it now. You borrowed that from me. Yeah.

It's funny because the metaphor applies across all of these level of collectivism. So he was

arguing that for the power of nation, so he would be arguing against national divorce.

But he was also arguing for marriage, the power of actual marriage between individuals. I think

he's a conservative. And what I really like about him is there's a clear philosophy of

conservatism that he expresses. And I think a lot of people get behind that philosophy. Because

to me, like conservatism and liberalism often is very kind of used loosely. Yes. He has a

clear philosophy that he's expressing there and is grounded in tradition. He has a lot of value

in tradition. And so it's the thing you said about America. Like one of the arguments against

national divorce is like, listen, we've been at it for a while. Like there is a lot of value in

the fact that we've been at it for a while. Don't just throw it all away all the time. So he says,

like philosophically, he seems in a lot of walks of life, revolution should be avoided as much as

possible. I agree. And so it's kind of interesting. So he makes the case that there's something

fundamentally powerful about the nation that we... It's a nice way to group a culture.

And so national divorce, I guess, goes against that. Do you find some aspect of the virtue of

nationalism, as you will put it, powerful? Well, powerful in a good sense?

In a good sense. So sorry. Yeah, in a good sense. It brings out the best in humans.

I don't know what the best, but it certainly brings out good things. I have that line I always say

about, I love my country. I hate the government because I love my country. So there is a love

of country. I think it's... I don't know that that's the... I think it's also the case because the

country happens to be America. Like, I don't know if I was living in whatever, I don't want to insult

someone's country. Canada, yeah. If I was living in Canada, I don't know that it'd be the...

This is a guy who calls basically every other country shithole country.

Yeah, that's true. That's the fact. Yeah. So it's either you're either... There's two types of

countries, Texas or shitholes. Oh, wow. You went full Texas. So you're okay burning the northeast

of the ground at this point. Okay, I'm hoping for it. I'm hoping. What they've done to New York City,

I will never forgive these people. And I hope that they suffer enormously consequences for what

they've done to New York. It's unconscionable the assault that they've done and had no remorse over

how many creative outlets that they've destroyed. Yeah, it's the cultural hub, cultural center of

the world in many ways. New York was the... This was the place where you go to put up your shingle

and move the needle and make things happen. And I would understand if it was like, okay,

we got to suffer through this for a year, but we're going to make sure all these businesses

have a kind of safety net to make sure that they kind of get through and survive this,

which they did to the banks in 2008, for example. And I'm saying this as an anarchist and there

was none of that. So I burn it down and salt the earth because it's like watching a zombie.

It's unnatural. It's an abomination. So I mean, sort of on the white pill side of things, I don't

know about you. Maybe I have a sense that both Silicon Valley, that for me personally, maybe I

have the same intensity of feeling as you do about New York. It's just disappointing to see it

be consumed with cynicism and a lot of other paralyzing forces. But I still have hope for

that place. I think maybe it's the Yoram kind of tradition hope that through momentum,

the strong reemerges. So I have hope for New York. I think New York will continue, not maybe on a

scale of years, but a scale of decades, it would be ups and downs where it reemerges as a cultural

center. I just can't imagine a place like New York is like Paris. There's going to be long

stretches of time where it leads the world.

But Paris has not been a cultural hub for a very long time. The days of Matisse and Picasso

and Gertrude Stein are long gone. It still is a hub. Even London isn't London.

But what is then? London is still London. Paris is still Paris. It's just not the Paris of old.

It's not London of old. London is still a place. It's a tech hub. It's a fashion hub.

It's a music hub. I mean, it's still a pretty strong hub.

Yeah, but not like during the Beatles era.

Right.

It's not like or during the Sex Pistols era.

But it could be just us romanticizing the past because what is a hub then?

No, it's not romanticizing the past because a hub is the place where everyone on earth

or our eyes are on you. So in the late 60s, the British in the mid 60s, the British invasion,

you know, the kinks and all these other bands coming out of Great Britain,

like they were the innovators. This was the place that was happening.